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You are here: Home / Archives for The Chatty DM

Adventure Prep, Session 3: Adapting a published adventure

September 15, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Image Source: Paizo’s Dungeon Magazine Two players can’t make it to the game next Friday. According to our social contract when 2 or more players are missing, we try to move the game back one week. While this extra time could allow me to prepare a super extra awesome adventure, I find that I spend […]

Filed Under: Adventure Prep, Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: DMing, Tropes

Mining Tropes for RPG nuggets: Meet Marty Stu

September 14, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Image Source: RPGnet’s Forums. (Check out Wil’s blog he’s a gamer too.) 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. […]

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

Where you guys come from…

September 14, 2007 by The Chatty DM

I’m going to commit a little blogging sin and go meta-blogging here. I’ll make it up with a Gaming Post today, honest! Yesterday I was looking at where people link from to get here and the planet is indeed a small place. (I took out the ones that stayed less than 1 minute, those were […]

Filed Under: Geek Stuff, Musings of the Chatty DM Tagged With: Community

My turn now!

September 14, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Thanks so much for those who answered the Getting to know the DMs questionnaire. I have read all the posts and will check periodically for new ones. I even put the post in my ‘favorite links’ on the page to allow anyone to answer later on. Now it’s my turn. I won’t directly recycle stuff […]

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

Is there such a thing as too much cool?

September 13, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Image Source: The Brothers Brick Blog My friends Dave and Danny over at Critical-Hits posted this over on their side. This makes me ask myself: Is there such a thing as too much cool? My rational side is a bit repulsed by the sheer cheesiness of the video. But my primitive, emotional brain purrs overtime […]

Filed Under: Geek Stuff, Musings of the Chatty DM Tagged With: rule of cool

Getting to know the DMs around here

September 13, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Image Source: D&D Cartoon. I’m working on a little series of posts where I will introduce each of my players with 5 RPG- related questions. While doing this, I thought it would be nice for me to answer these questions and post it too. Thing in, the questions were mostly player-related and I almost never […]

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

Cooperative World Building

September 11, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Image source: Hollow World, Basic D&D campaign Setting Earlier today, my pal Yan was telling me how much he liked the fact that I took players ideas and in-game decisions to shape the campaign world’s past and present. It’s true. From campaign to campaign, the players also occasionally glean events, places or people that were […]

Filed Under: Newest Critical Hits, Uncategorized Tagged With: DMing

Scary may not be Evil… But it works!

September 11, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Image Artist: Arnie Swekel Doug M. left a well written comment on my post about exploring evil in RPGs where he makes a clear distinction between Evil (The flavor, the horror, the creeping out of players), Menacing foes (More powerful than the party) and ‘I hate this guy’. This, and a funny exchange of comments […]

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

Mining Tropes for RPG nuggets: Opening up the mine

September 10, 2007 by The Chatty DM

This is a first stab at tackling the concepts of tropes and how they can be applied by a DM/GM to improve their favorite Role-Playing game adventures. I’d like to make this a weekly feature if it garners any interest. It sure does interest me!For those who have read at least one of my previous […]

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

Guess Post: A Fey's Journal, 1st Entry

September 9, 2007 by The Chatty DM

This morning I asked my good friend and long-time player Yan to prepare a player’s log to our game. I gave him the option to take it in the direction he wanted, baring some editorial oversight on my part. Yan is that ‘other’ extroverted overanalytical geek around our table. He’s passionate about the game, a […]

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

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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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