It's been a little while since our last contest, and we thought we'd get 2009 started off right with another one. This time around, you can win one of two sets of dice or a custom Gnome Stew dice bag. Thanks to Our Sponsors This contest is sponsored by Game Master Dice, who provided the two sets of dice, and Marsbarn Designs, who gave us the custom Gnome Stew dice ...

Before we went on our Christmas break (12/24 through 1/4, returning to normal posting 1/5), I asked all of the gnomes to choose their favorite three articles they'd written since our launch in May 2008. These guys have written a massive amount of GMing material -- 260+ articles! -- in the past seven months, and I thought this would be a good way to highlight some of the ...

Before we went on our Christmas break (12/24 through 1/4, returning to normal posting 1/5), I asked all of the gnomes to choose their favorite three articles they'd written since our launch in May 2008. These guys have written a massive amount of GMing material -- 260+ articles! -- in the past seven months, and I thought this would be a good way to highlight some of the ...

When Gnome Stew launched on May 12th, 2008, we had a bit more than 60 registered members and 250 RSS and email subscribers (thanks to some pre-launch buzz). In the 7.5 months since then, we've reached a level of readership that far exceeds anything I had expected. To put these numbers in perspective, it took my first GMing blog, Treasure Tables, two years to reach roughly the point the ...

Before we went on our Christmas break (12/24 through 1/4, returning to normal posting 1/5), I asked all of the gnomes to choose their favorite three articles they'd written since our launch in May 2008. These guys have written a massive amount of GMing material -- 260+ articles! -- in the past seven months, and I thought this would be a good way to highlight some of the ...

Before we went on our Christmas break (12/24 through 1/4, returning to normal posting 1/5), I asked all of the gnomes to choose their favorite three articles they'd written since our launch in May 2008. These guys have written a massive amount of GMing material -- 260+ articles! -- in the past seven months, and I thought this would be a good way to highlight some of the ...

Before we went on our Christmas break (12/24 through 1/4, returning to normal posting 1/5), I asked all of the gnomes to choose their favorite three articles they'd written since our launch in May 2008. These guys have written a massive amount of GMing material -- 260+ articles! -- in the past seven months, and I thought this would be a good way to highlight some of the ...

Christmas Day! It is finally here! And with it we embrace good tidings for all, holiday cheer, and loot. If you were a PC, then Christmas Day is when you get that +3 sword of Ass Kickery that you have been acting Lawful Good for all year long. But much like the occasional cursed item appears in a module, so too does the occasional stinker present show up in ...

'Twas the game before Christmas, when gathered around the table Were gamers a plenty and role players most able. Their dice were selected from their bags with great care, In hopes of rolling max damage and twenties most rare.   The players were nestled all smug in their seats, Craving more victories, and risking defeats. And I with my GM's screen and a clean battlemat, Reviewed my scenario while at the head seat I sat.   When around ...

Gnome Stew will be taking a holiday break starting December 24th, and returning to normal on January 5th. But don't despair: There will be new articles appearing regularly while we're on hiatus (in the form of us gnomes revisiting our favorite ones from the archives), with the possible exception of New Year's Day (when we'll all be so sloshed even WordPress won't help us). There are over 260 GMing ...

Social contracts. The concept isn't new to gaming, nor is it a foreign entity to the great gnome stew readers. While most of us are familiar with the concept, it is one that benefits from being brought up and discussed regularly. I'm hoping that this post will outline social contracts and point people to other sources that delve much more deeply into the subject. An outline and paraphrasing ...

Here's a situation that should be familiar to just about any GM: You pick up a new RPG, and you're stoked about running it. You've got the player buy-in you need to make for a good game. So...how do you actually go about, you know, running it for the first time? I wrote about the general case back in May, in the article 17 Steps to GMing a New ...

Back in the Reagan era, it was considered a cardinal sin in my gaming circles to read boxed text in published modules (which was High Gygaxian for "adventures").  We didn't want to listen to the Dungeon Master (yep, this was during Advanced Dungeons & Dragons' Golden Age) drone on in a monotonous tone about the room description, when all we really cared about is that it was a 15ft ...

V.Hobbs asks about gaming on a budget in the suggestion pot. Because I have little money to spend on all of the gaming materials that I wish that I could, and so I always end up looking at my friends’ impressive collections and wondering how they do it. How do you accumulate a large collection? There are several ways to do it-- I'll list a few below. ...

Well its that time of year. If you are a Christian you can celebrate the Christmas holiday on December 25th. If you are Jewish you can celebrate Hanukkah from sundown on December 21st to December 29th. If you are of the new school pagan variety you’ve got Winter Solstice on December 21st and if you are of the old-school pagan variety then you can celebrate the Christmas ...