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Old School Geekout: The Order of the Grappling Hook, Part 1

August 31, 2009 by The Chatty DM

I started playing D&D with the 1st edition of AD&D way back in the first half of the 80s. I didn’t read English very well (and neither did my friends), so we ended up doing what pretty much everyone else were doing with the game: use the rules we understood and ignored/made up the rest. […]

Filed Under: Campaign Logs, Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: S&W

Inq. of the Week: Cthulhu Who?

August 31, 2009 by Dave

I believe it is too late for me now. With each new tome I uncover, the more I find myself drawn away from my usual realm and into a realm of insanity. Are you with me?

Filed Under: Featured, Inquisition of the Week, Roleplaying Games, Science Fiction & Fantasy Genre Tagged With: coc, cthulhu, kobold quarterly, open design, yellow sign

Critical Bits for the week ending 2009-08-29

August 29, 2009 by Gato the News Robot

Here is our podcast feed but we do not yet have an iTunes link. The first of the GenCon Seminars from the media track has been posted “How the Web Series The Guild Stays Successful” by WSJ Short Muskrat Blog Post: The Summer of 69, and Gygax and Arneson (via @muskrat_john) Nice recap of the […]

Filed Under: Critical Bits Tagged With: twitter

I Am A Liberal Gamer

August 28, 2009 by Dave

I’m a big proponent of change in game design. If something isn’t working, don’t just patch it, teardown and rebuild. This puts me in opposition to what I will respectfully call the “Conservative Gamer” contingent, who prefer that games preserve much of their makeup from edition to edition. But, that’s not for me. I prefer to see innovation in game design.

Filed Under: Board, Card, and Miniature Games, Critical Threats, Editorial, Roleplaying Games, Video Games Tagged With: 4e, fallout 3, game design, warhammer fantasy roleplay

Friday Chat: The Issue(s) of Combat length in D&D 4e

August 28, 2009 by The Chatty DM

This post is inspired bu a Twitter discussions I had last week. As my player level up right into paragon level,  I noticed that the length of combat in D&D 4e kept increasing.  We often break the 90 minutes point  for ‘normal’ encounters and massive boss-level fights will easily eat up most of our 3 […]

Filed Under: Musings of the Chatty DM, Player Psychology, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: 4e, advice, combat, Friday Chat

GenCon 2009: High Level D&D Seminar

August 26, 2009 by Bartoneus

While at GenCon this year there were many events and seminars which I wanted to attend, but one of the seminars that I really didn’t want to miss was the High Level D&D one hosted by Bruce Cordell and Stephen Schubert from Wizards of the Coast.

Filed Under: Featured, News, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: 2009, 4e, 4th Edition, dnd, Dungeons & Dragons, gen con, gencon, high level, roleplaying game, seminar, tabletop, wizards of the coast, wotc

Notebook Campaing: Super Nico vs the 3 Hungry Goblins

August 26, 2009 by The Chatty DM

Earlier this year, I went to the movie theater with my son and we ended up playing a little of D&D with made up rules.  You can see the game here, including the now legendary Troll who can’t build a bridge encounter. When I came back from Gen Con a few days ago, I told […]

Filed Under: Campaign Logs, Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: gaming with children, Gaming with Kids

Congratulations to Obsidian Portal and Kobold Quarterly

August 26, 2009 by Dave

The winners of the 2009 Ennies for Best Website, Kobold Quarterly took the silver and Obsidian Portal took the gold. Congratulations to them both: while I would have loved to have won, they both definitely deserve it. I read Kobold Quarterly whenever I get a chance, and I used Obsidian Portal extensively for my last D&D 3.5 campaign (and planning on using it more) and it really is awesome.

Filed Under: Editorial, News

Primal/Within Chronicles: Say it with Tentacles, Part 2

August 25, 2009 by The Chatty DM

See part 1 here. Setting up the Fight This is going to be a weird game report because the fight that I will get into shortly, is pretty much all that happened in the game, with some dream sequence before and a bit of story and scary stuff after.  So I’ll spend a few minutes […]

Filed Under: Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: 4e, Chatty's 2009-2010 Campaign, Primal/Within

YouTube Tuesday: This Is Pure Nerd-nip Edition

August 25, 2009 by Dave

“Do You Want To Date My Avatar”, the incredibly catchy music video by the folks at The Guild.

Filed Under: Music, Video Games, YouTube Tuesday Tagged With: MMO, the guild

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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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