October – December 2025 Patreon Q&A

There's not a fantastic way to adjust the lazy encounter benchmark for hirelings, henchmen, summoned pets, and so on. There are two ways to adjust the benchmark depending on the power of the group: - Treat them as though they're a level higher (which I don't recommend) - Treat them as though they have more party members than they do (which I do recommend) I recommend the second one because it doesn't have an inadvertant jump at 5th, 11th, and 17th level. You can adjust the number of characters easily and it increases the benchmark. You can decide how much to increase it – maybe pretend the group has one additional character for every two pets or something like that. It's a loose dial, not a firm equation, so adjust as needed. For example, if you have five characters and they have three summoned pets or hirelings or tag-along NPCs, you can start by pretending they have six characters. If that still doesn't feel accurate, you can increase it to seven and so on. Don't hang on too tightly to the math and instead just pretend the group is bigger than it is as needed. Hope that helps!

What procedures does 5e have or encourage?

I think its ok to spend an entire session zero just making characters if you think the campaign is going to be long enough to manage it. From my understanding of Traveler, half the fun is going through the process of making a character. I've only played a Traveler campaign once but we enjoyed the process of making those characters and I think that might get lost with pregens. If you just want to try the system out for a short campaign, pregens can work just fine. But if the campaign is longer, I'd consider taking the time to build characters together. I think there's a benefit to this even if it can feel clunky sometimes. Building characters together helps build those connections you described as well. Players can talk about how their characters know each other. You can use character connection lists too like those found in the Lazy GM's Resource Document: https://slyflourish.com/lazy_gm_resource_document.html#connectingcharacters Good luck!

I think there are two ways to give off the sense of scale: size and age. Big things and old things. The easiest way to give that sense of scale is to tell them. Talk about how big some of the monuments are or talk about how old something is. For the latter, you can frame it from the perspective of the characters who are best able to determine a thing's age. I like what Rodney Thompson described as the Three Fs. Fantastic, functional, familiar. What makes something familiar to the players? What is the function of the thing? And what makes it fantastic? We need to ground some of the awesome descriptions we have with real-life things so they feel *real*. That can be hard to do sometimes but I think it gives that extra edge of authenticity to fantastic locations and monuments. If you're looking for fantastic inspiration, use origin, conditions, and effect tables. Roll on them and see what sorts of combinations you get. You can find them in the Lazy GM's Resource document: https://slyflourish.com/lazy_gm_resource_document.html#coreadventuregenerators

I'm glad the eight steps from Return helped you out! I do think publishers create a false impression that GMs should write adventures the same way they publish adventures. Even though many GM books describe it differently, it ends up being a problem. I think the new 2024 DMG and recent books like the FR books show a better way – at least a shorter way – to write out adventure prompts. As for learning new systems, I don't have a scientifically proven approach that's better than all the others but I do have some thoughts. Here are a few things I try to do: - Read the intro to the book - hopefully it gives an idea how the system works. - Flip through the book to see where it spends most of its time. - Look at the character sheet and see what I recognize and what looks different. - Find the chapter on the core mechanics of the game. Often each game has a clear chapter on how the game itself works at the table. It's usually not too long. - Look at character creation. How does one make a character? Often big RPG books are full of things like spells or abilities or magic items that fill out most of its pages. That sort of stuff you don't need to read right away. Flipping through the book often tells you where it spends a lot of its time and it usually isn't on the chapters you need to read to understand the system. Lately I've also tried to run some solo versions of any games I want just to learn how the system plays at the table before I'd inflict it on my friends. That takes more effort but it's good fun.

Thank you so much! It's my great pleasure to give you stuff to hopefully entertain you and your friends. Happy holidays to you as well! Exciting times in 2026!

I think it's cool to get some feedback but I wouldn't get too formal about it. Some self reflection and some feedback from players is good but you don't want it to end up demotivating you or making you doubt the skills you clearly have having finished a three-year campaign. Not a lot of groups ever finish a campaign so first, be happy about that! Like the rest of our lazy GM prep, have a loose grip on this sort of stuff. You don't need to do a deep and brutal self-analysis. Instead, rejoyce at having had such a wonderful campaign with your friends!

I do find I have to figure out what sort of encounter system is in place for any given game i'm running. Dragonbane and Daggerheart, for example, have very different methods of determing encounters. Dragobane really doesn't have one and Daggerheart has it based on tier. The LEB doesn't work for any game outside of 5e, of course. But most games have some system similar to it. I never worked one up for Pathfinder 2 but reading the Pathfinder 2 GM Core Revised – it looks like it has the same sort of math as PF1 – four creatures of a level equal to 2 minus the group's average level looks like a normal match for a standard encounter. I think PF2's system is pretty straight foward with a budget built on the comparison of characters and monsters. I think it still helps to have an idea, for any given system, what type of monster is a normal match for a single character at a certain level. When you know that, you can usually calculate the rest.

I didn't plan out a certain number of sessions. I let the campaign go where it would go based on the evolving situation. That's pretty much how I run all my campaigns. Level-ups were based on treasure. Sometimes they found a lot and leveled up quickly. Othertimes they didn't and didn't level up. I had items in the game that were key to the story of the game so those awarded a lot of XP. But otherwise it went how the game went.

I think its important that it isn't an all-or-nothing situation where the characters have to accomplish everything. Instead, they have several things they can try to accomplish and get as many as they can. You don't need all six artifacts to succeed at Crypts of Karigulon. You don't need all three items of power in Ravenloft or Scarlet Minotaur. Instead, there are degrees of success. That helps. Also, telling the players not to stress too much about it is also helpful in the beginning. You want a timer, of course, but you don't want the whole thing to be too stressful because of that timer. If you want, you can include some extra time in your game for breaks and rules-lookups and let them know that you've accounted for it. It wont' change much in the end. Most people know why you have this timer going – the session *has* to end at a certain time. So they'll forgive you. At least that's been my experience.

Yeah, no. That's an unfortunately common idea among brand new DMs who watched or read too much George RR Martin. https://slyflourish.com/avoid_removing_player_agency.html https://slyflourish.com/dm_mistakes.html Any sort of planned event that goes against the characters is almost never going to play out well. Character agency is really important and you have no agency of the GM is just going to summon an ancient red dragon. The GM said they were doing it to make you feel a certain way – that's a no-go as well. Build situations, spotlight the heroes, let the game play out at the table – these are fundamental GM principles I've seen come up time and again: https://slyflourish.com/top_advice.html

Hi Ryan! The main thing I've noticed is that martials have, in my opinion, too much stuff to do now and take a long time to finish their turns. We have a mechanist / fighter who gets four attacks a round with 1d6 + 1d8 on each attack (more than a greatsword) because his hands count as light weapons and he can get the extra attack with dual wield. I have no idea why they thought having *another* attack on a bonus action would be a good idea. Our fighter has a huge range of martial maneuvers he can do and it takes a long time to adjudicate all of them. We had a game this past Sunday and both of those two players were missing and folks remarked at how much faster the game went. So that's the main thing I've noticed. I haven't seen anything going on with rituals, though.

