3 Wise DMs

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, and Dave discuss their strategies for running narrative side quests outside the game as well as completely text-based campaigns.

Episode 358 of Dragon Talk.

DM Tony’s article on running narrative side quests outside the game.

3:08 What do we mean when we’re talking about a narrative side quest?

4:55 Our most recent use of narrative side quests in our Dragonlance campaign.

7:25 There must be an active give and take for narrative side quests and campaigns to work.

13:00 DM Chris’ Days of Future Past text-based Marvel Super Heroes campaign.

14:35 Narrative side quests for individual characters are a time to build out backstory and character, not for leveling and gaining experience.

16:48 DM Chris literally “Squirrels”!

20:12 Narrative, or “Descriptive”, side quests. What is your threat level? Will the character die while away?

22:40 How narrative side quests can help spur roleplay moments in-game.

23:55 How to build out actual side quests with monsters, loot, and experience for individual characters.

25:26 How far away are your characters and how long will they be gone? How many players are you currently juggling with side quests?

32:20 Narrative side quests allow players who miss a session to not feel like they missed out.

34:35 Excellent method for important plot drops… when they find it, they’ll want to shout it from the rooftops.

39:32 Final Thoughts.

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. DM himself, Jason, on how to run a great, epic, and memorable ocean-themed campaign outside of just being evil pirates who rob everything.

4:00 How is this different from every other setting? Taking care of the business of a sailing vessel.

6:30 DM Dave reviews how he has been approaching this in his Melora’s Light all-girl campaign. Including the idea of generating backstories and campaign settings through Call to Adventure.

9:10 Playing with resources: water, food, rests, etc.

11:55 Lean into the danger of setting sail in a wooden ship.

14:05 Using sourcebooks, like Ghosts of Saltmarsh, to stimulate your imagination.

16:25 The unique ability to travel to vastly different adventure locales when in a ship.

18:45 Focus in on the theme of the campaign that makes it different.

20:30 What happens when the ship is commandeered or stolen?

22:40 An ocean-themed campaign can be any type of campaign – High Fantasy, Pirates, Political, etc.

23:40 DM Tony using the airship in Storm King’s Thunder.

25:25 What are the character’s goals in this ocean-themed campaign? Will that change over the whole campaign?

35:30 We discuss how we made hex crawl travel interesting with our homebrewed Journey Cards.

39:15 Final Thoughts.

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 your players want to experience one of these “classic movies” and you’ve been running all homebrewed worlds? In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave sit down to answer a listener question about what their top tips are for approaching running a published adventure for the first time.

3:45 Tip #1: Know the general plot of the adventure – the “elevator pitch.”

4:50 Tip #2: Think of the adventure more like a sourcebook, rather than the gospel.

8:10 Tip #3: How to manage a giant adventure? One session at a time.

10:40 Tip #4: Focus on the plots in the adventure that will be fun for your players.

13:00 Tip #5: Lean on your fellow internet DMs… every published adventure has tons of hacks.

15:00 Tip #6: Approach these longform adventures as multiple adventures in your overarching campaign.

22:30 Tip #7: Make sure your initial hook is solid. Often, the published adventure hooks are “ehhh.”

26:06 PSA: Stop listening to “Tough Guy” DMs who use Railroad as an insult. Do what makes you and your table have fun.

36:40 Final Thoughts.

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 years to come?

In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave sit down to continue our discussions from the last two episodes about tying elements of the game together to share their pro tips about designing and executing a great finale that will be the capstone for the game that has gone on for weeks, months, or years!

1:10 3WD is Big in Algeria!

3:40 What do you mean by the end of a “campaign”?

6:40 What has been the Theme of the campaign?

8:05 Lessons learned for your games, good and bad, from the ending of Loki.

12:00 Does a campaign or campaign ending need to be “epic”?

13:45 How our Curse of Strahd campaign really had 2 separate finales.

16:40 Does every character’s story need to be tied up by the end? Does the campaign actually end?

28:25 The story ends when the story ends, whether it’s 10 sessions or 100.

33:10 The pros and cons of running a “Resolutions” session after the finale.

43:00 Final Thoughts.

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 Curse of Strahd campaign. Along the way, we brainstorm how to tie these two adventures together into one large epic story.

4:02 We delve into what we thought the question really was… how do you tie Curse of Strahd and Tomb of Annihilation together?

7:15 What to do with Curse of Strahd’s Megaliths?

8:00 Published material, like Curse of Strahd, is great fodder for ideas of how and where to tie characters into the story.

9:10 The heavy lift of some published material, like Tomb of Annihilation, in hooking the characters into the story.

11:05 Detailed backstories vs the blank slate as well as DM Tony’s idea of “Reactive” backstories.

15:20 Tying in the characters, backstories, motivations, and adventures in the same way as you plan your sessions… one session at a time.

24:40 Providing the characters with stakes that really matter.

26:15 Weak hooks with adventures that were meant to be from tournament modules and how we’ve tied characters in.

29:25 Remembering the perspective of the characters, not the audience.

