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 a bunch of description techniques, mechanics and tricks to try to give our settings just the right amount of detail to feel alive without overwhelming the players with architectural dissertations.

Here are 37 of the tricks the 3 Wise DMs use to try to make the players feel immersed in our worlds and give the settings some soul. If you can think of any to add, leave a comment or write us at [email protected].

2:00 Do the Drow have clown schools? — Setting ideas that … appeal to us

5:00 Why it’s important to make players feel the tone of a setting

6:00 Trick 1: Keep your descriptions brief but memorable — pick one detail you want to make sure the players remember

9:00 Trick 2: What does this look like in the game? Think about how players will interact and the why behind what things look and act like

12:00 Trick 3: What am I playing? High fantasy needs different descriptions and details than horror or other types of games

14:00 Trick 4: Deep logic: Why pull historical details into a high-fantasy game where you could do “whatever you want” (and why what you make up may feel less fantastical than the historical detail)

16:00 Trick 5: Using “generic” fantasy tropes to set up unique twists and subversions

18:00 Trick 6: Don’t introduce things you won’t be able to give the attention they need (i.e., why Beta Ray Bill didn’t make it into The Avengers movies)

20:00 Trick 7: Start your description small and let the players ask for the details they care about

22:00 Trick 8: Curse of Strahd’s Baby Walter Returns! Don’t be afraid to steal plot ideas the players throw out that you didn’t think of — use them to hook that player

26:00 Trick 9: From Spartacus to Plato’s Utopia: Steal smart and without shame

29:00 Trick 10: Be careful not to design so much you can’t run it effectively

30:00 Trick 11: Do spend time building the unique, cool things that players will interact with often

32:00 Trick 12: Why highly magical campaigns where you fly/teleport/space travel often leave players feeling disconnected from the day-to-day worlds their characters are in

35:00 Trick 13: The timing of your sessions should impact your level of detail — monthly games don’t have room or attention for details like a weekly game

39:00 Trick 14: You can’t horny bard your way through Barovia — showing the players what works and what doesn’t in your campaign setting

42:00 Trick 15: How to teach D&D players to be afraid in a Call of Cthulhu game

49:00 Trick 16: If your setting is in our world or historic, search online for real photos and records to show it

50:00 Trick 17: How and when to use an unkillable monster to teach the players to run away

53:00 Trick 18: Like they noted in the original Ravenloft module, horror is tough to convey when everyone is sitting around eating chips

55:00 Trick 19: Skill check difficulty is its own kind of horror

56:00 Trick 20: Know when a too-easy fight could ruin the adventure

58:00 Trick 21: Limiting technology (or turning it to evil) can enhance horror

60:00 Trick 22: How secrets and PC insignificance make Call of Cthulhu feel different

63:00 Trick 23: Modern settings require the highest suspension of disbelief — unless you take them off-world

64:00 Trick 24: Why most Marvel RPGs are set in the ‘80s, even when they’re in the “present-day”

65:00 Trick 25: Establish your difficulty level at the start of the campaign. What level qualifies as “high level” in this world?

66:00 Trick 26: How to pace and benchmark level in your world

68:00 Trick 27: Slave collars: The new player railroad! (Make sure you discuss the situation beforehand and everyone wants to play in it)

70:00 Trick 28: Reskin spells to look different in places like Barovia

72:00 Trick 29: Understand that the dice can roll for the players or against the players at any time

74:00 Trick 30: How available is magic in the world and what does it look like? If a player wants to get a magic item, do they need to go home and buy it, or go out in the wilderness and find it?

77:00 Trick 31: You decide what’s going to be important to the players: Are you making them count rations? Ammunition? Does money even matter to PCs in your world?

78:00 Trick 32: Counting sanity and honor dramatically change the tone of a setting

80:00 Trick 33: What kind of benchmarks are you showing the players so they can see where they stand?

81:00 Trick 34: Involved item lists make players love shopping

82:00 Trick 35: Use skill challenges to reinforce the environment and break up the action

83:00 Trick 36: Death Curse

85:00 Trick 37: If players have an easy-solution spell (like Goodberry to overcome starvation) let it work, but make them do it and describe it so the challenge of the setting isn’t overlooked

90:00 Final thoughts

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 be?

In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave take a deep dive into what party balance and imbalance do to the game, what it means to the DM, and what it means to the players — some of whom might not be entirely copacetic about playing in a game where the party isn’t balanced the way they want it to be.

