Thorin 
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?
It takes more than just a Wise DM to make a great roleplaying game campaign. No matter how thoroughly you plan or brilliantly you improv, the DM is only one person in a group of 2 to 10 or more people making this thing happen. When push comes to shove, the players are the ones who really make the game what it becomes — whether that’s an epic cooperative tale imaginative high adventure or a series of glorified minis skirmishes.
How we handle RPG character-altering changes, get the players on board with them and make it all balance mechanically with the rest of the game.
Of all the roles the DM takes on, none is more important than bringing new players into the hobby. DM a game, and your player has fun for a night. Teach them to play, and they may have fun for the rest of their lives (or think you’re a gigantic weirdo — it’s a win either way). In this episode, on the eve of DM Dave launching a mostly rookie campaign, the 3 Wise DMs talk about how they handle new players, what they do to try to teach them the game, and how they make it fun without overwhelming the poor newbs.
They say the clothes make the man, but the villain makes the campaign. It has to be something your players love to hate – but also love to learn more about. A good big bad evil guy (BBEG) is a balancing act of depth and destruction. Here are 5 things I make sure to understand about my villain and what it’s going to do before the party confronts it.
How do you make sure your BBEG is epic like Darth Vader and not a sniveling mama’s boy like Joss Whedon’s Steppenwolf? The 3 Wise DMs dig into their process for creating villains that are worthy of the title, from concept to motivation to final confrontation.
“Alignment doesn’t matter!” We’ve heard it all over the place, but alignment has been a part of D&D and other RPGs for decades. Is it worth your time? Does it make things worse instead of better? Does it have any benefits players today are overlooking?
For the first time ever, we brought the whole team together to recap DM Tony’s very highly customized version of Storm King’s Thunder. Hear what all 5 players and Tony thought of the game and what they have to say about the CRAZY MAGIC ITEMS in it his changes to the campaign, fitting in their backstories, and more!
When is a book module not a book module? When the DM throws in birthday games, a modifiable Spelljammer airship, legendary weapons tied to every character’s backstory, and more deviations from the standard campaign than we could count. Hear all this and more, as we break down the 9 main deviations Tony brought to Storm King’s Thunder and the DM’s perspective on running it.
Do your players feel into the campaign setting you’re running, or is it just generic D&D world #124 to them? What can you do to bring that world more to life and make it feel unique to you and your players? What makes a D&D session feel like more than just a glorified board game? Here are 37 of the tricks the 3 Wise DMs use to try to make the players feel immersed in our worlds and give the settings some soul.
