July – September 2026 Patreon Q&A

I'd use default NPC stat blocks to represent the party and switch to the higher-CR stat blocks as the NPCs level up. They don't have to be a perfect level match so I think upgrading NPC stat blocks can work up to level 11 or so with your mages to archmages and your spies to assassins and so on. You can also reskin NPC stat blocks with Forge of Foes stats to turn them into any CR you want. From a story perspective, I think it's always fun to have rival adventurers out there doing things. A "three of five keys" quest model works well with such a setup — the characters going for one quest while the villains go for another. There aren't a lot of such quests in Saltmarsh but you can certainly add some of your own.

You broke no DM Code. There *is* no code! You get to decide what works well for you and your group. No one else! I think telling the players what sort of gameplay experience they'll have is a great idea — a way to give the players agency over the sort of game you're going to run. Tell them if it's a dungeon crawl or an infiltration and heist or political intrigue. Let them choose the kind of game they want to have. Great idea.

I haven't expanded them beyond the +1 bonus or reroll a d20 if you spend three. I don't need any more extra attacks or extra spells in my 5e games, I tell you, so I wouldn't do that. I also don't like using them to change what a monster does. I think there are lots of other ways we can use them to make deals though, treating them like FATE points or maybe hope tokens in Daggerheart?

I think this is one area where Secrets and Clues really shine. For a one-shot adventure you have lots of potential secrets: - Whats going on in the dungeon now? - What's the history of the dungeon itself - Who are some notable factions that are or used to operate in the dungeon? - Who are some notable gods operating in the larger world surrounding the dungeon? Because you don't know where the characters are headed in the dungeon, you can drop in your secrets as they explore and give your players a rich experience during their crawl even though it's only a single session.

My first priority is to run the best games I can for the groups I play with so I don't really choose to run different adventures or campaigns based on larger contexts in the hobby. I might do so for a one-shot but, really, the most important thing is whether an adventure or campaign setting speaks to me and makes me really want to run it over everything else. In recent days I haven't seen a campaign adventure that's made me really want to do that. I've already run a bunch of campaign adventures over the past ten years so I think I already have the contrast you speak of and that's what led me to realize I mostly prefer running homebrew adventures in a published setting. There's no campaign adventure I really want to run that I haven't. There are plenty of settings I'd love to run that I haven't — Drakkenheim, Ptolus, five of the six cursed scrolls for Shadowdark, Dolmenwood (which is on the soon-to-play list), and others who escape me. I'm interested to see how Crown of the Witch Queen looks when it comes out next year but no guarantees!

I wouldn't worry too much about the mechanics of the monster. Use the flavor and the theme of vampires as they make sense in the story. They can still do their hit and run tactics even if it's not on their stat block. But don't be too mean about it — Shadowdark can already be deadly! You don't need to do nearly as much tactical plannning for a solid vampire fight in Shadowdark as you do in 5e for example. Vampires have a hard time in 5e.

The map and rooms of Ravenloft can be really confusing. Take some extra time to look at the map and room descriptions. It's deceptively complicated for a short 32 page adventure. Give yourself some time to noodle it through. There are a couple of chambers I always have a hard time with, the elevator trap in K61 and the Golem room in K78. You might need to modify those rooms for your own style because they can be pretty weird otherwise. Give them a read, study the map, and you should be ok.

I know I've talked about this before but I can't find my old discussions on it. My recommendation is to break up your prep into manageable chunks so if you're running a 10 or 12 hour game, break it up into three acts and do your prep for each of those three acts. You may not know exactly how one leads into the other or whether the events of a previous act will change a new one, but you can hopefully prepare some of the material that you'll find useful for that section. Another trick is to plan in some breaks and use those breaks to update your notes based on what happened previously — again, sort of treating a longer game as three shorter ones. Hopefully that helps!