2:00 Do we, as DMs, care whether the party is balanced or not?

5:00 Cool things DMs can do with unbalanced parties

10:00 Ways an unbalanced party limits what the DMs can do

13:00 Even if you don’t care about party balance, the players might

15:00 Hired Goons! Wizards are executives, so the all-wizard party should hire meat shields

17:00 How to use subclasses in D&D 5E to make sure PCs of the same class still feel different. IE: The 4 Wizards are an Evoker, a Conjurer, a Diviner, and a Blade Singer

23:00 What you gain when the PCs do have a balanced party

29:00 Players tend to care that the party is balanced and handle that themselves

35:00 What to do when a player is worried about party balance and won’t just go with the PCs everyone has brought

39:00 Exploiting weaknesses against high-stat PCs

43:00 Does the importance of party balance change with different systems? (and why it never really matters to the DM)

51:00 The real problem with an unbalanced party? Players don’t like other PCs stepping on their toes? (and why whatever the PCs can or cannot do, at the end of the day, it’s the DM’s problem)

58:00 How do you help the players accept the party’s overlap and deficiencies?

63:00 Final thoughts: Myth confirmed, busted or inconclusive?

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, or as people with a shared hobby just coming together to do the thing and may not have to get along great to make a great campaign?

In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave talk about what they want in the parties they’re playing with, what they care about, and what they let slide. Along the way, they discuss some of their trickier party dynamics challenges, and how they try to keep the games fun for everyone playing.

2:00 What we want to see in our PC parties

7:00 Character class/role/skill overlap and a listener who’s feeling squeezed out

14:00 Some tricks we use to deal with skill overlap

22:00 How the numbers work themselves out at higher levels

26:00 Should you intervene to prevent overlapping characters as the DM or let the players work it out?

32:00 How mechanics have been spread around D&D 5E classes to help with unbalanced parties

37:00 Party roles we enjoy and hate playing

44:00 Can’t we all just get along? Handling player personality dynamics

48:00 Intra-party conflict: When the party fights each other (and a digression into the D&D fiction we have and haven’t read)

52:00 What we want players to do to help bring the party together

59:00 How do you reign in a player who’s hogging the spotlight without squashing their enthusiasm?

66:00 Should you push wallflower players into the spotlight?

73:00 Final Thoughts: Is the way we think we’re playing the way the other players experience us?

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 players occasionally have to miss a session. We deal with it in a variety of ways, from rescheduling to running without them (there’s a ranger in The Woodstock Wanderers who hasn’t been seen since she ran off to “study dinosaurs”).

Although no one likes having players miss a game, we have ways we approach the issue and keep things moving along. In this episode, we reveal all our best advice for overcoming attendance and scheduling conflicts, including our one killer tip for getting players to commit to the next session.

2:00 A gaming club with a problem: How do players missing games impact your campaign?

10:00 Should there be a penalty for missing games? Do they still get XP? Treasure? Magic items?

17:00 The politics of players missing games – are the other players OK with it?

19:00 Information management: How do you keep a player engaged in the story and lore if they’re missing half the content?

26:00 Flexibility and FOMO: Different ways to approach players missing games

32:00 The Cannon Ball Run Gambit

35:00 Adjusting your game for lower session frequency

39:00 And now for something completely different: Try a new campaign or game with the players you have

43:00 Are you playing too often? Adjusting frequency and session length for the players you have

48:00 Why you should keep the tone lighter if players are missing or you’re playing less frequently

52:00 TTRPG scheduling tips: Our one big tip for getting the group to commit to the next session

57:00 Final thoughts

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 that turned out to be a lot of fun! Is this old saw just a myth?

In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave play MythBusters: They dig into their experiences with splitting the party and break down what you gain and lose by introducing this trick to your game.

2:00 Why splitting the party in an RPG doesn’t work the same as a book or movie

7:00 When scouting gets out of hand: The druid works alone

10:00 A few ways to handle solo scouting and fly-away familiars without eating up too much game time and spotlight

20:00 The usual suspects: Breaking PCs out into individual dialogue with NPCs (like the Arkham police)

28:00 Is everyone at the table having fun when they split up?

31:00 Shopping during game-time: Better in some systems than others

34:00 How to balance individual character spotlights and the rest of the party waiting

43:00 How far should you let the player’s interpretation of NPCs and events influence what you planned?

