3 Wise DMs

The ultimate BBEG for any tabletop RPG is the calendar. And judging by the vast gallery of memes about this topic, that villain is nigh unbeatable. Whether our schedules are hard to align or players have important things that come up or someone in your group is just flakey, every DM has to deal with some level of absenteeism. It’s always a little bit disruptive, and sometimes it can outright kill...

One of the old, unwritten rules of most TTRPGs is “Never Split the Party!” We tease our players with the risks and watch things go haywire when they don’t listen. But is splitting the party actually so bad? Can you play “Character Karaoke” and make sure everyone still has fun? In truth, though, we usually try not to split the party up as DMs. After all, that just means you’re now trying to juggle...

Every campaign gets to level 1, but how many make it to level 20? How do you challenge players who wield actual cosmic power? Is it fun to be kings, queens, warlords and arch-mages — and take on the responsibilities that may come with those titles? How does the DM/GM make epic-level enemies feel challenging and satisfying to defeat? How do you bring it all to a satisfying end? There’s a time for f...

Downtime: It’s when we play, when we sleep and when we record podcasts. Everyone needs some downtime, right? … Maybe. Do you actually give your player characters downtime? Or do you keep them slaloming down the plot with barely a weekend to get their equipment sharpened? What do you let the PCs attempt when they do get a weekend off? Is it taverns and tax collectors, or can they create new spells,...

You studied the RPG books. You recruited the players. You started a New Game. Every week (or weeks or month) you get everyone together and run them through a world you control! … What if you don’t like it? What do you do when you find yourself running a TTRPG game you don’t enjoy? The DM is a player, too. If you’re not having fun, there’s no game. We’d never recommend trudging through a campaign y...

No matter how much we say it’s the DM’s world, the players know the game too. They have access to all the books, all the lore, even all the monster stats! Sometimes that’s a big help. Other times, it can be a problem for the campaign you want to run. Have you ever had players who actively spoil what all the monsters do? Or players who think they know what your NPCs are all about? Or a fellow DM wh...

Characters bring a story to life, and that goes double for your TTRPG campaign. The best of your NPCs will become legends, most of the rest won’t be any more memorable than the thousands of monsters your players slay along the way. But how do you bring those NPCs to life in a way your players will engage with, trust and remember? Does the DM make an NPC memorable, or is that something the pla...

At some point, every DM sees their party get lost in the woods … or the weeds … or the brothels … Whatever the specific distraction, it’s easy to get caught up in the session-to-session filler content and see the game grind to a slog of travel encounters or petty larcenies or extended haggling sessions that bore everyone at the table. How do you get the party back on track and involved with the bi...

RPG tables tend to grow. Once you get the game going and people are having fun, they start talking about that fun, and new players come in quickly. The only problem is, most TTRPGs are optimized to run with 3 to 5 players (plus the DM), and DM gets tougher are you expand to 6, 8 even 10 players. Throughout our DMing careers, we’ve run a lot of large tables. Most of our current games have 6 or more...

What drew you into role-playing games? Was it the movies, TV, myths and legends you experienced as a kid? Was it video games? Was it the first time you picked up a gaming book and fell into the world? Once you got into the games, what shaped the stories you tell and worlds you build? Where do your characters come from? Where do your mechanical parts come from? We all stand on the shoulders of gian...

There comes a time when the dice cease to sparkle, when the monster loses its luster, when the DM screen becomes a prison, and all that is left is a DMs love for their players … Those little campaign-ruining jerks! Or not — maybe your players are victims of your burnout just as much as you are. Every TTRPG campaign is different, but one thing never changes: Without the DM, there is no game. And a...

Every DM needs to run their first game, and you don’t need a Ph. D. to do it! If you’re new to the system, and especially if everyone is new to the system, how much do you really need to know to start a game? Do you need to read all the rulebooks cover to cover? No. Do you need to design a minimum of 6 dungeon levels and populate it with monsters like Gary Gygax first intended? Absolutely not. So,...