Lots of styles work and it's been a while since I read How To Be a Game Master. If I recall, it had more of a focus on particular styles of play than an actual workflow for prep. One of the things I try to focus on that I don't see a lot in other advice books is a real down-to-the-table workflow for prep. Here's where you start, here's what you fill out, here's what it's like when you're done, here's how you use it at the table. Some games have it like Dungeon World and Mothership but a lot of books and systems don't clarify what it's actually like to do your prep from end to end. I think they're nervous about being too specific when so many GMs have their own style. I tried to thread that needle by offering one approach — one now tested for like eight years — but one that also allows for a lot of customization and flexibility. One thing I see a lot of in GM advice is sort of a "my way or the highway" style. "The game must run this way" sort of discussion. I don't really find that useful. It's an approach, sure, but it isn't the only approach. It isn't the *right* approach. I think I manage to dance that line without being too waffly. So You Want To Be a Game Master is also 500 pages. That's a lot to absorb. I've heard people who appreciate that Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master is easily skimmable in under an hour. I'm trying to keep Rise to be as easily skimmable even though it has a lot more in it than Return has.

First, don't beat yourself up. There's a lot going on and a lot to keep track of when you're running a higher level game. I also don't know how much players care about hearing the boss throw out a lot of lore when they're in the middle of fireballing him in the face. If you find some dead time in a battle, like one of the players is deciding what to do, you can quickly scan your secrets and clues and see if there's something new to throw out there. Otherwise you can use that opportunity to have something happen in the world that isn't mechanized in combat. But again, that too might add complications so you don't want to go overboard. But, in general, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Go with what feels right.

It didn't happen right away but now that we're in the flow I think combat is definitely quicker. We're only level 5 at the moment so it's hard to compare to higher level 5e where things definitely slowed down but I don't expect Nimble to get much slower. Evan has a very clear eye for the things that slow things down — it's the main reason he made Nimble if I understand correctly. But combat in Nimble is still pretty detailed and tactical, which my players like. So I think it strikes a good balance — a better balance than other games we've played.

Hi there! I have a lot of articles about selecting, reading, and customizing published adventures. This search hits a lot of them: https://slyflourish.com/search.html?q=how%20to%20read%20a%20published%20adventure I think there's a non-linear way to read an adventure book and see what's going on. First, I think its useful to do a skim read of the whole book, just flipping through the pages, to see what's in it front to back. Then I think it's worth reading the synopsis of the adventure so you know what the whole thing is about. Then I might go to each chapter and see what each chapter's summary is about. I don't really read every room in every dungeon across a whole adventure until I'm running that part of it. There's little value in noting details of a room I'm not going to run for months. Taking notes is great, I think. I don't see any problem jotting down notes while you're reading an adventure.

Scott, Teos, and I should do a talk sometime about Vault of the Dracolich and record it. It's a long story but I'll give some key events. Greg Bilsland was a D&D producer at the time and handled a lot of freelance stuff and is now the head of the D&D production team I think (they keep changing titles all the time but he's high up there). He managed a lot of freelance work that Scott, Teos, and I did for 4th edition. Teos and I had done a bunch of stuff and Scott had been doing editing for them for years — back through 3rd edition. Greg came to the three of us and wanted to do Vault of the Dracolich as an in-store multi-table adventure but built for 3rd, 4th, and 5th editions of D&D to sort of focus on the widespread nature of D&D instead of any one edition. I don't remember if we did much with 3rd, really. It ended up being a D&D Next-based adventure. Greg's idea was to have a designer (me), developer (Teos), and editor (Scott) all work together at once instead of in individual independent teams. Normally a designer would write stuff, throw it to the producer who would throw it to the deveoper who would throw it back to the producer who then gave it to the editor with no real communication across the three teams. So now we were going to meet weekly to talk about the work we did and we did and it was delightful. I don't remember a lot of the details about who built what. I do know that I had worked up a map so that multiple teams could work their way to the center hub with several spokes. I turned that in and Greg said "thats how we did things with 4e but thats not how we're doing things now — connect things up. We talked a lot about how the flow was supposed to work if you had like 8 groups all dropping in and out of the same chambers. I rewrote the map and scott built a much cleaner version that ended up in the book and later was published in the 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide as a sample map which we're all proud of. We had a lot of variables to consider: - It could have between 1 and 12 groups playing through it. - Playtime had to fit within a 4 hour session. - It had to have an open floor plan so groups had multiple options on how and where to go. - It was 3rd level but you had to face a dracolich. Honestly, looking back, I don't know how we managed to accomplish it, but we did. But the real treasure were the friends we made along the way. Scott and Teos and I have continued to talk every Friday for a looong time. We built Forge of Foes together. Scott and I have worked together ever since. He's edited every book I've published since Fantasic Locations in 2016. It's been a fantastic relationship between the three of us and we all look fondly on the work we did.

