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Campaign Inspiration

No Rest for the Weary: How the Rest Cadence of D&D 5E Can Completely Change Your Game

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Rest! In some D&D 5E campaigns, it’s taken for granted. In others, like Tomb of Annihilation, PCs may have to make their HP and long-rest abilities stretch for days. And like in real life, sleep deprivation changes the game! How can the DM use all of these nuances to their advantage to tortu… er, have fun with the players? Thorin, Tony and Dave discuss all that and more in this episode of 3 Wise DMs.

7 Ways to Make Monsters Interesting for Both New Players and Veterans

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When we did our podcast about how to play iconic monsters, it was suggested that D&D-specific creatures are like celebrities. However, just like anything, if it gets too much exposure, it can get staler than some of my jokes. That’s a concern when the same creatures get too much airtime over the course of one or more campaigns. And while there is nothing wrong with getting into the deep cuts of the monster list, there are other options. This is why we’ve put together a list of ways to make monsters more interesting for new and seasoned players alike.

The Sinister 7: How to Run 7 Iconic D&D Monsters for Maximum Mystique

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Dungeons & Dragons is a lot more than just dungeons and dragons. The game is full of iconic monsters with unique legends and mystique, some pulled from mythology and others found only in this game. But from D&D, many of these monsters have become pop culture icons with stories and expectations that have taken on a life of their own. Here are seven of the most iconic monsters in D&D and how Thorin, Tony and Dave get the most out of them in their campaigns.

Quick and Dirty D&D Mass Battle Rules Even Non-Gamers Can Understand

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One of the hardest things for me about higher-level play in D&D is that, inevitably, we’re going to war. At that point, either I need to present the war as a bunch of solo, special-forces vignettes – which is an OK approach, but misses something for me – or a bunch of players who never had much interest in wargames are going to have to grasp a unit-level wargaming system. So over the years, I’ve come up with a quick and dirty way to put player characters in charge of units in a way that isn’t too far removed from regular D&D play. We just had one of these sessions, and the players all grokked it easily and said they enjoyed it. Here’s what we did.

The Fetch Quest: Are They Fun? Are They Worth It? Are They Just Filler for the Big Story?

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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?

Learning From the Legend: 3 Lessons The Legend of Vox Machina Reveals About DMing Your Best D&D Game

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I’ve made no secret of the inspiration and enjoyment I get from being a fan of Critical Role, the D&D live-play stream that has taken the TTRPG world by storm. Now in its third season, the show’s creators unveiled the much-anticipated animated series on Amazon Prime, The Legend of Vox Machina, dramatizing (or comedyizing?) some of the adventures in their first season. There are things to learn about ways to improve our games from these types of creators.

Characters Over Combat: What We Learned From Gaming in 2021

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Happy New Year! It’s a new year for new games or just continuing the ones you already love. But before we look forward to 2022, it’s important to look back at what we learned from gaming in 2021. In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave talk about everything they learned throughout 2021, how it’s changed the way they play, and what they’re planning for 2022.

The True CR20 Strahd: Powering Up Your BBEG for the Epic Big Battle

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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.

The Curse of Strahd Postmortem: Our Players Talk About What They Thought of D&D 5E’s Barovia, the Things They Loved, and a Few Things They Didn’t

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You hear The 3 Wise DMs talk about our games all the time, but what do our players really think? In this episode, we have 6 of the 7 players from Curse of Strahd on to get honest with DM Dave about what they thought of his campaign! Along the way, we get into whether you should leave your Tarokka reading random, The Death House, what it was like playing in a low-magic setting, slow leveling, the Amber Temple and much more!

Christmas in Barovia: A Complete Holiday One-Shot For Your Curse of Strahd Campaign

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How do you run a vampire-laden, gothic horror Christmas one-shot, you ask? Quite easily, actually. One has to look no further than the Joe Hill novel, and later television show, NOS4A2. Charlie Manx. Abducted children. Christmasland. A chance to run my Curse of Strahd party against a vampire almost as powerful as the published CR 15 Strahd. So, in its entirety, here is 3WD’s Christmas gift to all of you – a joyful, dread, merry and gothic one-shot that checks all the boxes for vampires and Christmas!