3 Wise DMs

Artificial Intelligence is a polarizing topic these days. From Skynet-style flights of fancy to the very real implications for content creators, it’s an evolving technology that isn’t going away anytime soon. But free from worrying about profiting off of others’ work, using AI at the game table can help provide you with a set of tools and a pair of hands that can help lift the sometimes heavy and...

Terrain. Maps. Minis. Music. Handouts. TTRPGs aren’t movies and television and we can’t rely on moving pictures to help immerse our players, so what are some ways that you can help the imagination Build This City in your players’ minds? In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave sit down to revisit our discussion with The Wizard Washburn from Paper Terrain in Episode 112 about using and building terra...

Cobbler’s tools. Weaver’s tools. Glassblowing. There are a host of proficiencies that are part of building a character in D&D that seem strange at first for someone who is going out on adventures. For a lot of players, it just becomes something that you picked during character creation. We’ve come to call these the “orphan” proficiencies. In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave sit down to disc...

Multiple times a week. Once a week. Every other week. Once a month. Once every several months. We’ve referenced how frequency of play can really alter how you run the game, how the story flows, etc. But, our longtime listener, Dr. DM, has brought up how real life has really gotten in the way of scheduling their usually weekly games and how it has affected his confidence with running the game. In t...

It’s apropos that our first-ever players review of a campaign was for DM Tony’s Storm King’s Thunder campaign , as our newest iteration has us returning to the frozen world of the original giants in Mana Project Studios Journey to Ragnarok! We bring on return guests Scott (the Terrain Wrangler) , Bonnie (the Chaos Engine) and our newest player to join the group, Jen (the Girlfriend!) In this episo...

After a little over 2 years and 20+ sessions, we have finally concluded our adventure through the Norse Kingdoms in Midgard and the remaining 8 worlds of Yggdrasill, the World Tree, where the Auspicious Signs were successful in stopping Ragnarok: the Twilight of the Gods. Journey to Ragnarok was in the campaign queue for quite a while (with DM Thorin originally wanting to run it) and DM Tony final...

D&D does combat well. It can slow down time and can be more or less crunchy than you like, but it definitely creates aa play area that a new DM can handle during a session. Unfortunately, while the books talk about the other two pillars of roleplay, there isn’t a lot for the new DM to latch onto to understand the best way to run a seamless session. In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave sit do...

“What elements would this game need to include to feel complete for a fan of the setting and the story?” That was the question from Forever DM Larry about running a Dragonlance campaign for players that had read the books… which he hasn’t. In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave reveal the best tips they have for running a setting that you’re unfamiliar with while the players are steeped in it, whe...

Following the footsteps of our Storm King’s Thunder and Curse of Strahd campaigns, we gather all five players from our Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen players wrap-up! In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave welcome The Wizard Washburn, Monster Wrangler Matt, and our own Chaos Engine, Bonnie, to sit down and discuss the epic entirety of our Dragonlance campaign: what we enjoyed and what we...

Happy New Year! As promised, we’re kicking off our 5th Season with one of our favorite episode varieties: the 3 Wise DMs Campaign Reviews! Following the footsteps of our Storm King’s Thunder, Curse of Strahd, and Woodstock Wanderers campaigns, we delve deep into the High Tale of the Dragonlance with our DM Review of Shadow of the Dragon Queen . In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave review how we...

Metagaming. It’s one of the many topics that will spark controversy among those in the hobby. A listener wrote in explaining that they love making terrain and minis and have offered their services to their DM. Unfortunately, the DMs are reluctant, as they don’t want the player to have metaknowledge or spoil the reveals of the campaign. In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave bring on our return spe...

Several listener questions came in that were spiraling around the same general idea, and one that DMs have fielded since the very beginning of the game: how, and when, to exert the unlimited level of power that you possess as the DM. In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave, take part in a grab bag of listener questions that deal with players constantly interrupting, as well as how to best approach...

Low Magic. We’ve discussed it before and, in last weeks article , DM Chris delved into ideas of how to make magic rare and special in your D&D campaigns. In our discussion online regarding the article, there was a debate over what low magic means. The issue seemed to revolve around confusing Low Magic with Low Fantasy. Middle-Earth, while being a High Fantasy setting, is, in terms of D&D,...

