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.
The dice never lie, but they don’t tell great stories, either. So how much of your game do you want to leave up to the dice? When should you roll them and why? What kind of game are you teaching your players to play? Can rolling the dice even discourage role-playing?
Should your TTRPG campaign allow players to make clones of famous fictional characters (like Drizzt, Riddick or The Avengers)? Maybe. After all if a player is inspired, they’re going to be more engaged. But these can be complicated situations. Here’s how to make them work.
Some DMs are right at home improving from the first time they open a Monster Manual, while others are never comfortable without a rock-solid module to run for the night. If you want to improv more, or just do it better when you have to, here are seven tips for making it up on the fly.
Gold and jewels are all over the treasure tables in the Dungeon Master Guide. But what can they do with it? In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave talk about how they handle the RPG economy and the crazy things players can and can’t do with gold in their games.
Thorin, Tony and Dave talk about 19 of the craziest stunts players have pulled in their games and how they bent the systems to make it happen — or sometimes didn’t. Along the way, hear our best secrets for adlibbing and adjudicating some of the hardest situations DMs face.
Playing a TTRPG is an incredibly subjective experience, almost like a Rorschach test. With this in mind, I wanted to shift our perspective from the system and edition wars that populate so many social media feeds to something much more basic: What makes a TTRPG in the first place and what could we learn from that to improve our enjoyment of all our games (instead of firing shots at someone else’s fun)?
How we lean in to the best of D&D 5E while adjusting and homebrewing its role-playing game mechanics to fit the campaign styles they run.
You campaign may be all about your player’s characters’ “adventures,” but designing and running specific, self-contained adventures is about more than just stringing a few encounters together. Here’s why it matters and 6 tips that will help you build adventures that are worthy of the name.
Role-playing games, at their heart, are all about adventure! But are the stories you’re telling and sessions you’re building really creating “an adventure” your players will enjoy? How do you build focused, engaging, self-contained quests that span 3-6 sessions (roughly) with a tight theme, clear goals, fun ways to achieve them, and satisfying rewards at the end?
