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
Ever play poker? You might be dealt three of a kind, but you are never dealt three of the same. One eyed jacks, suicide kings, and the Black Mariah all stand out from amongst their peers. “Three of a Kind” is a series that is all about providing you with three distinct versions of an NPC archetype for you to use in your game as well as some ...
If you want an NPC to be likable or to have some humanity, give him or her a sense of humor. Obviously, this will work with run-of-the-mill NPCs: badass mercenaries, otherwise boring experts, or just portable boxes of healing. But where this idea really works is when you want an NPC to be liked. For instance, let’s say you will be using an NPC as ...
This is part two of a two-part series on index cards. The first part dealt with using index cards during game prep, and included a brief overview of what kinds of cards are available, and how to store them. While no single approach is ideal for everyone, this article will focus on how I’ve been using index cards, along with some ideas that I’ve seen in use, ...
This is part one of a two-part series on index cards. The second part will deal with using index cards at the gaming table. Unless you’re new to gaming, or live and die by the laptop, you’re probably familiar with index cards at the gaming table. A stack fits in your hand, and they can be used for any number of things, from notes to character ...
A couple of weeks ago I was at a convention and got to jump into a game of Apocalypse World. Definitely an interesting system with some unique elements and ideas, but one of the things that struck me most about it was a very non-unique element – something I remember doing a long time ago and that somehow slipped out of my library of gaming tools. It was ...
We've mentioned that we're working on our second book a few times over the past several months, but our secretive gnomish nature has kept us from releasing any details -- until now!
GenCon event listings came out over the weekend, and eagle-eyed Gnome Stew readers may already have spotted this listing:
SEM1123263
Meet the Gnomes Behind the Engine!
Come and meet some of the gnomes behind the ENnie Award-winning blog Gnome Stew! ...
A few weeks back I wrote about how to quickly hammer out a series of timelines for NPC factions for your game. In the course of using the timelines I’d made I found myself asking the question: “How do I know when to pull the trigger on the next stage of the timeline?”
The easy answers are “Whenever is dramatically appropriate”, “Whenever you feel like it.” or even “When ...
As soon as I saw this comment from Chando42 in our Suggestion Pot, I started writing -- this one's a doozy!
In fact, there's so much too it that there's no single theme that can tie together this article. Instead, I'm just going to tackle it piece by piece and try to offer useful advice for each element. It's pretty freeform. My hips, I have shot from them!
The truth ...
“…to boldly go where no man has gone before.”
According to a number of experts, this famous grammatical error is actually perfectly acceptable English. The infinitive may now be added to the short but growing list of things that can be split: hairs, firewood, and the atom.
Going even further, I submit that many things traditionally considered unsplittable may actually be split, including the adventuring party.
Conventional wisdom in RPGs dictates ...
There are many ways to build a good character, but one aspect that often gets overlooked -- or conversely, over-worked -- is motivations.
If you know what motivates a character -- PC or NPC -- you can extrapolate a lot of other things on the fly.
The trick is not to make your motivators too broad or too focused. Too broad, and they're meaningless ("She's motivated by a desire to ...
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 ...
I love names.
As a player, naming my character is one of my favorite aspects of character creation. It usually shakes out one of two ways:
I hit on the perfect name right away and it instantly helps me define the character. Sometimes this comes at the end of the process, sometimes at the start (it's better at the start).
I agonize over choosing a name. I try real names, random ...
There are lots of ways to use NPCs to motivate your players to take a particular course of action (by motivating their PCs, of course), but I've recently discovered one that surprised me: lying.
Specifically, having an NPC that they would like to trust -- or perhaps have trusted in the past -- turn out to be a filthy, lowdown liar.
This is along the same lines as stealing the ...
With D&D 4e out (and looking awesome so far), I wanted to start building a collection of prepainted fantasy minis for future use. While I plan to buy some boosters as well, I figured I'd kick things off by ordering a host of cheap minis for representing PCs. Even if creatures get counters instead, it's always cool when the PCs have their own minis.
Back when I was collecting ...
When it comes to your campaign, if you come across something you like -- an idea, a character from a novel you're reading, a cool scene from a movie -- steal it and use it in your game. Period.
There is absolutely no reason to be bashful about shamelessly borrowing and stealing elements from any source under the sun. If you like it and you think your players will ...
