Are you curious about diving deeper into the hobby of miniature painting? RPG miniatures are everywhere and you can even buy them in bulk. But most of the time, they come unpainted. Those bare plastic, pewter, or even resin miniatures are great starting points for your painting journey. In order...
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Like any vacation, Gen Con is a mixed bag of mostly fun and minor frustration. Sometimes you roll a 20 and occasionally you roll a 1. This year was a mixed dice bag, but I’m grateful to have the opportunity to visit Indy, enjoy the Con, and hang out with my gaming fam. In this article, I...
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Some people love using miniatures in tabletop RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons because they provide a visual representation of where things are on the table. Others dislike them because they can take up space or get knocked over easily if you’re not careful. In this latter, the “theater...
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Tabletop gaming has become a mainstream hobby in the United States. According to Forbes, the tabletop games market is growing rapidly with many new games coming out every year and more people playing these games than ever before. With this growth comes an increase of problematic players who are...
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Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) games have changed the landscape in a lot of very positive ways, but the one that has resonated most at my table – even feeding into other games – is the idea of “failing forward.” That is, creating a partial failure that moves the plot, or at minimum...
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Please consider the following content warnings before proceeding forward with the article. I will touch upon real-life trauma and tragedy as I explore “the line” in horror gaming. In this think piece, I’ll be exploring “the line.” What’s the line? You know the line. That line in horror...
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Put away the ski mask, you absolute sociopath. This is about doing bad things in gaming, and what you do on your own time is between you and your defense attorney. If you’ve been gaming for any amount of time, you’re familiar with most of the old adages about how to make a good game: “show, don’t...
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I’m currently running not one, but two experimental campaigns on weekends in Roll20; the experimental question is “how little worldbuilding can I get away with?” And the answer, it turns out, is very little. I started with this map from DeviantArt, made four gods, one quest-giver NPC, an evil...
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Thirty minutes into the session, the moment we’ve all been waiting for, our unlikely heroes finally catch up to the malicious war band that ransacked their village. In the events of a single hour, our characters lives were forever changed by the savage pillaging for their war effort. They didn’t...
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Any given game that you pick up off a shelf (or grab from itch.io) is an experience, geared toward creating a specific type of story: a fantasy skirmish simulator, a Jane-Austenesque adventure in manners, or living life as a cozy lesbian snake to name just a few. But sometimes you want to mix and...
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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.
Through our partner Engine Publishing, we've published six system-neutral books for GMs, with over 28,000 copies sold. Available in print and PDF.
Focal Point
Unframed
Odyssey
Never Unprepared
Masks
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Misdirected Mark Productions
Rockerboys and Vending Machines
Character Cache
Hydro Hacker Operatives