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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 1,109 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

Mar 4, 2009 by 9

The Perfect GM?

Fang asks, What Makes the Perfect Gamemaster?. It is having fascinating world, scenarios and characters? Being able improvise, but not railroad? Perhaps if one lets players act whenever / however they like? I’m a big proponent for keeps things moving; is that it? Maybe a perfect gamemaster can handle a split party with perfectly equal spotlight time? Memorizes all the rules? Is fair to the players but not ...
Jan 16, 2009 by 9

Flexible Planning

The previous session of our campaign was a couple of weeks ago (before Christmas). We left on something of a cliffhanger-- the PCs ambushed and slaughtered the Evil Dwarf King's elite guard, in two back to back battles that were almost a session long apiece. After their victory, I started to skip ahead and sketch out some downtime, but the players had a quick conference and stopped me. ...

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Metagaming, Noooo

It's why you always kill the grand vizier.