Last month, I wrote about overcoming engagement inertia and how to get your game running to a point where it becomes exciting enough that the interest and engagement in the game help to keep it going. In that article, I talked about frictions that if left unattended can wear down that engagement...
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I have for the past few months been running a one-on-one game with my co-host, and all-around lovely human, Senda, and recently our gaming session got disrupted for a few weeks in a row due to life, kids, etc. These things happen. At first, we were both nervous about missing sessions but realized...
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There are times in your games in which you want tension to increase rapidly. Maybe there’s some sort of time limit to deactivate a bomb, or you are sneaking through a gala full of guards trying not to be seen, but the longer you stay the higher the chance of getting caught. There’s a...
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RPG gamers will likely have come across a concept called the “social contract” at some point in their gaming career. Newer gamers may have not seen the topic discussed directly, but they engage with it every time they play. For those people that don’t know: the social contract is the agreement...
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Shhh…! I have a secret. But I’m going to tell you about it anyway. I hate intra-party secrets. Despise them. I think a secret being held back from the rest of the party by a fellow PC should cause that PC to burn in the 18th pit of fire on the 147th layer of the Abyss while being...
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This spring, we thought it was time to vary up our content a bit. While we all still love roleplaying games and all that comes with it, it was decided we needed a fresh look at the hobby. After all, who better to bring their opinions to us than the loveable furballs so many of us belong to. After...
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This past Tuesday was my 50th birthday, which unofficially marks my 4th decade of playing TTRPGs. They were called RPGs back then (shakes fist at kids playing 5th edition on my front lawn). In that time, I have played hundreds of games, run easily over a thousand sessions, and in doing so have...
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In fiction, a plethora of “lone wolf” characters exist. They’re there for a reason, and they can get along just fine with minimal assistance from others. However, in a group RPG setting, it’s really rough to have one of the characters in the party be a lone wolf. If...
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This article is partly for the players and partly for the game masters out there. The Musketeers from Alexandre Dumas’s book, The Three Musketeers, had a motto that goes, “All for one and one for all.” The intent behind this motto is that when one Musketeer needs something, all...
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Recently, my gaming group has been trying out Cortex Prime. We made our own setting, a sci-fi setting where super-geniuses travel around the galaxy preventing disasters and helping people (think Scorpion meets Thunderbirds), called Aux. As we were creating the skill list for the characters, we...
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Written by a team of veteran Gamers and Gamemasters, Gnome Stew is a widely read gaming blog with multiple awards, ennies, and thousands of articles. We’re dedicated to helping gamers have more fun at the gaming table.
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