In any TTRPG, but perhaps especially D&D 5E, the DM runs the world and the players run their characters, who are built within the rules of the game. You should let players build the characters they want to play, but that doesn’t mean you have to like it! It’s OK to have a TTRPG PC build that pisses you off. Whether it’s because they’re unkillable, unhittable, undetectable, unsurvivable, or, like our listener question this week, they passively perceive absolutely frickin’ everything! This may...
Jan 16, 2022•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 80
Balance can be the trickiest thing to strike in any RPG campaign. On the one hand, the DM is running monsters and villains who are literally plotting the PC’s destruction. If their plans aren’t good or their combat abilities aren’t challenging, like DM Tony says, it’s like playing the game on baby mode. A game that’s not challenging is unrewarding. On the other, a game that gets too hard can frustrate your players right out of wanting to play it. So where is the balance? How hard is too hard for...
Jan 09, 2022•1 hr 28 min•Ep. 79
Happy New Year! It’s a new year for new games or just continuing the ones you already love. But before we look forward to 2022, it’s important to look back at what we learned from gaming in 2021. Between playing and running about 6 different campaigns throughout the year, not to mention talking about all of it here on 3 Wise DMs, we learned a lot. From speeding up combat to the importance of good characters, especially PCs, the way we play and DM keeps evolving. In this episode, Thorin, Tony and...
Jan 02, 2022•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 78
What if you have your D&D campaign going, the players are having a good time … except one of them, who’s bored? Maybe they’re bored with their character or combat or the way things are going, and now figuring out a way to pick things up a notch for this player falls to you. Do you let them revamp or replace their character? Do you make combat more difficult? Making things more complicated, if the other players are having fun, is adjusting for the bored player going to ruin it for the rest of...
Dec 19, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 77
You hear The 3 Wise DMs talk about our games all the time, but what do our players really think? In this episode, we have 6 of the 7 players from Curse of Strahd on to get honest with DM Dave about what they thought of his campaign! Along the way, we get into whether you should leave your Tarokka reading random, The Death House, what it was like playing in a low-magic setting, slow leveling, the Amber Temple and much more! If you want the real scoop on how our game of Curse of Strahd went, and h...
Dec 12, 2021•1 hr 44 min•Ep. 76
Ding dong, Strahd is dead! He was thrown down from a pillar and we smashed his head! And with that epic victory, the 3 Wise DMs are finally able to talk about their review of D&D 5E’s Curse of Strahd, including their thoughts on what worked, why and the adjustments DM Dave made. It was a big group with 6 players, and Dave managed to connect each of them to the events in Ravenloft in some way. He talks with Thorin and Tony about how that worked, how the players and DM interacted to make the g...
Dec 05, 2021•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 75
It’s a problem as old as roleplaying: You have a few players who are engaged, paying attention and driving the story, and other players who may be shy, or not interested in what’s going on today. The result is that half your table may not be involved in what’s going on. A few weeks ago, DM Tony posted his article with 6 Tips to Get Everyone at the Game Table More Involved. That’s the tip of the iceberg for this essential DMing topic. On the show today, Thorin, Tony and Dave will dig into what ca...
Nov 28, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 74
We’re all at the gaming table for an adventure, right? But what about when your players don’t take the bait? Maybe they’re not interested in the mysterious disappearances in town? Or you’ve built a full dungeon in “The Mysterious Cave,” but they’re not going anywhere near it? What do you do when the player characters just aren’t vibing with the adventure hooks you’ve put in the water? In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave talk about what they’ve seen undercut PC motivation, how they get it back...
Nov 21, 2021•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 73
What do you need to make a town or city for your RPG campaign? A place for your PCs to hang their hats and rest their weary feet? Stores and taverns for them to unload their loot and pick up new quests? How about an economy and some way the town makes money? Who runs it and how do they keep the peace? Who tries to intervene when the party gets up to PC shenanigans? What about surprises? Is that beggar actually a shapeshifted silver dragon? Is there a secret wizard school operating out of a simpl...
Nov 14, 2021•52 min•Ep. 72
We all started DMing RPGs a long time ago. In the case of Thorin and Tony, we held on to older editions long after new ones were released (stretching 1E material into 2E and flat refusing to move to 3E later on). But Dungeons & Dragon 5E has been around for 10 years now and is bigger than any edition has ever been in terms of sales, player base and media exposure. WotC recently announced that they’ll be releasing an update for 5E in 2024, not a replacement, and the edition itself shows no si...
