Does anyone actually read this section, or do you just skip to the links? I had a friend in grade school who suspected a teacher wasn’t reading any of his papers, so he inserted large sections of just butter butter butter butter butter butter butter butter butter butter butter butter butter butter butter butter butter butter butter butter butter butter butter butter butter butter butter butter butter to see what happened. And lo and behold, his grade was unchanged.

Gnome Rodeos are our regular link roundups. Provided everyone doesn’t simultaneously stop talking about GMing for a week, you should see one most Fridays.

GMing Regulars

→ Dungeon Mastering: Yax is looking for a writer and editor. In the relatively small world of RPG blogs, this is a huge step for DMing.com. Yax is a good guy, and he runs an award-winning site — if you like the idea of getting paid to write about RPGs online, take a peek.

→ Musings of the Chatty DM: All the best stuff from this year’s annual Mastering Your GM-Fu seminar at GenCon (which I participated in in ’06 and ’07) is now online as a free PDF: GM-Fu: Session Prep. Our own DNAphil is the driving force behind this seminar, and from what I’ve heard it was excellent this year. Chatty has also made Chatty Studios official, and re-launched Project Kobold Love there.

→ Roleplaying Tips: It’s been so damned long since I did a Gnome Rodeo that RPT has released like a billion issues. OK — three, actually: Simple Acting Tips, The Power of the Dark Side and 10 Easy Tips for Player Involvement. From that last one: “Has this happened to you? Prepare a great campaign, full of plot twists and intrigue, only to have one of your friends bored and leafing through this month’s Cat Fancy at the table?” Yes, yes it has.

Links der GMing

→ There will be a longer article here in the not-too-distant future, but since Phil — Gnome Stew’s own DNAphil — is too modest for his own good, I at least want to link to it now: DNAphil is now a GM consultant for hire. Having known Phil for a few years now, I can say without reservation that he knows a LOT about GMing. If we ever had to compete for players, I would be the sad panda sitting alone in my room, because they would all be playing in his game. Phil, I wish you the best of luck with this venture — it’s an awesome idea, and one at which you will excel.

→ Self-described as “an online animated spaceship and experimental aircraft art magazine,” the concept ships blog is exactly that. The Flash gets old, the actual images rock the fucking house. If you dig sci-fi, need inspiration or want some ships to throw into your next game, give it a look. (Via io9.)

→ Download the Bioshock soundtrack for free (.zip file), straight from 2K Games. This is a fantastic, atmospheric game with a soundtrack to match — good stuff. (Via Stargazer’s World.)

→ Like Greyhawk? Check out RPG Blog II‘s Greyhawk Day column: Greyhawk Day #1, Greyhawk Day #2. This is a cool idea, and it’s nice to see some love for Gygax’s quirky setting.

→ In unrelated news, Zach (who writes RPGB2, above) has resigned as an ENnies judge. That sucks about 12 different kinds of dick — Zach is insanely dedicated to the ENnies, and from everything he’s written about, and everything I’ve seen, this is a big loss to this year’s panel.

→ Remember our first contest, in which three lucky Gnome Stew readers won custom RPG sound effects from World oF Twilights Studio? Well, the grand prize winner, Dave Chalker of Critical Hits fame, has written about his prize — and better yet, posted one of the custom effects. It’s awesome.

My wife, Alysia, and I will be spending the weekend celebrating our second anniversary — I can’t wait. Among other things, we plan to play Elk Fest and Mr. Jack. I hope you have a similarly excellent weekend!

And hey, speaking of board games, who else uses BoardGameGeek? Here’s my account — I’d love to see yours.