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
“Is professor Yell doing this now, or wait, when did I plan to have him introduce that plot point. Oh crap, I was supposed to have the spider queen attack the group after they got the idol, not beforehand. Shoot! Who was it that sent the quicklings after the grey ladies!” My latest game is NPC heavy, and almost all of the NPCs are politically motivated ...
The most common descriptions used to build a memorable NPC focus on their visual appearance, unusual quirks and mannerisms, or perhaps a voice or accent. In a few rare cases other senses, such as smell (seriously, I’ve used this) or...taste. One area that’s seldom used is the color pallet to describe an NPC. On the surface this sounds strange I’ll grant you, but it works!
I stumbled across this ...
Of the many ways to give the big villains in your campaign depth and make them fun for the PCs to go up against, one of my favorites is having a developed set of motivations and other cues for the villain. If you know what the villain wants, what they're like, and how they approach the world, you can switch into "PC mode" when you're planning or when ...
A few months ago I started down a path of reducing my prep for games that I run. I named my path of enlightenment: Prep-Lite. In my continuing quest to reach Prep-Lite nirvana, I decided to tackle another time sink in my prep: NPC (or Monster) creation. Along the way I learned some important lessons about NPC’s, and the difference between what players experience, and what GM’s see ...
One of the big GMing theory questions that constantly goes through my head is how to make important things stand out to the players. I’ve done a few articles in the past about how to do this. Still, I keep coming back to the concept and ways to do it better. While thinking about this the other day, one key concept keeps sticking in my head: If ...
Right before all of the Halloween craziness of this year occurred, my buddy decided to run a Halloween themed game instead of having the weekly Kilt and Beer night (yes, there is a weekly Kilt and Beer night). Not having been a player in a long time, I said sure why not. We only had a few hours, so knew it would be short and crammed with stuff, ...
One our of intrepid readers, Chando42, posed a suggestion in the Gnome Suggestion Pot that many of us have struggled with over our GMing careers: having good player interaction with our NPCs. Characters that inspire and help drive your adventures versus stale cardboard cutouts that sit there to disseminate information (or hit points) and little else. Or the ones that make you mock them. Mercilessly. First we'll start ...
It’s inevitable. DM long enough, and kids will crop up in your adventure. They’ll either need to be rescued from a trap or a villain, one decides to tag along for protection or curiosity, or like Sherlock Holmes’ Baker Street Boys, you’ll come to rely upon a gang of them to run errands and gather information.
So it’s a good idea to have some standard children rolled up. ...
