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
With our regular game canceled last week, we tried out a game that has been neglected on my shelf for too long. The game was In A Wicked Age. It features a short rulebook, simple character sheets, and seemed perfect for a fill in game. We got started a little late, didn't get all the characters tied together, and quit a few scenes before we reached the end--but ...
So stop me if you’ve heard this one before:
A Dragonblooded paladin who is trying to make a more noble name for his people, a shadowy thief/assassin Eladrin kicked out of his people for his devious ways, a high ranking human cleric of pelor fresh from the convent, and a tiefling warlock with a dark past walk into a tavern where a man in a corner gives them a ...
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 ...
When I think back over 20-plus years as a gamer, only a few gaming products have ever felt truly magical to me. Two, to be precise.
Oh, there have been LOTS of standouts -- awesome products that have given me years of enjoyment and shaped how I game, and, by extension, that have played a role in making some of my best memories with friends.
Which is a pretty fucking ...
As I continue to use and love Obsidian Portal for game prep (Going Digital: Using Obsidian Portal to Prep for, Run, and Document a Campaign), it occurs to me that a basic wiki principle can be applied to non-wiki-based prep, too: Add it now, build it later.
The prep I've been focused on recently has been creating NPCs. I asked each of my players to include three NPCs they'd ...
Reading the fantastic web comic Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic in which a recent story arc features a god-touched mute half-orc girl named Jone and her mouthy kobold sidekick, a seer from a family where every 5th female generation is gifted with prophecy, I was reminded of the fairy tales of my youth with whole menageries of characters touched by the spark of destiny, with strange magic artifacts, ...
Way back when, at Gencon 2009, I was comped a copy of Runepunk. I’ve been meaning to sit down and write a review, but I never feel right about doing a review unless I’ve gotten deep enough into the product to really understand it. I finally found enough time to really get into Runepunk and see what it is all about. So, a little under a ...
Reading fellow Gnome Scott Martin’s article on “Setting vs. Cast” made me realize that I generally don’t enjoy RPG settings borrowed from books, movies, or television. (For the sake of this article, let’s call them literary settings.) Asking “Why not?” led to this article, which includes advice for using literary settings. I recognize the popularity of literary settings; entire systems are written for them. But they ...
My wife and I are enjoying a free trial of the Star Trek Online game this week. So far, the game is fun: you get the feel of the universe, the uniforms you know and love, plus all of the technology, aliens, ship combat and a good mix of away missions. So far, it feels like a new Star Trek TV series, with your character as the ...
My new campaign is starting this weekend, and my group opted to make use of Dawn of Worlds to design the game world. Dawn of Worlds is a collaborative world building system for use with RPGs, novels, or anything else for which you'd need a world. It's system neutral which makes it useful for anyone, and it's a lot of fun in it's own right. We used Dawn of Worlds for ...
Over the years, I've met lots of GMs who've created and lovingly detailed their own campaign settings, most often for D&D. These settings are usually extensively developed, complete with maps, country write-ups, elaborate histories -- the whole nine yards.
But as much as enjoy writing setting material, I've never actually done this myself. I've dabbled -- drawn detailed maps for fantasy worlds, written chunks of material for specific cities, ...
During our last session at my friendly local gaming shop where I am a player in a Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition game I picked up a copy of the recently released Draconomicon: Chromatic Dragons. I am currently running a 4e game where dragons are a major part of the story arc, so I was considering whether or not to purchase the title.
I skimmed the contents and I was ...
In the D&D Supplement Heroes of Horror (2005, Wizards of the Coast), authors James Wyatt, Ari Marmell and C.A. Suleiman recommend constructing a horror-themed adventure with four components.
They are: mood, setting, plot and villain.
So, it seemed natural to try and pair that approach with some of the other D&D supplements I had at hand and see what horror-inspired adventure hooks we could devise.
Oriental Adventures
“A ...
It's been a long time since I've run a game of Feng Shui, but with my Savage Tide campaign wrapping up soon, I'm finding myself a little tired of D&D 3.5's rules heavy environment. The Feng Shui rulebook is refreshing, very well written and easy on the rules. However, there's one thing I absolutely cannot stand about it: the setting.
In a nutshell, Feng Shui's setting is an excuse ...
