48.png
 

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

Lenny Balsera–His Design Does Not Dictate Your Conversation

*Author's note: A draft version of this article was accidentally published on 12/08/2011. That version did not accurately convey Lenny's ideas and thoughts and was quickly removed. This version is the approved final draft.* A fairly common discussion, or argument in some cases, that I have observed gamers having is whether or not a GM should run a game exactly as the rules are written, or if it is ...

Your Players Are Your Fans–Treat Them as Such

While at Gen Con I met and hung out with some very nice people. Not just fellow gamers, but also industry insiders (who in the end were also fellow gamers). I had a very strong impression that anyone could spend some time with their favorite game designer, artist, or author at Gen Con. No one turned me away, and every professional that I met made some time for ...

The argument for teabagging when you TPK

There’s a lot of subjects that we as gamers and GMs have giant raving debates over that at their core revolve around “Will I lose a friend if I do this?” Everything from fudge to player kills to dealing with problem players at least partially hinges on the reaction of the rest of your gaming crew and how well you can trust them to act in a ...

Without which not

Here's something that is important for the whole group to pay attention to: Character Roles. The best description of the problem I have read came from Fang Langford when he was working through his description of Scattershot a few years ago. At the time he called it Sine Qua Non, Latin for "without which not". [The current version is here.] It is important to clearly label the ...

,