I think Tomb of Annihilation is a lot of fun and is still set in the Forgotten Realms. You can take a look at Princes of the Apocalypse and see if its for you – it's not for everyone. The new Forgotten Realms books have lots of cool FR locations and small adventure writeups you can expand into larger campaigns on your own. That's on the FR side. You could reskin Dungeons of Drakkenheim into Neverwinter if you wanted to stay in the FR or just throw Drakkenheim in your own version of the world instead. That's a very well loved adventure. Of course, as you say, City of Arches can fit in well as can Ruins of the Grendleroot if you want some undeground flavor. You can tie Grendleroot into Out of the Abyss for some fun underdark adventuring. Hope that helps!

I would expand his spears of the damned to be more like dreaful blessings: https://slyflourish.com/dreaded_blessings.html That way he can use them to do lots of other things and give you a bunch of freedom to use them or not as you need. Against four 20th level characters and sidekicks, I'd probably also put some simple but powerful vampire minions in there. For me, I'd reskin basic Forge of Foes stat blocks so I don't have to remember too much. CR 10 AC/DC 17 HP 155 Atk/Prof +9 DPR 65 Atks 3 × 1d6 + 22 Something like that with a bonus action to move without provoking and ranged attacks like necrotic bolts or something.

Of course it always goes without saying that you like what you like, and will play what you like. No shame in that. Just genuinely curious.

Yeah, these cameos aren't always the best. I introduced the villians from old D&D lore in Wild Beyond the Witchlight and no one had any idea who they were. That's fine, though. The cameo is now a new character if they don't know who they are. You can just play them out like any new NPC only they have this bit of history. I can't say if it's a big problem across all of WOTCs products but certainly I don't think it matters to everyone that Venger is on the cover of the DMG, for example. Of course, you can always replace these big named NPCs with NPCs of your own.

I would let such things play out organically. Important points will come back. If no one remembers (including you), is anything lost? I think it really helps to have one of your players take on the roll of a "scribe" who takes notes and shares them with the group. This can keep old secrets in context and help players discover them again when they need them. But I also think its ok to have a loose grip on such things and let it play out as it plays out. Important stuff comes back.

It really depends but this is exactly what's happening in my Dragon Empire game. I think some quests the characters could go on include: - Rescuing a deposed ruler - Stealing money from the tyrant - Breaking supply lines - Assassinating the empire's key figures - Acquiring powerful weapons to use against the empire - Forging alliances with outside groups - Setting up smuggling operations - Funding insurgents and rebellion groups - Destroying equipment - Engaging in propaganda campaigns - Conducting espionage against the tyrant Watch Andor for some great ideas as well.

Great question! The output of the villians, their goals, and their quests can come about through secrets and clues discovered during sessions. The characters might run into minions of the villians, or pick up portents, or get written clues, or other ways to find out what's going on. A villain's herald might announce them outright at a local bar. So yeah, secrets and clues are a great way to expose what a villian is up to.

For me, I handle such situations in the narrative of the game and not so much in the mechanics. I mgiht mention that they can't use an area attack spell in an area without hitting civllians or something like that. Or that civllians might be in the way making movement difficult. But I largely abstract such things to not take away from the rest of the game. I love your idea and I'm glad the timed boss worked well!

That's two questions but I forgive you. I can't say but I don't think it'll be a problem. The GM still decides if a roll is warranted and, in Daggerheart, that roll is based on what the possible outcomes could be. Otherwise they just do the thing or not.

Not being able to vary difficulty is a feature and trait of a roll-under system like this but I don't think it gets in the way. We've only had a couple of sessions so I can't say for sure but so far it's fine. Since the math is all pretty flat across characters across the whole game, you don't need a sliding scale of difficulty independent of the characters. There *is* a way to increase difficulty and that's boons and banes which is essentially adding more d20s to your roll and choosing the best or worst. It won't matter too much if someone has an 18 in a skill, of course, but it can double the odds of failure. Anyway, time will tell, but I think it's fine.

Solo RPGs is a great way to get used to a system and wire our brains for good improv play, but that's not what's going to help you get started running games for other people. I don't have the best answers on what might be keeping you from starting but my only suggestion is just to start. The new D&D Heroes of the Borderlands set is a great place to start. It's intended for brand new GMs and has everything in the box you need. Don't get yourself too worked up about running the game. Just run it. Bring two or three friends and run a session for an hour or two. Don't make a big deal out of it. Try to spend some time considering what's holding you back. Try to put what it is into context but then set it aside and just focus on scheduling a game and running one. More products and more systems isn't likely to help in this case, I don't think. Good luck!!

I try to really think about what makes each campaign different from the others. That focus on the characters and the current villains, their goals, and their quests helps me separate one group from another since those are so group specific. Lately all my campaigns have been very different from one another so I haven't had any trouble separating them. Of course that means I can't benefit from sharing material between campaigns like I was able to when I ran the same published or homebrew campaigns for multiple groups at the same time. My advice is, put the characters foremost into your mind and think through the eyes of your villains.

Yeah! That was a fun project for Kobold Press. I think they just pitched me on doing weird lists and I came up with the ideas for the nine lists. It's also weird that it's nine. They approached me about the work. I had already done some Warlock work for their Patreon magazine. I don't remember the first work I did for them – maybe a monster or a lair for Tome of Beasts. They were aware of the other work I did and reached out to me I think. I don't think I applied to them. The rate was word-rate-based with an understanding that lists have fewer words than normal projects so the word-rate was higher. I still let publishers know what my minimum rate is for a project and that number has gone up. The rates too have gone up though so that's good. Lately I've turned down a lot of work because I have so many things I want to do for you guys! For me, I have to ask whether the project is fun enough to work on, pays well, and helps expand my work and my name out beyond my normal sphere. Otherwise, working for myself on projects for you guys is a better use of my time and effort – which is often the case these days. I'm lucky to be in that position! One thing about freelancing and working for larger publishers is that just about the time they come knocking on your door is the time you don't really need to work for them anymore. Everyone's looking for an angle and leverage. As a freelancer, you're hoping to leverage getting your name out in a big publisher's product. Once you *have* a big name, publishers want to capitalize on *your* name to help sell *their* product. It's a continual balance and not always fair in either direction. The Weird Lists project was a great mental exercise in coming up with the ideas for the list topics and then the twenty items for the list. I really recommend the "come up with ten ideas" approach for brainstorming. I think it's a great way to get your mind nimble and flexible to build out lots of stuff in your RPGs. Try coming up with your own lists for things you need for your own campaign!

I haven't seen Nomicon. I have a copy of Tome of Adventure Design on my shelf but it's so big that I find it kind of difficult to find the stuff I need at any given time. For me, I need something that focuses down on the things I really need to roll randomly (which I try to do in my own products) because trying to reference everything in a book that big is just too much work for me. That's really why I haven't done a spotlight on it.

