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
1,110 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 ...
A while back I dropped an article talking about a prep method I used, called 3-3-3 Quick Prep. It’s a method composed mostly of bullet points to give some minimal structure to a game but allow for improvisation at the table. There were some requests in the comments to show some examples of it in play. Well, I am more than happy to oblige and dug up some ...
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 ...
This post is one of two posts today in our Gnome Stew Doubleheader. Today's Doubleheader is about designing campaigns. Check out Patrick Benson's article: You Do Not Have Time for That after reading this....
When I am not wearing my pointy hat here on Gnome Stew, or behind the screen GMing, I am a Project Manager (stop boo-ing..)
In Project Management there exists something we call the Triple Constraint. All ...
This post is one of two posts today in our Gnome Stew Doubleheader. Today's Doubleheader is about designing campaigns. Check out Phil Vecchione's article Doubleheader: The Triple Constraint of A Campaign after reading this....
My father retired a few years back after several decades of being a union electrician for the Chicago Transit Authority. He was a foreman in charge of maintaining the signal services for several of the train ...
