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You are here: Home / Archives for The Chatty DM

Setting the Tone for the Confrontation

October 12, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Image Source: Done by Elmore, owned by WotC The silliness with Wolfgang Baur will run it’s course shortly and I will return with more of my usual stuff. I’m home, on pain meds following a minor surgery so I’m a bit on the silly side lately. Please bear with me. Oddly enough, it’s quite an […]

Filed Under: Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: Crunch

Enter my Nemesis: Wolfgang Baur!

October 11, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Image Source: Once again, RPGnet’s Forum. To arms! My Fluff Nemesis, Master Wolfgang Baur, has found out about my nefarious plans to topple his empire of Fluff and has already started to maneuver to foil my mad Crunchy schemes! Aside: Well, to be honest, I did tell him about the Nemesis thing, how fun is […]

Filed Under: Geek Stuff, Musings of the Chatty DM Tagged With: Crunch, fluff, Tropes

Playing around Scheduling conflicts

October 11, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Dante touched a nerve today in his post on scheduling conflicts for RPG sessions. I have been playing with a rather stable group for about 8 years. Enough to take us from our early to mid-twenties well into our early Thirties. Babies were had, house were bought and jobs with traveling occurred. While my non-gamer […]

Filed Under: Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games

Mining Tropes for RPG nuggets: …and Cut!

October 10, 2007 by The Chatty DM

This is part of a series of articles that tackles the concepts of tropes and how they can be applied by a DM/GM to improve their favorite Role-Playing game adventures. It is heavily inspired by the sheer goodness of the TV Tropes Wiki. Description: a DM’s main weapon and canvas to paint the world in […]

Filed Under: Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games, Tropes Tagged With: fluff, rule of cool, Tropes

Fluff done right: Paizo's Burnt Offering review (spoiler free)

October 9, 2007 by The Chatty DM

I finished reading the 1st issue of Paizo’s Pathfinder #1 and I maintain my 1st impression that it’s one of the best D&D compatible products I’ve seen in a long time (they can’t say it but I can). The 1st adventure, called Burnt Offering, takes characters from level 1 to level 4 (or more) and […]

Filed Under: Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: DMing, fluff, pathfinder

Why do you Play?

October 8, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Image Source: Monte Cook’s World of Darkness d20 cover. Hot on the heels of the ‘Why do you DM‘ post, and to address the 64% of readers that play at least some of the time, here’s the follow up questions: Why do you play a player character in a tabletop RPG? What are the top […]

Filed Under: Musings of the Chatty DM, Player Psychology, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: Community, Tropes

Case Study: Power (Gaming) Storm

October 8, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Image Source: Sorry couldn’t resist… 🙂 Post-publication clarifications: I ended up getting a few facts wrong (eg: cRPG vs MMORPG) and making erroneous assumptions in the post and the comments (eg: ‘Jake’s’ age). For that I humbly apologize to Ve4grm. However, I think that, as written, the post remains an interesting case study. In Yesterday’s […]

Filed Under: Musings of the Chatty DM, Player Psychology, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: Community, DMing

Why do you DM?

October 6, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Thrommel, the head Admin. from the ‘Okay.. Your Turn‘ forums posed a good question a few days ago: “A DM carries a staggering amount of responsibility for game preparation, rules knowledge, storytelling and social interaction — especially when compared to the players, who often just have to show up and roll the dice. It’s a […]

Filed Under: Musings of the Chatty DM, Player Psychology Tagged With: Community, DMing

Meet the players!: Math

October 5, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Image Source: Shamus Young‘s most excellent DM of the Ring Webcomic (used with permission, thanks man!). Here’s the fourth Player Profile from my gaming group. All previous profiles can be found here. What character do you play in our current D&D campaign? (Name, Race Class)? I play Aravar, an elven Duskblade that’s been tweaked out […]

Filed Under: Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: Community, Player Profile

Mining Tropes for RPG nuggets: Glowing Fluff Elemental

October 4, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Image Source: RPGnet’s Forums. This is part of a series of articles that tackles the concepts of tropes and how they can be applied by a DM/GM to improve their favorite Role-Playing game adventures. It is heavily inspired by the sheer goodness of the TV Tropes Wiki. Quite a number of tropes exist solely because […]

Filed Under: Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games, Tropes Tagged With: fluff, Tropes

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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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