In our latest episode, we answered a listener’s question regarding how to handle players missing sessions. This led to a brainstorm about how to build a campaign that turns this apparent weakness into a strength. Starting from the basic idea of a West Marches-style campaign, I offer you “The Cannonball Run.”
The ultimate BBEG for any tabletop RPG is the calendar. And judging by the vast gallery of memes about this topic, that villain is nigh unbeatable. Whether our schedules are hard to align or players have important things that come up or someone in your group is just flakey, every DM has to deal with some level of absenteeism. It’s always a little bit disruptive, and sometimes it can outright kill your campaign … How do you handle it?
Roleplaying games are communal by nature. The “rules” we play by are often passed along more due to personal agreements and groupthink than actual “truths” underlying them. Here are four things we think are common RPG myths, and why they might not be true. How many of them do you believe? Do you still believe them after reading our take?
In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave play MythBusters: One of the old, unwritten rules of most TTRPGs is “Never Split the Party!” We tease our players with the risks and watch things go haywire when they don’t listen. But is splitting the party actually so bad? Can you play “Character Karaoke” and make sure everyone still has fun?
Every story needs a proper ending, especially if it’s one of epic proportions. And few tales are as epic as an RPG campaign that reaches the end of its final story arc. Unfortunately, some endings are like The Sopranos, which left the audience thinking “WTF?!” for all the wrong reasons. Others feel rushed, forced or downright unsatisfying. After being on both sides of this equation, I would like to share some tips to prevent your story from tanking in the 11th hour and leave everyone glad they showed up for the final game.
How do you challenge RPG PCs who wield actual cosmic power? How do you bring that campaign to a satisfying end? The time for killing rats is past, here’s how the 3 Wise DMs run and end high-level campaigns.
Many D&D campaigns assume that the players change the world most by their adventures. But downtime activities can be every bit as important to shaping the campaign and the world. Sometimes the things done during downtime turn out to be the most memorable parts of your game. Here are 7 of the coolest things I could see players do with downtime and how I would adjudicate them off the cuff.
Do you actually give your player characters downtime? Or do you keep them slaloming down the plot with barely a weekend to get their equipment sharpened?
In any game, just like in life, no one enjoys constantly losing. Most people would quickly get discouraged and want to move on to another game or stop playing such games at all. If the players always won, wouldn’t the reverse also be true? Instead of being frustrated with consistently losing, the players would start phoning in every scene and battle because the chance of defeat is less than zero. That’s why the risk of failure is just as important as the risk of death to a good TTRPG game.
The DM is a player, too. If you’re not having fun, there’s no game. Here’s how to figure out what’s wrong and get back to a game you enjoy running.
