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 Dave talk about everything they learned throughout 2021, how it’s changed the way they play, and what they’re planning for 2022.

2:00 2021: A year in 3 Wise DMs gaming

5:00 Tony hints at some upcoming post-level-20 house rules for D&D 5E

11:00 Is it better to push characters into epic-level, beyond-20 play or start new characters?

17:00 Why don’t 5E’s published adventures support high-level play?

23:00 How do you keep the tension and interest up to continue playing after you complete a book adventure?

26:00 Moments we remember from gaming in 2021:

• Epic-powered one-shots
• Teaching people who are totally new to gaming
• Completing classic book modules
• Alien technology
• Making new characters

30:00 Cross-overs and shared DM universes

35:00 Running a totally different, combat-light, character-focused RPG in Call of Cthulhu

43:00 Time management: The tension between letting players figure things out and do their own things, D&D combat, and slowing the game down

50:00 Confronting the time-twisting horror of maps!

54:00 Time management and large games (6 players and up … plus pets)

56:00 Is D&D 5E just another big, clunky combat system?

59:00 Making combat more epic and less time-consuming

63:00 What did we learn in 2021?

• Tony’s trying to limit plot complexity
• Dave’s trying to learn to balance Tony’s storytelling with Thorin’s improv
• Creating your own world vs running a book module
• Thorin’s still trying to speed up sessions and combat

69:00 Final thoughts and the games we’re looking forward to in 2022