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You are here: Home / Archives for Tropes

Dive in this bowl of Crunchy Hit points

September 25, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Image Source: Do I really need to? ๐Ÿ™‚ I’m prepping this week’s game tonight so I’ll keep the post a bit on the short side. Greywulf commented on this post earlier today* and shared his most excellent tricks to save time in RPG combats (dude, I’m like Keanu now, whoa!) One of his tricks literally […]

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

Mining Tropes for RPG nuggets: Let them see the light.

September 24, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Image Source: D&D 3.5 Monster Manual This is part of a series of articles that tackles the concepts of tropes and how they can be applied by a DM/GM to improve their favorite Role-Playing game adventures. It is heavily inspired by the sheer goodness of the TV Tropes Wiki. “I’m sorry, you’ve never faced a […]

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

The craziest, shortest, game I ever wrote/ran.

September 23, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Image Source: Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho Martin over at Treasure Tables had a recent post asking DMs what were ideal gaming sessions and the shortest ones we’re comfortable running (Quick Answer, 4 hours, 2 hours). That made me think of the shortest, craziest one-shot game I ever GMed. It was right before D&D 3.0 and, like […]

Filed Under: Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: DMing, rule of cool, Tropes

Mining Tropes for RPG nuggets: Running on the Edge

September 20, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Image Source: Gamespot This is part of a series of articles that tackles the concepts of tropes and how they can be applied by a DM/GM to improve their favorite Role-Playing game adventures. It is heavily inspired by the sheer goodness of the TV Tropes Wiki. All right, so Marty’s dead now and we need […]

Filed Under: Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games, Tropes Tagged With: DMing, rule of cool, Tropes

Adventure Prep, Session 3: Adapting a published adventure

September 15, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Image Source: Paizo’s Dungeon Magazine Two players can’t make it to the game next Friday. According to our social contract when 2 or more players are missing, we try to move the game back one week. While this extra time could allow me to prepare a super extra awesome adventure, I find that I spend […]

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

Mining Tropes for RPG nuggets: Meet Marty Stu

September 14, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Image Source: RPGnet’s Forums. (Check out Wil’s blog he’s a gamer too.) This is part of a series of articles that tackles the concepts of tropes and how they can be applied by a DM/GM to improve their favorite Role-Playing game adventures. It is heavily inspired by the sheer goodness of the TV Tropes Wiki. […]

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

Scary may not be Evil… But it works!

September 11, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Image Artist: Arnie Swekel Doug M. left a well written comment on my post about exploring evil in RPGs where he makes a clear distinction between Evil (The flavor, the horror, the creeping out of players), Menacing foes (More powerful than the party) and ‘I hate this guy’. This, and a funny exchange of comments […]

Filed Under: Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: DMing, rule of cool, Tropes

Mining Tropes for RPG nuggets: Opening up the mine

September 10, 2007 by The Chatty DM

This is a first stab at tackling the concepts of tropes and how they can be applied by a DM/GM to improve their favorite Role-Playing game adventures. I’d like to make this a weekly feature if it garners any interest. It sure does interest me!For those who have read at least one of my previous […]

Filed Under: Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games, Tropes Tagged With: DMing, rule of cool, Tropes

Tweaking Classes for Cooler Characters

September 9, 2007 by The Chatty DM

The following is a Crunch-heavy post on tweaking the mechanics of D&D 3.5 character classes. As D&D 4e draws nearer I feel more and more comfortable with playing under the game’s hood. Something I would never had dared with previous editions of the game. One of the things that came out of last Friday’s game […]

Filed Under: Game Hacks & Content, Musings of the Chatty DM, Player Psychology Tagged With: Crunch, DMing, rule of cool, Tropes

DM Chronicles, Session 2: When Cool Meets Satisfaction (Part 2).

September 9, 2007 by The Chatty DM

Scene 3: Evil is a matter of style Following the Self-Employed Mensa Troll, who just happened to be going where the map was leading, the PCs came into another burst Sewer tunnel leading into the darkness. That time, the passage looked like it had been man/thing made. This brought the party to a largish Cavern […]

Filed Under: Campaign Logs, Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: Chatty's 2007-2008 campaign, DMing, rule of cool, Tropes

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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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