I don't think that's a bad idea! Finding out there's more to the toady villain isn't as bad as revealing that a trusted NPC is actually a villain. That sucks. But turning a villain into a good guy is fun. Be ready for the characters to not give a shit, though. My players still hated the villain-turned-ally. I played into it a lot and they still begrudgingly accepted his help at certain points. Alternatively you can skip this idea and let them have a satisfying time kicking the hell out of him and calling it done.

We mostly didn't worry about it. I could inflict strife or exhaustion as needed and most of the time it worked across all three systems. Sometimes I'd have the character affected from the rules of their own system if it had a connection to the characters. Exhaustion wasn't so tied in that it mattered much and I don't think I inflicted much exhaustion that I can think of. So we mostly hand-waved it and figured it out as it came up. Most of the time it was fine. Sometimes we had a laugh about how weird it was but moved on. I don't recommend running a big mix like this. Instead, I'd stick to one central agreed-upon core book and then let any other rules wrap around that and modify as needed.

Here's a list of combat objectives that don't just have one side wipe out the other for an upcoming project I'm working on: 1. Defeating the boss. 2. Rescuing a prisoner and getting out. 3. Destroying one or more monuments or artifacts. 4. Stealing something and getting out. 5. Disrupting a ritual. 6. Allowing a ritual to complete. 7. Destroying a powerful weapon. 8. Causing the area to fall apart. 9. Crossing an area. 10. Escaping the area. 11. Waiting for reinforcements. 12. Convincing minions to turn on their leader. 13. Waiting for an event to take place. 14. Waiting for an artifact to power up. 15. Breaking a protective barrier. 16. Turning one force against another. 17. Holding off enemies so others can escape. 18. Redirecting enemies from another target. 19. Breaking enemy morale. 20. Opening a portal. I think its important to ask why the other potential combatants are there – sometimes the situation helps determine what the outcome should be. This list of quests could also determine what characters, or even NPCs or monsters, might be doing that isn't just being ready for a fight: 1. Find an item 2. Kill a villain 3. Rescue an NPC 4. Uncover a secret 5. Clear out monsters 6. Protect a monument 7. Protect an NPC 8. Steal an item 9. Return an item 10. Close a gate 11. Open a gate 12. Activate a monument 13. Disable an artifact 14. Recover an item 15. Convince an NPC 16. Awaken a monster 17. Put a monster to sleep 18. Bury a secret 19. Discover a monument 20. Dig up an artifact

Being able to enjoy the journey over the destination may just have to come out in play. One interesting thing about the starter set is that it really *has* no quests. It's meant to be pretty self-directed. Some players also just enjoy the action and spending a lot of time hanging around town isn't that interesting to them. Having some interesting scenes coming up while in town might shake things up. Look for books of town and city encounters like the Waterdeep City Encounters book (one of my favorites).

A downward beat is any moment in the game where the players aren't pulled up by what happened. It's all about the feelings. Are they yelling and cheering like the kids in Stranger Things or looking at each other and saying "wow, that was rough". You can't know that any given situation is going to really be an upward or downward beat until it happens. Because of this, you have to prepare to improvise – having a handful of prompts to generate upward or downward beats given the situation you're going to run. In answer to your question, I think a frustrating victory counts as a downward beat. Here are some articles on the topic: https://slyflourish.com/upward_and_downward_beats.html https://slyflourish.com/beats_of_a_dungeon_crawl.html https://slyflourish.com/deep_dive_with_robin_laws.html

I've been writing about this for a little while recently. I think it's useful to start thinking about threats after a session zero but you don't need to have them fully filled out in order to run your first sessions. Out of a session zero you usually have enough for your first couple of games. I like to have cascading threats – low power, medium power, and high power. Maybe they're all part of one organization or maybe they're acting independently. But this gives them bosses a little closer to what they're doing now and big looming threats far off. For threats, I like to come up with three. For each of these threats or villains, I like to have a goal and three quests they're working on or will work on to accomplish their goals. That's usually enough for me.

Yeah, at tier 3 it's really about apocalyptic threats and I think that's ok. Hopefully in your campaign those threats were foreshadowed early enough. Going to other worlds and planes of existence and dealing with things there is also a good feeling tier-3 threat. But at tier 3, those are the sort of threats tier 3 characters are going to face. Otherwise, they might as well retire!

I actually just talked about this in yesterday's Readings and Reflections! I like the idea of timed events where you know a big conclusion is going to happen at a set time no matter what the characters have done or where they're going. See my articles and posts about running i6 Ravenloft in a single session, Scarlet Minotaur in a single session, and the hero-tier adventure Crypts of Karigulon. I'm trying to think of other models for these fixed-timed scenarios but I need to do more thinking before I have great answers for it. Those are good models though.

I really don't know. I'm always the one to put quests in front of the characters. I think you might really need to tell the players in the group that it's up to them to build the motivation to explore locations in a more west marches style game. But I think it's also appropriate in West Marches to have rumors that feel like quests like "the goblin warbands avoid the tower of black spires for some reason but it's said a powerful weapon is hidden within!". Enough of those and hopefully your players are excited to go there. I don't know how much motivation one needs to put into locations in a West Marches game but I bet it isn't none.

I just got Dolmenwood too and haven't had a chance to really dive into it too much but it is thick! In general, I recommend picking one particular physical region and learning what's around there. You don't need the whole setting memorized if you're just going to be in one town or region. I'd start with that. These days, more sourcebooks are written to be generally absorbed and then focused down to particular regions so hopefully that can work. But don't feel like you need the whole setting in mind to run a game there – focus on where the characters begin.

I don't get a lot of details but I do ask for player names and character names. I think, at conventions, people really just want to get into the game so I can see where some of the pushback comes from. I can see it being fun, though, so maybe making it somewhat optional is a way to go. But yeah, convention time can be tight so I can see people wanting to just get into the game. Maybe save the introductions for the time before you start or after the game is done?

Having just finished a total 5e mashup of D&D 2014, D&D 2024, and Level Up Advanced 5e – and having played Tales of the Valiant with another group at the same time, my recommendation is to have a baseline ruleset that everyone follows with a single core player's handbook that everyone uses. Then you can add ideas from other systems to this core set: - Supply and exploration ideas from Level Up Advanced 5e - Monsters from Flee Mortals - Doom points and luck from Tales of the Valiant And if you want, you can bring some sub-classes over from other systems and work with your players to make sense of them within your core rules. So yeah, in your case I'd stick to D&D 2024 and then build off of that. In the end, all the 5es can really be supplements to any existing 5e just like we had supplements for D&D 2014 for the past ten years.

