Charrette is a word that most likely means nothing to you, unless of course you studied Architecture or Design in school then it is a word that can mean quite a lot and the emotions it brings up vary widely from person to person. Charrette is a word used among architecture students to describe a design crunch/cramming session that derives from the French word for “cart”. The term became popular because schools in Paris would have carts pushed around to collect student’s drawings and it was not uncommon for students to continue working on their drawings for as long as possible by riding in the cart. For better or worse, the term has stuck through to this day and architecture students are still as bad as ever at finishing their projects before rigid deadlines.
Bedtime Adventures: May-Gee’s Big Test, Part 2
In which Chatty concludes the Bedside story he and his daughter Rory created. A story about a young teenaged magician named May-Gee, a boy and the power of music and linked magic.
Fudging The Grid
I prefer to keep an open mind about most things, not the least of which is gaming. That, coupled with my willingness to play devil’s advocate, occasionally finds me arguing for a position I don’t completely agree with. Sometimes, you find you’re not arguing about what you thought you were when you started. This time, I found myself in an internal argument with myself contemplating the very nature of running a roleplaying game. It was like, inside the other argument. It was like ARGUMENT INCEPTION.
Bedtime Adventures: May-Gee’s Big Test, Part 1
In which Chatty goes back to basics and shares the first part of an bedtime interactive story he created with his daughter.
Box Out Of Hell 2: Back Into The Box
Our last D&D session went a bit different from the usual. For most groups, that might mean stepping out of the box a little and trying something weird. For my players, it meant riding in a Toyota Camry on a very straight stretch of interstate back to Normaltown. For the first time in our group’s history, we switched over from homebrewed adventures crafted from the seat of my very pants over to pre-made adventures done by Real Professionals. Of course it didn’t go quite as planned.
Preference is Puzzling
It is not terribly hard to write a typical dungeon-delve adventure with 3 encounters, a skill challenge, and the PCs rushing in at the last moment to stop the ritual before the evil creature of great power is unleashed. Many DMs and players are happy with that. Thank goodness! However, not every DM or player is happy with the standard fare.
My Favored Enemy Is Mean People
In case anyone didn’t see the entire Internet on fire yesterday afternoon, there was an article on Gizmodo yesterday entitled “My Brief OkCupid Affair With A World-Champion Magic: The Gathering Player”. The short version of this article is that the author made an OKCupid account, accidentally met Jon Finkel (a former Magic world champion), and then proceeded to not date him – because he played Magic. She apparently disliked this so much that she thought it was a good idea to use Gizmodo as her personal Facebook page and blog about her experiences and decided to let millions of people know what a clearly bad date one individual guy is. I’m sure his self-esteem has never been better. I’m not going to excoriate her in this here article. That would be unbecoming. Also, I think the Internet is going to do that all by itself without any help on my part.
Chatty DM, Freelancer, Part 5: OMG! I Made it!
In which Chatty comes full circle and ends up being a freelance designer of the games that brought him up into the hobby in the first place.
Hints From Dire Heloise
This week, I decided to open up the floor to reader questions. I am committed to answering these in the most serious way that I can.
A Year at Critical Hits, and GenCon 2011
Gen Con is always tough for me. When I first started attending, I just ran a few games, played a few games, and hit the Exhibit Hall. I didn’t really know anyone, no one knew me, and I could absorb it all without over-extending myself. Now it is getting more complicated. I still know very few people, and very few people still know me, but there are more obligations that go into a convention now.
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