They say a hero is only as good as their weapon, which may not be true but if you’re Thor, She-Ra, Drizzt Do’urden, or Trevor Belmont, but it gives them one hell of an edge. Not to say that their amazing magic weapons or objects of badassery define them as characters, but they definitely add to their personas. The same concept can apply to D&D characters.
Rich, vivid descriptions bring your fantasy world to life. Unfortunately, they can also lead your players to think that the intricately carved and decorated elven bridge they’re crossing has to be an important clue or secret! If it weren’t, why would the DM have given it such a cool description? This is the curse of the red herring: When you’re casually monologuing details to give the world depth, and the players lock onto something that you meant to be insignificant. Next thing you know, they’re spending 3 hours trying to investigate a mystery that isn’t there. d Dave talk about red herrings they’ve seen get out of control and what they do in their games to try to back to the story … if they can.
As the DM, when game day finally arrives of course you want your game to be both as fun and memorable as possible. However, you don’t want your adventure to come off like a bad action movie that feels like three forgettable plots sandwiched into one. Nor do you want your game ending after just two hours because your crew ran through your content like they chugged a six-pack of Red Bull. This is why we have created a list of tips, so your session will have a satisfying amount of material but not so much that a one-shot adventure takes 12 hours to finish.
What’s some of the tedious stuff you have to do as a DM that you really wish had an easy button? Why does WotC make some essential DMing info hard to find (or at least hard to find while you’re trying to run a game)? Here are the tricks and tips we use to try to make DM chores from magic item pricing to map making and initiative tracking less tedious and more fun. And, spoiler alert, it’s different for all of us because every DM has different things they find tedious in running the game.
In our recent episode on “How Many Players Are Too Many for One D&D Game,” we answered a listener’s question regarding “How big is too big” for adventuring parties. The challenges this creates can be confusing for both beginners and advanced DMs. So, I decided to share two examples of running 5e games with eight players to reflect on how I did it, what worked and what didn’t, and, hopefully, help you agree that, while having too many people wanting to play is a good problem to have, it’s still a problem.
The oldest Dungeons & Dragons books said the game was for 4 to 50 players, and we know people who DMed white box D&D campaigns with groups in the 20s. But that was then, and D&D 5th Edition runs into a lot of issues once you pass a certain number of players. So, what do you do when your game is already at 6 players and 3 more want to join? That’s the question posed by one of our listeners in this week’s episode of 3 Wise DMs.
In my previous article, we looked at 10 game mechanics that have become more refined under Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition. However, even the best system is a work in progress. While most of us agree that 5E runs smoothly, it’s not without a few rough spots. Here are three aspects of the current system that could use some fine-tuning and some suggestions on how to make them run better.
Many RPG campaigns end with the players taking over kingdoms, wizard colleges, crime syndicates or other powerful organizations in the world as a sort of epilogue. But what about when they want to take these titles during the campaign and actively run their new empires? How do you handle putting your player characters in charge of powerful organizations in your world as an active part of the game?
For many players, 5E wasn’t the first edition of D&D they played. But by the time they did, most found that it corrected a host of previous issues. And while no system is perfect, the newer versions’ downsides were substantially outweighed by all the good things it brought to the table. Here are 10 ways it improved the game (IMHO).
Not every player is OK playing RPGs by the rules as they’re written. Some can’t even get through character creation without asking the DM to make some kind of mechanical adjustment. This may seem like an easy situation – do it my way or play with someone else – but it’s not always that simple. How do you handle those situations?