I have very little experience with space-based vehicular combat and none GMing it. I'd try to think of ten or twenty possible things you could throw into space to keep things interesting that can include astronomical effects like gas clouds, ion rays, and other weird things. Get some of your star trek ideas in there too. Work on a list of twenty such effects and see where your mind goes. As far as fixed distances versus theater of the mind, I really have no experience here either. Sorry!

I actually think 3rd level is the best level for 5e games because characters are straight forward but still have a lot of capabilities now that they've unlocked subclasses. I think 1st to 6th level is a great level range but I think you can go up to level 12 before the game really breaks down and you can face some good legendary foes between 6th and 12th level. You can also suffer through and go higher than that if you have the time in your campaign and really throw some big beefy legendary monsters at the characters. Adult dragons can probably be faced as low as 12th level. Certainly young dragons, which still feel ike dragons, can be handled as low as 7th or so. I don't think you're leaving a lot of monsters on the table if you only go up to 12th.

With all the talk about the right and wrongs about railroading versus sandbox play (and the infinite variations in between), the real answer is that whatever works for you and your group is fine. I'm a fan of putting multiple objectives in front of the characters and letting them pick one — inserting three choices in lots of places so there's lots of agency about where the characters go and how they accomplish their goal. Even if you have a linear sequence of big objectives, how they accomplish those objectives can change. I'm a fan of the 3-2-1 Quest model which I talk about in Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster and also talked about here: https://slyflourish.com/3-2-1_quest_model.html but you can do variants on it. Your idea of tying levelling to accomplished goals is good but let the players have some agency over what those goals are.

I think keeping things simple works well for lots of games. Give them a choice of specific quests: "kill the rat king", "find the chalace of winter", "rescue Tomvon". Send them to interesting locations, let them explore, and let the game go forward. I think sometimes we overthink complicated campaign arcs when a series of specific quests works fine on their own. Thin plots are fine and plots may develop by them over time on their own. Build the scaffold and let them fill it out.

Answering your second question first, I really don't have a specific IP I'm dying to run a world in. I like RPG settings built for the purpose or I like doing my own homebrew ones. I'm happy to play games in established settings but sometimes I find the IP more constraining than freeing. Fine for one-shots but not something I want to run a long campaign in. That's just my view, of course. Lots of people love playing in established IPs. I think my approach would be to clearly define the aspects of the IP you're going to focus on and what aspects might be different. A friend of mine ran a Star Wars game that started off with the crawl text that said "Luke, Leia, and Han are dead!" just to clarify that the characters were the heroes, not the main characters in Star Wars we already know. So I'd go through your normal process for lazy campaign building — what's the elevator pitch? What are the truths? Where do the characters sit in the story? What's their place? And then where does the game begin and go out from there. I think it works well whether you're homebreweing a world, running in an established RPG setting, or playing in another fictional IP.

It's a carefull balance on how and when to reveal clues. It's also fine to reinforce an existing clue with new evidence if they go to a room later. Clues can be their own Russian nesting dolls with layers to them you can reveal piece by piece. We have ten secrets and clues so we usually have enough to fill out the rest of a session if the characters find clues early. We generally want more secrets and clues than we're going to reveal in a game. It's fine to have some secrets tied to specific things but yeah, you run into a trap if there's only one way to reveal a secret, that secret is required to move forward, and the characters don't end up going that way. That's why we keep them abstract. If you're able to move the secret to another spot later, that can work fine too. Secrets serve you, of course. You're not using them incorrectly if they're working for you. But finding the balance on making the method of discovery too specific or to loose can be something to work through. As always, hang on with a loose grip. Stay flexible.

I've used similar products like that and I've seen some others. For me, I find them a bit too fiddly. I have to find the right piece at the right time and that can be a headache. I think just drawing a small map on a blank battle map does a fine job of conveying the situation without needing a lot of extra accessories. https://slyflourish.com/draw_small_maps.html

I wouldn't overthink it too much. You're right, that the ingredients alone don't make a great scene. I'd avoid "perfect" because it puts this impossible goal in front of us. Run a good game. Aim for a great game. But no game is perfect and perfection isn't really what we're seeking. There's probably a good list of what our game needs to have in order to be great outside from filling out the eight steps. The steps are intended to help us get there but we still have to know what we're going for: - Meaningful choices for the characters. - A good sense of tention. - Clear goals - The potential for upward and downward beats. - Engaging details that set our adventure apart. - The opportunities for the characters to show off their cool stuff. That's off the top of my head but it's a start!

