July 2022 Sly Flourish Patreon Q&A Thread

Hi Matthew! Obviously I'm a big fan of my Fantastic Adventures pregens: https://slyflourish_content.s3.amazonaws.com/fantastic_adventures_pregen_characters.pdf They cover 1st to 5th level with all of the info needed to run them with no book required. You can also give each character an index card with a character hook tied to the adventure itself. Maybe an important NPC is related to a character or the main villain murdered one of the character's favorite pets. I find players /love/ these built-in motivations. The nice thing is they can be completely abstract from the character sheets themselves so any character might have any hook regardless of the class or race they want to be. Hope that helps!

Hi Simon! I have a bunch of YouTube questions on making combat interesting that might help. You can search the Talk Show database here: https://www.notion.so/slyflourish/Lazy-D-D-Talk-Show-Video-Topics-Database-Updated-18-June-2022-81e4c2f5523b4ceda45f6cc1137e6154 and search for "combat" to see a bunch of clips. Some of these get to your question. I think there are a couple of ways to improvise the situation. What features exist in the environment? What could those features do? Granting advantage and disadvantage are good ones. A creature "getting the high ground" has advantage on those below. Cover is an easy one to throw in to give people a bonus to AC and dex saves. Also take a look at cinematic advantage – a way to give characters advantage for using terrain in interesting ways. https://slyflourish.com/cinematic_advantage.html This article also has more: https://slyflourish.com/improvising_combat_with_advantage.html

Hi Alex! On the former side, I don't think I have any real ability to inform WOTC about stuff. They're smart people taking in a lot of input so I don't drive myself crazy thinking that I can influence their decisions. One of my reasons for looking at a "reaction declaration phase" was to give me a tool to help me smooth out the game even if they *do* keep adding new reactions. I need a way to handle it. On the second, I've talked about exploration before and why 5e isn't really suited to the older school rules of exploration. I've talked to Professor Dungeon Master over at Dungeon Craft (an old school DM himself) and he agreed with me. Here's more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVwD1XVeq3U&t=2440s

Letting them go is often the best approach and, as a GM, it's best not to make that the wrong option. A lot of enemies might turn sides, offering good info in exchange for fair treatment. They might even become allies. Lean this way so players don't feel like murdering helpless prisoners is the right way to go. I often have irredeemable prisoners kill themselves or die in some weird ritual (their master can burn them up from orbit).

I've seem some systems like this in games like Gloomhaven. I can't say if there's a market for it. 13th Age has enemies that have certain behaviors based on their dice rolls. It'd be something to experiment with, maybe put out a small product to test out the idea before pouring a lot into it. Hard to say! Good luck!

Hi Alexander! I think I'd go with the "get the majority" idea but as the characters are thwarting the lich, the lich has to sacrifice things *he* needs. Maybe he has a city of worshippers but has to sacrifice the worshippers. Maybe he has other assets he has to destroy. Him finding an alternate path is great and if that path puts him at a disadvantage, all the better. Maybe he's basically invulnerable but has to become vulnerable if he doesn't have what he needs. In short, what does he have to give up if the characters start thwarting his plan? Another way is for the characters to know that he gets /all/ the components, his magic will be basically unstoppable. The more components they keep from his reach, the less powerful his spell (but still plenty powerful). Hope that helps!

HI Rangdo! Tashas has a whole section of class changes not tied to subclasses. Rogues get "aim", a lot of classes can swap things in and out, monks get a new ability. A lot of these changes just make the game run smoother and fix some rough edges. I like them a lot so I'd include them even if I didn't include other Tasha stuff.

For a home campaign, I wouldn't worry about it! Your players might not even notice. It's perfectly fine to lift whole-cloth from published adventures or settings to drop into your home game. The publishers of these books hope you do so. Wolfgang Baur of Kobold Press told me this directly. He said it's his greatest hope for Midgard that DMs take pieces of the world and use it in their own settings. For a potential published campaign you'll want to shake things up. It's fine to take inspiration from other works but it should be original enough that it's worth buying. Hope that helps!

Hi Joshua! I don't know if I have outstanding advice. I think finding a good set of maps for them to look at is great. As far as getting from place to place, maybe its teleporters, maybe giant birds, maybe other ways they can think of to get from place to place. It's ok to lead them a bit and give them ideas.

