The 3 Wise DMs have only just started to get back together for some in-person gaming, but none of the online RPGs we’ve talked about has yet made it back to the dinner table. Can they be saved? Do the Wise DMs even want to bring them back in-person? Are the players on board? Even if everyone wants to go back to playing live, what challenges do they face?
How we handle RPG character-altering changes, get the players on board with them and make it all balance mechanically with the rest of the game.
“Alignment doesn’t matter!” We’ve heard it all over the place, but alignment has been a part of D&D and other RPGs for decades. Is it worth your time? Does it make things worse instead of better? Does it have any benefits players today are overlooking?
In any game, just like in life, no one enjoys constantly losing. Most people would quickly get discouraged and want to move on to another game or stop playing such games at all. If the players always won, wouldn’t the reverse also be true? Instead of being frustrated with consistently losing, the players would start phoning in every scene and battle because the chance of defeat is less than zero. That’s why the risk of failure is just as important as the risk of death to a good TTRPG game.
Understandably, many DMs and players feel strongly against adding a DMPC to the table. However, I am here to tell you that, if done correctly, this NPC could not only be valuable to the party dynamic but also provide the DM with unique perspective that you’d never get from the other side of the DM screen.
It may be the DM’s world, but the players know the game too. They have access to all the books, all the lore, even all the monster stats! What do you do when they can’t keep personal TTRPG knowledge separate from PC knowledge?
What does DM burnout look like? What does it feel like? Can you play through it? Here’s what the 3 Wise DMs have learned, and tips to start healing.
A few weeks ago, a listener asked how we manage players with special circumstances like autism and mental illness. Here’s what we’ve learned from gaming with players with special circumstances, and how D&D creates opportunities to express the things we can’t just say.
It’s one of the hardest things for any DM to handle: What do you do when the way you see the game and the way the players see the game is no longer in sync? This is no academic discussion. One of our own games is suffering from miscommunication, and it’s not fun. Can it be saved? Can yours if it’s starting to see some of these same issues?
