DM Tips

14 Tips for DMing First-Time Players: Teaching RPG Newbs the Game, Their Characters, and How to Have a Great Time Playing Both

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Of all the roles the DM takes on, none is more important than bringing new players into the hobby. DM a game, and your player has fun for a night. Teach them to play, and they may have fun for the rest of their lives (or think you’re a gigantic weirdo — it’s a win either way). In this episode, on the eve of DM Dave launching a mostly rookie campaign, the 3 Wise DMs talk about how they handle new players, what they do to try to teach them the game, and how they make it fun without overwhelming the poor newbs.

Build a Better RPG Villain in 5 Easy Steps

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They say the clothes make the man, but the villain makes the campaign. It has to be something your players love to hate – but also love to learn more about. A good big bad evil guy (BBEG) is a balancing act of depth and destruction. Here are 5 things I make sure to understand about my villain and what it’s going to do before the party confronts it.

15 Tips for Running RPG Villains: Playing BBEGs Your PCs Will Love to Hate

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How do you make sure your BBEG is epic like Darth Vader and not a sniveling mama’s boy like Joss Whedon’s Steppenwolf? The 3 Wise DMs dig into their process for creating villains that are worthy of the title, from concept to motivation to final confrontation.

The 4 Pillars of Exceptional Roleplaying

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If you asked 12 veteran gamers what fantastic roleplay looks like, you would get 12 very diverse answers. That’s exactly how it should be. You can’t nail down precisely what a great character looks like, and if you could, it would be boring. Instead, let’s look at some of the qualities adept gamers exhibit in terms of roleplay, and how they can be added to your gaming toolbox.

D&D Alignment: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly for Your RPG Campaigns — RPG MythBusters

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“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?

DMing RPG Party Conflict: 5 Tips for When Your Players Get Along But Their Characters Don’t

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Gaming keeps friendships together. But. what do you do when one or more of your friend’s characters either don’t get along or outright dislike each other? Unfortunately, when this happens, it can kill a game like nothing else. And on this topic, I’m speaking from experience. So, I would like to give some tips to help navigate this situation if you happen to be that unlucky DM whose party members have more hate for each other than the final boss.

The Players’ Review of Storm King’s Thunder: The Whole Party Spills the Tea on Tony’s Version of #SKT

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For the first time ever, we brought the whole team together to recap DM Tony’s very highly customized version of Storm King’s Thunder. Hear what all 5 players and Tony thought of the game and what they have to say about the CRAZY MAGIC ITEMS in it his changes to the campaign, fitting in their backstories, and more!

Storm King’s Thunder DM Review: The 9 Deviations DM Tony Used to Make D&D’s Giant Globetrot His Own

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When is a book module not a book module? When the DM throws in birthday games, a modifiable Spelljammer airship, legendary weapons tied to every character’s backstory, and more deviations from the standard campaign than we could count. Hear all this and more, as we break down the 9 main deviations Tony brought to Storm King’s Thunder and the DM’s perspective on running it.

RPG Session Prep Tips: 3 Ways to Set the Right Scene for Your Game

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So, you’re looking to set the right tone, the one that will begin your epic, world-shaking, heartbreaking, history-making, legendary campaign? To introduce the people seated around your dining room table to the fantastical world that they are about to enter? To begin, as our own Universe did, with a Big Bang? In our most recent episode, we delved into the tips and tricks we use to bring our campaigns to life: setting, descriptions, mechanics, etc. However, I thought it would be very helpful to revisit some of the nuts and bolts to my evolving method of Session Prep.

Bringing Your RPG Campaign World to Life: 37 Tricks to Give Your Setting a Soul

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Do your players feel into the campaign setting you’re running, or is it just generic D&D world #124 to them? What can you do to bring that world more to life and make it feel unique to you and your players? What makes a D&D session feel like more than just a glorified board game? Here are 37 of the tricks the 3 Wise DMs use to try to make the players feel immersed in our worlds and give the settings some soul.