Sometimes your players want something, or you want to give them something, that would be kind of lame to just leave lying around. After all, The Awesome Staff of Mega Power probably deserves its own quest to find. But how long should that quest be? And how do you keep the other players personally involved so they don’t get bored?
If you’ve never run or played in a solo game of D&D or some different system, then you’ve missed out on an interesting experience – even if, admittedly, one of the cornerstones of the game is built on collaborative roleplay. And, while solo adventure can be extremely fun, it’s definitely not for all players or DMs for a single session, let alone an actual campaign. This is why we composed a list of pros and cons to help you decide if a solo game is something you would like to introduce or request from your DM.
Vanilla Dungeons & Dragons 5E is a fine game, but depending on the atmosphere you want to set and the possibilities of your setting, there are a lot of alternate rules that can bring your game to the next level. The D&D 5E Dungeon Masters Guide has some great optional rules you can use to bring different genres of games to life by playing up things like honor and horror. Beyond D&D itself, a lot of other games use mechanics that are worth porting in to create certain effects in your campaign world. Your own unique homebrew mechanics can be even more powerful tools for bringing your setting more to life. In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave talk about their favorite optional rules, how to use them and when.
5e’s Curse of Strahd contains a double entendre. While it seems as if the big bad Lord of Barovia is the curse that follows the players around, the deeper truth is that the curse is his own. He cannot leave. Barovia is his prison. Having just completed our run of this infamous adventure, I found an even deeper curse lying within the module: Strahd just isn’t powerful enough to handle the heat of the epic, final battle when the players are level appropriate and have recovered the artifacts.
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.
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? We have warned you not to get caught up in building towns and cities before, but this time a listener asked what needs to be in them when you have to do it. The 3 Wise DMs came up with 19 tips to help you do it in pretty much any RPG.
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.
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).
A confounding villain scheme can be the thing that brings your campaign to life. It’s even better when you can make multiple villains crisscross and double-cross with the players in the middle trying to catch up. Here’s how to build a truly tangled web of intrigue starring the Kingpin and some of Marvel’s competing heavy hitters.
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.
