Bad sessions. We’ve all dealt with them and we’ll continue to have them periodically. It’s all part of running TTRPGs. But how to you deal with them when they happen? What do you do to salvage the game at the next session? DM Dave offers a question to his fellow Wise DMs regarding a recent … Read more
Greetings, 3WD-verse! DM Chris here. Along with Curse of Strahd, Tomb of Annihilation occupies a revered status as one of the “must-play” adventures in D&D. It has grown from the original Tomb of Horrors module into a complete setting, with the aforementioned Tomb lurking deep in the dangerous and vast Chultan jungle. Death and glory … Read more
Greetings, 3WD-verse! DM Chis here. In our latest Return to the Further session last Wednesday night, the players valiantly battled a Dragonborn Mummy Lord and his Green Dragon protector to remove the evil taint that had claimed the ancient elven city of Ennama. All that in two hours on a Wednesday night. Mini-session campaigns can … Read more
Running the adventure outside of the game session? Yes, that’s right. Starting back in DM Dave’s Curse of Strahd campaign, we began to develop characters and backstories with narrative side quests via text, email, and online documents (like Google Docs). In our Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen campaign, we have utilized them from the … Read more
Greetings, 3WD-verse! DM Chris here. As I begin my preparation for our upcoming Lord of the Rings Roleplaying campaign, I thought it would be a cool exercise to talk about what I’m doing to get it ready. When you are operating from a sourcebook versus a published adventure, there can be the additional stress of … Read more
Greetings gamers from all systems, places and timelines! The phrase “all good things must come to an end” feels extremely relevant as we enter the final chapters of both of our Journey to Ragnarok and Dragonlance campaigns. But there is often little time to celebrate these grand conclusions as the question of what’s next will be … Read more
Greetings gamers from all systems, places and timelines. One of the few things that can be guaranteed about running games is no matter the system, both the expectations of the players, as well as your own, will steadily rise over time. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but could also leave you forever under the … Read more
Immersion in your D&D game. It’s one of the most sought after and asked about topics in the whole DMing Multiverse. The real trick always lies in how well you can tie together all the seemingly disparate pieces of your group – characters, backstories, motivations, and adventures – into one cohesive, epic story. In this … Read more
Greetings gamers from all systems, places and timelines!
How challenging your campaign should be is one of those questions, like alignment, where if you asked ten seasoned DMs, you can expect to get ten entirely different answers. Odds are the players at your table will have vastly different gaming backgrounds and expectations. This can be tricky to balance between the player who really doesn’t understand the rules fully but wants to hang out and have a good time with their friends and the player who’s been gaming for twenty years and thinks Elden Ring isn’t difficult enough.
The obvious solution is just to make sure everyone has fun. But this is easier said than done when your players are looking for different levels of challenges to enjoy themselves. This is why we put together a list of four methods that will help you keep your game challenging without leaving anyone behind
Greetings, 3WD-verse! DM Chris here. In the long hours, weeks, months, and even years of your campaign, there will be portions of your carefully crafted story that will get lost in the flood of plotlines and twists. It’s inevitable. Don’t fret – it happens to writer’s as well. Remember, you spend a lot more time with the details than your players do. Top that off with the power that ideas can have. Once your players have had a “wrong” idea about the story, it can plant itself deep in their understanding and cause issues for you down the road.
We recently experienced this in our current Shadow of the Dragon Queen campaign. DM Dave does a fabulous job delivering lore and secrets, but over the multitude of sessions a “wrong” idea began to grow amongst the party members. I don’t want to spoil the fun for anyone looking to play that adventure, so I’ll be talking about it generally, rather than in specifics. Our party is nearing the epic finale of the story, and one of the key portions had become slightly twisted. We became so focused on this altered version of what we were there to do that finally Dave had to break immersion and course correct us in order for the story to continue. But then that got us talking – is there a better way to get your players back on point?