Hi Bastien! I definitely plan on more tier 3 and 4 hooks for City of Arches. I don't know about full adventures. The big thing to remember is that tier 3 characters are just plain different and more important. The scope and scale of the game should change. They should be doing kingdom / world-level saving instead of just local stuff. Big events require big heroes. Here's more on this: https://slyflourish.com/tier_appropriate_adventure_locations.html https://slyflourish.com/scaling_the_story.html

There needs to be a consequence for failure if you want to have a roll. If they can just keep trying, they should probably just do it. You can do this by saying that whoever has the highest arcana bonus is able to just do it (this makes them feel good about having so much in Arcana). Otherwise you might have a detriment. Does the cypher curse them somehow? Does it sink in some mind flayer hooks? Do they suffer a stress effect on a failure? Even if the stress effect isn't permanent, it's a bit of fun roleplaying. Not everything needs a mechanical detriment but even a story-based detriment for failure is worth doing.

Pretty high! I like it a lot. I think I liked Curse of Strahd and Tomb of Annihilation better but maybe number 3?

I'm not totally familiar with DCC but you might try to wrap your own larger campaign around the adventures or you might skip it completely. The six truths might instead be about the larger world in which these more focused adventures take place. Hope that helps!

I'm all for it. I've heard people use the term as a pejorative but it feels good and lazy to me. I do try to think about the situation on though. If it doesn't make sense in the world that an ogre would be on path A instead of B, I don't put it there and put something else. If you've watched some of my prep, you'll see that I often don't attach monsters to specific rooms. Instead I let the situation and the game's pacing dictate who shows up where.

Sure! A situation often has the following things: - A location. Give it multiple entrances, multiple paths, loop-backs, and secret paths. - Inhabitants. I like to usually have two types: unintelligent monsters and intelligent foes. - Behaviors. How would the inhabitants act if the characters aren't there? What are they doing? What events are taking place? - A goal. Something the characters must do in this location. - A complication. What might happen in the middle of the situation to shake things up? Someone else tries to break in, some army attacks, something bursts into flame, the main villain comes home from riding class. Etc. I think that's a good simple and lazy checklist for making situations. Hope that helps!

I have this same issue. I look forward to the response.

Hi Ciarán! There's a good study about subjects trying to identify a song when someone else is tapping out the rhythm with their finger. The tapper thought the listener would get it 50% of the time when, in reality, it was like 10%. We /think/ our players will recognize the situation but they probably won't. If they /do/, just roll with it. If the scene would break down because the characters figure out the truth, it's probably too fragile a scene. What would make the characters go into the vampire bar even if they *knew* it was vampires?

Hi JM! I'm very likely to do a Numenera retrospective when we're done with our campaign in a month or so but I'll give you some thoughts now: Running Numenera is pretty awesome for the GM. It's really easy to come up with difficulties and to improvise monsters. It has the best monster improvisation system I've ever used. I hardly ever bother to look up a monster except for art. The DM's role really breaks down to describing the situation, choosing difficulties, and dropping in GM intrusions. Because GMs don't roll dice (which I like but may GMs hate), I have more time for that sort of thing. I forget about GM intrusions all the time, though. I really need to focus on dropping them in so every character gets at least one every session. I have *no idea* what the game is like on the player side. I've asked my players and they're enjoying their progression and growth but its such a different system on the player and DM side that it's almost opaque to me. I don't know what's going on over there. Once I got my hands around my story, it's been great fun to put together. That said, there's *so much* material for Numenera that it's a little paralyzing. You really don't *need* much but it feels like a waste if you're running stuff in the datasphere and you don't use "Voices in the Datasphere". There are some mechanically weird bits. The whole idea that you can expend effort to lower a difficulty but the first is reduced by your edge and the second is reduced by one automatically just feels weird and we have to remember it every time. Monsters can quickly become just noise if a character's armor is enough to block the armor. I'm having monsters throw unblockable attacks about half the time due to their story (eye-rays or radiation blasts and the like). Also, I don't know when a monster should get multiple attacks. It feels like they should get an extra attack at level 4, level 6, level 8, and so on so they remain a threat. I just wing it which is really what the book does too. I just could have used better guidance on that. In the end, Numenera has held up to my expectations. I'm loving running it and my players are having a blast. I'm happy to go back to 5th edition but I don't regret playing Numenera at all.

One to three. Seven to eight is madness. I ran a game on Wednesday with three different monsters in three books and it was a pain in the ass. One trick is to use one stat block but reflavor them in the narrative so they all sound different. Four bandits or four veterans can use the same stat block but you can reflavor them or use different miniatures to make them *feel* like four unique monsters without the hassle. Thanks for the question!

I haven't seen Whimsy cards but they sound cool. We used to use some Rory's Story Cubes to help us fill in fun details of a story. We might use them to build backstories for un-named NPCs or the players would roll them to come up with things. We did it for a while but the novelty wore off and we're back to our normal styles. I'll have to check out whimsy cards. Thanks!

