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
Having no intention of running a game in 2012, I did not craft an entry for our New Year, New Game event -- hopefully you did! -- so imagine my surprise walking out of last week’s game discussion with a new campaign to plan. Did I mention it’s based on a licensed property that I’m only passingly familiar with and two players who dwarf my knowledge? Oh, and ...
This article was written for the first annual New Year, New Game blog carnival hosted by Gnome Stew as part of the 2012 NYNG challenge.
This past weekend I wrapped up a 16-month Star Trek campaign, and ending it (always a tricky affair) made me think about how I started it -- which in turn seemed like a pretty good topic to cover for NYNG.
I'm going to talk specifics ...
I was just reminded of an interesting concept the other day. My room-mate and I were hanging out in our shared office and talking about the game I am going to be starting up soon. He mentioned, offhandedly, that I’ve been doing a lot of prep for a game that hasn’t started yet. And then he said these bell-ringing words “Oh well, strike while the iron is hot, ...
Anymore, I’m pretty much an improv only Game Master. I like getting down and making an awesome, intricate, and detailed game, but so often those types of games just blow up when the players get into them. You either have to reign players in to preserve the spiderweb of the plot, or you have to help set it on fire and fiddle away. So I’ve taken ...
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 ...
I went to a book signing last night to see Brandon Sanderson, one of my favorite authors, and got a double header: Peter Orullian, who I wasn't familiar with, was also part of the event.
In addition to being incredibly nice, approachable, passionate folks, they both said some things that I wanted to get down right away -- and share with you, because while they were speaking about writing, ...
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 ...
Luke Crane, the creator of the Burning Wheel RPG and one of the best GMs I've ever gamed with, often does something very clever for convention games: He runs replayable scenarios.
"Replayable" as in, even if you've played the exact same event before, it will be dramatically different -- but just as fun -- every time.
That sounds like a pretty handy thing for a GM to have on hand, ...
My planning cycles for my current game are, for me, pretty short -- usually one week. That's actually a good thing, because it forces me to focus on the important stuff and helps me avoid getting bogged down in crap that won't hit the table, but it does mean that I'll take all the help I can get.
One thing I find helpful is having a list of adventure ...
Mashing genres can be a fun way to put a fresh spin on a new campaign. It allows you to to draw upon tropes and plots from one genre and give them a new "desktop theme." When I started this series of articles I planned on keeping to the hypothetical, but as it turns out I began a new campaign last weekend that is a genre mash-up.
At the risk ...
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 ...
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 ...
Over in Le Pote du Suggestiones, Gnome Stew reader gustavovp asked us a great question. As I was typing up a response that began "I don't think there's an article in this, because..." I realized that there was -- and that many of our readers may not know about the Suggestion Pot at all.
The Suggestion What, Now?
Given that close to 4,000 of you read the Stew via RSS ...
Over in the bubbling cauldron of scum and villainy that is our Suggestion Pot, Gnome Stew reader Razjah asked this fun question (thanks, Razjah!) on the heels of John's awe-inspiring improv GMing toolkit article:
I think it would be great to see an article about transporting rpg supplies. Something that compared the tradition methods of moving books, pens, paper, minis, props, etc. with other methods.
I would love to see ...
I just got finished with my stint at Con on the Cob. I and the other gnomes, who schlepped it out to Ohio for the convention, had a blast. By and far one of the best moments of the convention for me was the total improv game I ran on Sunday. The title of it was “WHOSE GAME IS IT ANYWAYS” and the description read like this: ...