Unfortunately I don't really know anything about Legend in the Mist so I can't talk to specifics about which campaign setting might work well for the system. For your question on picking a setting, I like to first read the intro of a setting and see if it grabs me. Midgard has a whole "truths of midgard" thing going on. Then I might flip through the regions and see which grab me. I've never read the entire 400 page Midgard book all the way through so I'm always finding new interesting regions in there to explore. I didn't know anything about the dragon empire until I ran it. Most settings give you a pretty good idea what they're all about in the introduction. The better ones make it clear what kind of adventures you can run in them and help you get on your feet with a focus on what elements of the campaign become gameplay at the table. Others are more fuzzy, focusing a lot on the general setting information and making you sort of figure out how to build adventures out of it. For me, the thing that really helps me choose a setting is how focused the setting is on the sorts of adventures and games I'm going to play there. Do they have good adventure hooks? Do they have good character factions? Do they tell me how the characters interact with the world? Do they give me enough details to build fun adventures but not overwhelm me with minutia? Those are the sorts of things I look for. Of course, you'll want a setting that fits your system too. Superheroic fantasy settings probably aren't great for folk-heroic systems. But often, GMs can make just about anything work if they're into it enough.

First, the lazy encounter benchmark is meant to be a loose gauge at best so don't overthink it. You'll have to ask yourself how much extra impact those NPCs have and decide if you want them to count for somewhere between one and four extra characters when calculating the benchmark. You can presume the level of a monster is roughly half of it's CR, so you might count CR3 martial adepts as either level 1 or level 2 monsters. You also have to ask how much more effective the NPCs are. If you already have six level 8 characters, I don't think the extra four CR3 NPCs are going to be particularly effective. I'd probably count them as an extra five or six total levels so your total levels would be 46 and your total CRs for the LEB would be 23. But again, your own experiences will give you a better gauge on how powerful they are based on where the characters are, how effective they are, how well rested they are and other factors.

I don't really have any good advice. You can always offer up the ability to scribe scrolls with spells as a downtime activity and with some cost so they can have some reserve spells on scrolls. I haven't really dug into the whole mechanics of the wizard to know what will and won't work well. Sorry!

This is a tough one. There are some hard choices to make — things you can do to speed things up but that might not always work for you: 1. Run with fewer players. 2. Run games at lower levels. 3. Run a more lightweight system with faster turn resolution. That's not always possible of course. In the story itself you can skip to the big parts. Move your game towards the moments of important decisions. Skip travel if it's not really interesting. Skip the whole quest-acquisition part and just put the characters at the location where they go on the actual adventure. Think of your game like a serial story. Get to the action fast. As far as being too cautious, you can make it clear out of game when things are safe or when they're not. "You're confident there arent' any traps in this hall" or "you have thoroughly exhausted this room and find nothing else of value". Of course, those statements have to be true. Hope that helps!

I think there are a few things we can do to include unbalanced encounters and still give our players some agency: First, talk about it in your session zero or talk about it before your game sometime. Make sure it's clear to your players that sometime they might run into an encounter that they likely cannot win head on. Second, have a phrase you can use in-world that makes this clear "you feel in your bones that this foe is beyond you" or something like that. Your players aren't their characters so they cannot see it themselves and know for sure but you can say something. Third, make dangerous monsters easier to spot and avoid. While you might use a roll for distance, behavior, and attitude; you might be more flexible with this for hard monsters. Give the characters a chance to avoid, run from, or assess really hard fights so they have some agency over the situation. Finally, have something prepared should things really go badly. Is it just a plain TPK? Do they get captured? Do they get resurrected in a charnel pit? Those are some of my thoughts.

I have not. I trust my file system and use my desktop search to find files which is hit or miss. I did vibe-code a little PDF search tool you can find on Github: https://github.com/mshea/pdf_search I sometimes use it but not all the time. It's a good way to do some deep research in particular files or folders. I haven't yet found a better off-the-shelf PDF search tool to help me with that but this does a good enough job. Others really love Calibre but I don't like that you need to reformat your entire library of PDFs into their folder structure. I like the way I have mine.

