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You are here: Home / Archives for Roleplaying Games

Chatty’s Bedtime Campaign: Nico’s Party!

August 31, 2008 by The Chatty DM

This is the last part of Nico’s Quest, an interactive bedtime story game I started with him my 6 year old son Nicolas in the last week. I also just bought a digital recorder to better capture the story and write it later since my blogging schedule is starting to get crowded! Chatty: “So what […]

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

The Seven Habits of Great GMs

August 29, 2008 by The Chatty DM

Inspired by the Stephen R. Covey’s seminal books. After 25 years of GMing, you learn a few lessons about GMing. Some are easier to learn than others. Here’s a list of what I’ve observed in good GMs and what I strive to develop. It’s in no particular order. Being Enthusiastic: A great GM exudes loves […]

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

The Sound of Gnomes

August 28, 2008 by Dave

In case you haven’t already, head over to Gnome Stew (which you should be reading anyway) and leave a comment on this post to be entered into a contest for one of the coolest prizes I’ve ever seen for RPGs: custom sound effects for your game! The sound effects are made by the professional sound […]

Filed Under: Critical Bits, News, Roleplaying Games

Campaign/Adventure Prep: 4th Edition Treasure Hunters!

August 27, 2008 by The Chatty DM

My gaming group usually takes off for the summer. We put our campaign on hiatus because of vacations, family quality time and yard work. While we gamed some (Magic:The Addiction, one shot RPG games, etc) this summer was rather dry. Next Friday is the long awaited start of our new gaming season and both my […]

Filed Under: Adventure Prep, Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: 4e, Chatty's 2008-2009 campaign, Tropes

And the YouTube of the Year is…

August 27, 2008 by Dave

…a tie! Yes, coming both in with 23 votes each (33% of the vote) are Dead Fantasy and “Rarr, I’m a monster.” A day in the life of portal turrets came in a respectable second place behind those two. Thanks to everyone who voted! The two winners are embedded after the jump:

Filed Under: Roleplaying Games, Video Games, YouTube Tuesday

Chatty DM Gets Commonly Creative

August 26, 2008 by The Chatty DM

As a prelude to opening Chatty Studios (don’t click yet, it will only return you here) and launching Project Kobold Love, I obtained a Creative Commons License for the whole content of my blog (See in blog’s footer). I chose the Attribution-Non Commercial Canadian license. What does that mean for people not versed in Intellectual […]

Filed Under: Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: Chatty Studios, Creative Commons

Adventure Design Workshop Seminar (GenCon 2008)

August 25, 2008 by Dave

Still working through our backlog of GenCon 2008, we stopped in at the Adventure Design Seminar, which Mike Mearls moderated (say that three times fast), and also included Rich Baker, Bruce Cordell, Chris Youngs, and James Wyatt. The seminar was advertised as both talking about adventure design for D&D 4e and actually designing an adventure, […]

Filed Under: Roleplaying Games Tagged With: 4e, adventure design, adventures, D&D, dungeon, dungeon magazine, fantasy, gencon, gencon 2008

Nico’s Pick up D&D 4e Game

August 25, 2008 by The Chatty DM

My 6 year old son Nico and 5 year old daughter Rorie are at their Granny’s for the next 3 days as both Alex and I work and school only starts on Thursday. That means that I won’t have new chapters of Nico’s Quest to share with you. I did however start a D&D 4e […]

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

The Unauthorized Ascension of the Drow Spy Report

August 24, 2008 by The Chatty DM

This is my play report of Nicolas Logue’s Ascension of the Drow prequel Mega-Adventure. It was a free-for all, storytelling-intensive D&D 3.5 game featuring 126 players (21 tables of 6) and more than 33 GMs. Everyone was sharing the same game at the same time! It was held at Gen Con and ran from 7h00 […]

Filed Under: Adventure Prep, Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: gen con 2008, pathfinder

Critical Hits Podcast #11: True Dungeon Actual Play

August 24, 2008 by Dave

During GenCon 2008, post-Ennies, I ran off to a far away hotel to play in my very first session of True Dungeon. No photography is allowed inside the game itself, but I smuggled in my trusty voice recorder inside my shirt pocket to record the whole thing as a bit of guerrilla reporting. It’s hard […]

Filed Under: Critical Hits Podcast, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: gencon, gencon2008, true dungeon

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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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