Nov 07, 2021•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 71
It’s the scary season around our gaming tables, and that brings up one of the age-old questions about DMing: Can you reasonably expect to scare adult roleplaying gamers? Maybe, maybe not. But what you can definitely do is remove the illusion that they’re in control. Undermine that false comfort that their characters will be OK. Whether you’re threatening their hit points, sanity or character attachments, if you can shake the players’ sense of security, then you can scare them — and that’s what H...
Oct 31, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 70
Can you teach your wife, girlfriend, best friend, family member or anyone you love to play your favorite RPG? It’s a risky proposition, as listener Dave points out in this week’s listener question: He wants to teach his wife to play D&D, and she’s agreed to give it a try, but he’s afraid that “if she doesn’t enjoy that first session, she will never come back to the table.” The thing is, we’ve all been there. Whether it’s a girlfriend, wife, best friend, brother … at some point, you want to s...
Oct 24, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 69
At D&D Celebration, Wizards of the Coast held a Future of D&D panel discussion with Ray Winninger, Liz Schuh, Jeremy Crawford, and Chris Perkins about new products and changes coming to D&D 5E over the next year and beyond. Among the topics discussed were changes to the way monsters will be presented, balanced, rebalanced around Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse as well as some hints about how settings will be presented in the future. One of the big points of emphasis...
Oct 17, 2021•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 68
DMing is all about bringing your ideas to the table, but some ideas reach beyond the story and dialogue to change the way the game is played. Today, 3 Wise DMs open a Pandora’s Box of DMing ideas and inspiration for D&D 5E. From campaign setting ideas to new weapon rules, combat formations, vampire and dragon age categories, and more, in this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave pitch the craziest D&D house rules and setting features they’d love to play with in the future. 1:00 Campaign ideas ...
Oct 10, 2021•1 hr 32 min•Ep. 67
Patrons and punishments have been a part of D&D since 1st Edition’s paladins had to toe the line or get busted down to fighter status by an angry deity. But with so many classes drawing their powers from gods, devils and monsters in 5e — and not really getting any better deal than the wizard who studied, sorcerer who was born with it, barbarian who’s too angry to die, or the bard who just has to rock out with his glockenspiel out — how can the DM handle these patron relationships in a way th...
Oct 03, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 66
How do you bring your campaign world to life? It’s a question lots of DMs and GMs ask from a lot of different angles. We’re all looking for ways to make sure our players have fun, but also have new experiences in the game that make it feel more like characters living out a story and less like tabletop Diablo. Some of our best questions come from our listeners. That is once again the case this week as Thorin, Tony and Dave dig into three messages asking about different ways to make your RPG world...
Sep 26, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 65
No DM’s plan survives contact with the players. Between remembering the story you’re trying to tell, the details you had to improvise, and the players’ actions (which may or may not have made sense), it can be hard to keep the details straight in your RPG campaign. How can you plan out the important stuff, capture improv details before you forget them, and make sure you remember it the same way week to week? Thorin, Tony and Dave each have their own tricks for keeping their stories straight. Thi...
Sep 19, 2021•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 64
When you take your RPG campaign to the high seas (or under the seas, outer space or anywhere else they need a ship to survive), all bets are off. Sure, you could run it like any land-based campaign using the ship for fast travel, but is that really what a ship-based campaign is all about? Or are they about ship-to-ship combat, unlimited freedom, and unimaginable treasure? The lure of the sea is about more than hopping from adventure to adventure. The captain is king of the vessel, whether that c...
Sep 12, 2021•57 min•Ep. 63
Dragons are to D&D what Jerry West is to the NBA: The Logo. They’re the monsters so iconic that they’re literally part of the name. No other fantasy property has done as much or gained as much from its dragons. So, when you decide to put a dragon in your campaign, you know it has to be special. But how do you make sure it hits the right notes for your players? Fortunately, dragons are some of Thorin’s, Tony’s, and Dave’s favorite creatures. How do you make dragons feel epic? How do you make ...
Sep 05, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 62
Sometimes you want to change the game up completely, even if it’s just for the night. Maybe you want to have a night of gambling games, a carnival with an archery contest, a little football, or, like DM Dave’s Barovia, a werewolf wrestling match to put the WWE to shame! When you have that urge, how do you make that happen? The 3 Wise DMs call them minigames, and in this episode, they’ll use Dave’s wrestling escapades to break down how to make these sessions fun for everyone. Thorin, Tony and Dav...
