Characters Over Combat: What We Learned From Gaming in 2021

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 gaming5:00 Tony hints at some upcoming post-level-20 house rules for D&D 5E11:00 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-shotsTeaching people who are totally new to gamingCompleting classic book modulesAlien technologyMaking new characters30:00 Cross-overs and shared DM universes 35:00 Running a totally different, combat-light, character-focused RPG in Call of Cthulhu43:00 Time management: The tension between letting players figure things out and do their own things, D&D combat, and slowing the game down50:00 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-consuming63:00 What did we learn in 2021?Tony’s trying to limit plot complexityDave’s trying to learn to balance Tony’s storytelling with Thorin’s improvCreating your own world vs running a book moduleThorin’s still trying to speed up sessions and combat69:00 Final thoughts and the games we’re looking forward to in 2022