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DM Workshop

Stone Cold Crazy – How a First-Time DM Ran a Crazy One-Shot With Four Kurt Russell’s!

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We recently shared a post about our Halloween one-shot adventure that we started referring to as the “Kurt Russell Campaign.” Four players, all playing one of the legendary roles made famous by your favorite, and ours, Mr. Kurt Russell. The response was fantastic, so we thought we’d do a deeper dive.

In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave are joined by return guests Bonnie and the Monster Wrangler himself, and now official DM, Matt, who decided that for his first official session behind the screen, he was going to do something that might even challenge even seasoned DMs.

A Murder Most Foul: 7 Tips on Running a Murder Mystery Game in any TTRPG

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Here at 3WD, it’s no secret that we love one-shot adventures and holiday-themed games. They can spice things up or provide a welcome change with the routine of your campaign. And with Halloween having just come, what idea could be more of a low hanging fruit than a murder mystery? However, this being a different style of game, it can be tricky – which is why we made a list of seven tips to guide you through making your own in-game murder mystery something that will be remembered. 

Tumbling Dice – Using Board Games in Your D&D Game To Create Unique And Fun Sessions

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Most of us who enjoy TTRPGs like D&D also love board games… classic board games, strategy games, resource management games, and the list goes on. It won’t take long until you as a DM start thinking of implementing some of your favorite board games or board game mechanics into your D&D sessions.

In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave discuss the ways that they have utilized their favorite board games and board game mechanics to create some incredibly unique, innovative, and fun game sessions, or in the case of our Dragonlance game, the entire campaign.

Happy Halloween: Our Best Tips For Horror Gaming in D&D and a Free Halloween Adventure

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So, just in time for Halloween, here are some ideas to get your creative juices flowing, call up your friends, plan a night, and enter into a bone-chilling, creepy, and horrific game session.

Strange Magic – The Best Ways To Adjudicate Spell Effects In Your D&D and TTRPG Campaigns

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Spell effects in Fantasy TTRPGs are easily the times when we as DMs and GMs have to respond on the fly to changing parameters. In systems like 5e, we’ve discussed how they’ve crafted a system that does some of the heavy lifting for you when it comes to rulings. But, no matter how many rules exist, you are going to have times that interesting uses of spells make you have to adjudicate in a completely new way.

In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave discuss ruling on how spell effects change the landscape and/or battlefield that we ran into in one of our most recent games. Regardless of your newness or your experience, this discussion helps us realize that the old adage of artists is true… “if you want to learn to paint great bricks. Paint one thousand bricks.”

Underrated: Our Top 7 Mid-Level Spells In D&D 5e That Won’t Disappoint

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While not all created equal, some of the spells between levels three and five are arguably the best in the game. If you don’t believe me, try naming a spell which has dusted more fictitious monsters than Fireball? But aside from Fireball which is even awesome in the D&D board game, we created a list of seven other spells which are true A-listers – which is harder than it sounds considering the competition. But rest assured that each one of these spells has proven to be a game changer on more than one occasion. 

Let’s Give ‘Em Something To Talk About: Our Best Tips To Get Your Players Roleplaying And Talking Amongst Themselves In Your D&D Game

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Roleplay. It’s commonly understood to be one of the three pillars that make up the game of D&D. But, roleplaying between the DM and player is one thing… how do you get your players roleplaying amongst themselves?

In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave discuss their best tips in getting players to roleplay amongst themselves, drawing from their games in Tomb of Annihilation, Shadow of the Dragon Queen, Journey to Ragnarok, and their homebrew world of The Further.

A game full of great roleplay can get you super jazzed… so how do you get to bed when it’s a school night? Dovetailing into a listener question from Dr. DM, Tony, Chris, and Dave discuss strategies to deal with late night games during the week and how to decompress and “turn your brain off”, so that it doesn’t lead to DM burnout.

DM Chris’ Favorite D&D 5e Subclasses From Fighter To Rogue: Part 2 of 3

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Greetings, 3WD-verse! DM Chris here. Several weeks ago, we began a journey through my favorite D&D 5e subclasses – from the newer Armorer Artificer to the classic Moon Druid. I wasn’t planning for it to take three articles, but when I started to talk about each there was just too much to say for just one article. Blame my muse, or our collectively shrinking attention span.

Part 1 was the beginning of the class alphabet, but Part 2 steers us into what I consider the heart of the martial classes. My apologies to Barbarian, who is definitely not a guy you want to piss off despite his alphabetic limitations, but here we have the damage dealer’s sweet spot from Fighter through Rogue. Let the fun begin.

Tribute to the Greatest Game In The World: The 3 Wise DMs Share The Lessons Learned From Running A 12 Player D&D Game

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12 players. 2 DMs. 6 dragons. Tiamat. 2 birthday cakes… and a whole hell of a lot of fun! As a companion piece to DM Tony’s recent article, the 3 Wise DMs are joined by some special guests to discuss and detail the lessons learned from running our largest endeavor yet – a massive, multiple-campaign ending game that required 2 DMs to pull off. If you’ve ever thought of running a massive Endgame-style game, or toyed with the idea of co-DMing, this is the episode for you!

The Summer Blockbuster: 8 Quick Tips To Running D&D and TTRPG Sessions With A Ton of Players

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One of the hardest decisions a DM can make is deciding on who they plan to invite on their adventure. Because if you have a huge crew who all enjoy gaming, it sucks not being able to include everyone. Scheduling issues aside, ‘why not just invite everyone,’ you might ask? Well my short answer is that most RPGs fall apart when you have too many players faster than Thanksgiving dinner the moment your uncle starts talking about politics. 

Case in point, In August we were staring at the possibility of having twelve character’s in one game. Which, to be fair, lands between a bad idea and a total disaster. Yet, somehow, we were able to gather more characters at the table than was in the Fellowship of the Ring for an evening and have a great time doing it. This is why we have compiled a list of eight tips which will allow you to run a one-shot adventure where you can invite whoever you want as long as you have a big enough place to host.