In March of 2020, we were getting ready to record our first episode of this podcast. We all got together in our planned recording space and cut the trailer. … Then COVID happened, and that entire plan went into the garbage along with concerts, vacations and sending kids to school. But as the year went on and we figured out online gaming and recording, the podcast and our games took off. 2020 was a...

Older players who look at the D&D 5E rogue would be forgiven for thinking traps aren’t in the game anymore. In fact, throughout the 5E Players Handbook, traps are given less attention than in previous editions. But that doesn’t make them any less important to the game, or any less tricky for the DM to get right. D&D Traps require the DM to walk a fine line. Balance them right, and your PCs...

A few weeks ago, a listener reached out and asked how we manage players with special circumstances. She was DMing for her brother, who’s on the autism spectrum, and hit a trigger that made him feel like his character was ruined. And even though she’s a therapist, that reaction surprised her. None of the 3 Wise DMs have DMed a player diagnosed with autism before, but we have had many players with s...

It’s one of the hardest things for any DM to handle: What do you do when the way you see the game and the way the players see the game is no longer in sync? You describe something as super dangerous, and a PC runs up to give it a hug — then the players get angry when it attacks them. Or the players come up with a plan, but when they try to execute it, the actions they take work out more like the K...

WotC as a company has long used errata as a way to keep its competitive games, like Magic: The Gathering, working as intended. But just several years into D&D 5E, they’re still releasing new errata that impact books printed years ago that have been used at tables for years since. Some of it just clarifies rules interactions in a helpful way, but other errata literally make books we bought obso...

There’s a myth that “old-school” Dungeons & Dragons was mostly a minis game. That may have been the case in the very earliest days, but throughout 1st and 2nd Edition, we played without minis and maps. Our game happened entirely in “The Theater of the Mind.” And, in many ways, it was a different experience from the maps-and-minis style of game most DMs run today. Some DMs still prefer theater...

The dice never lie, but they don’t tell great stories, either. (We mean, they’re dice, they don’t even talk!) So how much of your game do you want to leave up to the dice? When should you roll them and why? What kind of game are you teaching your players to play? Can rolling the dice even discourage role-playing? In this episode of 3 Wise DMs, Thorin, Tony and Dave dig into everything you always w...

How do you feel about a player who wants to play a famous fictional character in your game, like Drizzt, Riddick or Gandalf? Do you let them or ask them to come up with something more original? How much do you adjust the game world or homebrew mechanics to support it? That’s a question one of our listeners recently asked on the website, and Thorin, Tony and Dave have come across it before. As DMs...

How do you create your own RPG campaign from scratch? Do you build a railroad straight through the story, or an open world for the players to explore in their own way at their own pace? Or do you do what DM Dave does, and try to split the difference between a tight story and an open world without getting lost along the way? In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave talk about how they build their cam...

Gold and jewels are all over the treasure tables in the Dungeon Master Guide. Player characters can get filthy rich from adventuring! But then … What can they do with it? After a 1,500 GP suit of plate mail, the only expensive things left for players to buy in the D&D PHB are boats. How many boats is a level-15 wizard supposed to own? Does high-level play morph into some weird naval combat sim...

Some players come into any RPG they play with a 4-page character origin and personal history that drives them to adventure — others can barely pick a name. What do you do with player character backgrounds like these? Would you rather have the deep story, and the story baggage that comes with it, or the blank campaign canvas? Do PC backstories ever lead to unfair play, special treatment or other pr...

It’s the heart of every D&D story: The player characters did something crazy and their whacky adventures in getting themselves out. That’s what tabletop RPGs are all about, no video game will ever let players embrace free will and agency like a pen-and-paper role-playing game, and we’d never want it any other way. But it’s also where playing by the book stops and the real art of being a dungeo...

Dungeons & Dragons is the biggest role-playing game in the world, and frankly, it’s our game of choice. But that doesn’t mean it does everything great. There are design choices, and in some cases design shortcomings, that shape how a game of D&D plays and separates the experience from other systems. From D&D’s own basic roots (and the old-school renaissance — OSR — games recreating it)...