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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

May 11, 2011 by 3

The first episode of Dark Legacy of Evard

A new season begins tonight. It's not the new season of a cooking show--honestly, hardtack is difficult to make sexy, even if you have Kitchen Stadium's resources. No, tonight is the first session of the new 13 week adventure, Dark Legacy of Evard. I'm looking forward to welcoming new GMs into the fold; a few of our players from the previous seasons are stepping up to run tables ...
Apr 27, 2009 by 7

Customizing an Adventure: Making Published Modules Your Own

Brcarl asked a couple of questions (1, 2) in the Suggestion Pot about using modules and personalizing them. I’m currently running a published module (D&D 4e Keep on the Shadowfell), but have at least one player who would like the story to be more personalized toward the PCs. Any suggestions on how to take (often very generalized) published adventures and tweak them to integrate with PC backgrounds? ...
Nov 12, 2008 by 33

Nonlinear (Sandbox) games

Janna at Dungeonmastering recently wrote up an interesting article about running non-linear games. They're a neat and slightly under-explored concept, so I thought I'd bring in other people's discussions and see what we can figure out. They are commonly discussed using a variety of names... sandbox play is another common example. Core Concept In one sentence: In a sandbox game, you wander around and do what you want instead of ...

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It's why you always kill the grand vizier.