They're on the rewards page in my Obsidian Vault. Here's the rewards page: https://www.patreon.com/slyflourish/posts/sly-flourish-34953933 Here's a direct link to the obsidian vault: https://slyflourish_content.s3.amazonaws.com/ff98052f30d610b78a3b_patreon_files/sly_flourish_obsidian_archive.zip The vault is now updated automatically every week!

The eight steps are really focused just on your next session so villain-related material might show up as secrets and clues or potentially NPCs. Our thoughts about the three villains, their goals, and their quests manifest as secrets and clues, NPCs, or scenes in our eight steps. At least that's sort of how I designed it. I wouldn't add a Villain's step. I'd let your thought about villains fuel the existing eight steps.

If you're playing 5e, you can use the lazy encounter benchmark to see what total number of challenge ratings best fits your current group. You can always beef up HP and damage but adding more monsters is the easiest way to keep the challenge up. It does add time though, which gets exasperated by also having more players so that's something to consider. You can use the Forge of Foes monster stats by CR to scale monsters up too. It's in the reference document too: https://slyflourish.com/lazy_5e_monster_building_resource_document.html

Yeah, this can be tough and it's sometimes why I think it's ok to put your thumb on the scale for the overall fun of the game. Other GMs disagree but I think the fun of the game is paramount. It's also a good way to stretch one's "fail forward" muscles. What happens if the characters get captured along with those they tried to rescue and now they have to figure that out? What other shifts can take place to put them in a difficult spot but not end the whole situation? It's not easy to come up with such big shifts but when we can, they can be a lot of fun. Also, don't underestimate the incompetence of the guards. Maybe they don't really know what's going on themselves. People get confused, orders get confused. Maybe they don't know who the characters are or what they're trying to do. Mistakes can happen on both sides of the screen. I'm betting that, by the time I got around to answering this, the event is over. I'd love to hear how it ended up. Good luck!

My friend Teos Abadia had some cool skulls he used for Fear tokens in Daggerheart that would work well for Doom points or Dreadful Blessings. I think you can find stuff like this on Etsy.

Here are some one-hour tricks: - Run with fewer players — no more than four if you can help it. Split up into separate groups if you end up with more. - Run at low levels — ideally level 1. - Get them started right at the front of the adventure. Tell them the quest they have instead of going through the pantomime of them being offered and accepting a question. - Create a single situation that has all the pillars in it — roleplaying, exploration, and combat. Set up a situation with some interesting terrain features, some NPCs to talk to, and some monsters to fight. Ensure the situation has different possible entry points and solutions. You want the players to be able to make meaningful choices about how they engage. Some example scenarios: - Monsters kidnapped some friendly NPCs who need to be rescued. - The characters have to steal an artifact from an unholy altar. - The characters must disrupt a ritual to summon a powerful being. - The characters have to kill off a powerful warlord to stop a war. - The characters have to destroy a dangerous monument. - The characters must recover a magic item before a nasty beast shows up. Those are some off the top of my head. Hopefully they give you some other ideas too! Focus on essentially a single big complicated scene.

Hi Mike! I have not had an experience teaching the eight steps to kids. Walking them through it while they prep might be fine but I'd hang on with a loose grip. Let them learn in the way that best suits them and let them get the experience of just running the game itself. We all learned at a young age.

My dirty trick is to take a sharpy and put a little dot or an "E" next to the sections in the book that got errata'd. That way I know to go look for something new. Then I might print out the errata and have it handy. I've been doign that as far back as the 4th edition days.

I just listened to your best 5e podcast where you talk about the crx7 for damage :) that’s probably half my answer.

I think a big final "campfire tale" can be fun. Let your players know ahead of time that you want to have a scene like this — a calm before the storm — where the characters all have a chance to finish any other loose ends, talk to one another, and prepare for what's to come. You can prompt some questions to get your players into the right headspace. https://slyflourish.com/campfire_talk.html

Hi Jason! First, if you're not keeing track of time, you might keep a small alarm or chime to let you know as you cross 45 minutes in a scene. That helps ensure scenes keep moving at a good clip. You can also talk to your players about all working together to do more in a scene. If you explain it to them outside of the game, before your game starts, they might keep it in mind during their turns but they'll also recognize why you're moving things forward faster when you do so. Some other tips: - Cut the boring middle. Get rid of filler scenes like travel or transition scenes. - Put the characters right in the most interesting scenes. Hand-wave the rest. - Handwave dungeon crawling or exploration. Focus on the big set pieces. - Always have an eye out for action and decisions. Focus on those scenes. Hope that helps!

