My new Gears of Ruin Clockwork D&D 4e campaign starts as soon as the holidays are over (with a pre-campaign session right before). I’ve spoken a bit about what the setting would be. I’m moving away from my traditional fantasy world and creating a new one based on Clockwork Fantasy tropes (Girl Genius, Iron Kingdoms, […]
D&D 4e Ptolus: Chatty’s Demo Game
(This is the first post I write on my new mini-laptop that you all payed for by visiting this site, I thank you all!) Earlier this fall I attended a local gaming con called Draconis where I demoed a D&D adventure written by my friend Johenius. At the con, I met Erik, the owner […]
Campaign Genesis: Gears of Ruin
I’m taking a short break from my course prep to share with you some of the brainstorming that is shaping my newest D&D 4e campaign. Last week, when I pre-pitched my D&D adventure ideas for Dungeon Magazine, one of the ideas that wasn’t retained ‘as is’ was a clockwork fantasy adventure. It’s not that the […]
Adventurers Anonymous
Storyteller is the author of the RPG blog Beneath the Screen, and a content developer for Nevermet Press. He is proud to be back at ChattyDM’s blog for the one-year anniversary of his first guest post ever on the blogosphere, which he wrote for ChattyDM last year. Without further ado, onward with the guest post! […]
For new GMs: Worldbuilding is storytelling: complication, complexity, micronarratives, and your precious little fantasy world-baby
It’s the autism-spectrum version of playing god: surveying charts and tables and lists and believing, for just a moment, that a world can be contained in such a form. Elves and dragons are less unbelievable than that power fantasy.
Old School, New School and Gygaxian Naturalism (or not)
Here’s the post that I promised wouldn’t write since it could be construed as a comment bait. However, since I spent 2 hours reading arguments and trying to define some fairly controversial terms, I’m not going to waste that! No siree! Now, just so we’re clear on this, I’m interested to read your thoughts and […]
Adventure Prep: The City Adventure
For my next D&D session (which is on Friday next week), I’ve decided to go for a city-based adventure. We’ve played 3 sessions into our new Primal/Within campaign and all those were focused on the Dungeon part of the setting and very little on the city (except to interact with Quest giving NPCs). I think […]
One-Page Dungeon Contest Update 2: Four on the Template
After 2 weeks, the one-page dungeon contest is revving up nicely. Entries have been coming in at a steady pace from all over the world. Seriously, this week we got entries from Australia, Italy and Germany just to name a few. The dungeons are also very very diverse showing off various genres and themes. I […]
Primal/Within: Some Factions, Sectors and (one) Citizen
You might notice that my empty speech bubble in my blog’s header is no longer empty. Thanks to Eric Maziade, I now have a little plug-in that lets me write quotes! This week is session #2 of my new campaign (if we don’t count the awesome prequel session in the Crypt of the Thief-Prince). My […]
The Primal/Within Campaign: The Dungeon as a NPC
As someone told me earlier today, back to our original programming! With my last mini-campaign done and completed, I’m getting ready to start playing my new homebrewed campaign centered around the Primal Dungeon and The City Within. One of the key challenges that I’ve found with campaigns with an overarching story arc is that I […]
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