Welcome to Gnome Stew, the Gaming Blog, Part II

Hello, and welcome to Gnome Stew, part II ^[1].

If you read Martin’s farewell and explanation article here ^[2], then you know what’s going on, but if you haven’t here’s the short version (short is all we’ve got around here, being Gnomes y’know) – After 8 years of manning the helm here at the stew, Martin decided to step down. When Martin asked the Gnomes whether to keep the stew going or archive it, I threw my red hat in the ring to keep the site around and growing.

With close to 3,000 articles written by stew authors (including the archives of Treasure Tables where many of us met), a handful of industry awards, and most importantly an incredible community of commenters and supporters, we feel the Stew has a lot going for it and wanted to make sure it’s here to help Game Masters and gamers in the future. Gaming’s not going anywhere, and neither are we.

Gnome Stew Gnewness

Times of change can be scary, but they can also be opportunities to broaden horizons and step into new areas. That’s what we’re planning to do here at Gnome Stew, and we’ve got some incredible projects in the works.

• Gnomes Emeritus  – A few of the Gnomes – Scott, Don, and Walt – are going to be stepping out of the spotlight alongside Martin and going into Gnome Emeritus status. They may jump in and write the occasional article when the mood strikes, and they still jump into our communications from time to time, but they won’t be writing regular articles here.
• A New Site Design – With a broader perspective and a bunch of new authors, we’ll be putting together a cleaner and newer looking site in the next few weeks. We’ve added a lot of features over the years, but it’s time to consolidate them and update the kitchen. Expect a newer site sometime around the end of the month or the very beginning of next month.
• A Broader Menu  – We’ve written a LOT of articles about Game Mastering, and it’s at the core of our passion, but we’ve also got a lot of other topics we’re interested in and want to share with you. To that end, we’re opening up the scope of gaming topics we’ll be writing about to tabletop role-playing games and not just game mastering.  You might see an article about Fate Core mechanics one day, an article about dealing with player conflict the next, then an article about art trends in gaming after that. Our scope is broadening, but one thing is staying the same – we’re writing about things that are helpful and interesting to you and your games. The stew is going to stay as meaty as it ever was, we’re just using some new (still gnome!) meat.

Meet The New Gnomes

Speaking of new meat, we’re pulling in some new staff writers for the Stew. Knowing a few of the current Gnomes were stepping back and it having been a while since we pulled in some new blood, we went out looking for people who were doing really great things to join the team. We wanted to give them another platform, if they already had one, and help them bring their voice to our audience. I’m super excited to introduce the new gnomes who will be joining us here.

• Tracy Barnett
  Hey everyone, my name’s Tracy. I’ve been gaming seriously for the last 16 years, or so, and have been a professional game designer for the last four. I co-own a publishing company called Exploding Rogue Studios ^[3]with my business partner Brian Patterson. Gaming-wise, I tend to the indie side of things and absolutely every game I run is influenced by what I’ve learned through Fate and games that are Powered by the Apocalypse. Game design-wise, I’ve published three roleplaying games (School Daze, One Shot, and Iron Edda: War of Metal and Bone), and we’ve got more in the works. I don’t design full-time (yet), but that’s my dream.
• J.T. Evans
  Greetings to all of the Gnome Stew readers! I’ve been a long-time follower of Gnome Stew and compile lists of great gaming articles over at Ravenous Roleplaying. ^[4] When John asked me to join the team, I was honored and flabbergasted. I will do my best to maintain the incredible quality of articles found here, and I hope you enjoy reading what I write as much as I love writing it.
• Avery Liell-Kok
  Salutations, Gnomes! I am deeply honored to be one of the Stew’s newest ingredients– er, contributors. I’m Avery Liell-Kok, player, occasional GM, and professional illustrator ^[5]of children’s lit, fantasy art, and more relevantly, gaming books. I pretty much run on horror, melodrama, romance and cataclysm, so if you’re looking for star-crossed lovers bonding over their shared love of cannibalism in the aftermath of a devastating tsunami, I’m your gal. I solemnly swear to shine a little light on the visual side of our industry, wax rhapsodic about narrative theory, maybe even show y’all some pretty pictures. Also, just hang out and squee with people over my favorite hobby.
• Darcy Ross
  Gnomes! Your Gnomenesses! El Gnomerinos (if you’re not into the whole brevity thing)! I’m Darcy Ross, a one-shot focused GM that is just starting to dip my toes into the messy, crazy world of campaign GMing. I’m a staff member at ConTessa ^[6] and am broadly interested in getting new people into gaming and highlighting the diversity that’s already here. Cypher System games are my jam, especially Numenera, the delightfully weird far-future science-fantasy setting. I like to explore lots of other new games and I also enjoy jumping backwards in time for old favorites like AD&D 2nd Edition Planescape. I’m a snail-ologist by day and my love of weird invertebrate animals definitely bleeds into my gaming – so expect tentacles!
• Chris Sniezak
  Hello, gnomians, I’m Chris Sniezak and I’ve been hanging around the gnomes of the stew for some time now. I write, design games, podcast over at Misdirected Mark ^[7],  and now I’m a gnome. It happened when the other gnomes asked if I’d jump in the stew pot. I said no, but when they held up a number of cleavers I happily agreed/compromised with them to write articles for the site instead of being part of the stew pot. Gotta love those gnomes. I’m gonna go write now since I like my hands attached to my arms.
• Senda
  Hi gnome readers! I would like to preface this introduction by making sure that you know: there certainly is no gnome standing over me with a cleaver forcing me to write this. Definitely not. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I’m Senda, one half of the She’s a Super Geek ^[8]podcast. I’m an improv style GM and I’m very passionate about story forward/indie/small book games, however you like to label them. I’m so extremely honored to join such a prestigious group of gnomes, and I hope that I and my gnewb compatriots can add even more amazing content for you! (Please send help! He just licked the blade!)

We feel that having a diversity of gaming experiences and a diversity of voices will help hit a lot more areas of gaming than we currently have, so we may add a new Gnome or two in the future once we get the current batch of new Gnomes tenderized and prepared on their feet and comfortable.

Thanks To Martin and Thanks To You

We’re always going to be incredibly grateful to Martin for starting up the Stew (and Treasure Tables before that) and we’re looking forward to continuing on the incredible articles he brought us all on board to do, but we’re also thankful for you, the readers, who give us a reason to do this. If you’ve been with us since the beginning 8 years ago, or just recently found us,  thanks for being with us. We know you’ll like what we’ve got coming down the line.