Gnome Stew Contributors
Get to know our incredible guest authors
Adam Brown
A writer of many different styles, aspiring freelancer, forever GM, metal and woodworker, and now blogger I guess. I'm trying to dip my toes into the content creation sphere to share the million ideas I produce every day. RPG's have been my passion for over a decade, and I aspire to play every game out there (not possible I know). I've also partially written several RPG's (I'll finish one of them one day I swear!).
AJ Bartlett
I am just your average nerd who enjoys the world and language of DnD as a tool to build fantastical worlds and memorable games that carry with you forever. My big focuses come from the perspective of the Dungeon Master and all the fun things you can do as one.
Alyssa Visscher
New to the ttrpg scene, Alyssa frequently rambles on twitter about D&D, providing a fresh, newbie perspective to conversations. She especially enjoys analyzing its overall structure from a newbie perspective, bringing larger concepts to small, bite-sized pieces. She's a parent of four, neurodivergent, and is absolutely terrible at small talk.
Amelia Summers
Mel is a writer, artist, researcher, and Dungeon Master. Avatar by @Airyn_Weiss on twitter.
Andi Fox
Andi Fox is the co-host of She's a Super Geek, a player and sometimes DM on the Wednesday Evening Podcast All-Stars, and a player on the Redemption Podcast. She's been gaming and GMing for well over a decade and loves cross stitch, baking competition shows, and porgs.
Andrew Christman
Andrew is an overall tabletop enthusiast, with a wide range of games that he enjoys playing and running that include sci-fi and various fantasy titles. When he's not thinking about tabletop (which is almost never!), he enjoys reading, cooking and writing. He also enjoys connecting with others through his YouTube channel, where he highlights all kinds of aspects regarding games big and small.
Bridgett Jeffries
Hello! My name is Bridgett Jeffries. I’m a self-employed African American woman who resides in Columbus, Ohio! I write and run horror roleplaying game scenarios under my gaming club, Symphony Entertainment Gaming & Arts. The vast majority of my games have a strong historical influence and a diverse selection of characters. Oh! I also have three dogs. They’re pretty cool. Actually, no they’re awesome.
Brittany Ferrendi
Brittany (she/they) is a writer, editor, artist, and TTRPG player of 9 years. When they're not running a campaign in a fandom-inspired universe, they're endlessly drawing digital illustrations of her many, many D&D characters. She helped write and edit Siren Squad, a TTRPG about secret agent mermaids. She's also been a Digital Content Director and Journalist for several print and online publications, including South Florida Gay News and Debt.com.
Chris Baker
A tabletop and RP gamer from way, way back, Chris Baker is a denizen of the windswept Prairie. He is the founder of PrairieCon, one of Canada's longest-running gaming conventions. His RPG inspirations include Tolkien, Jack Vance, C.S. Lewis and The Goon Show.
Chris Spivey
Chris has a decades-old love of gaming, horror, and history, and a mission to create a more inclusive gaming world. Chris’s most recent published work can be found in Harlem Unbound, Cthulhu Confidential, The Land of Gold and Fire and Thousand Years of Night. Chris is a proud father and devoted husband and has a strong penchant for scotch. In fact, he will write for scotch (the good stuff, at least).
Craig Dedrick
Craig has been playing and running games since 1983, and in later years, has developed an affinity for horror and story-driven games, a love of constructive inter-party conflict, and a healthy level of disdain for challenge rating systems.
critographer
Bart’s first brush with the hobby started with the discovery of HeroQuest, in the early 90s. He was always the kid who played the bad guy, and it seems he’s been stuck behind the GM screen ever since. His three campaigns are currently emerging from Covid-hibernation and he can’t wait to revisit Curse of Strahd which, thirteen sessions in, has already gone completely off the rails! “As any good campaign should†he claims. Since 2018, Bart has been working as a freelance writer, designer and fantasy cartographer and is currently involved in several exciting projects! He’s also active on Twitter, sharing bits of history and folklore to serve as writing inspiration, as well as banging out the odd article on GM tips and advice.