47:00 What makes the party split themselves?

56:00 Character impulsiveness: Good role play or impatient players?

59:00 Tips for DMing split-up parties

63:00 When do you bring the party back together?

66:00 How do you handle table-talk and party knowledge when the characters split up?

69:00 Secrets and lies: How do you handle intraparty secrets and hidden backstories?

74:00 Who is Finneas, anyway?

79:00 Partial-party side quests: Do you do them? How do you handle treasure, XP and … Death?

87:00 Final thoughts: Myth busted, confirmed of inconclusive?

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 different. It’s not just about bumping up stats — you have to make the game FEEL epic. It’s time to pay-off on the plot threads the PCs have been pulling since level 1 and let the players see the impact their characters have had on the world.

In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave reveal their best tips for high-level campaigns, including what they do with “Hall of Fame” characters and how to bring it all to the kind of climax your players and friends will talk about for years.

2:00 Our experiences with long campaigns

6:00 When is a campaign “High Level”?

11:00 High-level play should pay off on the relationships and events built throughout lower-level play

18:00 The PC’s story arcs should still be alive heading into the epic tier

23:00 Who really wants to be king? What does REAL POWER look like in a TTRPG setting?

32:00 How do you bring a high-level campaign to a satisfying conclusion? Pay off on the character’s goals

40:00 What do high-level campaigns look like? How are they different?

46:00 What we want in epic-level villains and monsters

52:00 How we handle thugs, bandits and run-of-the-mill/random encounters for high-level PCs

60:00 “Welcome to the Hall of Fame”: How to bring an epic campaign to a satisfying conclusion

64:00 Do the things video games can’t: Reshape the world in the characters’ (and players’) image

65:00 Going out with a bang: How to nail that last session

·        Bring out that BIG monster you’ve been saving all campaign

·        Try not to TPK them (heroic death can be good, failure is usually bad)

·        Pay off on expectations – don’t subvert them

·        Give them a BIG fight

·        Don’t wait until the final fight to give them the legendary gear

·        Finish it in one session— you don’t want to cut in the middle of the final battle

68:00 Final thoughts

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 downtime and keep the game moving and fun. They also talk about what’s not fun in downtime, and things they’ve tried that the players didn’t like.

But first, we have an ogre to bury … A quantum ogre! A recent article on our site kicked a hornets’ nest of a broader discussion about encounters that DMs op in no matter which way the PCs go. Here’s what we think of the debate and how it fits into reasonable game prep.

It’s all in this week’s episode of 3 Wise DMs.

1:00 Schrodinger’s Encounter gets ambushed by the Quantum Ogre

8:00 Revisiting traumatized players and how it influences online discussions

13:00 The lies DMs tell … and should keep telling

20:00 A frank discussion of how we build and change things on the fly

27:00 Downtime activities: How they fit into 5E vs. prior editions of D&D

32:00 Libraries?! How Quaint! Ways to portray downtime research

39:00 Pros and cons of letting players find incorrect “facts” and false research

47:00 Do you want to let players design new items and spells with downtime?

50:00 Does your adventure even have room for downtime activities?

53:00 Giving PCs a cool base of operations

55:00 Do you open up the world and give players a chance to take on other big downtime projects like building armies, magic items, spells, kingdoms, etc.?

63:00 Training, titles and taxes: Are your downtime activities actually fun?

68:00 How do you bring a long-running, high-level, epic campaign to a satisfying end?

79:00 Final thoughts

You studied the RPG books. You recruited the players. You started a New Game. Every week (or weeks or month) you get everyone together and run them through a world you control! … What if you don’t like it? What do you do when you find yourself running a TTRPG game you don’t enjoy?

The DM is a player, too. If you’re not having fun, there’s no game. We’d never recommend trudging through a campaign you hate just for the players or your pride. Your time’s too valuable. For the game to go on, you must get it back to a point where you enjoy running it. How do you that?

In this episode, hear how Thorin, Tony and Dave make sure their games stay fun — for their players and themselves. Along the way, we’ll talk about how we lean into the things we enjoy and cut the things we don’t, even when those things may seem essential to the game. Plus, we’ll go deeper into DMPCs and how they can be one way for unhappy DMs to reconnect with the fun of the game (and how to keep them from overshadowing your players).

1:00 A new DM who isn’t having fun in Icewind Dale

3:00 DMPCs: Do they make the game more fun for the DM or are they just one more thing to manage?

