If I have the party run into a babbling madman, any ideas for improvising his monologue of madmaking?

Well, it depends. Is the madman supposed to convey any meaningful information?

If not, just mumble about cheese and lemurs or something.

If so, it's hard, because you have to start thinking in metaphor and allegory and they have to be not really obvious metaphors or allegories. But at the same time they can't be so obscure that the players will never get it. You don't want a situation where later it comes out that "The burning donkeys of the obelisk" represented a town oppressed by a dark wizard or something and the players just glare at you and yell "How the HELL was I supposed to get THAT?!"

If I have the party run into a babbling madman, any ideas for improvising his monologue of madmaking?

Maybe end of days stuff integrating the lore of the setting?

"You, have you seen the signs? The darkness is coming. The darkness. Mothra brings the darkness on wings of night. The signs. In the night he will come drawn by the flame. The fire is the sign. Can't you see the fire? The signs, the fire, don't you see it? He's coming. Mothra is coming and he brings the darkness."

That sort of stuff.

D is really good at the dialogue of madness but he wasn't very helpful with suggestions. The best I got, "take two things that don't go together [eg. lemurs and cheese] and talk about them as if they do."

Well, it depends. Is the madman supposed to convey any meaningful information? If not, just mumble about cheese and lemurs or something.

Not really. He's just foreshadowing. In their first adventure, the PCs came across some guys who'd been partaking liberally of the insanity peppers, this is really just a reminder. He will, however, be insistent that the PCs aren't in as good health as they think.

Maybe end of days stuff integrating the lore of the setting?

If the end of days are really coming, maybe I should have him trying to convince the PCs that everything's fine. "No, really, move along, nothing to see here. Grakhna the Desroyer, Render of Worlds, He Who Sits in the Space between Dreams and Waking? Never heard of him."

D is really good at the dialogue of madness but he wasn't very helpful with suggestions. The best I got, "take two things that don't go together [eg. lemurs and cheese] and talk about them as if they do."

Ok, one thing will be the wasps. I think maybe they've divulged to him that the PCs will be next.

Just got home from our first 4th edition session. Being hard to kill makes risk taking so much more rewarding. We had two players fall into negative hit points and recover in time to rejoin the battle. I was down to one hit point and chose to risk using my daily power instead of a healing surge and unleashed 40 hp of damage on the enemy magic user, reducing him to a stain on the path. It was exhilirating. Our cleric has got some mad skills. The thing where she takes HP away from our enemies and gives them to us is a thing of genius. I used to hate playing the cleric but now I think it would be kind of fun.

The second time we played 4E I played a cleric, and yeah, I completely agree that it's a lot more fun. The cleric actually has a raison d'etre now.

The dragonborn was still totally useless. Each time we've played, the opening salvo from the enemies is a tanglefoot bag at the dragonborn, which always succeeds.

This weekend was Rock Band and Dune.

uh-oh I'm playing a dragonborn, but so far none of the kobolds we've encountered have tried the tanglefoot bag. We played for seven hours and only had two encounters, both with troops of kobolds. I got a false sense of the power of my breath weapoon when I scored a crit the first time out.

Our DM just realized we're short one adventurer, as the module we're playing is meant for four adventurers and we only have three players and an NPC so he asked if one of us wants to play two characters. I volunteered since my fighter seems to be the simplest and last night I rolled up a Paladin of the Raven Queen who's going to be a serious force to be reckoned with. I used my human racial bonus to up her charisma to a 19. Now I just need to think of a name. My dragonborn fighter is Perra Panteese.

One thing that really helped was each player having his own PHB. There's so many little plusses; I played half an encounter bloodied before I was reminded I should be adding +1 to my attacks.

Perra Panteese.

If I was your DM, I would empty truckloads of tangle-whatever bags at you for that name.

We've had 4 sessions of our 4e game now. It's been going pretty damn good. We have 7 players, though 1 has only been able to make it to 1 game so far because of a work obligation. Still, she'll be back tonight and we'll have all 7 again. I'd tell you the hilarity we just had with a metric fuckton of kobolds but it's a bit of a spoiler for a published adventure.

Btw, I recommend going to enworld, and checking out their 4e house rules forum which has links to many variant character sheets and power cards. There really are some very good examples of both.

Each time we've played, the opening salvo from the enemies is a tanglefoot bag at the dragonborn, which always succeeds.

If I was that dragonborn, I'd be pissed. Different groups of opponents should not be using the same tactics and it's especially bad if it's regularly screwing up one player's involvement.

If I was your DM, I would empty truckloads of tangle-whatever bags at you for that name.

Luckily our group is punnish although I did get a dirty look the third time our Wizard's Magic Missile failed and Perra shouted, "more like magic fizzle!" My last character was a Dwarf ranger named Kang Mussmun. (after the thai curry dish) My paladin seems to want the straightforward name Eliza Duskbringer but if I can think of a punny surname for her Duskbringer might end up being the name of her sword.

I recommend going to enworld

edit: great resource, thanks!

If I was that dragonborn, I'd be pissed. Different groups of opponents should not be using the same tactics and it's especially bad if it's regularly screwing up one player's involvement.

Oddly, it was different characters, different players, and different DMs.

The first time, my DH was DM and I was running 4 characters as we took the back-of-the-book adventure out as a 4E test drive. The second time it was another published adventure that one of the other Poochies wanted to run, and the newest Poochie was playing a dragonborn.

("Poochie" - our gaming group and erstwhile paintball team is the Pooch Screw Crew.)

If I was your DM, I would empty truckloads of tangle-whatever bags at you for that name.

Our newest member is a hardcore liberal and keeps naming his characters things like Rove and Cheney. I'd rather have the puns.