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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

Jul 15, 2011 by 21

Lessons From a Bad GM: Success, Unbeatable Situations, and Effort Versus Reward

Some GMs approach the players as their rivals in the game. This is not to say that they are hostile to the players, but that the GM believes that he or she must meet or surpass the players through the game’s mechanics. This approach may result in preparation decisions that are not inspired by the game’s storyline but are instead born of meta-knowledge of the players and the ...
Apr 19, 2010 by 16

Suggestion Pot: Recurring Adversary

For today's article I thought I'd go to the Suggestion Pot well. Crushnaut writes: I would like to work a rival, or re-occuring adversary into the next campaign I run. How do you guys work these into your stories? Do you use the powerful, yet utterly hopeless defiler as seen on TV? Or do you use a truely threatening foe? What if, to your best efforts, the PCs kill their ...

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Metagaming, Noooo

It's why you always kill the grand vizier.