I think you can do two things. First have some part of the quest that's out of the control of the paladin and the rest of the group that some group of NPCs has to work on. "Come back later when we have more information" sort of thing. Maybe the gang goes underground and is silent enough that the group can't investigate further until they rise back up again. But also consider just telling the group that that quest line is paused for a bit. They'll understand. You have a group of real human beings at the table who can get why something like that is happening and that's fine. Not everything needs to be in-world. We can state clearly to our players why we're doing a thing and it really helps smooth things out many times.

I really enjoyed running the same adventures for multiple groups and did so many times with both published adventures and homebrew adventures. I saved a little bit of time in processing the adventures but the events of both groups took them in very different directions and that was a lot of fun. I wouldn't try to get crafty and have both groups operating in the same world. Only you would know about it and it'd likely make it harder to prep without a lot of gain. Running two independent instances of the same adventure can work really well.

I wouldn't try to pack everything into one session. I think its ok to have a session aftermath and then maybe just a fun social time talking about the campaign and what you liked and what you're looking forward to next. I would be more afraid of short-changing the campaign ending – both the boss fight and the one-year-later montage than I would be of feeling like you have too much room.

I am asking myself this very question as I prepare my Daggerheart game! I think there are a few things we can do to have players help build the world. First, we can ensure we leave parts of our world blank so players and their characters' histories can fill them in. We don't need to open up the whole world to our players. Instead, we can focus on specifics that they bring to fill in those parts of the world. In my DH game, I'm purposefully leaving things like histories, factions, and gods blank for now until I see if the players come up with some ideas for those. A lot of the texture and tapestry of the world can remain blank until we, as a group, fill it out. I think we can also prepare and ask specific questions. like "tell me about the god your character worships" or "tell me about where the other members of your guild like to hang out". One thing for my group, and I bet I'm not alone, is trying to avoid joke replies. I might state clearly that humor is great but let's not default to joke names and domains for all the gods if we can. Try to get into the world itself before making everything a gag to make other players laugh at the table. Once in a while is fine but if we're building a world, the joke is going to get stale.

A cult of a false hydra seems awesome and truely mind-bending! There could be rings of cultists – some of whom are dedicated to simply keeping the false hydra in view so they don't forget. Then other outer-ring cultists who know that there's this void in people's lives and know that these inner-facers (wallfacers if we're going to steal from The Three Body Problem) know the truth. Like the Nameless King, there's a void in people's minds. They know something was there. That people once existed that are now forgotten and something is responsible but they don't know what, but it is still worth their worship. Maybe they believe that not knowing is the true answer to enlightenment. It's a great idea for a cult!!

Dreadful Blessings aren't needed for legendary actions. Legendary actions are already balanced into the math of the monster so it's just what they do. But you can use dreadful blessings to give monsters *more* actions if you feel like their action economy isn't keeping up. *When* you use a dreadful blessing also matters. Sometimes you can eat a stun and let the monster simply be stunned until its their turn and *then* use a dreadful blessing to break the stun and dump out a bunch of attacks. This gives the stunner some fun and still doesn't remove all the monster's agency. It also ensures the monk doesn't chain-stun (a big problem in D&D 2014 if you ask me) on the same turn because its already stunned. I do replace legendary *resistance* with dreadful blessings since they can do similar things, but not legendary actions.

Every so often something comes up that feels like it could be another step: the adventure's hook or faction / villian quests and the like. I think most of this can be captured in other steps like secrets and clues or scenes. The eight steps are big buckets. You can put a lot of different things in each step with that higher-level category in mind. "Fantastic Locations" can be big set-piece scenes or tiny one- or two-word dungeon rooms. Scenes can include quests, hooks, next steps, things on the horizon, or lots of other things. NPCs can be chunky dossiers or just the names you need to remember. But, specifically for faction movement, I'd probably put those into secrets and clues so they're more player and character-facing. You can always create a new step if you want but I'd try to find a way to include it in existing steps first.

Hi Ides! I chose 5 DBs at tier 4 because it felt right. I'd usually burn them out or come close by the end of a battle and there weren't so many that players felt like they could never use them all. I think having three at tier 2, four at tier 3, and five at tier 4 worked well for my games but I'm still experimenting. The size and importance of the boss matters too I think. But somewhere between two and five feels right. I talked more about Dreadful Blessings in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YulwEOVRLvU&t=2078s No major changes to how I use them, I think, but boy did they help me run high-tier games. I also think its great training for Daggerheart's Fear mechanic!

That's tough and it's probably a balance between talking to them about how best to manage the game and also give them the valve they need to chat about other stuff. Common advice includes: - Ensuring you schedule some time before the game so they can chat then. - Making it clear when the game is on and going. - Have another break about 90 minutes into the game so people can chat more. - Gently bringing people back to the game when conversations stray. It's all easy to say but hard to implement. I go back to probably my most common piece of advice: talk to your players about it out of character. Before a game begins, talk to them about wanting them to have the chatter but please do it before, after, or during a break to be kind to the other players who have the floor and are focused on the game. The other part is managing your *own* expectations. Sometimes conversations stray. Make the adventures and quests a little more lightweight and demand less time for them to be completed to account for the extra table chatter. It's not ideal but maybe the two approaches can meet. One other thought is to ask one of the players to help you manage this – or even all of them! Police thy neighbor! If someone breaks out of the game during the game, please bring them back to the game.

I have a friend who does facilitation and loved a lot of the concepts in the 8 steps and used them in his corporate facilitation jobs and in presenting in general. The strong start, the outline of potential scenes, secrets and clues, the characters (knowing your audience). It ended up being valuable for him! I think there are lots of other connections between RPGs and other aspects of our lives. It's used in therapy and in treating other conditions quite a bit these days.

If you have the chance to move the NPC to a game in which the player of the PC is there, that's obviously preferred. I've had it where entire arcs of a session were intended for a particular character and the character missed it. It's a disappointment but it happens. I think we just move on. So yeah, any opportunity we have to shift things around to ensure the PC hook is there for the player of that PC we should take but sometimes it happens. Another thing we can do, though, is just have an out-of-game conversation with our players and move things around. Say they all agreed to go to the tomb of Kendal Olimar's ancestor but that player can't make it. We can just explain the real-world situation and suggest they go to some other place instead. They'll understand.

Yeah, I definitely prefer heroic characters. I think games can get nasty if they're too focused on greed and leaning into an "evil" campaign. Some groups love them – that's fine for them. It's just not my thing. So yeah, I tend to push hard on the main driver and motivation of the characters *before* players start to build character concepts in their head. It's hard to do, though!

I have them but haven't had a chance to really dig into them. Sorry!

Some that jump out to me: - Looking up rules - Taking notes for the group - Managing loot - Acting as a "caller" and facilitating choices among other players - Ordering food and managing such orders Those are the ones that leap to mind but I'm sure there are others.

An interesting thing about warlocks and their patrons is that they don't need to get along or even be aligned the same way. Just because you're drawing power from that patron doesn't mean you have to serve it. A creature like the fathomless could have a lot of fascets going on – some of which are self-destructive. Thus, the warlock could be acting directly against the will of the patron and still be following a direction it has in some segment of its vast mind. You could tie the patron to an entity that isn't the main antagonist of the campaign, but some deep forgotten entity that doesn't directly come into play except through the warlock. So yeah, the player can absolutely play against the draw of the entity who serves their power. It's a fun struggle.