I'll share a few that I use for my games — right now I'm running a Nimble game set in my Blood of the Primordials setting. First, I love to have my faction list. You can use some general purpose domains and name generators to build a custom faction list if you don't have one but having a faction list lets me flavor everything else. I use NPC generators all the time. I use the one from the 5e ADB a lot but I also made some custom ones for my Nimble Primordials campaign using their species. So that's a big one. Locations I use a lot — again, the 5eADB or the tables in the Resource Document work well for locations including conditions and effects to add some flavor, and again, mixing in some factions to give me an idea who runs it. Monuments work very well as set-piece markers for travel. When the characters go from one place to another, I roll a monument with the monument, condition, effect, and faction. Then I might roll some monsters or mix up some ideas of my own to build a situation. I have a list of quests too if I need some ideas about what sorts of quests the characters go on. I tend not to use that as much because quests often come out from the previous missions the characters undertake. When I'm filling out a dungeon, I'll use the dungeon rooms to help inspire my own specific ideas for the dungeon I'm going to run. These are in Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster and also in the resource document. I think those are the big ones for me!

Hi Mountain Girl! First, don't be hard on yourself about timing. Very few people have the superpower to keep track of time when running a game. If it's ok that a game goes over with you and your group, no problems. The 45 minute benchmark is, like all of my benchmarks, very loose. Some scenes take longer, some are shorter. You'll have to gauge how well it works for you and there are many variables: the number of players, the focus of those players, the system you're running, the amount of stuff to do, and so on. I don't know exactly how many scenes it should count as. It depends on what they did in the dungeon. I'd consider the intro one scene, the battle with the cultists is certainly a scene, and then whatever scenes took place during the exploration. It's worth thinking about how the timing actually played out so you can get a better personal model than the 45 minutes per scene model but, like all things in our hobby, hang on with a loose grip.

Yeah, the main way to use the eight steps is to focus on your next session and often your next session might be a transition between quests. They might finish up what they have, have a rest, maybe level up, do some odd jobs, and then get on with their next quest. I just ran a game like this on Wednesday. It started with a big fight that took a good chunk of time and then went into the aftermath of a long quest, leveling up, studying their new loot, choosing their next quest, and then returning back to the city. On their way they ran into a situation of serpentfolk trying to pry the eye out of a statue of a gold draon. That's the strong start for the next session. I think the main thing to prepare for transition sessions is any decisions the characters need to make for the *next* session you're going to run. You don't want to get caught at the end of one scenario and not know where they're going to go next. Otherwise, I think you can outline your scenes based on what you think the characters might go through during the next session you're going to run. Your prep notes with the eight steps don't have to fit perfectly inside the box of a quest or adventure — they can span across quests and adventures or they can focus just on one part of the quest or adventure you think you'll get through next. Hope that helps!

I didn't get a chance to play high-tier Daggerheart but looking at the encounter building math for the came in it's core rules — they don't change from tier to tier. I think the hit point method for encounter building and tracking should work just as well across tiers. I don't think it has to change. Again, I didn't do thorough testing like I have with the Lazy Encounter Benchmark so I can't say for sure but I think the 5 to 7 HP per character method is a good benchmark and fits well with the existing encounter benchmarks they have in the core book.

I would have a converation with the player about it before you run your campaign and then make it clear that the characters are working together on the goal of the campaign during your session zero. You can have a "no secrets between players" sort of rule too. If you're running the game and its not fun for you or the other players, you can make it clear that that behavior isn't acceptable. They had their fun in a previous campaign — how about playing a character who's above board and on the side with the other characters? Individual one-on-one converations (ideally in person) and clear guidelines for a session zero can hopefully help things get on track.

I'm a big fan of using existing maps from the Dyson Logos map gallery or directly off of his website. For my own online games I'll either use a clipping tool to show parts of the map in Discord or I'll put the map into Owlbear Rodeo and use a fog of war to cover and uncover the parts I want to reveal. In my Shadowdark game we could put a little light circle around one of the characters with the torch and the characters could only see what was in the circle. This gave a great sense of mystery as they explored. They still had to draw their own map of where they've been and what they've seen. I don't have any good advice for drawing your own maps. I almost always use published maps.