6:00 What do you do when you start a new game as the DM and it’s not fun for you?

8:00 DM know thyself: What specific parts of DMing do you actually enjoy?

11:00 Don’t be afraid to pull a “Princess Bride” and run your own “good parts” version of the module

16:00 Never listen to what anyone online says you’re doing wrong

19:00 “Your DMPC should be like Gandalf”

22:00 How to make DM prep work more reasonable and more fun

27:00 Run the kind of campaign you’d enjoy reading/watching/playing in

31:00 RPG environment and the limits of survival-focused settings for super-heroic D&D characters

34:00 Encounter difficulty and how the feel of fights should change as you go up in level

40:00 How do you fix a game you don’t like DMing?

43:00 Stop doing the things that make you miserable and find your own DMing style

47:00 Are you playing any NPCs you enjoy being?

50:00 Are you playing with players you enjoy DMing?

55:00 Final thoughts

No matter how much we say it’s the DM’s world, the players know the game too. They have access to all the books, all the lore, even all the monster stats! Sometimes that’s a big help. Other times, it can be a problem for the campaign you want to run.

Have you ever had players who actively spoil what all the monsters do? Or players who think they know what your NPCs are all about? Or a fellow DM who’s DMed every Ravenloft module D&D has produced and is trying not to spoil your run through Curse of Strahd? How do you handle players who don’t separate their personal knowledge from what their characters would know?

Thorin, Tony and Dave go off-book a lot, homebrewing, up-scaling, and repurposing all the time. In this episode they talk about what is OK and not OK metagaming, problems metagaming has created in their games, and how they deal with the players and situations it spawns.

1:00 Dueling Strahds: Metagaming rears its blood-sucking head

3:00 What out-of-character knowledge is or isn’t a problem?

6:00 How metagame expectations can undermine attempts to create original adventures

10:00 How we sometimes struggle with meta-knowledge as PCs

15:00 Reimagining Strahd

18:00 Really, how should PCs react when literally The Devil invites them to dinner or to do a job?

23:00 The Strahd dinners that might’ve been…

29:00 What to do when players think they know what the monsters do?

36:00 “You just don’t want us to win!” When the world doesn’t work the way the players assumed, and they blame the DM

38:00 The Deck of Many Editions: What worked then doesn’t work now, and some players hate that!

45:00 In-depth on vampire challenge levels and the problem with nonmagical damage immunities and

53:00 Changing monsters to create interesting thematic, cinematic, moments

58:00 Metagaming: How do you get players to cut it out and respect your “authority”?

68:00 Monk Owl Bears are too far … Or are they?

72:00 Final thoughts

Characters bring a story to life, and that goes double for your TTRPG campaign. The best of your NPCs will become legends, most of the rest won’t be any more memorable than the thousands of monsters your players slay along the way.

But how do you bring those NPCs to life in a way your players will engage with, trust and remember? Does the DM make an NPC memorable, or is that something the players decide? Does it all come down to who lives, who dies and who tells their story?

In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave talk about their biggest successes and failures creating memorable NPCs, their favorite characters in gaming and beyond, and all the tricks they use to bring their favorite characters to life.

1:00 Metagaming against the NPCs: Fighting snap judgments about the Zhentarim in Storm King’s Thunder

5:00 I KILL IT! When the PCs instantly hate an NPC and kill someone you had bigger plans for

13:00 What makes an NPC memorable?

·        What is the NPC doing for the party?

·        Do the players make them memorable?

·        The NPC that knows things the party doesn’t

·        The comic relief who supports the environment

26:00 How do we bring these NPCs to life?

·        Communicate that they have something to offer

·        Get the party to trust them, but not fully

·        Don’t spill the beans, NPC secrets should tease the party over time

·        Good NPCs have an internal compass, motives and secrets that drive how they act

·        They need a distinct description and personality

·        They need a backstory, but the players don’t need to hear it

33:00 Building NPC personalities

41:00 Our picks for the most memorable NPCs (in RPGs and pop culture)

53:00 What to avoid when creating and playing memorable NPCs (and WTF is a “non-descript” man?!)

58:00 Tips for creating NPCs with depth and character development

62:00 What makes an NPC not work?

72:00 Great NPCs don’t need to stay in their campaign: Tony’s Ra’s Al Ghul

75:00 Final thoughts