Hi Christopher! I think there's probably no better way to be tightly tied to an adventure than to write it out yourself – assuming the type of adventure you write is the type you like running =) But yeah, that's not realistic for every session of every game any GM wants to run. We all need different things to feel like we have a handle on the game. I know that my own style of writing adventures (more like scenarios) is filling out the stuff I tend to use at my own games. I think a useful way to go is to look at the stuff you find most valuable when writing and running your own published adventures and see how you can get more of that in your more lightweight prep. For me, even just cutting down the sentences into fragments and ignoring the stuff I already *know* helps me quite a bit. I don't typically feel like the stuff I've written for publication is easier for me to run than my normal prep but that's just me I think. Hope that helps!

Sounds like a really good pattern you have! I think up front, it's worth taking a look at the long-form adventure you're considering and deciding what can be cut down. You may not need to cut as much as you think depending on how things go, but you want to be sure to get where you need to get when you start to get closer to the end. For Curse of Strahd, I'd start wtih the drawing of the cards to see where the items of Ravenloft end up in Barovia. Then you can focus down on those locations and see what areas you can trim to keep things to your schedule. You also want to bookmark enough time for the big conclusion in the castle itself – I don't know exactly how you can gauge how many sessions that takes – probably at least four depending on where Strahd is. You can also use the "strahd comes to you" idea from my ravenloft one-shot as a way to say "however it goes, you're going to face him in the final session wherever you are". Going back to the deck, you can tailor the deck before players draw cards to cut things out. Maybe you don't want them traveling all the way to the amber temple or whatever it is, so you remove that card. You can do the same for other locations you think are too far out of the way. Maybe ensure at least one item is in the castle itself to consolidate it. So my main advice is to read through the adventure and see what you want to focus on and what to cut and try to figure out the pacing so you can keep things on schedule across the sessions you have to run it.

Hi Vernon! Jasper F right below you asked a very similar question! For me, the most important thing for me to remember is where the last session ended. I can usually riff the rest. I honestly don't worry too much about the continuity but if I wanted to keep better track, having a list of the things that happened in the game can help and updating any NPC trackers I might have helps too. Usually the important things that happened happened to NPCs or characters. Jotting down those notes helps a lot. It also really helps if you can ask one of the players to take and share notes so that you can the rest of the group can reference them. Adding that to a session zero can really help a lot. Good luck!

If you can, asking one of your players to take notes will better engage you and them in the story. It's great when it works. I find, for me, I mostly have to remember where the previous session ended and that clues me in enough to read over the past notes and see if any secrets are still relevant or not. That's about the only secret tracking I do. If you have the time and energy, a few bullets of the activities in a previous session is often enough for you to remember what happened and what they learned. Not always, but most of the time I'd guess.

Yeah, I'll have to look into that. The Artisanal Database is built from the open 5e material available at https://open5e.com It's a volunteer-run organization and effort and people have other things going on in their lives so it's not always up to date. The 5.2 material in particular is still getting updated. When I have a moment (which seems slim at this point), I can try to go update items like that myself. But time is always tight. Sorry! It is easy for me to update the database when open5e updates their records. I'll spend a little time on it today and see what I can do. Update: I checked and yeah, Open5e's data format doesn't include the option for *who* can attune an item so that's not something I can pull into the 5eADB. I brought it up with them but it might be a big change to incorporate and all the data would have to be reingested which may take some time. Sorry!

I think breaking down the city into districts and focusing on one particular district at a time can help. I know it's not Greyhawk, but the Waterdeep City Encounters book on the DM's Guild has a lot of fun ways to make a city come alive. https://www.dmsguild.com/en/product/251816/waterdeep-city-encounters Running big cities can be tough but focusing on the goal of the characters and the locations of most interest to them can help, I think. Your players don't want to be overwhelmed anymore than you do. The material on Greyhawk in the D&D 2024 DMG does a good job of focusing on the quarters of the city and offering useful starting places for adventure. I'd focus on that and add locations as you need.

I think there are a few things you can do to help with this. A big one is clarifying who's "on deck". I do this when I want the pace to speed up. I'll tell the person who's turn it is and then I'll address the *next* player on the turn and tell them they're "on deck" so they know they're up next. This usually speeds things up and also clarifies to the players that you *want* to speed things up. You can also have a conversation at the beginning of the session before anything begins and say "Sometimes the pace of the game can slow down when we get into combat. Please be ready before your turn with whatever you need to do on your turn. Look up your spells. Look up your class features. Be ready to go when your turn is called so we can move things along". That might help a little bit too. Asking players to note the page numbers of their spells and abilities and having their books ready can help too. The other tricks for faster games are more brutal: - Run with fewer players - Run at lower levels Those are the two clearest ways to speed things up but they're not always possible. I have six to seven players in my 20th level game next week!

I think it can be worth taking some time at the beginning of a session to re-baseline a campaign since you're switching from a one shot to a longer campaign. You can email them and let them know you'll be doing so and what your goals are for the session zero: - Explaining the campaign arc and truths - Clarifying the roles of the characters in the story and as a group - Giving the players opportunities to build out their backstories and tie them to the larger story going on. Honestly, characters with limited backstories aren't nearly as big a problem for me as characters with backstories that don't follow the theme of the campaign. Welcome to the hobby!!!

Do the characters know he's evil? Are they going to get duped? I think its ok to have a patron who's suspicious as long as the players have the opportunity to find it out. I think it can be a rug pull if it turns out this good guy god you've been working for has been bad all this time. That feels like a betrayal to me. I have a lot more fun with sinister complicated factions and patrons than ones who hide their devious ways.

Yeah! That seems like a great advantage of play by post. Notes you can always go back to. I think asking players to volunteer to write notes and share those notes with the rest of the group can help. In one of my games, the notes are fantastic. In the others, people take notes but its in paper notebooks and the like. I play fast and loose in my games so sometimes we lose the details or I'll ask someone to remind me of a name that slipped out of my head. With three regular campaigns going, it's hard for me to remember everyone and everything and I don't think that completely breaks the game. Asking your players what they remember of a situation can help. Reviewing your own prep notes to look at previous secrets and clues and ask if those came out or not can help too. But also, we can be kinder to ourselves and remember that it's ok if things are messy sometimes.

I can't say why more shops don't use Bits and Mortar. It might just not be something they understand or want to deal with. If you're able to have a constructive conversation with the stores owners and managers about it – maybe as an email sent their way – explaining that they have the option to send out digital versions of physical books that costs them nothing and gives their customers a better option than just buying it online, maybe that can help. I'd suggest finding their customer support email if they have one and asking them to set it up. Show them how, maybe.

