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PODCAST

3 Wise DMs

3 Wise DMs is a podcast for dungeon masters (for Dungeons & Dragons) and game masters (any other RPG) with problems. And when we say problems, we don’t mean the kind of things you find answers for in the gamebooks. Think of it as a gaming philosophy show with a strong emphasis on applied knowledge. We all want to be great DMs, so what do we do to try to get there?

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All Episodes

01:38:26

21 Tips to Master D&D Combat: How to Run RPG Fights...

3 Wise DMs ·

2021/07/18

Combat is such a central part of D&D 5E, but it’s also a part of the game that can take forever! And not all players are down for a 4-hour fight every game session. What can the DM do to keep the fights fun for everyone, even if some players in the party want fast combat and others want to take their time and enjoy the tactics? How do you make sure you’re not the one slowing combat down and killing the vibe?It’s not just a D&D question, either. DM’s who stumble running combat encounters can

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01:11:23

Powering Up! Bringing D&D Monsters, Villains and...

3 Wise DMs ·

2021/07/11

Whether you’re playing a book Dungeons & Dragons campaign or just have big plans for a couple uglies in the Monster Manual, there’s a level window where your PCs will have a good, balanced encounter with those threats. But what do you do when the party isn’t in that window? Maybe through the course of their adventures, the PCs have explored everything and leveled up too fast, so now Strahd or Auril or whatever big bad is looking a little wimpy? Or maybe your players have characters they’ve been

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01:07:31

13 Tips for DMing Across the Multiverse: How to Bring...

3 Wise DMs ·

2021/07/04

Dungeons & Dragons gives most DMs a good idea of how to start running high fantasy games, but where do you go from there? Or if you started with another genre of role-playing game, like horror, how do you make a high fantasy game feel alive? What mechanics, details and dungeon master tricks (or GM tricks) can you use to make your players feel what’s unique about your setting?One of the cool things about 3 Wise DMs is that we do get to play a lot of games and try a lot of genres and settings

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01:15:59

Superhero Roleplaying: How to Run Comic Book RPG...

3 Wise DMs ·

2021/06/27

From The Avengers to The Snyder Cut and Arrow to Wanda Vision, superheroes have conquered entertainment. Are you ready for them to clean up the streets of your game group, too? That’s exactly what’s been happening at the 3 Wise DMs’ game table, as our little experimentation with TSR’s Marvel Superhero RPG (MSH RPG) from 1984 has ballooned into a 3-DM shared universe. Instead of the MCU, we now have a 3WDMSHRPGU! (We really need to work on that acronym). Ever since DMs Dave and Tony were 0-level

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01:19:24

11 Ways to Be a Better Dungeon Master: Lessons...

3 Wise DMs ·

2021/06/20

How much time should you spend prepping for individual game sessions? When should you improv and when should you plan more ahead of time? How can you keep rules lawyers and house rules under control? This episode marks one year of recording 3 Wise DMs and some of the most intensive gaming of our lives. We’ve had as many as 5 campaigns running across 3 different systems, and every week we got together to talk about them on this podcast. It’s been an intensive RPG workshop for all three of us, and we

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01:19:01

Bringing RPGs Back From COVID: How Do We Get Back to...

3 Wise DMs ·

2021/06/13

The 3 Wise DMs have only just started to get back together for some in-person gaming, but none of the online RPGs we’ve talked about has yet made it back to the dinner table. Can they be saved? Do the Wise DMs even want to bring them back in-person? Are the players on board? Even if everyone wants to go back to playing live, what challenges do they face?In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave talk about the surprising difficulty of bringing their games back to live, in-person play. From commuting

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01:20:03

21 Things Wise DMs Want From Their Best RPG Players

3 Wise DMs ·

2021/06/06

It takes more than just a Wise DM to make a great roleplaying game campaign. No matter how thoroughly you plan or brilliantly you improv, the DM (or GM, judge, storyteller, or whatever the system you’re playing calls it) is only one person in a group of 2 to 10 or more people making this thing happen. When push comes to shove, the players are the ones who really make the game what it becomes — whether that’s an epic cooperative tale imaginative high adventure or a series of glorified minis

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01:03:24

DMing Big Character Changes: How to Handle PCs...

