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
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 ...
Along with DNAphil, I've recently switched to using a template for my session prep. Phil uses a template he created; I'm using the one from the Decipher Star Trek RPG Narrator's Guide.
The Trek RPG template is really two templates: an outline for the episode (adventure) as a whole, which follows the three-act model common to Star Trek and many, many other TV shows (and movies, and books, and ...
When you're running a longer campaign, there's always a danger that the story arcs you had in mind at the outset won't be the best option as you progress through the arc of the campaign itself.
This is often a good thing: Static, predetermined stories can be awesome, but they can also feel static and predetermined to your players -- not so good.
Planning things out in broad strokes (or ...
A few weeks ago I was preparing for running games at Ancon, a local gaming convention. A million things were occupying my time, and I only got two out of the three games written that I had to run. Waiting to meet someone at a table in a coffee shop, I decided to start taking notes for the final game I needed to write up. Having only my ...
After the Dungeon Crawl, the Heist is the second greatest of all RPG tropes. From stealing the scepter of Arkurs, to a stealing an AI out of a cyber fortress, the Heist transcends all settings. There is something about the planning, the sneaking, and eventually laying your hands on the object that strikes a chord with nearly all gamers.
The Heist is a tricky type of scenario to run. ...
Ideally, every new campaign you design has complete player buy in. You’ve discussed systems, options, flavor, outlined the basic thrust of the game, and everyone is on the same page and ready to go. In reality though, some games defy the full disclosure approach. Sometimes you want to throw in a major twist, some concepts are ruined by full disclosure, and other times you need to start work ...
Many GMs don't think about how their campaigns will end. And for those of us who grew up hearing about epic, decade-long campaigns with rotating casts of characters, why should we?
I mean, campaigns aren't supposed to end -- right?
Wrong.
With the exception of some outliers (who are no doubt having a fantastic time, and more power to them), never-ending campaigns are a myth. Jobs, school, kids, and a host ...
Thank you to everyone who commented on the Intro Games for New Players post last month. Jennifer ran her intro game for her group-- and it went extremely well.
A number of your tricks really helped people dig into their characters. Highlighting key skills was a nice touch-- making it obvious at a glance which characters were good at which tasks. We made use of a number of ...
This post is inspired by John Arcadian's recent post, Ah, the good old Scry and Fry. Before I get into this post, however, I want to whip you into a frenzied mob. March with me and demand a solution to the whole "Scry and Fry" thing, especially the fry part. Gnome Arcadian, show us the solution or (raising torch high in gnomish hands) we'll show ...
