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.
A change of pace can be nice, and when it comes to gaming it’s no exception. Case in point, we recently played two basic style D&D games using the Basic Fantasy RPG, and they were interesting to say the least. The rules are based on the Moldvay system from the 1980s which is about as old school as you can get without playing the White Box.
If you haven’t tried this system, you might have heard things like: it can be a lot of fun, but you better bring several character sheets to the game. Because if you make it to the end of the adventure it probably won’t be with the same character you started the session with.
So does this classic stand the test of time and is it worth playing today? To answer this question we put together a list of reasons both for and against so you can be the judge.
We’ve talked about it many times on the podcast. We’ve been waiting for a chance to run it. We finally did! DM Dave ran us through an old-school dungeon crawl for our friend Scott’s birthday with the Basic Fantasy Roleplaying RPG. In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave review the pros and cons of returning to Basic Moldvay-era D&D with the OSR. Final verdict: More pros than cons… try it out!
It’s been said that how you say something is just as, if not more important, as what you say. For a DM, this also applies to how your material is being delivered to your players – as it can be frustrating when you felt prepared for the game but your wording or even the overall rhythm seemed off.
Maybe the scenes were choppy between their transitions. Perhaps when you were relaying some important information, you fumbled the lines. Or when delivering the big reveal to the players, it really didn’t connect with your group as intended.
These things have happened to the best of us. Fortunately, from these mistakes lessons were learned which we would like to share with you now. We’ve distilled this into five tips that will hopefully allow you to avoid some of the gaming trainwrecks which we have both caused and been a part of.
Running a game is a lesson in balance. There are so many dials and mechanics that you need to play with while also focusing on what Gary Gygax referred to as being “the Shaper of the Cosmos.” Anyone who has started running games or has been running for decades has found hacks to make running the game that much easier and streamlined. In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave discuss their favorite DM hacks that we’ve employed in our games.
Game groups fall apart. It’s as inevitable as the rain. What do you do when your current group goes south, but you still have a player who wants to continue? Do you continue with the current campaign? Do you now run the entire rest of the party, the monsters, and all the NPCs? The 3 Wise DMs answer long-time listener Jared’s question about his Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign and delve deeper into utilizing Sidekicks, DMPCs, and other tips with one-on-one gaming. And, as an added surprise, we introduce our newest co-host…
With 5e being an arguably complicated system, not every rule or power is going to be perfectly balanced. However, some defy reason making them so wildly powerful that it’s hard to believe they not only made it into the Player’s Handbook but were never amended. This is why we have put a list together of five things everyone enjoys having in their campaign – except, possibly, the DM.
It’s easily one of the most iconic settings in all of D&D history and we’ve gone into detail about how we homebrewed sections of Curse of Strahd for our table. But, what do you do when the long-running adventure you’ve been running ends at around 10th level? How do you handle it when your players want to continue with this set of characters and take it all the way to epic tiers?
It was near impossible to make the all-ranged party work in earlier editions, but in Dungeons and Dragon 5E, it can work shockingly well. It can even “ruin” the campaign for DMs who don’t know how to handle it. On the other hand, if you make them spend all their time shut away in bare 10’ dungeon corridors, that ruins the fun for the party and likely ends in a level-1 TPK. So how do you DM the all-ranged party so you and the players all have fun?
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.
