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Gears of Ruin: The Ruiner’s Gambit, Session 1, Part 3

February 11, 2010 by The Chatty DM

The Wrath of Melora tackles the Claw, Hollywood style and takes on the Titan Clanks while his buddies are being pummelled relentlessly.

Filed Under: Campaign Logs, Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: 4e, Chatty's 2009-2010 Campaign, Gears of Ruin

Let Me Tell You About My Campaign: Age of Awakening

February 10, 2010 by Bartoneus

About two months ago Dave decided to tell you about his campaign – the setting, world, how it all began, characters, planning, and some of his house rules. He set me up to share about my campaign also, as a large part of planning for both of our games was done together. In fact his game is being run in a world that I designed and handed over for him to take and expand upon as he saw fit.

Filed Under: Editorial, Featured, Roleplaying Games, The Architect DM Tagged With: campaign, D&D, DM, DMing, dnd 4e, dungeon master, dungeon mastering, Dungeons and Dragons, roleplaying games, Roleplaying Games, world building

Gears of Ruin: The Ruiner’s Gambit’, Session 1, Part 2

February 10, 2010 by The Chatty DM

As stated in Part 1, the first combat encounter was designed to be among the hardest hitting encounter my players had yet faced in D&D 4e while still being designed with an XP budget that somewhere between level 15 and 16 (the PCs are still 14th). The goal was to totally challenge the PCs while having monsters close in levels to the PC (from 12-16) without having the players clamour for an extended rest right after.

Filed Under: Campaign Logs, Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: 4e, Chatty's 2009-2010 Campaign, Gears of Ruin

Two Scoops

February 9, 2010 by Vanir

In the immortal words of Muse, from the book of Cydonia: “Don’t waste your time or time will waste you.”

Filed Under: Dire Flailings, Roleplaying Games, Science Fiction & Fantasy Genre, Video Games Tagged With: atari 2600, bioware, elcor, fun factor, lolelcor, mass effect, mass effect 2, xenofeces

Gears of Ruin: The Ruiner’s Gambit, Session 1, Part 1

February 8, 2010 by The Chatty DM

Last Friday’s adventure was great. It was mostly a 3 hour+ set-piece fight but I wanted to duke it out with the players in a no-holds barred slugfest. I cranked damage dealing to the absolute maximum I could without breaking the rules (a design goal of mine). I also did my best to screw with their game plan and use plenty of dirty tricks to give them their greatest challenge in months.

Filed Under: Campaign Logs, Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: 4e, Chatty's 2009-2010 Campaign, Gears of Ruins

Friday Chat: Are You Trying Too Hard?

February 5, 2010 by The Chatty DM

Friday Chats are end-of-week posts intended to foster discussion on various RPG topics that bounce around in my noggin’. This week, with my post on prepping for my game,cramming it with all the awesome Magitek I can think of and applying lessons from last week’s posts, I caught myself asking, yet again, “Dude, aren’t you […]

Filed Under: Adventure Prep, Musings of the Chatty DM, Uncategorized Tagged With: advice, Friday Chat, GMing

Gearing up: The Setting, Pre-Prep and the Adventure Plan

February 3, 2010 by The Chatty DM

As many of you know, I’m starting a D&D clockwork campaign called Gears of Ruin set on a dying, water and magic-poor world. One where the gods nearly lost the war against the Primordials and more or less abandoned this ravaged, but resource-rich husk to its own fate.

Filed Under: Adventure Prep, Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: 4e, Gears of Ruin, Tropes

Stephen Colbert and The Rats of iCrap

February 2, 2010 by Vanir

Take a stroll down memory lane. Remember what it was like to spend all your Mom’s money 50c at a time on Dragon’s Lair. Weep at the loss of Commodore and the Amiga. Find out Apple’s place in the universe, and if any of this seemingly random information relates to each other!

Filed Under: Dire Flailings, Television, Video Games Tagged With: amiga, apple, arcade games, Bill Murray, cartoons, cinematronics, classic gaming, don bluth, dragon's lair, easter eggs, ghostbusters, il, iPad, jeff minter, lion-o, lorenzo music, mega man, pekin, peter venkman, retrogaming, roberta williams, thundercats, voice acting, yuukichan's papa

Chatty’s Tales of the Arabian Nights

February 1, 2010 by The Chatty DM

Instead of providing another review of the game, I thought I would tell you the story of my ‘character’ to showcase how rich the game is. Note that while I may flourish the prose of my tale a bit (that’s what being a storyteller is all about), what I will present actually happened during the game.

Filed Under: Board, Card, and Miniature Games, Musings of the Chatty DM Tagged With: boardgames

Keeping up with the PCs: Part 3, The DM’s Toolbox and Other Dirty Tricks

January 28, 2010 by The Chatty DM

Welcome back to this series about helping D&D 4e DM’s keep up with players who manage to become more performing than the game’s default assumption. In part 1, I described the “Secret Synergy Bonus” that made players a lot better at dealing with combat encounters that should otherwise be more challenging.  Then in part 2, […]

Filed Under: Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: 4e, advice

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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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