Behind the Screens: 3 Wise DMs Reveal What They Want and Need Behind Their DM Screens and Offer Tips to Improve Your DM Set-Up

The DM Screen. It’s one of the quintessential D&D visuals. But what goes behind it? What lurks behind that foot-high barrier between the characters and the gods? In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave delve into how they use the DM screen, what they want to have behind it, and what they need to have … Read more

Glory Days: 3 Wise DMs Shares the Pros and Cons With Their Return to Basic D&D Through the Old School Renaissance

We’ve talked about it many times on the podcast. We’ve been waiting for a chance to run it. We finally did! DM Dave ran us through an old-school dungeon crawl for our friend Scott’s birthday with the Basic Fantasy Roleplaying RPG. In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave review the pros and cons of returning … Read more

My Name’s the Teacher: Making Leveling with Character Abilities, Oaths, and Patrons Matter in your Dungeons & Dragons Campaign

Sleep takes you as you wrap yourself into your bedroll in your campsite in the forest. Your slumber is surprisingly restful this night. As you wake in the morning, you find yourself having taken an Oath to a God and possessing several new spells… Not very satisfying, right? We can all understand that Fighters and … Read more

It’s So Easy: 3 Wise DMs 18 Favorite Dungeon Master Hacks To Help Make Running Your TTRPG Game That Much Easier

Running a game is a lesson in balance. There are so many dials and mechanics that you need to manage while also focusing on being what Gary Gygax referred to as “the Shaper of the Cosmos.” Anyone who has started running games or been running for decades has found hacks to make running the game … Read more

When Good Gaming Groups Go Bad: 3 Wise DMs Tips On How To Continue Your TTRPG Campaign With Only One Player

Game groups fall apart. It’s as inevitable as the rain. What do you do when your current group goes south, but you still have a player who wants to continue? Do you continue with the current campaign? Do you now run the entire rest of the party, the monsters, and all the NPCs? The 3 … Read more

Just Do It! 3 Wise DMs Interviews a Brand-New D&D Enthusiast About the 13 Tips and Tricks to Mastering the Dungeon

New DMs. It’s easily the most discussed topic in the TTRPG hobby. We’ve talked before about tips and tricks for new DMs looking to run their first games. However, this week, we got the chance to sit down with our return guest Chris and his brand-new to all things fantasy, D&D, and DMing friend, Lenny … Read more

Terrain, Maps & Minis, Oh My! The Long Tradition of Using Terrain and Minis in D&D to Enhance Your Game

In this episode, Tony and Dave sit down with our good friend and fellow gamer, Scott Washburn of Paper Terrain (www.paperterrain.com) to discuss the tradition of using terrain, maps, and minis from the earliest days of the game up to our current times. Along the way, we discuss how we have used and continue to … Read more

Back in Black: The Players Wrap-Up to the Absolutely Epic Curse of Strahd Finale with Vampyr, the Star of Blood

Hello and welcome BACK to 3 Wise DMs! It’s been quite some time and we’re glad that we’re back… Back in Black, that is – like Vampyr, our epic, final BBEG to end all BBEGs in Barovia. We thought that it worked out that the absolute, final ending to our 2+ year Curse of Strahd … Read more

Finish Your Homebrew Campaign With a Bang: DMs’ Breakdown of the Epic Ending of the Woodstock Wanderers

How do you bring a 4-year Dungeons & Dragons campaign to a satisfying, epic ending? With an epic, solo boss. Some would say you shouldn’t do that in D&D 5E because the action economy favors a more numerically balanced battle. But with seven level-15 PCs, that’s exactly how we finished off the main quest in … Read more

Will Player Character Secrets Ruin Your Campaign?

Secrets: Are they powerful character-building tools or TPK time bombs waiting to destroy your RPG campaign? We’ve seen it go both ways, from character background secrets that added depth and immersion for the player to secrets pacts that saw PCs murdered in-game by other PCs. Is that second one a failure? That depends on your … Read more