GM’s Day Resource Roundup: 49 Articles from the Stew

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 ^[1]
• The Physical Space Of The Game Part 2 — Put Something There, It Doesn’t Need To Be Polished Or Fancy ^[2]
• RPG Background Music: 41 Awesome Soundtracks ^[3]
• Assigned Seating ^[4]
• Video Gnoments, Episode II: GM’s Screens ^[5]
• GMing Screens: What Are They Good For? ^[6]

Props and Materials

• Video Gnoments, Episode 1: Props ^[7]
• Mad Props II — AmmoCounters ^[8]
• Mad Props and the Character Box ^[9]
• Building the Endurance ^[10]
• Troy’s Crock Pot: Template terrain ^[11]
• Accessory Madness ^[12]
• Free Standees from Gnome Stew to You! ^[13]
• Gaming on the Cheap ^[14]

Technology

• A GM’s Guide to the iPad, Part 1 ^[15]
• A GM’s Guide to the iPad, Part 2 ^[16]
• A GM’s Guide to the iPad, Part 3 (Video!) ^[17]
• Laptops at the Gaming Table, Part 1 of 2 ^[18]
• Laptops at the Gaming Table, part 2 of 2 ^[19]
• Going Digital: Using Obsidian Portal to Prep for, Run, and Document a Campaign ^[20]

Prep-Light GMing and Improvisation

• Prep-Lite Manifesto- The Template ^[21]
• Prep-Lite: Wireframes And Skins ^[22]
• Running A Minimal Prep Game ^[23]
• My Improv Game Setup — An Article With Waaaay Too Many Pictures ^[24]
• Why Using a Template for Game Prep is Awesome ^[25]
• Troy’s Crock Pot: Shopping list adventure planning ^[26]
• D&D Burgoo: Five Room Dungeon ^[27]
• Loose Prep, Detailed Play ^[28]
• Improvisation: Give Your Players Enough Rope to Have a Blast, but Not Enough to Hang Themselves ^[29]

Adventures

• Gnome Stew’s Giant List of RPG Adventure Types ^[30]
• The Pilot Adventure ^[31]
• Re-molding an Adventure ^[32]
• Customizing an Adventure: Making Published Modules Your Own ^[33]
• Seizing the reins: One Shot adventures ^[34]
• Jump Starting a One-Shot with the Familiar ^[35]
• The Dungeon Crawl Checklist ^[36]
• Nonlinear (Sandbox) games ^[37]

First-Time GMing

• First Time GM: Looking for Group ^[38]
• First Time GM: Job Description ^[39]
• First Time GM — Game Prep I — Overview ^[40]
• First Time GM — Game Prep II — Techniques ^[41]
• Introduction to Game Mastering, Part 1: The Most Important Rule ^[42]
• Introduction to Game Mastering, Part 2: What You Need to Get Started ^[43]
• Introduction to Game Mastering, Part 3: More Things You Need to Get Started ^[44]

Treasure

• Seven ways to Spice up Your Treasure ^[45]
• Seven More ways to Spice up Your Treasure ^[46]
• Christmas Morning on the Battlefield ^[47]
• A Mess of Magic Items ^[48]
• Why Not Just Give It To Them? ^[49]

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!