I still follow my own advice for spiral campaign development and the campaign one-sheet design even for games as complicated as my Dragon Empire game. I think we can spiral out as the characters spiral out by diving back into the source material and learning more about what's going on. Digging into the Midgard Worldbook, for example, gives me more ideas for factions and situations I can bring into my game but I didn't need to do so all at once. I can do little bits as our adventures continue. I still think focusing on the session I have ahead of me is better than worrying about the bigger world stuff going on.

I think there's no perfect format for a published adventure. Even WOTC, who has been doing this for 25 years based on the work of TSR who did it 25 years previous keeps changing their format. I applaud them for trying new things like the short 500 word adventure outlines they have in the DMG and now in the Forgotten Realms Adventures in Faerun book but they're obviously not for everyone. Over on the discord, I wrote a list of what I think are good criteria for an adventure: - Material we can't easily come up with ourselves. - Options for all three pillars. - Room for different character types and motivations - Lots of room for character agency and choice - Engaging location and map design - Clear, useful, and differentiating lore - Strong ties to the world's lore – more than just proper names but how the elements of lore fit in the world. I definitely think shorter is better these days.

Having time to break away from doomscrolling on my various platforms and just sort of disconnecting for a bit to think about my game helps me. I get inspired a lot by thinking about my games as I go to sleep at night. It's my way to count sheep. I try to dive into whatever I think the cool bit is in my campaign. The "What if" sort of questions that can shift things around and aim the spotlight on the most entertaining stuff. I love video game music. The BG 3 soundtrack, Horizon Forbidden West, Warhammer 40k Darktide; those are some of my favorites right now. I'm inspired by all sorts of books, TV shows, comics, video games and other fiction. Too many to count really. I love horror movies a lot and bring ideas in from them: Hellraiser 1 & 2, Midsommar, Hereditary, Nosferatsu, The Ritual, Bone Tomahawk, and so on.

I'm actually running it tomorrow! My plan is to draw a loose map with lines and boxes instead of a detailed map. I also wouldn't recommend the players draw an accurate map. There's no way they can keep up. The idea of describing things and making the players map it I think is too hard for a dungeon as complex as Ravenloft in a single session with a timer running.

Hi there! There is a home base put into the City of Arches sourcebook, the one published and funded on Kickstarter. However, you can find that material in Uncovered Secrets Volume 2 as well for you patrons. Take a look there.

I think you can use the standard FoF stats to turn any A5e monster into a monster hitting as hard as the 2024 monsters do. Most of everything there is balanced fine except damage which works best as 7 x cr total damage output per round or 10 x CR for legenary monsters or monsters above CR 20ish. That alone can turn them into great powerhouses. Like you, I really like all the other stuff A5e has in the Monstrous Menagerie.

This sort of thing can be tough if the rest of the group isn't into it. There are some fun things you could do like make his family farm a home base for the characters. Something they can build out into a big estate over the course of a campaign. Try to find ways to bring the other characters into the farm and then turn it into a big expandable bastion-style thing. That's one way. If you don't think it's going to gel with the other characters and players, you might need to have an out-of-character conversation with the player or the group to get things straightened away. I had trouble with a player who really wanted a home base but wanted it to be *their* home base. It didn't go well.

That sounds like a great time! It's been a long time since I read through or ran Vault of the Dracolich but I think it should work fine with Shadowdark. It was actually written to be run with 3e, 4e, or 5e in mind when it first came out!

Some players dig the folk-heroic player-challenging style games like Shadowdark while others like the more super-heroic high-fantasy character-challenging games like 5e and others. My recommendation is to give it a try. Ask to run just a few sessions of a system like Shadowdark. Explain how the game works and the style they should expect but ask to just give it a try and see. It usually takes more than a session to figure it out so ask for two or three. Maybe four. Then re-evaluate and see what you all think. More here: https://slyflourish.com/how_to_get_players_to_play_other_rpgs.html As far as what my players felt, it was a mix. My Sunday group loved Shadowdark and would definitely play it again but were happy with the crunchier Tales of the Valiant. I'm going to see how my big 5e Wednesday group feels about Dragonbane.

I think scoping a boss with the intention that he isn't beatable isn't the way to go. Instead, the boss should be whatever CR they should be given their context in the story. Compare them to monsters of various CRs to gauge what CR you think they should be and then build the situation around them. Maybe the players figure out a way to even the odds against them or not. Aiming for a particular outcome, particularly one where the characters can't defeat a foe, usually isn't the right way to go. Instead, build around the context of the story, give players information so they can make meaningful choices, and then let them decide their path. If the characters are only 3rd level, the campaign ending might be pretty far out so maybe you don't need to worry about it quite yet anyway!

I use a program called Compass which is super helpful. You can assign each of your pdfs a tag, like monsters, spells, adventure, etc. A pdf can have multiple tags. That way you can find all of your monster books or what have you with one click. You can also open your pdfs directly out of the program, along with linked webpages. It will not help you with how you file the pdfs in your folders, but once the tags are assigned, you will not need to sort through a super organized file tree to find things. You can learn more about the program at https://www.compassapp.info/.

Like you, I think it's useful to have some secret type definitions on hand to help inspire me if I'm struggling to come up with secrets and clues. I wrote more about those types here: https://slyflourish.com/types_of_secrets.html - Character secrets - Location secrets - Historical secrets - NPC or villain secrets - Plot-revealing secrets - Adventure hooks But often I don't need to worry about the types until I actually struggle. Otherwise, if secrets come out easily enough, I don't worry about types. I do worry about context though – ensuring that the secrets I'm coming up with really are relevant to the situations likely to happen in the next game. I'll consider that context more than I consider the types. Still, it's useful to know those types. Anything that helps you is a help!

Hi Borius! Great timing on this question since I just got back from Gamehole Con. Here are a few ideals: - Close enough that I can drive there in five hours or less. - At least a couple of thousand people but not much more than that. - A good fun vendor hall. - Lots and lots of games in lots and lots of different systems so I can try a lot of stuff out. - Games that focus on 2 and 3 hour slots instead of a lot of 4 hour slots. - Clear rules on harassment and protection for women, people of color, and LGBT folk. - Lots of access to clean water, clean bathrooms, and moderately healthy food. - Big enough to have a lot of people but not so big that you can miss entire swaths of folks. - Affordable and accessible hotel accommodations. I think that's about it!

Hi Tokkosanji! I use Dyson maps as a reference and draw them out on a big Chessex battle mat during play in my two in-person games. For online games, I'd use Owlbear Rodeo and their fog of war to display them. So the answer is – however they best serve me and you is how we best use them! Here's more: https://slyflourish.com/use_dysonlogos.html https://slyflourish.com/drawing_maps.html https://slyflourish.com/your_only_dungeon_map.html https://slyflourish.com/owlbear_rodeo.html Hope that helps!

