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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

01:12:31

Is ‘Don’t Over-Prepare’ the Worst Advice for New DMs?

3 Wise DMs ·

2022/05/08

DM prep: It can be the most important thing to putting on a good game or the biggest obstacle keeping you from getting back behind the screen. Some DMs say the most important thing to remember is to not over-prepare, but YouTube DM guru Ginny Di recently called this The Worst advice new DMs hear, and that it actually hurt her development as a young DM.Is “don’t over-prepare” bad DMing advice? There’s a lot to dig into there. In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave take a close look at Ginny Di’s

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50:21

Are Red Herrings Derailing Your D&D Game? Here’s What...

3 Wise DMs ·

2022/05/01

Rich, vivid descriptions bring your fantasy world to life. Unfortunately, they can also lead your players to think that the intricately carved and decorated elven bridge they’re crossing has to be an important clue or secret! If it weren’t, why would the DM have given it such a cool description?This is the curse of the red herring: When you’re casually monologuing details to give the world depth, and the players lock onto something that you meant to be insignificant. Next thing you know, they’re

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01:09:32

DM Hacks and Tricks to Make Running D&D Less Tedious...

3 Wise DMs ·

2022/04/24

What’s some of the tedious stuff you have to do as a DM that you really wish had an easy button? Why does WotC make some essential DMing info hard to find (or at least hard to find while you’re trying to run a game)? This idea comes from Kaila Evans on Twitter, DM of the Comedy of Terrors podcast, who posted, “I've been waiting for some OG Dungeon Master to show up and starting giving us all some wicked obscure advice on the craft nobody ever heard of yet. Like maybe there's a hidden page in the DMG

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55:33

How Many Players Are Too Many for One D&D Game? What...

3 Wise DMs ·

2022/04/17

The oldest Dungeons & Dragons books said the game was for 4 to 50 players, and we know people who DMed white box D&D campaigns with groups in the 20s. But that was then, and D&D 5th Edition runs into a lot of issues once you pass a certain number of players. So, what do you do when your game is already at 6 players and 3 more want to join? That’s the question posed by one of our listeners in this week’s episode of 3 Wise DMs.How many players can you comfortably DM at one time in D&D

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01:09:59

Putting PCs In Charge: How Do You Handle RPG Players...

3 Wise DMs ·

2022/04/10

Many RPG campaigns end with the players taking over kingdoms, wizard colleges, crime syndicates or other powerful organizations in the world as a sort of epilogue. But what about when they want to take these titles during the campaign and actively run their new empires? How do you handle putting your player characters in charge of powerful organizations in your world as an active part of the game?In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave take on a listener question about how to let PCs take on these

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01:07:30

When Should You Bend RPG Rules? Handling Players Who...

3 Wise DMs ·

2022/04/03

Not every player is OK playing RPGs by the rules as they’re written. Some can’t even get through character creation without asking the DM to make some kind of mechanical adjustment. This may seem like an easy situation – do it my way or play with someone else – but it’s not always that simple. Sometimes the change may look harmless. Other times it’s a house rule you want to play with. And in rare occasions, it can become a battle of wills between the DM and a player constantly trying to twist rules

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51:38

How Do You Make New DMs?

3 Wise DMs ·

2022/03/27

It’s the question forever DMs everywhere ponder at night: How do I get one of my players to jump in and DM their own stuff so I can get some playing time?! (And also, so they can express themselves, expand the hobby, and all that other good stuff.) It’s not always easy. Sometimes the players you think would be the best DMs don’t have the interest. Other times your own presence may be intimidating them out of trying. Perhaps you just don’t make DMing look very fun to them?With those obstacles in

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59:21

No Rest for the Weary: How the Rest Cadence of D&D 5E...

3 Wise DMs ·

2022/03/20

Rest! In some D&D 5E campaigns, it’s taken for granted. In others, like Tomb of Annihilation, PCs may have to make their HP and long-rest abilities stretch for days. And like in real life, sleep deprivation changes the game!As we’ve started our Tomb campaign, it’s really driven home how Dungeons & Dragons’s rest cadence has a huge impact on how characters play, and it’s not an even handicap. Barbarians, fighters and warlocks barely notice. Clerics, wizards, sorcerers and artificers (poor

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01:05:04

The Sinister 7: How to Run 7 Iconic D&D Monsters for...

3 Wise DMs ·

2022/03/13

Dungeons & Dragons is a lot more than just dungeons and dragons. The game is full of iconic monsters with unique legends and mystique, some pulled from mythology and others found only in this game. But from D&D, many of these monsters have become pop culture icons with stories and expectations that have taken on a life of their own.There is a fine line between meeting expectations and playing a boring cliché, though. In some ways, the iconic monsters can be the hardest to DM because you have

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01:03:54

Do D&D Magic Item Limits Crimp Your DM Style?

3 Wise DMs ·

2022/03/06

Do the magic item attunement rules and limits make D&D 5E a better game or just add a layer of frustration? When we started playing 5E, we actually ignored attunement. Now, we’ve started using it across all of our campaigns to understand how the game is meant to be played. … And we have some concerns. What role do magic items play in your game? Are they rewards? Character development tools? Just items that help optimize PC builds? We’ve found that attunement, while it helps keep PC power in

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01:02:56

The Fetch Quest: Are They Fun? Are They Worth It? Are...