We’re getting geared up for some new campaigns to begin. Both our Dragonlance and Journey to Ragnarok campaigns are coming near their finale, so we’ve begun thinking about what’s next up. Just in time, DM Chris sent out his Player’s Guides for the upcoming Lord of the Rings campaign that he’s going to be running in the new year. In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave discuss what makes a good Play...

Play through an adventure and you’ll realize how strangely time can move in your D&D campaign. Longtime friend of the show, Dr. DM (Jason) returns with a question about his ocean-based campaign that we discussed in Episode 148. His question revolves around how quickly leveling can affect the passage of time in the adventure. In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave discuss the strange way time c...

Bad sessions. We’ve all dealt with them and we’ll continue to have them periodically. It’s all part of running TTRPGs. But how to you deal with them when they happen? What do you do to salvage the game at the next session? DM Dave offers a question to his fellow Wise DMs regarding a recent session that he felt he could have run better, smoother, better improv. But he got stuck. Hey, it happens. In...

Running the adventure outside of the game session? Yes, that’s right. Starting back in DM Dave’s Curse of Strahd campaign, we began to develop characters and backstories with narrative side quests via text, email, and online documents (like Google Docs). In our Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen campaign , we have utilized them from the very beginning for each character individually, as well...

Pirates. It doesn’t take long for a D&D group to want to play as pirates, swashbucklers, privateers, and sailors. In our modern day, we can blame Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean. But how do you approach running a seafaring adventure? Is it just a fancy travel mechanic? Is it just a vehicle to get from town to town? Or is it the basis of the whole campaign? In th...

Movies like The Godfather, The Lord of the Rings, Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Gladiator, Goodfellas… the list is inexhaustible. Movies that are “must-see” movies, classics that are nearly required viewing. Many published adventures, like Curse of Strahd , Storm King’s Thunder, Dragonlance, The Keep on the Borderlands, Against the Cult of the Reptile God, Tomb of Annihilation… th...

The 3 Wise DMs are all approaching campaign finales: DM Tony’s Journey to Ragnarok , DM Chris’ “Wednesday-Nighters” campaign in our homebrewed world of The Further , and DM Dave’s Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen campaign. Just like the start of a campaign, the end only comes along once. So what should you focus on when your campaign is coming to a climax? What questions should you ask your...

Immersion in your D&D game. It’s one of the most sought after and asked about topics in the whole DMing Multiverse. The real trick always lies in how well you can tie together all the seemingly disparate pieces of your group – characters, backstories, motivations, and adventures – into one cohesive, epic story. In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave answer a listener question about how to best...

2:05 A listener question regarding how to run episodic adventures that serves as a jumping off point for Matt Colville’s recent video asking the question, “How long should an adventure be?” 3:40 DM Tony’s lead-off question… what is your table hungry for? 5:25 The classic Monster of the Week theme and DM Chris’ love of The X- Files . 7:25 Episodic Adventures can easily become a railroad. 8:25 How e...

On July 3rd of 2024, D&D 5e will turn 10! While it has taken some hits in those ten years, no one can deny the positive effect it has had on our TTRPG hobby, bringing in an entire generation of new players. With this anniversary, we started to reflect on what we have loved, what we’ve hated, what we would change, and what we look to for the future. And, as opposed to most of the posts we see o...

As we learned from the AD&D release, Deities & Demigods , “If you stat it, players will kill it.” So, what do you do if you want to place an unbeatable Kaiju-type monster, like Godzilla, into your game world? Something way more fearsome than a Tarrasque. A complete force of nature that shapes the entire world and every adventure in it. Something that you can’t just “punch really hard.” In...

We’ve done several episodes and articles about how to best onboard new DMs and GMs to the hobby, including episode 113: Just Do It, with DM Lenny, about running his first game ever . But what about all the Grognards and OG DMs that were playing it out of the White Boxes assembled by Gary Gygax in his own home? In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave sit down with our good friend, Scott Washburn of...