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You are here: Home / Archives for Newest Critical Hits / Columns / Musings of the Chatty DM / Tropes

Mining Tropes for RPG Nuggets: I, Overlord!

January 2, 2008 by The Chatty DM

This post is part of a series exploring Tropes (recurrent plot devices and expectations in fiction) as applied to RPGs, see the growing collection of posts on the subject here. Now that Yax has fallen in my fiendish trap by accepting my Ennies challenge, I thought I’d start the ball rolling by finally tackling one […]

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

Mini-Trope: No, I won't let you tell me about your character…

December 22, 2007 by The Chatty DM

A few weeks ago, I wrote a tongue-in-cheek post about tropish DMs. Tonight I felt like tackling the equivalent for players. Once again this is going to be a satirical post and not an actual critic on play style. As usual, if this offends you…. ah heck, it’s not like I’m shopping for new players… […]

Filed Under: Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games, Tropes Tagged With: mini-post, Tropes

Mining Tropes for RPG Nuggets: Ice Ice Baby!

December 17, 2007 by The Chatty DM

This morning, I posted about my Winter adventures on the forums here. That’s my car if you were wondering… after I dug it out! Shortly after, Omnius, who’s allergic to snow I’m told, wrote a good weather-themed post. Well all that snow and ice also inspired me to go dig in the TV tropes site […]

Filed Under: Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games, Tropes Tagged With: DMing, fluff, mini-post, Tropes

Mining Tropes for RPG Nuggets: Gravity? Pfaa!

December 12, 2007 by The Chatty DM

It’s been quite some time I’ve posted an honest to goodness, fluff-rich Mining Tropes post. I’m also nearing the end of the tropes fueled by the Rule of Cool, so I combined two tropes that share a certain ‘airy’ theme as a tribute to a sub-series I really enjoyed writing! Asian Wire-fu and Anime is […]

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

Mini-Fluff: Pathfinder #3 Preview

December 7, 2007 by The Chatty DM

This is a continuing series of short posts on Paizo’s Pathfinder adventure path magazine. The image is Copyright 2007 Paizo Publishings I got issue #3 of this amazing OGL compliant adventure series about 2 weeks ago. Time for another capsule review/preview. Issue number one was about Crazy Gobbo’s and an insane Assinar. Issue number #2 […]

Filed Under: Musings of the Chatty DM, Tropes Tagged With: fluff, mini-post, pathfinder

Tabletops & Tropers: That would make such a…

December 2, 2007 by The Chatty DM

While looking at the TV Tropes Wiki for inspiration for my next trope post, a recurring idea kept coming back. You know that thing where a bunch of gamer geeks come out of the latest Superhero/Spy/ Action/Sci-Fi/Fantasy movie and they have this discussion: “Dude, this, like, totally rocked!” says the extroverted enthusiastic geek! “Yeah, ’twas […]

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

Mini-Trope: The Bad, The Killer and the Evil.

November 22, 2007 by The Chatty DM

So far I have been doing a lot of posts about DMing tropes, but what about tropes on DMing? (This post is very satirical. If anyone is offended by this… well let’s just say I’d rather not play in your game…) When you ask RPG-savvy people to describe a cliché (or a trope) about DMs, […]

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

Mining Tropes for RPG Nuggets: What a Coincidence!

November 12, 2007 by The Chatty DM

It’s been some time since I last posted an article in the Tropes series. What can I say? It’s been a busy 2 weeks! This post will tie in directly with tomorrow’s Adventure Prep post for this week’s game. There you are, sitting wherever it is you sit when preparing your next adventure. You want […]

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

Mining Tropes for RPG nuggets: Halloween Special!

October 31, 2007 by The Chatty DM

This is a boring, repeating preface nobody reads anymore. It links to stuff I wrote some time ago that has a vague thematic link to what I’m about to write here… Actually this is a Very D&D specific Trope post. It features a lot of Crunchy bits… like the candy I’m eating right now…The kids […]

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

Tabletops & Tropers: The first stab.

October 27, 2007 by The Chatty DM

I’m having a successful run with my posts on coolness and applying tropes to tabletop RPGs. Today I’d like to start a new series that tackles the actual tropes that generate from Tabletop roleplaying instead of other narrative media. The idea came to me while reading a tabletop RPG debate on the TV Tropes forum. […]

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