3 Wise DMs ·

2021/05/30

Dungeons & Dragons used to have cursed treasure that would suddenly cause big changes in player characters — like the Helm of Opposite Alignment and the Girdle of Opposite Gender. These were transformations that could ruin a character for some players, so we see less of that in most RPGs today, but they can still be powerful tools for the DM and players to make a narrative twist have a lasting impact on the game. Sometimes big character changes like these — changing alignment, class, subclass,

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01:14:47

14 Tips for DMing First-Time RPG Players

3 Wise DMs ·

2021/05/23

Of all the roles the DM takes on, none is more important than bringing new players into the hobby. DM a game, and your player has fun for a night. Teach someone to play, and they may have fun for the rest of their lives (or think you’re a gigantic weirdo — it’s a win either way). DMing new players has its own rewards and challenges. On the one hand, they haven’t played anything before, so every goblin, dragon and rogue demigod is new and awesome! On the other hand, you have to help them learn the

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01:23:03

15 Tips for Running RPG Villains: Playing BBEGs Your...

3 Wise DMs ·

2021/05/16

It’s the Big Bad Evil Guy (BBEG)! The font from which all the pain in your campaign should spring. … So, how do you make sure that NPC is epic and inspires your PCs to true desperation like Darth Vader and not a sniveling mama’s boy like Joss Whedon’s Steppenwolf? It can be a fine line to walk. You need to make the villain powerful, intimidating, and willing to do things that the players will hate. But you can’t make them so bad that the players will come to hate your game. There are levels to this,

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01:33:39

D&D Alignment: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly for...

3 Wise DMs ·

2021/05/09

“Alignment doesn’t matter!” We’ve heard it all over the place, but alignment has been a part of D&D — and most RPGs in some form — for decades. And it’s been played differently through every edition. Is it worth your time? Does it make things worse instead of better? Does it have any benefits players today are overlooking?Once upon a time, violating alignment could cost a character a level, which meant acting against alignment lead to fighters forgetting how to swing a sword as well. It got kind

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01:47:57

The Players’ Review of Storm King’s Thunder: The...

3 Wise DMs ·

2021/05/02

For the first time ever, we brought the whole team together to recap DM Tony’s very highly customized version of Storm King’s Thunder. Hear what all 5 players and Tony thought of the game and what they have to say about the CRAZY MAGIC ITEMS in it, his changes to the campaign, fitting in their backstories, and more! Along the way, we talk about fighting the Kraken, befriending (most) of the giants, and how we all became The Avengers in a Halloween game. If you’re wondering just how far a DM can push

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01:27:16

Storm King’s Thunder DM Review: The 9 Deviations DM...

3 Wise DMs ·

2021/04/25

When is a book module not a book module? When the DM throws in birthday games, a modifiable Spelljammer airship, legendary weapons tied to every character’s backstory, and more deviations from the standard campaign than we could count. That’s how DM Tony made Storm King’s Thunder his own. We just wrapped this epic campaign at level 11 after 16 sessions. Now the 3 Wise DMs are comparing notes on the episodic, exploration-lite, story-focused approach Tony took with it, how that felt to play in, and

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01:35:36

Bringing Your RPG Campaign World to Life: 37 Tricks...

3 Wise DMs ·

2021/04/18

Do your players feel into the campaign setting you’re running, or is it just generic D&D world #124 to them? What can you do to bring that world more to life and make it feel unique to you and your players? What makes a D&D session feel like more than just a glorified board game?With about a half dozen campaigns running between the 3 of us, making each of those worlds and settings feel unique is important (especially with Strahd running around in two of them). Over the years, we’ve built up

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01:12:11

RPG MythBusters: PC Party Balance Is Essential! …...

3 Wise DMs ·

2021/04/11

Party balance: It’s the most important thing every new campaign needs, right? Maybe not. Is there anything a party really NEEDS to have? Can your players survive without a healer? Or a thief? Or a meat shield warrior? Will they still have a good time?In general, we’re big fans of letting each player play whatever they want to play and working out party balance as we go. But what do you do when that leads to overlap and obvious weak spots? Is party balance as important as some players make it out to

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01:19:10

TTRPG Party Dynamics: How We Want Players to Work...

3 Wise DMs ·

2021/04/04

The biggest variable in any TTRPG campaign isn’t the dice, the monsters, or even the unbalanced psyche of an exasperated DM. It’s the players themselves and the party dynamic they create both in the game with their characters and around the table as the people they are. How do you want the party in your campaign to work? Are you OK with a little role/skill overlap? Are the players? How well do the players themselves need to get along? Are you approaching the game as a bunch of friends hanging out,

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01:02:51

Missing in Action: How to Handle Players Skipping...

3 Wise DMs ·

2021/03/28

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 your campaign … How do you handle it? We all deal with this. Every game Thorin, Tony and Dave run sees

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01:32:43

RPG MythBusters: Never Split the Party! … Or Should You?

3 Wise DMs ·

2021/03/21

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 2 or more stories instead of the one you came to tell. But we’ve had a few split-party incidents lately

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01:16:56

How to DM Epic-Tier Games: 19 Tips for Running – and...

3 Wise DMs ·

2021/03/14

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 fighting rats, goblins and thugs … And that time is long gone. High-level play, in any TTRPG, should feel

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01:24:19

Party Downtime: When, How and Should You Let the...

3 Wise DMs ·

2021/03/07

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, magic items and heists? In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave talk about different ways to handle

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