• Critical-Hits Studios
    • Criminals Card Game
    • Sentinel Comics: the Roleplaying Game
  • Downloads & Tools
    • Critical Hits Fantasy Name Generator
    • Drinking D&D 2010
    • Drinking D&D 2011
    • Fiasco Playset: “Alma Monster”
    • MODOK’s 11 for Marvel Heroic Roleplaying
    • Refuge In Audacity RPG
    • Strange New Worlds RPG
  • Guides
    • Gamma World
    • Guide to 4e Accessories
    • Guide to Gaming DVDs
    • Skill Challenges
  • RSS Feed
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Critical Hits

Everything tabletop gaming since 2005

  • News
  • Reviews
  • Columns
    • Dire Flailings
    • Dungeonomics
    • Musings of the Chatty DM
    • Pain of Publication
    • The Architect DM
  • Podcasts
    • Critical Hits Podcast
    • Dungeon Master Guys Podcast
  • Roleplaying Games
  • Tabletop Games
  • Game Hacks & Content
  • Video Games
You are here: Home / Archives for Roleplaying Games / Adventure Prep

Adventure Prep: Planning Ahead for the End

March 10, 2008 by The Chatty DM

This series covers the thoughts that go behind my Adventure Preps. I don’t go into details as my players read this blog, but I try to showcase the key challenges and choices I face every time I sit down in the days before we play. Game week again! For those who don’t know, our group […]

Filed Under: Adventure Prep, Musings of the Chatty DM Tagged With: Theme week:Endings

Mini-Fluff: More on-the-fly world building

February 27, 2008 by The Chatty DM

Mini-posts are approx. 500 words posts on one of my pet subjects. I usually do them when I have a busy evening, like Adventure Preping or doing things like, you know, exercise! I’m deep in adventure prep, deeper than I have been for a long time. I don’t know if it’s the same for you […]

Filed Under: Adventure Prep, Musings of the Chatty DM, Player Psychology Tagged With: fluff, mini-post, world building

Addendum to Adventure Prep and Open Captioned Bragging Contest

February 26, 2008 by The Chatty DM

I can’t write an actual post tonight I have quite a large game to prep because my players decided they wanted to talk with a god and then have a stroll in Asgard/Ysgard… Were I playing 2e Planescape, I could just say “Tough luck, you don’t have the proper portal key”. However, since it’s one […]

Filed Under: Adventure Prep, Musings of the Chatty DM

Adventure Prep: Icing on a planar cake

February 25, 2008 by The Chatty DM

This post is part of a series that covers the preparations I do for my current D&D campaign. You can follow it here. Yay! Hopefully we’ll have a game this week. Eric, Franky and Yan have confirmed their presence, I just need Math or Stef to confirm and we’re good to go. My players are […]

Filed Under: Adventure Prep, Musings of the Chatty DM

Adventure Prep: The Newbie group, an Encore

February 15, 2008 by The Chatty DM

Back in late October I posted an adventure prep article about doing a Demo D&D game for a group mostly made of D&D newbies based on Paizo’s Pathfinder #1 : Burnt Offering. The game was very entertaining, featuring crazy stupid goblins and some of the worse dice-craft I had ever seen in a game. A […]

Filed Under: Adventure Prep, Musings of the Chatty DM Tagged With: D&D for Newbies, pathfinder

Adventure Prep: When the end of an era draws near

February 5, 2008 by The Chatty DM

This post is part of a series that covers the preparations I do for my current D&D campaign. You can follow it here and the various DM logs I wrote here. Yup it’s another game week for Chatty’s gang as I pick up and read through Expeditions to the Demonweb pits and try to hack […]

Filed Under: Adventure Prep, Musings of the Chatty DM

Adventure Prep: Strapping it all together to get it going good!

January 21, 2008 by The Chatty DM

This post is part of a series that covers the preparations I do for my current D&D campaign. You can follow it here and the various DM logs I wrote here. Our next D&D game is Friday night. Weeee! This time we’ll be missing our Archer as Franky will be working during the evening (he’s […]

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

What Awaits my Players…

January 9, 2008 by The Chatty DM

I finished my game prep early enough to drop by here and make another mini-post. This time it’s a preview of what awaits my players and is also a showcase of what you can do with the D&D battlemaps, tiles and miniatures. First we have our heroes leaving the Styx’ Oarsman, a newly opened inn […]

Filed Under: Adventure Prep, Geek Stuff, Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games

Adventure Prep: Of Planescaping and High Intensity Hacking, Part 2

January 6, 2008 by The Chatty DM

I’m preparing for next Friday’s game, the year’s first, which will also coincide with a new campaign arc. I’ll also be marking my 35th birthday and my 25th year as a Dungeon/Game Master. Weeeee! Nostalgic Aside: My 1st dungeon was drawn on a piece of graph paper, was filled with death traps, had a White […]

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

Mini-Prep: Just how little do you need to prep?

January 3, 2008 by The Chatty DM

That title brings back memories of my Internship in a Molecular Biology lab, before DNA isolation became automated. Anyway, yesterday’s post took more creative juice than originally planned. Today I’ll keep it shorter and turn the keyboard over to you earlier on (Andy, your new year’s recommendations are simmering in my noggin’ and will be […]

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

« Previous Page
Next Page »

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/

Subscribe

RSS Feed

Archives

CC License

All articles and comments posted posted on the site (but not the products for sale) are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. References to trademarks and copywritten material are included for review and commentary use only and are not intended as any kind of challenge.

Recent Comments

  • fogus: The best things and stuff of 2024 on Remembering the Master: An Inelegant Eulogy for Kory Heath
  • Routinely Itemised: RPGs #145 on Review: The Magus
  • The Chatty DM on Review: The Magus
  • Linnaeus on Review: The Magus
  • 13th Age: Indexing Truths — Critical Hits on The Horizon Conspiracy

Contact The Staff

Critical Hits staff can be reached via the contact information on their individual staff pages and in their articles. If you want to reach our senior staff, email staff @ critical-hits.com. We get sent a lot of email, so we can't promise we'll be able to respond to everything.

Recent Posts

  • Remembering the Master: An Inelegant Eulogy for Kory Heath
  • Review: The Magus
  • Hope in the Dark Heart of Evil is Not a Plan
  • Chatty on Games #1: Dorf Romantik
  • The Infinity Current: Adventure 0

Top Posts & Pages

  • Home
  • The 5x5 Method Compendium
  • Dungeons & Dragons "Monster Manual" Preview: The Bulette!
  • Critical Hits Fantasy Name Generator
  • On Mid-Medieval Economics, Murder Hoboing and 100gp
  • "The Eversink Post Office" - An Unofficial Supplement for Swords of the Serpentine
  • Finally a manual for the rest of them!
  • Dave Chalker AKA Dave The Game
  • How to Compare Birds to Fish
  • The Incense War: a Story of Price Discovery, Mayhem, and Lust

Copyright © 2026 · News Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in