Aug 29, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 61
DMs have some crazy ideas. And deep down, there’s nothing most of us want to do more than unleash those ideas on our unsuspecting players. The party is rolling along a totally normal campaign in a non-descript fantasy world, and suddenly, you’ve dropped a giant, soul-eating, boon-granting, Lovecraftian spaghetti monster into the center of it with a cult that’s depopulating the world to wake it up. Or, through your Wizard’s misfiring experimentations, you’ve bonded him to a Venom-like symbiote bo...
Aug 15, 2021•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 60
Most DMs come to a point in their campaigns where they want to run The Big Battle. We’re not talking the players vs. a few Balors, but a real war: Storming the beaches of a fantasy Normandy, the Siege of Winterfell, the Battle of Pelennor Fields from Lord of the Rings. But when you go to set the battle up, you realize just how clunky mass combat is in D&D and most RPGs. The problem is, most RPGs are skirmish-level games, especially D&D. That means they run well with up to about 20 charac...
Aug 08, 2021•58 min•Ep. 59
Lots of DMs draw inspiration from their favorite movies. But adapting a movie to your game isn’t always as easy as it sounds. Can you really use D&D, where the PCs are super-powered, to create Jurassic Park, where most of the characters are lunch? How do you capture the magic of Lord of the Rings in a way your players can actually play through without following the book scene-for-scene? How do you turn linear silver screen storytelling into something that can survive an encounter with your p...
Aug 01, 2021•54 min•Ep. 58
Sometimes the best stories play out after defeat, but to get to them, bad guys need to occasionally survive the fight. It’s not always so easy to recognize when it’s time to pull back and have the monsters or villains run away or surrender to the PCs, and it can be even harder to get the party to accept the surrender after it’s offered. When should a DM surrender and how do you make sure it doesn’t turn into a slaughter? It all comes down to how you teach players to play your game. After all, if...
Jul 25, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 57
Combat is such a central part of D&D 5E, but it’s also a part of the game that can take forever! And not all players are down for a 4-hour fight every game session. What can the DM do to keep the fights fun for everyone, even if some players in the party want fast combat and others want to take their time and enjoy the tactics? How do you make sure you’re not the one slowing combat down and killing the vibe? It’s not just a D&D question, either. DM’s who stumble running combat encounters...
Jul 18, 2021•1 hr 38 min•Ep. 56
Whether you’re playing a book Dungeons & Dragons campaign or just have big plans for a couple uglies in the Monster Manual, there’s a level window where your PCs will have a good, balanced encounter with those threats. But what do you do when the party isn’t in that window? Maybe through the course of their adventures, the PCs have explored everything and leveled up too fast, so now Strahd or Auril or whatever big bad is looking a little wimpy? Or maybe your players have characters they’ve b...
Jul 11, 2021•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 55
Dungeons & Dragons gives most DMs a good idea of how to start running high fantasy games, but where do you go from there? Or if you started with another genre of role-playing game, like horror, how do you make a high fantasy game feel alive? What mechanics, details and dungeon master tricks (or GM tricks) can you use to make your players feel what’s unique about your setting? One of the cool things about 3 Wise DMs is that we do get to play a lot of games and try a lot of genres and settings...
Jul 04, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 54
From The Avengers to The Snyder Cut and Arrow to Wanda Vision, superheroes have conquered entertainment. Are you ready for them to clean up the streets of your game group, too? That’s exactly what’s been happening at the 3 Wise DMs’ game table, as our little experimentation with TSR’s Marvel Superhero RPG (MSH RPG) from 1984 has ballooned into a 3-DM shared universe. Instead of the MCU, we now have a 3WDMSHRPGU! (We really need to work on that acronym). Ever since DMs Dave and Tony were 0-level ...
Jun 27, 2021•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 53
How much time should you spend prepping for individual game sessions? When should you improv and when should you plan more ahead of time? How can you keep rules lawyers and house rules under control? This episode marks one year of recording 3 Wise DMs and some of the most intensive gaming of our lives. We’ve had as many as 5 campaigns running across 3 different systems, and every week we got together to talk about them on this podcast. It’s been an intensive RPG workshop for all three of us, and...
Jun 20, 2021•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 52
The 3 Wise DMs have only just started to get back together for some in-person gaming, but none of the online RPGs we’ve talked about has yet made it back to the dinner table. Can they be saved? Do the Wise DMs even want to bring them back in-person? Are the players on board? Even if everyone wants to go back to playing live, what challenges do they face? In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave talk about the surprising difficulty of bringing their games back to live, in-person play. From commutin...
Jun 13, 2021•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 51