3 Wise DMs ·

2022/02/27

Sometimes your players want something, or you want to give them something, that would be kind of lame to just leave lying around. After all, The Awesome Staff of Mega Power probably deserves its own quest to find. But how long should that quest be? And how do you keep the other players personally involved so they don’t get bored?In this episode, Thorin, Tony, and Dave talk about a fetch quest they just started in the Curse of Strahd game, how it could play out, and the risks of other players tuning

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01:09:08

Getting the “Face” Player to Shut Up and Let Other...

3 Wise DMs ·

2022/02/20

Some players are more assertive than others, as every DM quickly learns. Some players sit quietly waiting for their turn to speak, while the “Face,” like his A-Team counterpart, never misses a chance to go to town. Before you know it, the party is down another rabbit hole or skipping through a conversation without anyone else getting a chance to participate.Or, as this week’s listener question asks: “How do you get the “Face” to STFU?To be fair, none of us actually recommends telling a player to

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01:17:36

9 Alternate D&D Rules to Try: Our Favorite Optional...

3 Wise DMs ·

2022/02/13

Vanilla Dungeons & Dragons 5E is a fine game, but depending on the atmosphere you want to set and the possibilities of your setting, there are a lot of alternate rules that can bring your game to the next level. The D&D 5E Dungeon Masters Guide has some great optional rules you can use to bring different genres of games to life by playing up things like honor and horror. Beyond D&D itself, a lot of other games use mechanics that are worth porting in to create certain effects in your

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01:14:47

How to Handle a Backseat DM: 11 Things to Know

3 Wise DMs ·

2022/02/06

Why won’t the experienced DM playing in your game back off and let you run it? A backseat DM can be a frustrating experience and force some difficult conversations — but having an experienced DM on the player side of the table to help lookup rulings and encourage the other players can also be a really beneficial asset in your game. How do you leverage that DM player as a good assistant and not let them become your worst critic?At 3 Wise DMS, we’ve played with backseat DMs, been backseat DMs, and

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01:25:04

Sharing RPG Worlds: Balancing PC Power Levels and NPC...

3 Wise DMs ·

2022/01/30

Across the games we’re running and playing, we have several campaign worlds, NPCs, and PCs that cross over between DMs. Usually, this is no big deal, but sometimes what one DM does can unbalance what another DM is trying to do. Often this revolves around PC power, with characters in both our Marvel and Woodstock Wanderers game sometimes breaking the curve for the other DMs/GMs. But conflict can also arise over how shared NPCs and campaign worlds are portrayed. If one DM’s giant unfeeling tentacle

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01:37:50

Does D&D 5E Need Character Levels? Radical...

3 Wise DMs ·

2022/01/23

Leveling up! It’s synonymous with D&D and one of the game’s biggest contributions to gaming culture. The very idea of gaining a level has become a staple of RPG video games, board games, and even most (but not all, as we’ll discuss) Tabletop Roleplaying Games. But is it the best way to handle character advancement in D&D 5th Edition?Dael Kingsmill of the MonarchsFactory YouTube channel has some different ideas. In a recent video, she even suggested that D&D shouldn’t use levels! Our

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01:16:58

How to DM PC Builds and Abilities That Piss You Off

3 Wise DMs ·

2022/01/16

In any TTRPG, but perhaps especially D&D 5E, the DM runs the world and the players run their characters, who are built within the rules of the game. You should let players build the characters they want to play, but that doesn’t mean you have to like it!It’s OK to have a TTRPG PC build that pisses you off. Whether it’s because they’re unkillable, unhittable, undetectable, unsurvivable, or, like our listener question this week, they passively perceive absolutely frickin’ everything! This may mean

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01:28:05

How Hard Is Too Hard for Your RPG Campaign and Players?

3 Wise DMs ·

2022/01/09

Balance can be the trickiest thing to strike in any RPG campaign. On the one hand, the DM is running monsters and villains who are literally plotting the PC’s destruction. If their plans aren’t good or their combat abilities aren’t challenging, like DM Tony says, it’s like playing the game on baby mode. A game that’s not challenging is unrewarding. On the other, a game that gets too hard can frustrate your players right out of wanting to play it. So where is the balance? How hard is too hard for

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01:18:22

Characters Over Combat: What We Learned From Gaming...

3 Wise DMs ·

2022/01/02

Happy New Year! It’s a new year for new games or just continuing the ones you already love. But before we look forward to 2022, it’s important to look back at what we learned from gaming in 2021. Between playing and running about 6 different campaigns throughout the year, not to mention talking about all of it here on 3 Wise DMs, we learned a lot. From speeding up combat to the importance of good characters, especially PCs, the way we play and DM keeps evolving. In this episode, Thorin, Tony and

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01:10:12

What to do With a Bored D&D Player? A DM’s Dilemma

3 Wise DMs ·

2021/12/19

What if you have your D&D campaign going, the players are having a good time … except one of them, who’s bored? Maybe they’re bored with their character or combat or the way things are going, and now figuring out a way to pick things up a notch for this player falls to you. Do you let them revamp or replace their character? Do you make combat more difficult? Making things more complicated, if the other players are having fun, is adjusting for the bored player going to ruin it for the rest of

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