Balance can be the trickiest thing to strike in any RPG campaign. On the one hand, the DM is running monsters and villains who are literally plotting the PC’s destruction. If their plans aren’t good or their combat abilities aren’t challenging, like DM Tony says, it’s like playing the game on baby mode. A game … Read more
Happy New Year! It’s a new year for new games or just continuing the ones you already love. But before we look forward to 2022, it’s important to look back at what we learned from gaming in 2021. Between playing and running about 6 different campaigns throughout the year, not to mention talking about all … Read more
What if you have your D&D campaign going, the players are having a good time … except one of them, who’s bored? Maybe they’re bored with their character or combat or the way things are going, and now figuring out a way to pick things up a notch for this player falls to you. Do … Read more
You hear The 3 Wise DMs talk about our games all the time, but what do our players really think? In this episode, we have 6 of the 7 players from Curse of Strahd on to get honest with DM Dave about what they thought of his campaign! Along the way, we get into whether … Read more
Ding dong, Strahd is dead! He was thrown down from a pillar and we smashed his head! And with that epic victory, the 3 Wise DMs are finally able to talk about their review of D&D 5E’s Curse of Strahd, including their thoughts on what worked, why and the adjustments DM Dave made. It was … Read more
It’s a problem as old as roleplaying: You have a few players who are engaged, paying attention and driving the story, and other players who may be shy, or not interested in what’s going on today. The result is that half your table may not be involved in what’s going on. A few weeks ago, … Read more
We’re all at the gaming table for an adventure, right? But what about when your players don’t take the bait? Maybe they’re not interested in the mysterious disappearances in town? Or you’ve built a full dungeon in “The Mysterious Cave,” but they’re not going anywhere near it? What do you do when the player characters … Read more
What do you need to make a town or city for your RPG campaign? A place for your PCs to hang their hats and rest their weary feet? Stores and taverns for them to unload their loot and pick up new quests? How about an economy and some way the town makes money? Who runs … Read more
We all started DMing RPGs a long time ago. In the case of Thorin and Tony, we held on to older editions long after new ones were released (stretching 1E material into 2E and flat refusing to move to 3E later on). But Dungeons & Dragon 5E has been around for 10 years now and … Read more
It’s the scary season around our gaming tables, and that brings up one of the age-old questions about DMing: Can you reasonably expect to scare adult roleplaying gamers? Maybe, maybe not. But what you can definitely do is remove the illusion that they’re in control. Undermine that false comfort that their characters will be OK. … Read more