Dustin DePenning
Dustin DePenning is a board game designer and product manager. He previously released Synthicide, his first RPG. Now he is working on Heroic Dark, which has a free early edition available on DTRPG.
George PR
George's first foray into tabletop roleplaying games began in the early 1990s and culminated in working at a small comic and game shop for several years. He then took a hiatus from the hobby in the mid-2000s before returning in May 2020 and intends to stay this time for good. He enjoys learning and writing about game design, world-building, and storytelling.
Gil Ran
Gil is a writer in the Israeli RPG theory blog Play in Theory, former board-member and treasurer of the Israeli Role-Playing Society, and a veteran GM of many campaigns and many many one-shots.
Haggai Elkayam Shalem
Haggai is the founder and editor of the Israeli RPG theory blog Play in Theory, former chairman of the Israeli Role-Playing Society, and a veteran GM of many campaigns.
Heinrich Moore
Heinrich D. Moore is the pen name of an aspiring Call of Cthulhu author residing with his wife in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, together with their three cats and dog, Finnegan. He finds his existence in the nation's capital suitably terrifying.
Itamar Karbian
Itamar is an improv artist and facilitator. He has been playing and running games since 1990, when his first 6 dice rolls were 6, 6, 6, 6, 6 and 4 (so he played an Elf). He currently hosts the Twitch channel FigmentRP: https://www.twitch.tv/figmentrp
Jabari Weathers
Jabari Weathers is under suspicion of being a goblin princet from beyond the veil. In order to keep up their glamour, they make illustrations for tabletop rpgs, and write things under the guise of a gnome for this very site. You can follow their artistic endeavors at jmwillustration.com, or their game projects at lunarveil.press.
Jack Berberette
Jack graduated from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, with B.S. In Workforce Education and Curriculum Development. During the day, he works for the Federal Reserve Bank as an IT professional. Outside of work, he is an avid tabletop gamer, and has been for over 36 years, but his real passion, however, doesn't reside in rolling dice…it is for creating accessible gaming materials and aids for the visually impaired and to raise awareness for this need industry-wide. Inspired by a close friend, and visually impaired, veteran gamer, Jack started the DOTS RPG Project whose mission is to kick open the doors of roleplaying games for the visually impaired. He taught himself braille, raised money for a braille embossing printer and translation software, and got straight to work. The DOTS Project offers free translation service for game designers to help make them accessible to the visually impaired. Jack's other passion resides in tearing down the walls of bigotry, hatred, and anger. He is currently developing an RPG called Dicey Adventures which is being designed to celebrate diversity. If all goes well, the game will be a fun, standalone game for any gaming group, but also useful for diversity training, team building exercises, therapy sessions, and in the classroom as an alternative teaching method.
jackpeachey
Jack Peachey is an independent writer from Britain who is currently working on DMsguild creating homebrew gaming content. He enjoys long walks under the gloomy British sky and talking for what is frankly an inordinate amount of time with prose that can be considered almost dauntingly archaic.
Jasmine Stork
Jasmine is a PhD candidate looking at online communities and fandom/fan engagement. She has a slight obsession with dragons and miniature foods, and hoards books like they are the greatest of treasures.
Jason Morningstar
Jason Morningstar is the designer behind award-winning roleplaying games like Grey Ranks, Fiasco, Night Witches, and Ghost Court. Lately he has been focusing on smaller scale live-action games, and consulting in corporate, nonprofit, and educational settings.
Jay
Creative writer, avid TTRPG player, old and new school gamer with a passion for revolution, the underdog (dogs too!), and food! When not writing, he can be lurking on the internet, Discord, and his local card shop in search of new games to experience and share stories with friends!
