Thirty minutes into the session, the moment we’ve all been waiting for, our unlikely heroes finally catch up to the malicious war band that ransacked their village. In the events of a single hour, our characters lives were forever changed by the savage pillaging for their war effort. They didn’t...
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A party at the palace. A meeting of the ruling council of a secret cabal. A tense negotiation between leaders. There are many situations in which game masters can find themselves having to play multiple NPCs during the same scene. These scenes can often prove challenging as the GM has to switch...
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Want to write better adventures? Want to prep more efficiently? Sick of players skipping all of your best content? Prep Smarter, Not Harder, with Encounter Theory Encounter Theory: The Adventure Design Workbook is a fresh way to look at adventure design by Ben Riggs, the voice of the...
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As a GM, do you really get to play like everyone else at the table? Do you get to enjoy the setting and the rules of a game in the same way? Do you experience the unexpected as deeply as you would from the perspective of a single character? Do you get to feel like you’re one of the party, standing...
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Are visual aids a must-have element in your TTRPG sessions? Professional GM Daniel H. Kwan breaks down his favourite tool for creating dynamic and engaging stories!
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If there’s a Treasure Tables philosophy (as longtime reader John Arcadian suggests that there is), then this is its cornerstone — number one with a bullet, a gold star and a chorus of angels playing little trumpets: Always put your players first. Don’t ignore your own fun, but...
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One final (?) GMing observation from this year’s GenCon took a few days to bubble up the surface: The best GMs I gamed with were confident, but not cocksure. Confidence is the pink shirt of GMing, a key ingredient that will make any game you run better. Even knowing that (and having written...
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Social contracts are a popular topic here, and one that I’ve found readers often associate with TT (which is great!). That’s due in large part to Chris Chinn’s guest post, Social Contracts for RPG Groups, which I consider to be the definitive introduction to and overview of the...
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When it comes to the PCs, hard choices are the steam that powers the engines of character development. Without that steam, that energy and motive force, the PCs won’t develop nearly as quickly, nor in such interesting ways. I’m not a big advocate of forcing anything player- or...
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I just started reading The Making of Star Wars (which, if you geek out for behind the scenes stuff, is fabulous), and was struck by how wrong most of the original concept art for the main cast actually was. Take this guy on the right, for example. That’s Chewbacca. Specifically, it’s a...
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Written by a team of veteran Gamers and Gamemasters, Gnome Stew is a widely read gaming blog with multiple awards, ennies, and thousands of articles. We’re dedicated to helping gamers have more fun at the gaming table.
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