A confounding villain scheme can be the thing that brings your campaign to life. It’s even better when you can make multiple villains crisscross and double-cross with the players in the middle trying to catch up. Here’s how to build a truly tangled web of intrigue starring the Kingpin and some of Marvel’s competing heavy hitters.
This is the 1-year anniversary of our publishing the first episode of 3 Wise DMs. We’ve had as many as 5 campaigns running across 3 different systems, and every week we got together to talk about them on this podcast. This week, we look back on the very first episode, how our DMing ideas have changed since then, and 11 things we think have made us better dungeon masters.
Even if your players have experience with gaming or roleplaying, new systems always have more parts than a deluxe Lego set. What if there was a way to bring first-time players into a campaign and get them comfortable right away? you could run a specially designed starter game that is more focused on getting everyone familiar with how the system works before jumping headfirst into things. At the end, your new players should walk away with a foundation for how both their characters and the system operate.
Even if you are in a campaign with a fantastic plot, sometimes it’s refreshing to do something a little different. The answer to this is to run a one-shot game that has a beginning and an end yet is entirely separate from the main story arc. So, strap yourselves in and let’s take a look at a simplified guide to running one-shot games without screwing up the campaign already in process.
In a recent episode, we discussed how to go about introducing new players to the hobby. During our discussion, we got around to the topic of roleplaying, specifically about ways to encourage people who are brand new to tabletop gaming to act and speak as their characters would act and speak. This would have been my response to the question, had my brain not decided that it was time to, I don’t know, catalog my grocery list for the coming week while going live!
How we handle RPG character-altering changes, get the players on board with them and make it all balance mechanically with the rest of the game.
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.
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.
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.
“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?