Jerry Weis
Jerry is an award-winning author who made it into Time magazine’s 2013 issue of 100 most influential people. (Well, sort of. The award was for perfect attendance in kindergarten, and his letter to Time’s editor got published in that issue.) He has a wife and two teenaged daughters, who lovingly put up with his tall tales and bad jokes. When not gaming, writing, hanging with his family, or working on some other project, Jerry enjoys talking about himself in the third person. 😉 (Shameless plug: you can download some of his books for free at his website)
John Carney
John Carney is an old man who likes to tell stories with his friends, preferably with dice and Texas barbecue at the table.
Josh Murray
Josh Murray is an AgTech customer success rep from 8 to 5, and an aspiring author, always. His work is best described as supernatural mystery and dark fantasy. He lives in Des Moines with his best friend, who happens to also be his wife. When not writing, he loves reading, table-rop RPG’s, playing guitar, collecting records, and an increasingly obscure collection of board games.
Kane Driscol
Kane Driscol started playing RPGs back in high school when a friend from his fencing club invited him to go, "Questing". Now more than a decade later, Kane's go to game is Index Card RPG and he runs Kane's Kiln, a YouTube channel sharing resources for ICRPG. When he's not rolling dice, he's either fencing, playing board games, or enjoying the sweet artificial taste of a cherry-dipped ice cream cone.
Keith Garrett
Keith Garrett is a freelance writer from Memphis. He’s been a roleplayer for 30 years, and firmly believes you can never have too many dice. He writes more things like this at adventuresofkeithgarrett.com, and on Twitter he’s @keithagarrett.
Krystina Keene
Hi, I'm Kryss--I'm 26 years old and I'm a fan of Tabletop RPGs! I'm currently in the middle of a long-running campaign and sometimes I write about guides to DnD5e on my blog during my spare time. I'm also the owner of two cute dogs and one small but hardy cactus.
Laura Hamel
Laura Hamel is a game convention organizer and professional software engineer. Having held roles of Con Chair, Events Coordinator, Ops Coordinator, and Technology Chair, Laura is a key organizer of U-Con Gaming Convention, a Michigan based con with annual attendance of 1100, which is going virtual in November 2020. She created the event and registration management software behind U-Con and has released it as open source software under the name GameConSuite. Laura loves tabletop roleplaying and board games. Find her on U-Con’s Facebook page or the U-Con website.
Lucia Tang
Lucia Tang is a Level 7 Lawful Neutral PhD candidate in History at UC Berkeley, where she works on premodern China and its modern cultural reception, both eastern and western. Outside of grad school, she writes educational content for Reedsy and particularly enjoys mining on her sub-Jesuitical knowledge of Chinese, Latin, Japanese, and Old Irish to work on the site’s historical name generators.
Mark K Riggleman
Mark GMs and plays for multiple groups using various tabletop role playing games, wargames, board games, and deck building games. When he's not working as a writing consultant for The Ohio State University, he enjoys being a Catalyst Game Labs demo agent at conventions and his local gaming bar.
Matthew
Hey there, I’m Matthew! I am a lifelong gamer and lover of collaborative storytelling. I believe RPGs bring us together and help us enjoy the little things in life.
Michael Dinos
Michael is a writer, gamemaster, and player who enjoys a wide variety of games and a wide variety of genres. He is currently on a mission to find a group to play Coriolis, Invisible Sun, and ACHTUNG!Cthulhu. He can regularly be found among both the Gnomes and the Misdirected Mark community, or working with his service dog, Pretzel.
Nick Labonté
Nick is a writer currently experiencing the joy of trying to get a book published. He's been running games in various systems for nearly five years and likes to think he knows a thing or two about doing so. Whether that's actually true is up for debate.
Noah Lloyd
After being eaten by a dragon in his first AD&D session at eight years old, Noah took an almost twenty-year hiatus from RPGs. Now he’s back, co-founding ReckoningOfTheDead.com, a website for Call of Cthulhu and other horror games, and freelancing as much as possible, while also working on a PhD in literature. Most recently he worked on the upcoming second edition of Harlem Unbound.
