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You are here: Home / Archives for 2011

Archives for 2011

Bedtime Adventures: May-Gee’s Big Test, Part 1

September 12, 2011 by The Chatty DM

In which Chatty goes back to basics and shares the first part of an bedtime interactive story he created with his daughter.

Filed Under: Featured, Musings of the Chatty DM, Newest Critical Hits, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: Bedtime roleplaying, collaborative storytelling, gaming with children, Gaming with Kids, story games, Storytelling

Critical Bits for the week ending 2011-09-11

September 11, 2011 by Gato the News Robot

RT @fredhicks: Dresden Files RPG Casefile: Evil Acts: http://t.co/j75DNSs # RT @SlyFlourish: These are absolutely awesome #dnd character sheets. I hope @newbiedm does something like this: http://t.co/2N5pqDn # “@Wizards_DnD: Playtesting for the #DnD skirmish-style board game is open. Join the D&D Playtesting group now. http://t.co/btWXeDK” # Do you want a code to get into the […]

Filed Under: Critical Bits Tagged With: twitter

The Architect DM: On Magic Items – Part 2

September 7, 2011 by Bartoneus

Last week I looked at some issues I’ve been experiencing with magic items in 4th Edition D&D and some possible solutions. This week I’d like to talk about some other possible solutions as well as just some general concepts related to magic items that hopefully generate some interesting ideas for how to handle magic items in your D&D campaigns. There were some fantastic comments on last week’s post and I’m going to incorporate some of the topics or ideas brought up there into this post as well.

Filed Under: Featured, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: 4e, 4th Edition, advice, architect dm, D&D, dnd, Dungeons and Dragons, inherent bonus, magic items, roleplaying games

Box Out Of Hell 2: Back Into The Box

September 6, 2011 by Vanir

Our last D&D session went a bit different from the usual. For most groups, that might mean stepping out of the box a little and trying something weird. For my players, it meant riding in a Toyota Camry on a very straight stretch of interstate back to Normaltown. For the first time in our group’s history, we switched over from homebrewed adventures crafted from the seat of my very pants over to pre-made adventures done by Real Professionals. Of course it didn’t go quite as planned.

Filed Under: Dire Flailings, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: box, boxes, boxing, boxing helena, D&D, dnd, module, preconstructed, premade, purchased

Critical Bits for the week ending 2011-09-04

September 4, 2011 by Gato the News Robot

Nominations now open for Golden Geek Awards, for board games, RPGs, and video games: http://t.co/oo6wuHe # RT @SlyFlourish: Three tools for the lazy #dnd DM: poster maps, reskinning monsters, the DM cheat sheet: http://t.co/NKf7Bj3 #

Filed Under: Critical Bits Tagged With: twitter

Preference is Puzzling

September 2, 2011 by Shawn Merwin

It is not terribly hard to write a typical dungeon-delve adventure with 3 encounters, a skill challenge, and the PCs rushing in at the last moment to stop the ritual before the evil creature of great power is unleashed. Many DMs and players are happy with that. Thank goodness! However, not every DM or player is happy with the standard fare.

Filed Under: Editorial, Featured, Know Your Roll, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: 4e, design, game design, puzzles, Writing

The Architect DM: On Magic Items – Part 1

August 31, 2011 by Bartoneus

I’m sure that magic items in D&D have been talked about for countless hours, but with Wizards of the Coast finally releasing Mordenkainen’s Magical Emporium for 4th Edition in September and my home campaign nearing the middle of the epic tier I’ve been wanting to talk about them here. The handful of times that I ran 3rd Edition D&D I was guilty of handing out items of a much higher level than the party, but I would try to balance it out with concepts like staves only having a small number of charges. The players/characters always loved it, but I would hear from other D&D players outside of the game that they didn’t like what I was doing and that they had the impression it was “contrary to the rules of the game” or something like that. I didn’t mind them much, but was very intrigued by what they were saying.

Filed Under: Featured, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: 4e, 4th Edition, advice, architect dm, D&D, dnd, Dungeons and Dragons, magic items, roleplaying games, Roleplaying Games

My Favored Enemy Is Mean People

August 30, 2011 by Vanir

In case anyone didn’t see the entire Internet on fire yesterday afternoon, there was an article on Gizmodo yesterday entitled “My Brief OkCupid Affair With A World-Champion Magic: The Gathering Player”. The short version of this article is that the author made an OKCupid account, accidentally met Jon Finkel (a former Magic world champion), and then proceeded to not date him – because he played Magic. She apparently disliked this so much that she thought it was a good idea to use Gizmodo as her personal Facebook page and blog about her experiences and decided to let millions of people know what a clearly bad date one individual guy is. I’m sure his self-esteem has never been better. I’m not going to excoriate her in this here article. That would be unbecoming. Also, I think the Internet is going to do that all by itself without any help on my part.

Filed Under: Dire Flailings Tagged With: anger, dating, geek, geek love, hormones, i hate puberty, i hate puberty SO MUCH, mean girls, mean people, puberty, rabies, self esteem, stuart smalley

Critical Bits for the week ending 2011-08-28

August 28, 2011 by Gato the News Robot

Via PR: Settlers of Catan novel coming 11/15 "…a fascinating, action-packed adventure full of surprises and intense character conflict." #

Filed Under: Critical Bits Tagged With: twitter

Chatty DM, Freelancer, Part 5: OMG! I Made it!

August 26, 2011 by The Chatty DM

In which Chatty comes full circle and ends up being a freelance designer of the games that brought him up into the hobby in the first place.

Filed Under: blogging, Featured, Freelance Writing, Musings of the Chatty DM, Newest Critical Hits Tagged With: freelance, game design, roleplaying games, Writing

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About the Author

  • The Chatty DM

    The Chatty DM is the "nom de plume" of gamer geek Philippe-Antoine Menard. He has been a GM for over 40 years. An award-winning RPG blogger, game designer, and scriptwriter at Ubisoft. He squats a corner of Critical Hits he affectionately calls "Musings of the Chatty DM." (Email Phil or follow him on Twitter.)

    Email: chattydm@critical-hits.comWeb: https://critical-hits.com//category/chattydm/

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