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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

42:02

The Great Pretender – How To Lean Into Metagaming To...

3 Wise DMs ·

2024/12/22

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 special Wise DM, the Wizard Washburn, from our Terrain and Minis episode, to discuss how we have leaned

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46:46

Can I Ask You A Question? When and How to Exert Your...

3 Wise DMs ·

2024/12/08

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 using, or not using, the newest 2024 version of the Player’s Handbook. For any DM who has wrestled with

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50:18

Misty Mountain Hop: Unleash Epic Adventures and...

3 Wise DMs ·

2024/11/17

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, a Low Magic setting for the simple fact that there are no spellcasting classes.In this episode, Tony,

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38:31

We’ve Only Just Begun: Kickstarting An Epic D&D...

3 Wise DMs ·

2024/11/03

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 Player’s Guide, what to include, what to leave out, and how they can help to start your campaign off on the

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52:02

The Time Warp – Mastering the Strange Way Time Flows...

3 Wise DMs ·

2024/10/20

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 can move in your campaign and how to best handle that. Is your game a non-stop march towards the

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50:09

Don't Worry About A Thing: Essential Tips To Turn...

3 Wise DMs ·

2024/10/06

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 this episode, Tony and Chris help Dave talk it out and, in the process, reveal what we all deal with…

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49:12

Signed, Sealed, Delivered – Revolutionize Your D&D...

3 Wise DMs ·

2024/09/15

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 as the whole party, to further flesh out the characters, world, and story.In this episode, Tony, Chris,

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46:59

Shipping Up To Boston – Uncovering The Secrets To...

3 Wise DMs ·

2024/09/01

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 this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave sit down to answer a question from a longtime friend of the show, Dr

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43:54

Love the One You’re With – 3WD’s Top 7 Tips To...

3 Wise DMs ·

2024/08/18

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… they’re classic adventures that you want to experience, just like a classic movie. So what do you do if

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51:05

It’s the End of the World: 3 Wise DMs Pro Tips to...

3 Wise DMs ·

2024/08/04

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 yourself? What do you have to make sure you do? How do you create something that will be talked about for

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48:36

The Ties That Bind – Tying Together Characters,...

3 Wise DMs ·

2024/07/21

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 tie their characters into their newest campaign, Tomb of Annihilation, following the finale of their

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50:14

Chill, Till The Next Episode – 3WD Answers The...

3 Wise DMs ·

2024/07/07

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 epic, longform stories are the current zeitgeist and how that affects the adventures we create.10:15 Whether a

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53:20

What I Like (And Hate) About You – 3 Wise DMs Reflect...

3 Wise DMs ·

2024/06/23

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 on social media (like the DM who stated that a 1st level character could kill a Tarrasque?!?), this is

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45:33

Go Go Godzilla! 3WD Brainstorms The Best Ways To...

3 Wise DMs ·

2024/06/09

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 this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave respond to a listener’s question, “have you ever put a monster in your

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43:52

Back in the Saddle Again: Our Best Tips and Tricks...

3 Wise DMs ·

2024/05/26

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 Paper Terrain, to discuss his recent return to the DM chair with his homebrewed campaign “World of the

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42:22

Changes - 3 Wise DMs Absolutely Best Tips For The...

3 Wise DMs ·

2024/04/28

What do you do when your player is unhappy with the direction of their class and wants to change over into a new class mid-campaign, but with the same character?In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave answer a listener question about their player that wants to change their character’s class from Paladin to Sorcerer at 5th level. We delve into not just the narrative components of a change like this, but also the mechanical effects that such a change would inevitably bring. Along the way, we offer

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50:54

RPG Mythbusters: The Tavern is the Best Place to...

3 Wise DMs ·

2024/04/14

The tavern. It’s the start of 23 different campaigns that DM Tony has been in over the last three decades. It’s a fantasy adventure trope and gets a lot of hate out there for being basic and unimaginative, but is that necessarily a bad thing? In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave return to our RPG Mythbusters series and test the myth, “Is a tavern the best place to start an adventure?” Will it be confirmed, plausible, or busted?0:49 The return of RPG Mythbusters, all the way back to Episodes 39 and

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56:48

I Just Dropped In To See What Condition My Condition...

3 Wise DMs ·

2024/03/31

With our recent Forged in Fire article series, DM Chris realized how many Conditions that monsters have resistance and immunity to, especially in 5e. With that, we began to discuss how much (or little) we play with Conditions in our home games, and how that might be limiting what we can do to craft engaging, thrilling, and challenging encounters.In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave delve into the Conditions mechanic (both in and out of 5e), the issues we have with some of them, what ones we find

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44:05

She’s a Mystery to Me: How Long To Keep Secrets and...

3 Wise DMs ·

2024/03/17

One of the beauties of TTRPGs is the ability to not just watch or read an amazing story, but to experience it… to create it. The mystery, the action, the climactic battle between good and evil; D&D gives us the ability to create our favorite stories.One of the most important aspects of that, as the DM, is creating a level of mystery to the story that the players get the chance to uncover as they delve deeper into the adventure. In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave discuss a listener question

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49:21

Whatcha Got Cookin’? – 3WDs Top 9 Tips To Homebrewing...

3 Wise DMs ·

2024/03/03

Homebrewing has been part of the game since its inception. Hell, the game itself is a homebrew of wargames! We’ve discussed homebrewing in previous episodes and articles, but a listener asks the question about how to homebrew magic items and monsters from well-known pop culture sources (like Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere Universe.)In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave discuss their top nine tips to pulling in objects and ideas from existing beloved pop culture properties and making them have the same

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