32:00 Creating a one-sheet Campaign Guide (like Mike Shea’s) to help players tie the characters in at creation.

38:35 Final Thoughts.

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 longform campaign or a one-shot, every adventure needs to be self-contained with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

 20:05 The issue of players remembering ALL the lore and information gleaned over longform adventures.

22:45 The adventure should be as long as it needs to be to feel complete.

27:40 The level of prep needed between short and longform adventures.

30:50 Creating episodic adventures even in longform adventures, like DM Tony’s Storm Kings Thunder and Journey to Ragnarok campaigns.

40:30 Final Thoughts.

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 coming from players and DMs who have been playing weekly, not just pontificating from their armchair.

In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave see where the rubber hit the road in 5e as they discuss how it has affected some of their campaigns over the last 10 years: Storm King’s Thunder, Curse of Strahd, Tomb of Annihilation, Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen, and their homebrewed world of The Further!

2:55 Bardic Inspiration as a Reaction from the One D&D Playtest.

9:00 Counterspell… a DMs Bane!

14:00 The UA Tunnel Fighter build… one man holding off the armies of Mordor!

18:40 Leomund’s Tiny Hut… 5e’s “Save” Function.

23:45 Looking to the future: Making Rests Better.

29:50 We need to have some real talk about Find Familiar…

36:45 Looking to the Past for the Future: 3rd Editions Change to Magic Items.

40:55 3WD Homebrew: Stacking Inspiration.

43:45 Looking to the Future: Feats!

45:00 Final Thoughts.

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 campaign that cannot be defeated?” and enter into a real time brainstorming session as we discuss how we’ve used it as DMs as well as played with it as players in our own games.

1:45 DM Jim’s Brainstorm Topic

2:25 Are these the seeds of where the endgame of your campaign is or are you just hazing your players?

3:50 Think less about defeating the unbeatable monster and more about foiling their plans.

5:55 The Scroll of Tarrasque Summoning from Rime of the Frostmaiden and our tangent into the idea of WOTC playtesting adventures before they release them.

8:10 “If you stat it, players will kill it.”

8:55 Our return to the Woodstock Wanderers campaign and the unkillable, flying spaghetti monster that was Ghatanothoa.

12:15 Be careful dropping this type of monster into your game if your players singular idea is “Frontal Assault!”

17:45 The idea that this type of creature is not “good” or “evil” but just a force of nature. How do you fill this story and adventure out without it becoming monotonous?

22:05 The trick of revealing the BBEG and their nefarious schemes early in the campaign… how do you do this with Godzilla who doesn’t really have plans?

29:00 The adventure is in realizing that this “oncoming storm” is coming and what are the heroes going to do about it.

34:45 “Can you write a campaign for Superman?” Dealing with problems that you can’t just punch in the nose.

37:30 Final Thoughts.

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 Five Gods.” True to form, Scott kitbashed together the original White Box D&D with some flair from 5e.

For all the DMs who have thought that “Retirement Sucks,” whether its been 40 days or 40 years, this is the episode for you.

2:15 Our very Special Guest DM, the Scott “Wizard” Washburn, from our Terrain, Maps, and Minis episode, who recently returned to the DM chair after a FORTY YEAR HIATUS, and a brief review of the recent game.

9:10 What would Scott have done differently, or what would he have prepped more (or less) having finally ran a game again?

14:25 Don’t get lost in the worldbuilding and the introduction of the massive breadth of your setting, get the players rolling dice as soon as possible.

16:40 Make the adventure objective clear.

17:10 How Scott made adventuring in dungeons a significant driver of the economy and commerce (including taxes!)

19:45 Scott shares his thought process in how he approached running his first game back, as well as leaning into some of his skill sets from an unlikely source, and some of the changes he would make.

27:15 Some of the things we enjoyed about the system, including the return to OD&D, 1e, and the OSR – including removing initiative as we know it!

32:30 Final Thoughts.

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 tips, tricks, and questions you should ask yourself if you’re planning on something like this in your own games.

3:45 First questions: will this completely break immersion and is this an offer you’re ready to make for all the players?

4:30 DM Chris fondly remembers Clyde from Every Which Way But Loose and discusses the “Buyer’s Remorse” of character choices and how to work with it.

7:00 The benefit of starting at lower levels and the character building that comes with it. How a 5th level character might feel a little more “pregen”, as DM Tony refers to it.

8:45 The benefits of One-shots, Session Zeroes, and Playtests to understand better the choices you’re making. What if Aragorn never leaves Bree?

12:30 DM Tony’s workaround for swapping power sets in 4th edition.

13:14 Learning the rules of the class as you level… the kid who hates the elite sports car they just got.

16:30 How we have and would narratively approach changes like this in our own games.

18:00 How do you handle the mechanical changes that would come with such a change?

28:50 DM Tony recounts how DM  Thorin had narratively and mechanically done this very thing in a 4th edition game… the return of Cassidus, the wizard made of a pile of undead bugs!

30:35 “It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to”.… the time needed to evolve the character and how to balance realism and fantasy.

34:05 Final Thoughts