Happy GM’s Day! To celebrate this, the Earth’s finest holiday, I wanted to highlight some resources we’ve posted that relate to seven specific topics:

• Setting up your gaming space
• Props and materials
• Technology
• Prep-light GMing and improvisation
• Adventures
• First-time GMing
• Treasure

With over 850 articles, these aren’t the only seven topics we’ve covered in depth, but they offer a good cross-section of the Stew and its 10 current authors, and they all feature evergreen articles — the kind you can come back to in six months or six years and mine for advice and ideas. (You can make that easier by bookmarking this article!)

Whether you’re a new reader or have been with us from the start, I hope this roundup and the 49 articles it features are useful to you!

Setting Up Your Gaming Space

• The Physical Space Of The Game Part 1 – Understanding What The Space Means
• The Physical Space Of The Game Part 2 – Put Something There, It Doesn’t Need To Be Polished Or Fancy
• RPG Background Music: 41 Awesome Soundtracks
• Assigned Seating
• Video Gnoments, Episode II: GM’s Screens
• GMing Screens: What Are They Good For?

Props and Materials

• Video Gnoments, Episode 1: Props
• Mad Props II – AmmoCounters
• Mad Props and the Character Box
• Building the Endurance
• Troy’s Crock Pot: Template terrain
• Accessory Madness
• Free Standees from Gnome Stew to You!
• Gaming on the Cheap

Technology

• A GM’s Guide to the iPad, Part 1
• A GM’s Guide to the iPad, Part 2
• A GM’s Guide to the iPad, Part 3 (Video!)
• Laptops at the Gaming Table, Part 1 of 2
• Laptops at the Gaming Table, part 2 of 2
• Going Digital: Using Obsidian Portal to Prep for, Run, and Document a Campaign

Prep-Light GMing and Improvisation

• Prep-Lite Manifesto- The Template
• Prep-Lite: Wireframes And Skins
• Running A Minimal Prep Game
• My Improv Game Setup – An Article With Waaaay Too Many Pictures
• Why Using a Template for Game Prep is Awesome
• Troy’s Crock Pot: Shopping list adventure planning
• D&D Burgoo: Five Room Dungeon
• Loose Prep, Detailed Play
• Improvisation: Give Your Players Enough Rope to Have a Blast, but Not Enough to Hang Themselves

Adventures

• Gnome Stew’s Giant List of RPG Adventure Types
• The Pilot Adventure
• Re-molding an Adventure
• Customizing an Adventure: Making Published Modules Your Own
• Seizing the reins: One Shot adventures
• Jump Starting a One-Shot with the Familiar
• The Dungeon Crawl Checklist
• Nonlinear (Sandbox) games

First-Time GMing

• First Time GM: Looking for Group
• First Time GM: Job Description
• First Time GM – Game Prep I – Overview
• First Time GM – Game Prep II – Techniques
• Introduction to Game Mastering, Part 1: The Most Important Rule
• Introduction to Game Mastering, Part 2: What You Need to Get Started
• Introduction to Game Mastering, Part 3: More Things You Need to Get Started

Treasure

• Seven ways to Spice up Your Treasure
• Seven More ways to Spice up Your Treasure
• Christmas Morning on the Battlefield
• A Mess of Magic Items
• Why Not Just Give It To Them?

I hope your GM’s Day is an especially fine one, filled with visions of gnomes and halflings making gnomelings sugarplums and plenty of accidental kobold hangings gaming!