It’s that time of year where family members from near and far gather together for the wide and various holidays of the winter season. This is a great chance to game with some folks that you normally don’t get a chance to roll some dice with. Some of your family may not be aware of your...
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What types of stories scare you the most? Is it the madness of the unknown from Cthulhu or the social and body horror of Bluebeard’s Bride? Some find terror in the monster’s teeth inches from their character’s neck, while others flee from the faint noises and shapes in the darkest part of night....
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Last week was kind of super awful. I don’t want to get into the specifics, but I was stressed by both a heavy work load and other unpleasant personal things that appeared unexpectedly. You’d think I would have been looking forward to the escape of game night coming up that Saturday, but it was my...
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What is it that separates the games that we tell stories about for years after we play in them from the bulk of adventures that are fun but disappear from our memories? How can we guide the opportunities for roleplay and storytelling towards those special moments? There are many answers, more than...
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Recently I was thinking my encounter tables seemed kind of dull. Taking some inspiration from this great article series from Justin Alexander, (specifically this part) I decided to add some layers to my encounter tables. This is accomplished pretty simply. By making a handful of themed tables that...
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It is fair to say that I have run a number of campaigns. Some epic, some pretty good, and plenty that were meh or worse. Over time, I have gotten a good feel about if a campaign has what it takes to be worthwhile or not, but it takes a few sessions to be sure. Knowing that, I have made it a...
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The night we started back in on our Tales from the Loop game was nearly breathless with excitement. We’d taken about a six month break and played another truly epic medium size campaign, but this game had stolen our imaginations for months. We wanted to know what had happened to Harrison, Stacie,...
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Recently I’ve had a few conversations about using safety tools in role playing games and it seems like a topic worthy of bringing up with the Gnome Stew audience. Whether you run a high fantasy dungeon crawl or a modern day police noir game, safety tools offer the opportunity for deeper...
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If you’re like most people, you’re capable of effectively keeping track of seven plus or minus two “things” at a time. This phenomenon is sometimes called “the magical number seven plus or minus two.” We can remember and juggle around seven pieces of information—numbers, words,...
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For years I’ve been kicking around a system in my head for simplifying hex crawls, point crawls, West Marches style games, megadungeons, etc… Something that keeps but abstracts the process of wandering, searching, and eventually discovering points of interest without requiring the...
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