Thanks so much! I don't have a great list but you can look at tables like chaos tables in various books and supplements and maybe the effects of common magical items. They can inspire you to come up with funny effects like that. Monte Cook Games has "The Weird" which has lots of things like this. You might check it out: https://www.montecookgames.com/store/product/the-weird/

I think really big powerful guardians would make sense for an ancient temple. Also some potentially trapped alien horror. Maybe something even more dangerous than the threat they face. Super-deadly traps might make sense too. A dying god, an undead god, or some Beast from Below. Maybe a secret vault of a Tarrasque. In Fantastic Lairs we have several high-level dungeons that might make sense: - The lair of a super powerful marilith queen who guards a shard of creation. - The vault of a tarrasque - The lair of a corrupt ancient gold dragon - The vault of a world-eating lich - The arcane forge of a powerful ancient blue dragon wizard Off the top of my head for an ancient temple: - Guardian demons or devils - Guardian celestials - Guardian golems, huge statues, that sort of thing - Trapped alien horrors leaking out - A corrupted lich priest and their minions - A powerful beast (like a tarrasque) bound down in the depths.

Thanks for supporting the Kickstarter!! Yeah, mysteries like that definitely come up as we improvise our games. For me, I find it's just useful to jot down the situation and make it part of the new canon of the adventure or campaign. Making fuzzy things become true is part of the fun. Sometimes it does put us in a bind and I think its ok to call for a mulligan and say "that thing I said was true isn't true anymore". Go with it if it makes sense or try to pull it back to something more reasonable if it gets out of control. That's really my best advice.

For the problem of having broken continuity, you can just call for a reset and get it back on track the right way as one option. Or do your best to steer the shift back to the way they were. "That was a splinter faction but not the main faction" or something like that. I wouldn't worry too much about maintaining continuity. You're all playing a game around the table. You can explain to them. As far as prep is concerned, trying to narrow the focus of your campaign so it doesn't involve a ton of wide-spread places and tons of different factions can help. The people of the town of Corm Orp don't necessarily know anything about what's going on in Icewind Dale or Waterdeep. The regional focus of our campaign can help us keep our attention focused down. You can also ask your more knowledgeable players for ideas that you research between sessions to fill in the next one. You can sort of steer where the path is well trod by figuring out what your players are interested in and aiming things that way. And yeah, sometimes its really worth doing some reading and writing down notes. It can be a lot of fun to cross reference information and figure out the world. I love doing it. It's not lazy prep but the results are pretty valuable.

This is very self-serving but I think going over parts of Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master (and soon Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster) chapter by chapter might be useful. My top tips for gamemasters is another potential resource. I think breaking down the pillars of play might be good too. Things like improvising DCs for situations. Stuff like that. Hope that helps!

The Lazy DM's Companion has a Jaws-style scenario builder right in it! It's not just an investigation in a big town. We can expand it out with minions too. Here are the major parts of a jaws-themed adventure outlined in the Lazy DM's Companion: What is the creature? What makes it unique? Where does it reside? Who protects the creature? What drives the creature? Who else hunts the creature? Answering those questions gives you a good idea for a jaws-themed adventure I think.

Sometimes I just don't. There are times when I'm running multiple systems (and I've been running multiple systems for three groups sometimes in the same week!) I just count on my players to help me noodle it through. I think the idea that the GM should have any sort of rules mastery is misplaced. We're all playing the game together. Bring the players behind the screen to help you all figure out the rules as you go. And yeah, cheat sheets really help. Tabs in books help too!

Hi Sam! I've used the eight steps for prep for both homebrew and published adventures and recorded my prep sessions on YouTube and on the Podcast for several years. You can find some playlists here for both: https://www.youtube.com/@SlyFlourish/playlists Rime of the Frost Maiden and Scarlet Citadel are two examples: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLb39x-29puapm7MfiUn74l4RbR3jeXyLu https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLb39x-29puarlo9ZC9opm3Yf1Uojk7i44 Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster includes information on running with published adventures — the sorts of stuff you might just keep from the adventure and the stuff you still likely want to prep. Most important is that GMs make published adventures their own. It's your adventure. I wouldn't run any published adventure in a rigid style. I'd always decide what works for me and what does not and build around that. Often we get a lot of value out of published adventures but it's still worth us spending the time to twist it the way we want. If a published adventure fills in one of the steps for you, like your location description, you don't have to do that step!

