Whether you’re playing a book Dungeons & Dragons campaign or just have big plans for a couple uglies in the Monster Manual, there’s a level window where your PCs will have a good, balanced encounter with those threats. But what do you do when the party isn’t in that window?
Thorin, Tony and Dave are always looking for ways to make their settings stand out to the players in them. Here are 13 tips we use to bring different RPG campaign worlds to life with players who’ve seen them all (and could easily start forgetting which game is which if we’re not on top of our genrebending).
In March of 2020, we were getting ready to record our first episode of this podcast. We all got together in our planned recording space and cut the trailer. … Then COVID happened, and that entire plan went into the garbage along with concerts, vacations and sending kids to school. For some people, 2020 was a quarantine lockdown. For us, it was a year in the lab doing intensive DMing and podcasting. Here’s how it went, what we learned and our resolutions for gaming in 2021.
D&D Traps require the DM to walk a fine line. Balance them right, and your PCs will find themselves in a world of trouble that’s entirely their fault. But overdo it, or make traps too randomly deadly, and the party can slow to a crawl as they check for traps every 5 feet — cursing the DM the whole time. In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave talk about how they build hazards that up the mayhem and force layers to solve problems, without reducing traps to two rolls to avoid random death … at least not too often.
From adventuring Apocalypse Dragons to the PC pile of bugs, what the 3 Wise DMs learned from our (mis)adventures that may have crossed the line.
DM Tony and I have had several wonderfully reminiscent conversations about the great TTRPG that TSR produced in 1984 at the height of D&D’s popularity – entitled, Marvel Super Heroes (MSHRPG). We’ll dive deeper into the eponymous FASERIP system in future episodes and articles (maybe even a 3WD One-Shot!), but I’m bringing attention to this … Read more
