Gnome Stew
4,077 FOLLOWERS
Written by a team of veteran GMs, Gnome Stew is the most widely read game mastering blog on the planet. The Stew won a silver ENnie Award for Best Blog in 2011 and 2010. It is a multi-author blog about tabletop RPG game mastering, written by GMs, for GMs.
Gnome Stew
9h ago
I love a good front. Of all the tools to come out of Powered by the Apocalypse games, fronts are probably one of my favorites. (Second only to clocks, really.) Because fronts allow me to keep track of everything from the arrival of the catastrophic doomsday event to the minor rival NPC’s petty revenge plot, and they give me the tools I need to not only figure out what the bad guys are up to but also how they’re going about their nefarious deeds.
(Confession: Even though I’ve read a bunch of Powered by the Apocalypse and Forged in the Dark games, I’ve only ever run a single session of one (the ..read more
Gnome Stew
3d ago
https://polygamero.us/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Gnomecast187-LearningAboutOSR.mp3
Ang gets JT and Walt on the mics to learn more about what the OSR (Old School… Renaissance? Revival? Retro? The R varies) actually is. Join us and learn more about this style of roleplaying game.
Links:
JT’s Amazon Book Page
Origins Game Fair
Renegade Game Studios ..read more
Gnome Stew
5d ago
One of my gaming groups plays a mashed up game with three genres: Highschool, Swashbuckling, and Urban Fantasy. We call it Children of the Shroud. In the game we play high school kids in a hidden magic world. As part of our magical learning we are part of the Junior Guardians club. It’s a club for magical students at our high school in Buffalo NY. Due to reasons, we got ourselves involved in trying to stop a magic prosperity cult who are using the in-game currency of a video game called Call of Violence to try and manifest a new primal elemental of prosperity. This in game currency can be bou ..read more
Gnome Stew
1w ago
When starting to design an adventure for your home group, the first things I always consider are the mood, tone, and theme of the adventure. This will dictate all design decisions, descriptions, monsters included, sometimes the treasure gained, and the general aesthetics of everything I create for the adventure.
Before I jump in, you’ll note that I’m leaving genre out of this list because I’m assuming you already have an established genre for the game you’re running for your group. If you’re working with a “clean slate” (meaning no campaign in flight for this adventure), then you really shoul ..read more
Gnome Stew
1w ago
Licensed games usually take the approach of presenting material that can happen far away from the canon events of the setting. This works especially well in settings like Star Trek or Star Wars, where there is a literal galaxy of locations available for storytelling. Player characters may hear about canon events, and there may be a butterfly effect on some of their options, but the assumption of the game is that the player characters aren’t going to be directly confronting and potentially contradicting the fictitious history of the setting.
Despite this, there are some fans who want exactly t ..read more
Gnome Stew
2w ago
https://polygamero.us/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Gnomecast186.mp3
Ang, Chris and Josh chat about mixing up genres in our RPGs and as a result touch on what genre is, and why we can and should mash it all up together!
Links:
D&D Lego!
The Nebula Awards
Daggerheart Playtest ..read more
Gnome Stew
2w ago
Try all the options
We are all familiar with the trope of a regular gaming group. You know, the one who meets on regular days in the regular gaming location. And while the particularities of the imagined group differ, the factors of time and space stay constant, but so too does the cast. Although we all know how wonderful a regular gaming group can be, I am here to suggest that there’s several benefits of regularly shifting up the cast around your gaming table as well. I will discuss the pros of this, and of course mention some of the cons while suggesting how they can be remedied or at leas ..read more
Gnome Stew
3w ago
Game of the year?
I’ve reviewed so many other things, and I feel like I’ve been missing a fundamental item in all of this. It’s key to understanding all of my other reviews. Today, I’m going to review the process of reviewing.
I’ve literally been reviewing things from the time I was born. I remember my siblings showing me Land of the Lost, and when I saw the Sleestak for the first time, I said nope. My very first review, and a lot more succinct than I would become once I had a better vocabulary.
Disclaimer
I was not given permission to discuss the process of reviewing the review process. I ..read more
Gnome Stew
1M ago
Planning in RPGs has always been a problem. On one hand, it’s often necessary for a group of players to plan out something their characters are trying to accomplish. On the other, most groups are not adept at planning, and even if they were, the activity is never that exciting at the table – worse if you are the GM who is more of a spectator. All of this is worse if you are under any kind of time constraint, like running a one-shot.
That is the problem I was having. In a few weeks, my high school gaming group is having a reunion, and we wanted to play some games. One of our group’s main ..read more
Gnome Stew
1M ago
It’s become a bit of a meme for people to declare characters from different genres to be “magical girls.” Prince Adam lives his life, during the day, as an unassuming royal heir that hasn’t quite grown up enough to assume his full responsibilities, but when he holds his sword aloft and says “by the power of Grayskull,” he transforms into a big buff dude that can punch holes in tanks. He’s even got a talking cat.
But a lot of those memes assume that the concept of the magical girl is really about Sailor Moon style stories. You have young women living a normal life at school, with normal student ..read more