I think the three-act stucture (setup, confrontation, climax) can work fine and we can think about it in the scenes we're prepping. Certainly the strong start fits the idea of a setup and then we have scenes the characters might follow. Often these get to a final conclusion – acquiring the artifact you're looking for or fighting a big boss. Pacing is a whole question in itself. Chapter 24 of Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master talks about pacing, in particular alternating upward and downward beats: https://slyflourish.com/upward_and_downward_beats.html As far as moving between stages, timing is good and considering when it's time to cut from the boring middle to the end. Some adventures have this built in. See how Crypts of Karigulon does it!

I think this can be cool but first, you want to make sure you have the consent of the player and the rest of the group to go down this course. I don't know the best way to get that without spoiling the surprise but I think you want to be careful that the player doesn't feel betrayed by the choice and that the other players don't feel betrayed by that character if they take that dark pact. I think a dark entity could offer lots of things beyond just mechanical effects. Information on the men who killed his son, blackmail for the son's soul, information leading to weapons they could use as the vehicles of their vengeance. Things like that. For bonuses, you can look at your system of choice and look for boons that aren't magic items and offer those boons. If you're playing 5e, Tashass has tattoos of power which could act like this. Essentially they're magic items that don't have a physical connection. Anyway, above all, you want to make sure the story is going the way your players want it to before you dive into the darkness.

Honestly, I'm not big on using AI on either the GM or player side. I certainly won't tell anyone that they're not finding value out of something when they are, but, for me, I prefer to use books and random tables to help fire off my own imagination instead of getting average results out of an LLM. I wrote more about it here: https://slyflourish.com/best_llm.html We have an AI chat channel in the SF discord where you can ask other folks about it. There we poke at the technology from all sides – good and bad.

I don't know why luck wouldn't work in Shadowdark. The only thing to consider is that a +1 bonus matters more in Shadowdark than it does in 5e. But you can always try it out and see! Maybe limit it to three luck tokens instead of five? Give it a try!

Some folks have had luck using monster stat block converters to bring monsters from the ADB into Foundry. I'm not experienced enough with Foundry to get it to work directly, unfortunately. Development for Foundry is a pretty developer-intensive situation that I just can't devote the time to right now. Sorry!

I wouldn't worry about the feelings as much as the challenge in learning and re-learning one's character between sessions. It would make character building really hard. If you have to go from level 3 to level 11 and then back to level 5, that's a lot of character sheet management for Pathfinder 2. I'd stage out the monsters you think make good sessions to fit the levels of the characters so big nasty monsters come in later sessions and more manageable monsters come out in earlier sessions. I think that best fits the level-based system of Pathfinder than the more open idea that you can face any monster at any level. I bet you can make a list of those monsters you think are cool and drop them into level ranges. I don't know if Pathfinder has an idea of tiers (like tier 1 through tier 4 of D&D) but that could work. Anyway, that's how I would handle it.

yeah! I think it's a great idea. You can treat them as main villains or sub-villains and have them each with their own agendas, goals, quests, and things going on. You can review them between sessions to think about what they're doing. As you mention, you'll want to foreshadow what these lieutenants are doing so the players get to see what they're up to. Seven may be a little too many. Five might work better if it fits your story. You can always have some come in, get killed or defeated, and bring in more. But yeah, this can work very well.

In one of the essays in a Kobold Press Guide, Wolfgang Baur said that he got feedback once from someone outside of the hobby that RPGs felt like 5 minutes of fun in a four hour bag. Sometimes it definitely feels like that. As GMs, we're always on. I can't focus on anything other than the game when I'm running a game. But when I'm playing? There's a lot of downtime. Like you, I can get bored pretty quickly as a player and sometimes I'm just a really bad player who isn't invested in what's going on. I just played a bunch of games at Gamehole Con and I'm happy to report that I enjoyed all of them and was into all of them. A lot of that had to do with fantastic GMs and also game systems that moved the spotlight around quickly. 5e can be pretty heavy when it comes to the length of a turn and that can take a lot out of it. But Shadowdark and Dragonbane don't have that problem. You do your one thing and you're done. I much prefer it. I think bonus actions and reactions (and the plethora of new free actions in D&D 2024) don't help the game when I compare it to faster games. As a player, though, there are a few things we can do to help in our fun and also help us be good players. This includes: - Taking notes. - Building off of the other characters. - Leaning in on the story the GM's telling. - Paying attention to what other players and characters are doing. - Building our characters as support characters. Bards! More here: https://slyflourish.com/be_a_great_player.html

Good question! I've certainly seen all four. I've seen some bigger products still focusing on D&D 2014. Other companies like Ghostfire are moving over to D&D 2024 (primarily to ensure they can publish their material on D&D Beyond). Others like Kobold Press publish for Tales of the Valiant with a hand-wave to general 5e – which I think is smart. And others still produce system agnostic content which is where I'm mostly headed for the foreesable future. There's another angle too which is the vast amount of high production value RPGs that have their own system: 13th Age, Shadow of the Weird Wizard, Dragonbane, Land of Eem, Pendragon, The One Ring, Nimble 5e, Shadowdark, and so on. As a GM speaking for GMs, I think this is fine. We have so much material to choose from that there's no lacking of excellent products to bring to our game. I don't think any one avenue is clearly dominating over the others (D&D 2014 versus D&D 2024 versus other 5e variants versus other RPGs). As a GM, I think we have so much awesome stuff that it's great for us. As a publisher, it's a little hard to decide what to focus on. My recommendation to other publishers is publish what you dig and hopefully people come to it. I think we're in a great time for RPGs!!

I think having legacy magic items that upgrade is a great idea. I have a couple of these in my current 5e games. The easy way is to have some tier-based milestone in which the weapon upgrades from like +1 to +2 to +3 (at roughly tier 2, 3, and 4). You can also add a single-use spell effect to a weapon and then add another at the other tiers. That's probably my laziest recommendation. Flavor is important too and fun personalities for intelligent magic items is also a great way to add a new NPC that's always with the characters but doesn't get in the way.

I am in a wonderful position to be able to decide what I want to do and base that on what's fun for me. I'm not really into doing livestream games or short-form video so I just don't do that stuff. I also don't think those avenues actually bring a lot of people to the work we do at Sly Flourish. I love writing newsletters and I love doing the Talk Show and lucky for me, those things *do* bring people to the work we do. Finding the right way to market our work is really hard and its a continually changing environment. Right now, I think YouTube is one of the last big platforms to draw attention to work outside of a given platform. You might be able to get tens to hundreds of thousands of views on a video on Tiktok or Instagram (or YouTube Shorts) but getting those people to do anythong other than watch the next video is near impossible – like 10x harder than getting someone to follow your work with an email. I wrote more about all of this here: https://mikeshea.net/how_to_make_it_in_the_rpg_industry.html Hope that helps!

