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D&D 5E

The Summer Blockbuster: 8 Quick Tips To Running D&D and TTRPG Sessions With A Ton of Players

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One of the hardest decisions a DM can make is deciding on who they plan to invite on their adventure. Because if you have a huge crew who all enjoy gaming, it sucks not being able to include everyone. Scheduling issues aside, ‘why not just invite everyone,’ you might ask? Well my short answer is that most RPGs fall apart when you have too many players faster than Thanksgiving dinner the moment your uncle starts talking about politics. 

Case in point, In August we were staring at the possibility of having twelve character’s in one game. Which, to be fair, lands between a bad idea and a total disaster. Yet, somehow, we were able to gather more characters at the table than was in the Fellowship of the Ring for an evening and have a great time doing it. This is why we have compiled a list of eight tips which will allow you to run a one-shot adventure where you can invite whoever you want as long as you have a big enough place to host.

To Roll or Not to Roll? The 7 Best Times To Roll The Dice In Your D&D Game And When Not To.

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In the immortal words of The Bard… “To roll or not to roll, that is the question…” Rolling dice is the cornerstone of TTRPGs, because without them, as DM Chris says, we’re just telling a story as we play with our GI Joe’s in the backyard. So, when you’re running a session, when do you decide to have the players, and yourself, pick up the dice?

In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave springboard off a listener question that deals with trying to speed the game up in a homebrewed superhero campaign. From here, the 3 Wise DMs delve deeper into the big question of when to roll and when not to roll.

DM Chris’ Favorite D&D 5e Subclasses From Artificer To Druid: Part 1 of 3

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Greetings, 3WD-verse! DM Chris here. Over our many combined years at the table, we’ve created characters in every D&D 5e class available, as well as most subclasses, both published and UA. Looking back across the myriad campaigns, I decided to share my favorite subclass for each class. 

Cutscenes – How to Deliver Lore and Secrets in Your D&D Games and TTRPGs While Still Keeping Your Players Involved

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Cutscene. In a video game, it’s a scene shown to the player when they reach a particular point in the game, such as at the end of a level or when the player’s character dies. The immense popularity of videogaming and the similarities between them and TTRPGs begs the question: Can you, or should you, utilize cutscenes in your game?

Don’t Know What You’ve Got: The Top 6 Most Underrated Spells in D&D

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When playing a spellcaster in D&D 5e, there are plenty of powerful and iconic spells to choose from. Fireball and Wish are two of the most classic examples, capable of ending an encounter in one magical flourish. Granted, those spells aren’t available at early levels or available to every caster, so we decided to shine a light on six highly-useful, yet remarkably affordable “underrated” spell options we’ve used.

Live and Let Die: Dealing with Anti-Murderhobos in Curse of Strahd and Players Who Don’t Want to Confront the Enemy in Your TTRPG Game

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Murderhobos. It’s one of the most discussed issues in any TTRPG discussion. Players who don’t feel like there’s no encounter that can’t be solved by casting “Sword.” But what happens when your party turns out to be what we refer to as “Anti-Murderhobos”? What if the party isn’t motivated to engage and/or end the evil machinations of the Bad Guys?

The Prestige: 3 Steps to Make Your Character’s Backstory Shine in your D&D Game

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Characters are the most important thing we deal with as DMs. How many campaigns suffer because the DM is tied to their story, instead of the party’s? I don’t have a number — it was meant as a rhetorical question — but it’s probably a lot. How do we get the best of both worlds, with a rich experience for both player and DM? The backstory, that’s how.

Any character worth his mettle has some sort of backstory — former soldier, disillusioned priest, etc. — but a history ignorant of the world they’re playing in leaves us with the same problem. So the task isn’t just creating a backstory, but rather creating a backstory in the world you’re given. Something to tether the character to the lore, history, and developing plot lines of the campaign world. Sounds daunting, but it’s no harder than your traditional backstory. It’s hitting the right story beats, as our friend DM Tony might say, that makes it all come together.

How Low Can You Go? The Things Every DM Needs To Know When Creating Low Magic Settings in Their D&D And TTRPG Campaigns

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Magic. It’s the thing that separates Fantasy RPGs from all others. Every other TTRPG can have combat, exploration, social situations… but magic is the secret sauce that makes fantasy special. Many DMs and GMs toss around the idea of “low magic” worlds, but what does that mean exactly?

3 Wise DMs 6 Easy Steps To Crafting And Playing The Best Character In Your D&D or TTRPG Game 

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What really makes a character in any given RPG awesome? Sure, high stats help but they guarantee neither success nor that they will be interesting in any way. Maybe six years from now, you and your friends will be sitting around the table talking about how a character was incredibly strong. But that’s only if they did something with it in the game which really was worth remembering. 

After running decades of games, the characters who stand out were run by players who ran them extraordinarily well. But what makes a character an “A-lister” who will be weaved into the lore of both the stories of both you and your friends in years to come? To answer this we have created a list of the seven things which will make your characters the most memorable

D&D Accounting: 11 Tips and Pitfalls to Tracking Treasure in your TTRPG

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Gold. It’s the perfect representation of the reward mechanic from the earliest days of the White Box. Hell, it even used to represent experience! As a companion piece to our 19th episode on RPG Economics, Tony, Chris, and Dave delve into not just how to make things worth using the gold for, but also the idea of how do you, or DO you, account for the treasure that the party finds?