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She’s A Mystery To Me: How Long To Keep Secrets And Clues From Your Players In Your D&D Game

One of the beauties of TTRPGs is the ability to not just watch or read an amazing story, but to experience it… to create it. The mystery, the action, the climactic battle between good and evil; D&D gives us the ability to create our favorite stories.

One of the most important aspects of that, as the DM, is creating a level of mystery to the story that the players get the chance to uncover as they delve deeper into the adventure. In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave discuss a listener question about their mystery that they’re planning on having last for 10 levels and ask, “am I being cruel by leaving them in mystery so long?”

Forged in Fire: 3WDs Top 3 Homebrews For 5e: The Sword of Power, Zeus’ Thunderbolt and Demonic Bob Ross

In our recent episode, we discussed a listener question about homebrewing magic items that are based off our favorite books, movies, myths, and television series. Specifically, they were hoping to translate the legendary Shardblades from Brandon Sanderson’s epic series, The Stormlight Archives. We discussed several of our own homebrew items that we’ve instituted in our … Read more

To Be Or Not To Be: 3WD Reveal The Top 2 Pros And Cons To Consider When Its Time To Kill A D&D Character

Now I get that not every story has a happy ending and some of the greatest of all time don’t. But when this happens to your character in a table top game it usually plays out and feels significantly different.  So as a DM, if you have a chance to kill a player, should you? And, as a player, is this what you expect at the table? To help sort this debate out we are offering our top two pros and cons to consider if this makes sense for you and your gaming group.

You Say It’s Your Birthday – 3WD Reveals 7 Tips That Will Help You Build Your Own Very Special One-Shot D&D Game

Birthday games. Several of our recent articles and episodes discuss our passion for running birthday games for our game group, whether it be D&D, the OSR, Avatar Legends, or the classic Marvel Super Heroes system; it’s become our thing.

In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave discuss the recent Birthday Game they ran where The Doctor teamed up with the Sensational She-Hulk and members of the Avengers and the Fantastic Four to stop the impending Cyberman invasion orchestrated by the wielder of the Cosmic Control Rod, Annihilus, and do battle against the Brood in a giant Space Whale (believe us…. It made way more sense at the table!)

We then discuss our 7 best tips to help you build your own Very Special One-Shot for Birthdays or any other day!

Share and Share Alike: 3WDs Top Tips For Dealing With D&D Players Who Won’t Share The Spotlight

Sharing. It’s one of the first skills that we have to learn as kids and, as anyone who has gamed for long enough, some kids never quite learned how to do it. Our longtime listener, Jim Laubacker, posed a question regarding how to best deal with players that won’t share the spotlight. As a bonus, Jim is also trying to balance a group that is a hybrid of in-person and virtual players!

In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave discuss the ways in which they’ve adjusted to turn the dominant and passive players weaknesses at the table into strengths. Additionally, they delve more into the difficulties they’ve experienced in running hybrid games and some tips and tricks with dealing with a very new issue in TTRPGs.

How DM Chris Got His Groove Back: 5 Simple Concepts To Help Enhance Your D&D Combat Encounters

If you’ve listened to the podcast, you’ve heard me talk often about how I feel my weakness at the table is combat. As funny as that seems, with D&D being spawned from wargames, I didn’t think my combat encounters had the verve or excitement that I experienced as a player in other campaigns. Roleplay, NPC interactions, exploration, description – those came more naturally for me. Truth be told, I’m not a very tactical guy. 

Now, I could have pouted about it, but the more I’ve DM’d, the more I’ve come to discover that the learning never stops. Real wisdom, unlike its ability score equivalent, is gained over time and through trial. So first, I studied at the table, watching other DMs run their combat encounters. Then, I went out to the internet and researched how the larger community handled combat. 

I’ve distilled all of it into these five simple concepts for now – Tempo, Deployment, Control, Deception, and Expectation. The overall theme is pulling back the player’s security blanket just enough to get the blood pumping. Maybe this is old news for you, but if you’re a little like me, maybe this gives you an idea or two on how to improve your own combat encounters.

The Breakup Game – How Constant Splitting of the Party Can Lead to DM Burnout and What to Do About It

And for our first episode of 2024, we delve into a listener question regarding the players constantly Splitting the Party in their Curse of Strahd campaign and how that’s leading to DM Burnout. But, Splitting the Party is a gift to a DM, isn’t it? I mean, now you can really dial up the tension, right? In a dungeon, or a mansion, or a Keep, sure. But what about when the party is split up into three sections of the campaign world?!

In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave discuss strategies for dealing with players who constantly want to run, in essence, three separate games within a single session. Further, we delve again into the very real topic of DM Burnout and finish our Final Thoughts with some prescient wisdom from DM Thorin.

Christmas One-Shots: 3 Wise DMs Top 8 Holiday D&D Plots To Give Your Party A Reason For The Season

The holidays provide opportunities for many things. Like good food, visiting with friends, and running holiday-themed one-shot games. You know, the kind of games which have nothing to do with the plot of your campaign but are light hearted and fun as hell.

And while this session should be memorable, odds are your schedule was pretty tight before any of the holiday madness even began. To help you make your own holiday-themed game we have put together a list of eight of our plots of Christmases Past which were very successful and a ton of fun. Hopefully these will provide you with a starting point and inspiration for your own adventure or at the very least some amusement.

Damage, Inc. – 3WD Discuss What Hit Points Represent And How To Improve Your D&D Game By Changing Your Perspective

What do Hit Points represent? Who knew that this was a controversial question on par with asking about Alignment? Following our episode reviewing the Avatar Legends RPG and their use of Fatigue and Conditions, we posed the question regarding what hit points represent on our socials and the response was impressive.

In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave take a deeper dive into what Hit Points represent in their games, how they describe the loss of them, and how other systems approach one of the oldest traditions of D&D.

Fatigue and Conditions: An Excellent Mechanic From The Avatar Legends RPG To Add Depth And Roleplay To Your D&D Combat.

In our most recent episode, we reviewed our experience with playing the Starter Set for the new Avatar Legends RPG developed by Magpie Games, as well as the tips, tricks, and pitfalls we’ve found with running brand new systems that are very different from traditional d20 systems.

During the episode, we got into a discussion regarding one of the mechanics that we were a bit divided on. But I thought it was an interesting way to make the effects of combat more cinematic and narrative, as opposed the the tried-and-true mechanic of hit points.

So, I thought I’d break out the mechanic a bit more in this article to introduce you to something that might inspire you to look at your combat encounters in a slightly different way: Fatigue and Conditions.