I'm a fan of "this foe is beyond you" or "this may be the most dangerous creature you've ever faced". Sometimes you can just tell them out of character that a monster is going to be lethal. Make sure, however, that you're not putting lethal monsters in front of the characters just to force the situation. It's ok for them to stumble into something really powerful if that's just how things went in the story, but avoid setting up situations where they have to run.

I really try not to delve too much into the deep parts of my campaign and instead just focus on the next session and have each session lead to the next. I'd never want to cancel a game because I need more time to prep a campaign — that, for me, would feel like I'm spending too much energy on the larger campaign and not enough on the next session I want to run. That's the session that matters.

I never have a perfectly solid never-evolving group of players. My groups are always evolving. Some people step away, some other new folks jump in. I'm sorry to hear you haven't been able to find a solid group. Finding and maintaining a good group is the hardest part of this hobby. Even though I have lots of suggestions, that doesn't always make it easier or solve the problem completely. My suggestions are: - Seek players online to play even if you'd rather not play online. - Aim for smaller groups of three players (or even two or one player!). - Be more willing to try other systems and other styles of play if that helps. - Be willing to run even if you have fewer players than your full group. - Seek out people willing to play occasionally. - Shoot for shorter campaigns of roughly four sessions. Build a group of players from those who stick around and who gel with your style. - Offer to run games at community centers, libraries, schools, universities, and clubs in your area. Hopefully that gives some options. But yeah, it can be really hard. I'm sorry it's been tough.

There are a few things you might do. First, you can think about shrinking the story of your campaign to better match the pace you're able to get through. Often we have big wild stories we want to go through but the pacing of our game just isn't going to match. If you're lucky to have a long-term group, you can let things take time. My Dragon Empire game is well into its second year now for a weekly game and we're all fine with it I think. No one is yet bored. The other trick is to try to cut more of the boring parts and jump right into the action. Start at the entrance to the dungeon instead of spending a lot of time on travel. Have people do their shopping and town visits offline in email instead of running it as part of your session. Hopefully betwen the two of those suggestions, you can better match the story you want to explore with the actual pacing of your game.

I think it helps to prep as close to the game as possible. I tend to prep within a day or so. If I prep earlier than that, I make sure to give myself time to go over my prep notes again maybe an hour or so before the game so I'm fresh. I think it is useful to jot some game notes down right after a session and then review it when you're prepping your next one — ideally as close to the next session as you can. For my Wednesday game I prep usually Tuesday evening. For my Sunday game, I'm prepping two hours earlier than the game.

Having some way to mark miniatures so you can keep them separated is good. In the 4e D&D days we used to use coke bottle rings of different colors to keep track of status effects and the like. You can put little stickers on the base of a mini with numbers or letters ir colors as well. Another trick is to pool damage against a whole set of monsters instead of tracking damage to each monster. I do this when there are a lot of monsters of a lower level than the characters and I make it clear to the players. Instead of tracking the hit points of individual monsters, you pool the damage done in one tally. When the tally takes enough damage to match or exceed the hit points of one particular monster, the monster that just took that damage dies. That way you don't have to track damage to each one.

yeah, I think making monsters sound scary in the fiction is great but you do want to let the characters know when an encounter is potentially deadly. I think its ok to break character and let them know. Their characters are seeing things the players cannot. I'm a big fan of "these foes are beyond you" sort of quotes but really making it clear that's the case. I'll warn you against designing encounters specifically to put them in spots like this, though. Pre-determined un-winnable fights aren't a lot of fun.

I don't do anything special for just one character. I might touch-up the overall difficulty of an encounter to account for it — or change the difficulty if that character doesn't happen to be in the party on a given week. But I don't want to "overfit" the encounter by trying to touch up the difficulty of one particular thing to account for that one character. I will, however, throw in lightning rods so that character can show off. Big creatures with decent AC he can penetrate and do a lot of damage to. Monsters that dish out a lot of elemental damage so his resistances come into play. That sort of thing. I also use dreadful blessings in boss fights which give me some more improvisational room when I need them: https://slyflourish.com/dreaded_blessings.html