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
Today I am going to describe two ways of structuring your plots. One of these methods is bad and the other is good, but you need to understand both in order to see the value of one over the other. plot: Also called storyline. the plan, scheme, or main story of a literary or dramatic work, as a play, novel, or short story. (As ...
Last week, I posted the first preview from the Stew's soon-to-be-released book, Eureka: 501 Adventure Plots to Inspire Game Masters.
The sci-fi plots chapter has come back from layout, so without further blathering, here's the second sample: Eureka sample PDF #2.
This time around, you'll see a different group of authors -- all of the gnomes contributed 55 plots apiece to Eureka, give or take a plot or two.
You'll also ...
As a player I recently experienced two opposite approaches to how a game master can react to the players’ input during a session. One GM made sure to incorporate what the PCs did into the game, and the other made sure to keep the plot on track with what he had prepared. I am not going to go into the details, but guess which game sucked? ...
I hear people brag about their sandbox games. About how the players can have their PCs interact with the world in an unrestricted manner. How the gameworld is not bogged down with a plot that railroads the players, but instead the PCs encounter unique self-contained events that the PCs may investigate further or walk away from at any time. Every time I have played in a campaign ...
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 ...
