Leveling up! It’s synonymous with D&D and one of the game’s biggest contributions to gaming culture. The very idea of gaining a level has become a staple of RPG video games, board games, and even most (but not all, as we’ll discuss) Tabletop Roleplaying Games. But is it the best way to handle character advancement in D&D 5th Edition?
In our most recent episode, we talked about character builds and abilities that really tick us off. During that, I called Banishment a bad spell that was poorly designed, boring, and keeps the DM from being able to use a whole class of encounters. “Show us where on the doll Banishment hurt you,” you ask? OK, here’s how I decide if a spell or ability is broken and why I think this spell is bad game design.
It’s OK to have a PC build that pisses you off. Whether it’s because they’re unkillable, unhittable, undetectable, unsurvivable, or, like our listener question this week, they passively perceive absolutely frickin’ everything! In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave talk about how to handle builds that piss you off or at least challenge you as a DM. Along the way, they talk about builds, abilities and spells they’ve struggled with and how you can handle the situation without ruining the game for yourself or any of your players.
One of the eternal struggles a DM must constantly manage is to what extent they reward their players. This is why we put together seven tips to help you navigate giving out rewards within your games. Make these a part of your game, and your players should feel both rewarded and motivated without dripping in treasure by the end of every session.
Balance can be the trickiest thing to strike in any RPG campaign. On the one hand, the DM is running monsters and villains who are literally plotting the PC’s destruction. A game that’s not challenging is unrewarding. On the other, a game that gets too hard can frustrate your players right out of wanting to play it. So where is the balance? How hard is too hard for your style of game and your players?
Greetings, gamers from all systems, places and timelines! During this year, we at 3WD had the pleasure of playing in multiple campaigns in several different systems. Throughout all of these epic moments, mistakes were made and lessons learned. These we have compiled here to not only help you refine your DMing but also to give you a heads up on some land mines you will want to stay clear of.
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.
What defines a DM who is truly great at the craft they practice? Some would argue that it’s a masterful comprehension of the rules and their applications, while others might say it’s the experience they possess from years of running successful campaigns. While both knowledge and experience of the game are important, even the most polished DM can have a game end up lackluster or even go off the rails entirely. This is why we have assembled a list of eight essential DM qualities to help ensure your next game starts off with a bang or the one you’re currently running is filled with high player energy and memorable moments.
ored? Maybe they’re bored with their character or combat or the way things are going, and now figuring out a way to pick things up a notch for this player falls to you, the DM. Do you let them revamp or replace their PC? Do you make combat more difficult? If the other players are having fun, will adjusting for the bored player ruin it for the rest of them? Here’s how the 3 Wise DMs handle it.
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.
