• 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

Inq. of the Week: Tiers of Play?

September 9, 2009 by Bartoneus

Dave and I both started running 4th Edition D&D campaigns when the system was released, now over a year later Dave’s game is solidly into the paragon tier while mine looks to be entering paragon in the next few weeks.

Filed Under: Featured, Inquisition of the Week, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: 4e, 4th Edition, dnd, Dungeons & Dragons, Inquisition of the Week, paragon epic heroic, Roleplaying Games, roleplaying games, tabletop, tiers of play

Primal/Within Chronicles: City of the Overmind, Part 2

September 8, 2009 by The Chatty DM

See part 1 here. Burning Dungeon & Wheel Dragons As Wednesday night was ticking by, a dangerous new idea about the way to run a D&D adventure came up… You see, like many gamers unused to indie RPG designs, I read Mouse Guard with voracity but finished it with the  feeling that while I had […]

Filed Under: Campaign Logs, Game Hacks & Content, Musings of the Chatty DM Tagged With: 4e, Burning Wheel, Chatty's 2009-2010 Campaign, Mouse Guard, Primal/Within, Tropes

Primal/Within Chronicles: City of the Overmind, Part 1

September 8, 2009 by The Chatty DM

Previously in our game… After a few months of rest our heroes are called to save citizens of the City Within from the monstrous tentacles of a clutch of aberrant creatures. Following clues left behind by the monsters and the ever elusive ‘Master’, the party prepares to use thier recently acquired teleportation lore to follow […]

Filed Under: Campaign Logs, Game Hacks & Content, Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: 4e, Burning Wheel, Chatty's 2009-2010 Campaign, Mouse Guard, Primal/Within

Old School Geekout: The Order of the Grappling Hook, Part 4

September 5, 2009 by The Chatty DM

This series has been a play by play report of my first Sword and Wizardry (A retroclone of the 1st, 1974 version of D&D) game.  I used  Chgowiz’s Quick Start rules and starting adventure that you can find here. You can find part 3 here. You Dum Dum! Me Stony! Hired by the cowardly goblin […]

Filed Under: Campaign Logs, Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: Sword and Wizardry

Old School Geekout: The Order of the Grappling Hook, Part 3

September 4, 2009 by The Chatty DM

This is part 3 of my retelling of last weekend’s Sword and Wizardry Quick-Start game we played at our monthly Geekout.  Part 2 can be found here. Skellies! After jamming open the portcullis in the room to the north, the PCs advanced to another room filled with 6 animated (and armed) skeletons!  As soon as […]

Filed Under: Campaign Logs, Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: Sword and Wizardry

Old School Geekout: The Order of the Grappling Hook, Part 2

September 2, 2009 by The Chatty DM

This is a retelling of my recent Sword & Wizardry during a day of gaming with my friends. See part 1 here. Descent into the Depths of Level 1 As we set up for the game, we took a bunch of Hero Clix minis to act as our miniatures to represent marching order and determine […]

Filed Under: Campaign Logs, Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: Sword and Wizardry

The Inner Half-Orc versus The Retro-Clone

September 1, 2009 by guest

(PM is a good friend of mine and while our interest in gaming and movies intersect, we have not roleplayed all that often together.  Here’s one of his rare, and always very entertaining posts about his experience as a closet RPG geek -ChattyDM) Where is it? I’m sure it was around here somewhere… I hear […]

Filed Under: Musings of the Chatty DM, Player Psychology, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: S&W, The Closet Half Orc

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

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

« Previous Page
Next Page »

About the Author

  • Bartoneus

    Danny works professionally as an architectural designer and serves as managing editor here at CH, which means he shares many of the duties of being an editor but without the fame and recognition. He also writes about RPGs, videogames, movies, and TV. He is married to Sucilaria, and has a personal blog at Incorrect Blitz Input. (Email Danny or follow him on Twitter).

    Email: bartoneus@critical-hits.comWeb: https://critical-hits.com//author/Bartoneus/

    Follow me:

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