Award-Winning GMing Advice
Gnome Stew won the silver ENnie Award for Best Blog in
2011 and
2010 -- thank you for your support! Online since 2008, we've published
1,110 articles packed with GMing tips and advice, as well as
two books for GMs. Our
top 30 articles make a great starting point for new readers.
"I check Gnome Stew every day." -- Monte Cook
"fantastic blog for game masters, dungeon masters, and rpg fans" -- Wil Wheaton
"If you aren’t reading Gnome Stew, you’re missing out." -- Wolfgang Baur
A while back I dropped an article talking about a prep method I used, called 3-3-3 Quick Prep. It’s a method composed mostly of bullet points to give some minimal structure to a game but allow for improvisation at the table. There were some requests in the comments to show some examples of it in play. Well, I am more than happy to oblige and dug up some ...
Anymore, I’m pretty much an improv only Game Master. I like getting down and making an awesome, intricate, and detailed game, but so often those types of games just blow up when the players get into them. You either have to reign players in to preserve the spiderweb of the plot, or you have to help set it on fire and fiddle away. So I’ve taken ...
No matter how roleplaying heavy or interactive a game is, it usually contains conflict that the characters engage in. I can’t remember ever having played in a game where there was no challenge for the characters to overcome. Even in the most non-combat oriented games I’ve played in or run, there was something for the characters to set themselves against. In a game of Bunnies & Burrows that ...
I just got finished with my stint at Con on the Cob. I and the other gnomes, who schlepped it out to Ohio for the convention, had a blast. By and far one of the best moments of the convention for me was the total improv game I ran on Sunday. The title of it was “WHOSE GAME IS IT ANYWAYS” and the description read like this: ...
A few weeks ago I was preparing for running games at Ancon, a local gaming convention. A million things were occupying my time, and I only got two out of the three games written that I had to run. Waiting to meet someone at a table in a coffee shop, I decided to start taking notes for the final game I needed to write up. Having only my ...
When I'm playing but not GMing (as is the case right now), part of my brain is always watching -- and trying to learn from -- my GMs.
During my group's Eberron campaign session last night, I got to watch a great GM handle a tricky balancing act brilliantly, and I wanted to share some of what I took away from that experience.
The Quick Setup
The PCs in this campaign ...
When I run my D&D 4e game I use a random encounter generator. I look at the stats for the various monsters, and I then put those monsters into the game. This might result in a zombie, some lizard people, a classic magical beast, and a handful of human minions being the encounter. If the PCs decide to travel into the woods that evening these monsters are suddenly ...
We've all been there: The game is going gangbusters, but it's getting late. People have work or school in the morning, and you have to stop soon -- even though the adventure isn't over.
Before my baby daughter Lark was in the picture, I was up for gaming until two or three in the morning on Saturday nights. I could sleep in the next day without any worries, so ...
It took me some time to get used to the idea of emerging complexity for player character backgrounds and roleplaying elements (which I wrote about in its own article, Player Characters: Emerging Complexity is A-OK), but the concept is one I've always embraced as a GM.
In this context, "emerging complexity" is the organic growth of a character from a sketch, or from little more than stats or the ...
Welcome the first in an ongoing series here on the Stew: 100-Word Solutions to GMing Problems!
Every 100-Word Solutions post gets its start as a question I email out to the gnomes -- a GMing conundrum of some sort. Here's the first one:
"You completely spaced out on game prep -- it's 30 minutes before your players show up for tonight's game -- an ongoing campaign -- and you realize ...
