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
Back in January, I wrote about using PC backgrounds as a campaign roadmap, and I've been putting a version of that concept into practice in my current Star Trek game. It's been fun and it's saved me time, so I thought it might be useful to you.
Specifically, I used a version of the Three Things approach created by the Stew's own Don Mappin: I asked my players for ...
I'm fascinated by the similarities and differences between movies and adventures, as well as the ways movies can be used to inspire games, and a striking difference between them hit me recently: Pivotal moments in movies are often difficult to translate into adventures.
I'm a spoiler nazi, so I won't reveal the movie I was watching when this popped into my head, but here's the pivotal incident: A firefight ...
Recently, Jared von Hindman wrote an article for the Wizards website on why playing evil races is perfectly legitimate, and how to properly integrate yourself into a party if you are playing one. I’m a long-time fan of Mr. Hindman’s work at his website Head Injury Theater. In fact, one of my first major “Wooo! Someone on teh Intarwebz noticed me!” moments was getting my name in his ...
When I'm not sitting behind a screen or writing Gnome Stew articles, I'm also an RPG freelance writer. That means that my weekly group usually gets dragged into whatever I need to playtest for my projects, the latest of which is Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space.
Running a playtest is like running a one-shot. The players are only going to be playing a short while and it's often ...
A modern variant of the mythical "grim and gritty" fantasy campaign is the "standard horror" campaign. How many of us have dreamed of running a horror adventure (horror generally doesn't lend itself well to campaigns without high PC turnover rates) where all of the PCs are regular people forced to confront something horrific? How much fun would it be to have a flight attendant, a bookish college student, ...
I'm a big proponent of using everything my players give me, especially when it comes to PC backgrounds: If you put it in there, I assume it's because you want to see it in the game, and I'll do my best to make that happen.
But why assume?
As a player, I design character backgrounds this way. I include NPCs my PC would love to fight, fuck, or otherwise interact ...
I was running a Star Wars campaign a few years ago (revised pre-Saga) edition. One of the most helpful sections in the core book was a list of stat blocks for NPCs. As I wanted these stat blocks to be challenging for the PCs, I decided that the PCs would be standard by-the-book characters.
When I showed up to the first session, I discovered that the group had a ...
My regular gaming group of five includes four GMs, which is fantastic for all sorts of reasons -- but one of the best things about it is that as a GM, I'm constantly exposed to new ideas, new approaches, and new tricks and techniques that I never would've come up with on my own.
The background-independent pilot session is one of those techniques.
There are lots of ways to kick ...
Last night, my group kicked off a Ghouls chronicle set in 1983 (Ghouls being a subset of White Wolf's Vampire RPG -- mortal thralls with minor supernatural powers, each bound by blood to a specific vampire), and our GM put a spin on the traditional prelude mechanic: He ran the session round-robin style.
Preludes: Nuts and Bolts
In WW games, preludes are solo (one player, one GM) mini-sessions that take ...
As a GM, I used to struggle with player backgrounds and PC complexity. I thought that every PC needed to be extensively plotted out down to the tiniest detail, and ignored the fact that many players don't enjoy doing this.
Once I took off my blinders and looked at things from a different perspective -- and once I'd seen for myself how enjoyable PCs who start off simple could ...
Here's a question dug from my GMing archives.
In a previous modern occult campaign, there were two players, Dan and Sarah, that played two characters, Drake and Shayla. Dan was very much into roleplaying and being "in character", while Sarah found roleplaying awkward and preferred to refer to Shayla's actions in the third person.
Prior to the campaign, it was established between Dan and Sarah that Drake and Shayla would be madly in love ...
This is the fourth and final article in this series -- the home stretch. My definition of "roleplaying-intensive" is in Part 1, along with tips 1-3; tips 4-6 are in Part 2 and tips 7-9 are in Part 3.)
10. Driftable Mechanics
(This topic was suggested by Gnome Stew reader Irda Ranger -- excellent suggestion, IR.)
"Drift" just means taking an element -- usually a mechanic -- from one RPG and ...
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 ...
I apologize for the almost exclusively "D&D-ish" nature of today's Hot Button, but I think it definitely deserves addressing. It's a question that also comes up in other games that have similar distinctions (such as Palladium's alignment system or Star Wars Light Side/Dark Side distinctions).
Do you allow evil player characters in your standard campaigns?
I mention "standard" because I'm sure all of us old-timers can recall at least one ...
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 ...
