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You are here: Home / Archives for Newest Critical Hits / Columns

The Perfect Game

November 23, 2007 by Dave

I was talking to a fellow designer a few weeks back, and we were discussing the designing a game for a specific audience. While we both agreed that it’s very important when marketing to someone, he didn’t think it was as important when designing. I felt that in any kind of creative design, it’s important […]

Filed Under: Board, Card, and Miniature Games, Critical Threats, Featured

The Overlord's bid for Superstar status!

November 23, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Man, the suspense is killing me! When I first learned about Paizo’s American Idol-inspired RPG Superstar contest, I was intrigued but not that interested. While I have a certain knack for words and things D&D as well as non-professional experience in both department, being a RPG designer/writer was never seriously on my radar (As mentioned […]

Filed Under: Geek Stuff, Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: Crunch, DMing, fluff

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

DM Chronicles, Session 6: Perfectly Paced Action Crunch! (Part 2)

November 21, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Image Source: Monster Manual IV, Wizards of the Coast, Artist: Jim Nelson In which ChattyDM’s players find all kinds of trouble and manage to always come out on top. See part 1 here. The players entered deeper in the tomb’s second level, finding themselves in a large “T” shaped room. It featured 2 more stone-doors-with-levers […]

Filed Under: Campaign Logs, Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: 3.5e, Chatty's 2007-2008 campaign, DMing

Micro-Crunch: I knew Mike Mearls was a Crunch Overlord!

November 21, 2007 by The Chatty DM

As you may know, Martin Rayla of Treasure Table is taking a well deserved month off from writing his daily blog. He’s now slaving away doing NaNoWriMo, writing about whatever it is DMs write about (I suspect Ninjas and Pirates, but that’s just me). During that time he’s reposting some of his best stuff from […]

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

DM Chronicles, Session 6: Perfectly Paced Action Crunch! (Part 1)

November 20, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Previously in Phil’s game: The heroes struck a deal with the Keepers of the Veil to investigate where the plant-like humanoids, created by the drug Green Welcome, were headed in Ptolus’ Necropolis. Said plant-like beings, called Children of Sehan, were tracked to an ancient funeral mound and engaged. Two were slain, diffcultly, one remains, inside […]

Filed Under: Campaign Logs, Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: 3.5e, Chatty's 2007-2008 campaign, DMing

A fey's journal: Under Ptolus' Necropolis (estimated time: noon)

November 20, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Image Source: Art from Song of Serenity (Magic the Gathering, Exodus, Wizards of the Coast), Copyright 2005 Tony DiTerlizzi (Check his site!), used with the artists’ permission. Here is Yan’s latest player log detailing last Friday’s tomb crawling. Enjoy! I take a few minutes to write this as we are discussing our next course of […]

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

Adventure Prep: My Recent Time Management Shortcuts

November 18, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Now that I made a point about the value of our player’s free time, I must confess that I don’t have that more free time than them. Ronin and Ve4grm have made good argument that the DM’s fun factor must also be taken into account and does not want to waste his/her own free time […]

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

The special challenge of DMing for adult gamers

November 18, 2007 by The Chatty DM

There is quite an interesting discussion going on over the Okay…your Turn RPG forums (a very classy, mostly D&D/Iron Heroes/Arcana Evolved/ Ptolus gaming forum) about the Dungeon Masters having become the Dungeon Servants. This discussion brought me additional insights about a subject that has been brewing in my mind for some time now. You see, […]

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

Ahhhhh, now everything seems to work just fine.

November 17, 2007 by The Chatty DM

We had a great crunchy game last night… with lot’s of laughs and a lot of Flight of the Conchords videos during dinner… (Sorry embeding a YouTube Video seems to break the page… to be checked) As you can see, I switched themes to a darker, less colorful one than the Sci-Fi theme. (To be […]

Filed Under: Geek Stuff, Musings of the Chatty DM

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