It’s been a long time in the making — herding gnomes is just as difficult as herding cats — but it’s finally ready: Gnome Stew’s Top 30 Game Mastering Articles page is now live.

We chose the top 30 using a highly scientific process involving gnomish fungus ale, roshambo, plaintive gnomish whining, knife fights, and public drunkenness.

With any luck, the results will provide you with a solid snapshot of what the Stew is all about: game mastering, game mastering, cannibalism-based humor, and game mastering. And unless you’ve read each and every one of our 375+ articles, there’ll be some surprises in this list even for regular readers.

We love to write, and that’s translated into producing a tremendous amount of GMing content over the past year (we launched on May 12, 2008). I believe Gnome Stew is now one of the largest repositories of game mastering tips, advice, and ideas available in print or online — alongside sites like Roleplaying Tips, Errant Dreams, and Treasure Tables.

With so much to read here, we thought it was high time we made an intro page for folks who weren’t sure where to start, or who wanted to get an overview of what the Stew has to offer.

In short, we hope you like the Top 30. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go practice my firming exercises for our next round of gnomish roshambo* while listening to “Always Gonna Read Gnome Stew.”

* Worse, if that is possible, than the regular variety.