Good question! I haven't read all of the adventures in the Starter Set yet so I don't have specific context but, as you say, a failure on a role should generally do *something*. Maybe it makes guards more alert. Maybe it increases the chance of being discovered. Maybe it forces a roll for a random encounter. Often the answer is "it takes up time". But also, it can just be a flavor thing. We're using rolls to narrate a story happening in front of us. Taking three times to bash open a door is still interesting in the story. It's different than a critical success on the first roll. This falls into my "not everything needs a mechanical outcome". Sometimes its just flavor for the story.

The new D&D Starter Set is a marvel of product engineering but I just spent the week with the Shadowdark Quick Start rules at Gamehole Con and I still think it's the best way to bring new players into the game. The whole ruleset is so streamlined and there's so much play on that small $20 packet. I think I still prefer it.

I am a fan of rolling in front of my players. I don't use a GM screen because I like to be there fully present in front of my players like any other player. Only occasionally do I hide a roll and only if it makes more sense that the players don't know the result of some outcome. But most of the time, I roll in the open. I think it pushes me to stay true to the randomness of the situation and push me to improv. I like to say "I don't fudge die rolls but I fudge everywhere else".

I have no problem with it! I ask that you link back to the City of Arches page: https://shop.slyflourish.com/collections/sly-flourishs-adventures/products/the-city-of-arches and ensure your work is your own and not copied from the book. I'd ask that you not publish products for money (like PDF products) using lots of proper names from City of Arches or saying that it's built off of City of Arches. One day I want to open up the City of Arches so more people can write against it as a backdrop but I have to figure out how best to do that. In the meantime, ten encounters in the Endless Warrens and fan fiction about Shella of the Red Teeth are fine as blog posts – just not finished products for money.

I'm not sure I understand the question. What is "it"? Can you clarify what you mean?

I think its also ok to let them have their table talk. If players are engaged in the game, talking among themselves about what is going on in the game, that feels like a win to me. As an adjudicator, it might help if you included the players who aren't talking as much, asking what they think about what the others are planning. It's really a matter of what the expectations are among you and your players. It's worth a meta-conversation to make sure you're all on the same page. But I don't mind table talk. It means they're engaged! Just make sure you can help get *everyone* engaged.

I wouldn't worry about the dials too much. Shadowdark is really intended to have a random variance of difficulty based on your rolls and the situation. I doubt they'll be able to steamroll everything they run into but random rolls of the dice are the name of the game. I think its probably ok to include Doom-style mechanics if you find bosses are getting totally overwhelmed but I wouldn't worry about it. If you want to increase the threat, add more monsters. But overall I'd stick to focusing on what the situation offers instead of trying to tune things.

I do use random tables a lot in my prep. You'll also see me use the 5e artisanal database random generators or random tables in things like the Tales of the Valiant game master's guide random encounters. I use that stuff often. I have generated entire adventures from random tables and have a few videos where I did so. https://youtu.be/RYkn1qzLt2Q As far as building out a d12 table of secrets and using encounter tables for wilderness, I think it's fine if its valuable to you. I don't get to decide if you're wasting your time or not. Only you do. If you find you're getting use out of it, that's great! I probaby wouldn't make *big* random encounter tables. Just a handful with some prompts are good. But also, you can likely roll random stuff and generate preplanned encounters and that's fine too. It all depends where you want to put your randomness. But if it's working for you, it's working!

Can I suggest Dhaka Jaar: a 30 page long gdr and comic book ( in italian only but with llm you can tranlate). Is done for entry level, with 3 stats, low math. Is a fantasy low magic. Setting is not ok for kids, but still a good starting point. ( sorry for this comment but I think only an Italian person would know this title 😅)

Glad Styles as a False Hydra is working! I forgot about that! I've been running a ton of 5e these days and have two very high-level games so I've gotten to run pretty much every monster I haven't had a chance to run. There isn't any monster right now where I'm super excited to run it. There are a lot of adventures and sourcebooks I'd love to run: - More Eberron, I love Eberron. - A Forgotten Realms Cormyr game. - Dungeons of Drakkenheim - Ptolus by Monte Cook Games - The D&D Starter Set and lots of RPGs I want to run - Cairn - More Shadowdark with the new Cursed Scrolls - Daggerheart - Mothership - Shadow of the Weird Wizard - 13th Age Rev 2 - A full D&D 2024 game

I don't have any fantastic advice, I don't think. Doing some sort of sign-up so you don't end up with too many players is definitely a good idea. Go for the largest group you can comfortably run and expect one or two won't show up. I'd aim for single-session games at first and see how they go. Eventually you might find a core group that comes week after week. That's how my in-store group turned into one of my home games. Eventually we just kept playing with the same group for years on end.

Wow. Everything influences me at different levels! Over the past year I've been playing a lot of 5e so the books for D&D 2024 and Tales of the Valiant influenced me a lot. Some fictional influences might be: - Elrich of Melniborne (first time reading it) - Berserk the graphic novel (trigger warnings ahoy!) - Hellraiser and Hellraiser 2 - Twin Peaks - Clair Obscur Expedition 33 OSR stuff still bleeds into my games; travel, weather, distance, attitude rolls. Stuff like that

Hi Woody! I don't think we prep solo games the same way we'd prep a game we're running for our friends. Most solo games I've seen have their own built-in instructions for running them and I think we're best off following those instructions to enjoy them the way the writers intended. I'd check out Ironsworn's solo rules since they're free. https://tomkinpress.com/collections/downloads-for-ironsworn The solo rules in Dragonbane are cool too but you have to buy the whole core set to get them. https://freeleaguepublishing.com/shop/dragonbane/dragonbane-core-set/ Mythic Game Master Emulator is also really great: https://www.wordmillgames.com/page/mythic-gme.html

You can mix in more in-world downtime activities between adventures to mark the passage of time a bit more. I think its fine to slow down level progression overall – be sure to let your players know. You can also decide what events account for a level increase and do it at big milestones instead of smaller milestones. Again, I'd talk to your players about it so they know what sort of things will level them up. Hope that helps!

Howdy! I answered over there too. I'll repost it here: I have a few rules of thumb for fireball placement (or things like that). First, if they want to hit one target and no one else, they almost always can. Because they can position a fireball in a 3d space, they can form it to just hit one person somehow. Otherwise, I try to keep in mind roughly how many creatures should typically get hit by a fireball (about four or so) and then move it up or down based on the circumstances. If you're trying to fireball a handful of guys who are already fully engaged with the characters, it might be harder. If there's a horde of orcs running in a 20 foot radius circle, you can hit them all. I have no problem with precise positioning to hit the maximum number of bad guys. I always have more bad guys.

I think the paradoxes of their existence is part of their charm. Some people just want to take the whole world down and all of existence. I think its ok if their motivations don't make sense to most people. Slime cultists think everything should be in a primordial state. Void cultists think existence shouldn't exist. Fire cultists want the world to burn. Demogorgon cultists want to live in a hazy mental world instead of the real one while fungus eats their useless bodies. I think it's great fun to imagine why cultist would do what they do but they don't have to make sense. Rarely do cultists make sense in the real world so they certainly don't have to in our fictional ones.