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.
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.
One problem I have with 5E D&D is that martial combat isn’t that interesting. When I look at the hundreds of years people were fighting with arms and armor, I just see a lot more interesting things we could do with the martial side of the game that I think would add depth and make it more fun.
Dragons! They are the logo monster of Dungeons & Dragons. They are fire. They are death. They are the winged nightmares of any fantasy citizen. … Except the one my party chewed through in about 3 rounds. *sigh* So, the party had fun, and good for them! But on my end, mistakes were made, and here’s what I think they were.
Most DMs come to a point in their campaigns where they want to run The Big Battle! A real war: Storming the beaches of a fantasy Normandy, the Siege of Winterfell, the Battle of Pelennor Fields from Lord of the Rings. But when you go to set the battle up, you realize just how clunky mass combat is in D&D and most RPGs. In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave answer that and more as they break down what happens when DMs go to war.
Sometimes the best stories play out after defeat, but to get to them, bad guys need to occasionally survive the fight. In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave roll out their best tricks for using surrender as a storytelling tool, combat hack, and reminder that actions in their RPG worlds have consequences.
Combat is such a central part of D&D 5E, but it’s also a part of the game that can take forever! And not all players are down for a 4-hour fight every game session. What can the DM do to keep the fights fun for everyone, even if some players in the party want fast combat and others want to take their time and enjoy the tactics? How do you make sure you’re not the one slowing combat down and killing the vibe?
Not every D&D fight should be a 2-hour slugfest for the party’s lives. But at the same time, how often does it feel like the party is steamrolling everyone they meet without having to break a sweat? Here are 5 tactics I use to make combat more dangerous when I want to challenge the party. They’ll put the PCs on the back foot and make them feel less than comfortable on the battlefield.
The 3 Wise DMs get old school with their best tips for DMing without maps and minis. Hear what we like about theater of the mind for D&D, what we don’t, and our best tips for making games engaging and fun without maps and minis.
We talked about some of our favorite monster combos in giving out “wisest” answers to the 7 Questions Dungeon Masters Ask. But we came away feeling like those barely scratched the surface. So I reached back to my InQuest Magazine days and went digging for monster combos like they were Magic cards. While I didn’t find any Channel-Fireballs, here are 9 monster combos for D&D 5E that will give your players a lot to think about.
