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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?

leisure games

All Episodes

01:11:59

Patrons, Powers and Punishments in D&D 5E: So Many...

3 Wise DMs ·

2021/10/03

Patrons and punishments have been a part of D&D since 1st Edition’s paladins had to toe the line or get busted down to fighter status by an angry deity. But with so many classes drawing their powers from gods, devils and monsters in 5e — and not really getting any better deal than the wizard who studied, sorcerer who was born with it, barbarian who’s too angry to die, or the bard who just has to rock out with his glockenspiel out — how can the DM handle these patron relationships in a way that

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01:08:17

RPG Weather, Puzzles and Ritual Challenges: 3 Ways to...

3 Wise DMs ·

2021/09/26

How do you bring your campaign world to life? It’s a question lots of DMs and GMs ask from a lot of different angles. We’re all looking for ways to make sure our players have fun, but also have new experiences in the game that make it feel more like characters living out a story and less like tabletop Diablo. Some of our best questions come from our listeners. That is once again the case this week as Thorin, Tony and Dave dig into three messages asking about different ways to make your RPG world a

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01:21:14

Keeping Your Story Straight: How We Manage All the DM...

3 Wise DMs ·

2021/09/19

No DM’s plan survives contact with the players. Between remembering the story you’re trying to tell, the details you had to improvise, and the players’ actions (which may or may not have made sense), it can be hard to keep the details straight in your RPG campaign. How can you plan out the important stuff, capture improv details before you forget them, and make sure you remember it the same way week to week? Thorin, Tony and Dave each have their own tricks for keeping their stories straight. This

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57:13

I’m on a Boat! Running Sea-Faring, Space-Faring and...

3 Wise DMs ·

2021/09/12

When you take your RPG campaign to the high seas (or under the seas, outer space or anywhere else they need a ship to survive), all bets are off. Sure, you could run it like any land-based campaign using the ship for fast travel, but is that really what a ship-based campaign is all about? Or are they about ship-to-ship combat, unlimited freedom, and unimaginable treasure? The lure of the sea is about more than hopping from adventure to adventure. The captain is king of the vessel, whether that

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01:08:01

Dragons: Why We Love Them and How We Run Them

3 Wise DMs ·

2021/09/05

Dragons are to D&D what Jerry West is to the NBA: The Logo. They’re the monsters so iconic that they’re literally part of the name. No other fantasy property has done as much or gained as much from its dragons. So, when you decide to put a dragon in your campaign, you know it has to be special. But how do you make sure it hits the right notes for your players?Fortunately, dragons are some of Thorin’s, Tony’s, and Dave’s favorite creatures. How do you make dragons feel epic? How do you make sure

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01:06:34

How to Bring WrestleMania to Barovia: DM Dave’s Curse...

3 Wise DMs ·

2021/08/29

Sometimes you want to change the game up completely, even if it’s just for the night. Maybe you want to have a night of gambling games, a carnival with an archery contest, a little football, or, like DM Dave’s Barovia, a werewolf wrestling match to put the WWE to shame! When you have that urge, how do you make that happen? The 3 Wise DMs call them minigames, and in this episode, they’ll use Dave’s wrestling escapades to break down how to make these sessions fun for everyone.Thorin, Tony and Dave

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01:16:44

Strange D&D Homebrew: Knowing When, Where and How to...

3 Wise DMs ·

2021/08/15

DMs have some crazy ideas. And deep down, there’s nothing most of us want to do more than unleash those ideas on our unsuspecting players. The party is rolling along a totally normal campaign in a non-descript fantasy world, and suddenly, you’ve dropped a giant, soul-eating, boon-granting, Lovecraftian spaghetti monster into the center of it with a cult that’s depopulating the world to wake it up. Or, through your Wizard’s misfiring experimentations, you’ve bonded him to a Venom-like symbiote

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57:38

When DMs Go to War: How to Run Mass Combat in D&D...

3 Wise DMs ·

2021/08/08

Most DMs come to a point in their campaigns where they want to run The Big Battle. We’re not talking the players vs. a few Balors, but a real war: Storming the beaches of a fantasy Normandy, the Siege of Winterfell, the Battle of Pelennor Fields from Lord of the Rings. But when you go to set the battle up, you realize just how clunky mass combat is in D&D and most RPGs. The problem is, most RPGs are skirmish-level games, especially D&D. That means they run well with up to about 20 characters

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54:02

When Your Game Goes Hollywood: How to Adapt Jurassic...

3 Wise DMs ·

2021/08/01

Lots of DMs draw inspiration from their favorite movies. But adapting a movie to your game isn’t always as easy as it sounds. Can you really use D&D, where the PCs are super-powered, to create Jurassic Park, where most of the characters are lunch? How do you capture the magic of Lord of the Rings in a way your players can actually play through without following the book scene-for-scene? How do you turn linear silver screen storytelling into something that can survive an encounter with your

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01:11:37

Surrender Like a Boss: When RPG Monsters and NPCs...

3 Wise DMs ·

2021/07/25

Sometimes the best stories play out after defeat, but to get to them, bad guys need to occasionally survive the fight. It’s not always so easy to recognize when it’s time to pull back and have the monsters or villains run away or surrender to the PCs, and it can be even harder to get the party to accept the surrender after it’s offered.When should a DM surrender and how do you make sure it doesn’t turn into a slaughter? It all comes down to how you teach players to play your game. After all, if

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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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187 results

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