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Thorin

Strange Homebrew: Knowing When, Where and How to Make Your RPG Campaign Weird Without Losing Your Players

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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. These strange homebrew ideas can be the coolest and most memorable part of the campaign, but they’re also risky. Will your player throw a fit after their corporeal form is replaced with a pile of insects? The quit risk is high. What makes sense in the story? If you can get the players to go along with that, you can have fun with all sorts of crazy homebrew ideas.

When DMs Go to War: How to Run Mass Combat in D&D (and similar RPGs) and Not Bore Your Players

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Most DMs come to a point in their campaigns where they want to run The Big Battle! 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. In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave answer that and more as they break down what happens when DMs go to war.

When Your Game Goes Hollywood: How to Adapt Jurassic Park, Jumanji, and Any Other Movie Into an RPG Adventure or Campaign

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campaigns, including how it can go wrong, choosing the right system, and understanding the details your players will identify with.

Surrender Like a Boss: When RPG Monsters and NPCs Should Give Up and How to Get PCs to Accept Their Submission

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Sometimes the best stories play out after defeat, but to get to them, bad guys need to occasionally survive the fight. In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave roll out their best tricks for using surrender as a storytelling tool, combat hack, and reminder that actions in their RPG worlds have consequences.

21 Tips to Master D&D Combat: How to Run RPG Fights That Balance Fun, Challenge and Time Investment

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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?

Powering Up! Bringing D&D Monsters, Villains and Campaigns Up to Your Party’s Level

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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?

Murderhobos vs. Cthulhu? 3 DM Tricks to Make Players Respect The RPG Campaign Setting You’re running

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How often has the new campaign just become murderhobos in space, murderhobos vs. Cthulhu, or murderhobos visit Scooby-Doo? It’s one thing to start a new campaign in a new setting or system. It’s another to get the PCs to act they belong there. Here are 3 tips that can help bring your new setting to life and keep murderhobos from infesting every world in your multiverse.

13 Tips for DMing Across the Multiverse: How to Bring Different RPG Genres to Life, From Fantasy to Steampunk, Intrigue, Horror and More

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Thorin, Tony and Dave are always looking for ways to make their settings stand out to the players in them. Here are 13 tips we use to bring different RPG campaign worlds to life with players who’ve seen them all (and could easily start forgetting which game is which if we’re not on top of our genrebending).

Superhero Roleplaying: How to Run Comic Book RPG Campaigns That Feel Super-Powered

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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).

11 Ways to Be a Better Dungeon Master: Lessons Learned in Our First Year Recording 3 Wise DMs

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This is the 1-year anniversary of our publishing the first episode of 3 Wise DMs. 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. This week, we look back on the very first episode, how our DMing ideas have changed since then, and 11 things we think have made us better dungeon masters.