Paige Leitman
I have been playing and creating for D&D since 1982. 5th Edition D&D is my favorite edition and I am proud to write for the D&D Adventurer's League. Other RPGs I love include Deadlands, Shadowrun, Legend of the Five Rings, Dresden Files. Based in Atlanta, I run several D&D conventions there with my husband. Spare time hobbies include travel, cats, and shooting zombies in video games. In real life, I'm a marine biologist and I help clean up hazardous waste sites.
Pod!
Pod is a nonbinary person who loves GMing mini campaigns & having guest players join their gaming group. <3 Outside of gaming, they dye yarn for a living & keep a small flock of ducks!
Robert Adducci
Robert Adducci is freelance RPG designer and marketing professional. He has design credits under Wizards of the Coast, Paizo, Ulisses North America, Schwalb Entertainment, Kobold Press, Alligator Alley Entertainment and Soldier Spy. He was a community manager for the D&D Adventurers League . Robert is a die-hard Dark Sun fan and the founder of the Burnt World of Athas website (Athas.org) and Bone, Stone, and Obsidian Podcst. Robert was born and lives in the deserts of Athas, aka Phoenix, AZ.
Sawtooth
Boston-based Dungeon Master and boardgame enthusiast. My 1st D&D ruleset was the Moldvay Basic boxed set. That is, unless you count that AMAZING Troubador Press D&D coloring book from 1979! Fan of the OSR as well as current 5th Ed D&D. The game system matters, but not as much as the people you game with!
Shane Dayton
Shane is a long time TTRPG player and game master, as well as one of the four founding members of Assorted Meeples. He is a fan of multiple tabletop systems, and especially loves to focus on storytelling and world building. Definitely chaotic good alignment...emphasis on chaotic.
Shanna Germain
Over a 20-year career, Shanna Germain has penned six books, hundreds of short stories, and myriad other works, along the way garnering a Pushcart nomination, the C. Hamilton Bailey Poetry Fellowship, and the Utne Reader award for Best New Publication. At Monte Cook Games she has contributed to dozens of products and was lead designer for No Thank You, Evil! which is currently kickstarting a second printing. She is a co-founder and creative director of Monte Cook Games.
shimmer
Maria is fairly new to the TTRPG scene, but has become a huge fan in her five years of playing. Her favourite interest is exploring how the RPG games she plays relate to her identity as a trans woman, and trans identity in general.
Steve Rakner
Avid tabletop enthusiast, Steve Rakner, has begun his journey into the dangerous game of RPG Blogs. He is the creator of the RPG Blog Community to connect RPG Bloggers together and to help each other to start promoting their work. He has aspirations to finish some of the RPG Tools that he currently has in development.
Tammy Dotts
Tammy started her RPG journey with the Basic edition of D&D. Since then, she's played in or GM'd at least a dozen systems. Her day job is as a senior product manager, which is really just another way of story telling.
Tara Zuber
Tara Zuber is a writer and game designer living in Chicago. She enjoys running and writing both tabletop games and larps. Her interests include fairy tales, folk lore, unintended consequences, the history of disease, portal fantasies, and weird fantasy. In 2017, the 7th Sea Free Basic Rules, which Tara had abridged from the 7th Sea Core Rulebook, won the Gold ENnie for Best Free Product.
Tomcollective
The Tom Collective is a Sage Mega Brain of massive ambition and moderate indolence, fueled largely by his preoccupation with games and bourbon (his preferred pickling agent). His minions produce mildly informative crafting videos on youtube, and he has entrusted one in particular with the production of a stage play centered around the hobby. Should his plans be realized, and they will, he shall take over the world by way of gaming dominance in no less than several decades. Or thereabouts. He also likes cats.
Will Martin
Will (he/him/his) is from DC and is a fan of high fantasy, gothic, and future punk genres, DMing theory, cooperative gaming, and low-rules gaming. He is also a proud member of the LGBTQIA+ community and is always looking for better representation in gaming for all folks because of it. His current fascination is with the evolution of game systems throughout the decades (for better or worse).
