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

Adventure Prep, Session 5: When Frustration leads to Inspiration

October 30, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Okay, so this week’s game is a transition from my adaptation of the Vile Addiction adventure (From Dungeon Magazine #145) to its sequel, Spawn of Sehan from #146. Going in this week’s preparations, I had the following goals: Focus the adventure on the more impatient Butt Kickers like Eric and Math to make up for […]

Filed Under: Adventure Prep, Musings of the Chatty DM Tagged With: DMing, fluff, rule of cool

Campaign Fluff Tools

October 29, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Tonight I had planned to write an Adventure Prep post for this week’s game, but I don’t have a lot of time and will do it Tuesday evening. Instead I’m whipping up a short post on some Fluffy tools I use to better create a sense of immersion in our games.One of the walls of […]

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

Tweaking Classes for Cooler Characters, Parts Deux

October 28, 2007 by The Chatty DM

As I was gearing up for preparing this week’s game, I reviewed the player’s ‘satisfaction levels’ with their characters. By tackling this early this week, I might be able to address any issues before Friday’s game. For those who follow the antics of my gaming group (either from my logs or from a Yan’s) you […]

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

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

DM Chronicles, New Player Intro: The legend of the Broken Dice

October 26, 2007 by The Chatty DM

This post features extensive spoilers for the 1st Pathfinder Adventure path adventure “Burnt Offering” Last night we played the introduction D&D game I talked about earlier this week. It was a good game and while I completely realize that I might be expecting too much from D&D, it could have gone better…. but this time, […]

Filed Under: Musings of the Chatty DM, Player Psychology, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: 3.5e, DMing, pathfinder, Teaching RPGs, Tropes

Pulling the plug…on ads

October 26, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Meta-blogging post alert… After nearly 2 months of Ad Sense and referral adds, I pulled in a Whopping 2$ (Canadian, mind you). I initially put ads on the page because I was curious to see how it worked. Since I’m nowhere near the threshold 1000 pageviews a day point (which would land about 0,15$ a […]

Filed Under: Geek Stuff, Musings of the Chatty DM Tagged With: mini-post

Finding the Path: Pathfinder #2 First Impressions

October 25, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Image Source: Paizo’s Pathfinder Wallpaper found here*. According to Google Analytics, the 1st search result that lands people here is ‘Pathfinder’ (at 11,6%), right before my ‘Nom de Plume‘ (which doesn’t mean ‘My name is Plum!’). So there seems to be some genuine interest in Paizo’s Pathfinder Adventure Magazine on the Web. Since I just […]

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

Mining Tropes for RPG nuggets: Grab a can of Evil

October 24, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Image Source: The one and only PM! This is part of a continuing 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.Ahhhh Evil, evil, evil… Misunderstood, […]

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

A Fey’s Journal, 3rd entry. Part 2

October 24, 2007 by The Chatty DM

As we where heading back to find the drug lab, seven other Spriggan were blocking our path. They were the remaining force of the Dogbane House and they got to see the unconscious form of their leader, Raketi in our grasp. To my surprise they started talking to me in Sylvan, stating that they had […]

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

Adventure Prep, Special Session: Introducing Newbies to D&D

October 23, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Since PM posted his first ‘Perspective‘ post yesterday, I thought it was the perfect timing for posting this Adventure Prep/Response to PM’s post Next Friday, PM has agreed to get a few friends together and allow me to DM an introductory D&D game. I feel honored to be entrusted a mission so many of us […]

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

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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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