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
Ever play poker? You might be dealt three of a kind, but you are never dealt three of the same. One eyed jacks, suicide kings, and the Black Mariah all stand out from amongst their peers. “Three of a Kind” is a series that is all about providing you with three distinct versions of an NPC archetype for you to use in your game as well as some ...
If you’re like me you’ve found yourself thinking the following: “I need to make an encounter table for this area. It’s a swamp, so I’ll just go though all my monster books and make a list of all the monsters that can live in swamps…” and then three pages of paper and way too much time later you succumb to information overload, shelf it and go do something ...
It’s that time of the year again, where as a belated holiday gift, I hand out my accumulated B-string campaign ideas from the previous year. Lucky you! The real gift however, is the ideas in the comments section from readers.
These are not only great campaign ideas, but they can be dropped into an ongoing game as a new location hook. And if you’re on the lookout for a ...
The holiday season is upon us, and that means gifts will be exchanged soon amongst friends and loved ones. This year I wanted to share with you two gift ideas that I think are awesome items to have as a GM, but that are not actually gaming related. One is relatively cheap, and the other is fairly expensive, but I have found both of them to be wonderful ...
The character portrait – be it for a PC or NPC – is a time-honored tradition. If you lack any artistic skills technology has fortunately been able to offer an alternative, but these options have historically been expensive and difficult to use. How about a photorealistic option that’s totally free? Read on!
Models Not Required
While 3D modeling packages have routinely been out of the reach of most of us ...
Back when I wrote about using 100 Blank White Cards as tool for world creation, Martin asked for an example. Since Martin is the boss here at the stew, that means you get a follow-up article. With 30 of our previously created cards, and another 30 blanks, my wife and I set out to create a setting for a fantasy game.
With our first two cards, we were off ...
Often times, the ideas we have in our head don’t translate to paper very well because they’re just too darn complex. Case in point, years ago, inspired by the 1986 adventure Night of the Seven Swords and by the play reports of a friend of mine, I wrote my own adventure “Return to The Carnival of the Damned” and it’s follow up: “Son of Return to The Carnival ...
Longtime readers will know that I'm obsessed with gaming widgets, especially little boxes and other containers. Office supply stores are dangerous places for me; to a lesser extent, so are craft stores, housewares stores, and the like.
I recently dropped into Pier One to kill some time, and wouldn't you know it: I walked out with a new gaming widget. Behold the false tome of holding!
Why a false tome, ...
1000 Blank White Cards is a fun game on it’s own, but it’s also a tool that can be twisted to any number of uses. Here's just one way to make it’s creative synergy and frenetic energy work for you: use it to design your campaign world. Like other collaborative world building methods, this system allows your entire group to have input into your campaign world. It also ...
GMs must populate their settings with plenty of fun and interesting locations and after a while it can be tough to create new and fresh locations and to keep similar locations distinct from one another in your head. Over time every creepy forest tends to blur together and you don’t remember the difference between Fenwood and Bramblescar.
Locations also have the capacity to be a major prep time-sink. Good ...
This past week, I finished entering and rating my entire RPG collection on RPGGeek, something I've been putting off for two years. I first posted about RPGG -- which is part of Geekdo, the umbrella site that also includes BoardGameGeek and VideoGameGeek -- almost exactly two years ago: Geekdo.com: Pure, Distilled Awesome.
RPGG is an amazing tool, and one that many GMs -- and gamers in general -- could ...
In this episode I talk about what I am including in my GM’s kit for Gen Con 2011. I also refer to Kurt Schneider’s Index Cards for Prep articles, as well as my own Three of My Favorite Items for GMing article.
What do you have in your GM’s kit? Tell us by leaving a comment below.
I admit it. I’ve resisted using a mounted whiteboard for my game for a long time.
It’s not that I have anything against dry-erase markers. On the contrary, a dry-erase initiative tracker and a basic Flip-Mat brand 5-foot base map are both fine GMing tools that have a place at my table.
(And yes, I realize, they are just smaller versions of the same thing.)
My resistance to the mounted whiteboard ...
If you've been waiting for the standalone PDF edition of our latest book, Masks: 1,000 Memorable NPCs for Any Roleplaying Game, your wait is over!
Order the Masks PDF directly from Engine Publishing
Order Masks from DriveThruRPG
We've also made the Masks PDF available in a bundle with our first book, Eureka: 501 Adventure Plots to Inspire Game Masters, for 20% off:
Order Masks and Eureka for 20% off from Engine Publishing
Order ...
This is part two of a two-part series on index cards. The first part dealt with using index cards during game prep, and included a brief overview of what kinds of cards are available, and how to store them. While no single approach is ideal for everyone, this article will focus on how I’ve been using index cards, along with some ideas that I’ve seen in use, ...