Hello! I talked a bit with Shawn Merwin who wrote many short adventures on this topic. You can listen to us talk about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rWFXTpmZj8 Here are a few other tips: - Stay in 1st to 4th level as long as you can. - Try to limit your number of players to four or less. - Run combat in the theater of the mind when possible. - Use a single type of monster, change their descriptions in flavor instead of mechanics. - You can get probably three scenes in a two hour game. Plan accordingly. Some of those may not be possible given your circumstances but hopefully they give you some ideas. Good luck!

Hi Zeke! Tag-along NPCs can be a killer. Most of the time, I ensure that the tag-long NPC can't or won't do anything in combat. If they *do* something in combat, I try to handle it off-screen. Some segment of monsters and the NPC head off and become part of the background. I always want the spotlight to stay on the players. If I have fewer than four players, having one of the players run a simple NPC stat block (like a veteran) can work fine, but if there are four or more players, I try to avoid tag-along NPCs. One great way to have a tag-along NPC is as an intelligent magic item. I *love* intelligent magic items that offer all sorts of info and fun personality to the characters without taking up a slot of combat or time in the spotlight. Here's an article I wrote on the topic! https://slyflourish.com/tag-along_npcs.html Good luck!

Hi Kevin! Unfortunately I've never really dived into flow-charts for characters but I've heard they can work really well. Good luck!

I think it's totally fine to say that certain races are predominant or the only ones that exist in a given situation. That list can be wide or narrow. As you say, I think it's a good session zero topic, but in the end I think its perfectly fine to say that only certain races exist in a given campaign. I think it helps when you include some new ones in the list so players don't see it as a limit as much as a new opportunity. Having faeries and satyrs in a Witchlight game makes sense. Having tabaxi and tortles in a Tomb of Annihilation game makes sense. Having hexborn and vampyrs in a Ravenloft game makes sense. I think talking about it with your players and making it part of your one-page campaign summary is a fine way to go. With the huge range of races now available both from WOTC and from third-party publishers, it behooves us to explain which races make sense for a given campaign. If a player has an idea for a particular race not included but you think it does make sense for the campaign, you can always include it. In the end, the only races that matter are the ones the characters choose.

Hi J! My approach was to look through other third-party products and see the artists they used and reach out to them. The good news is that artists want to be found so it isn't usually that hard to find them. Find art you really like from sourcebooks (usually third party) and reach out to them on Twitter or email. Many of them have portfolios available you can look through. The same is true with cartographers. Look through products similar to yours and see what cartographers you find. Good luck!

Hi Christopher! I talked about this in a couple of videos I think: https://youtube.com/watch?v=UDyEig99m1c&t=1857s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRDn3pU1XOs&t=2347s Let me know if those don't answer your question!

Hi Philip! I think there's a difference between "banning" something and not allowing something. I doubt many games out there allow *everything* (every third party product, every wiki-based build, every Reddit idea, every player's home creation). I think nearly all DMs select what material they allow at the game, even if that selection is "everything from WOTC" or "everything on D&D Beyond". So it's not a question of what one bans or doesn't but what one selects for their game. I'm of the belief that WOTC material isn't necessarily better than third party material from a balance or design standpoint. Many former WOTC designers now publish their own third party products and many WOTC designers were once third party designers themselves. I don't think WOTC has a special sauce that makes their material better than everything else (that said, their stuff is really good – don't get me wrong). So that means I want to treat WOTC material the same way I'd treat third party material. Most of the time I have two criteria for selecting what's allowed and what isn't for a given campaign: 1. What fits the theme of the campaign itself? 2. What material makes the game run more poorly for me as a GM or for all of us as players? For the first one, I might say that, for my Empire of the Ghouls campaign, I'm going to include the Player's Handbook, Midgard Heroes, and Tome of Heroes so we have a good selection of Midgard-focused builds and an opportunity to try things out we've never tried before. If I were running a Strixhaven game I might allow the PhB, Xanathar's, and Strixhaven as sources. For a more straight-forward D&D game I might allow PhP, Xanathar's, and Tasha's. For the second one, there are certain sub-classes, spells, and abilities that either make my life harder as a DM or make the whole game harder to run and enjoy. Examples include Twilight clerics who change the whole balance of combat by off-setting damage by like 8 points per character per turn; spells like Heroes Feast which completely negate monsters who use poison; spells like summon woodland beings which give one player nine turns they can take; and other things like that. I've given shit to the spell "Silvery Barbs" from Strixhaven but I don't have to "ban" it because we're not playing Strixhaven so I don't include Strixhaven spells in my regular selection. D&D Beyond doesn't make it easy to filter out spells from sources you're not including which is a problem but I just have to make sure my players are good with it. Overall, given I've been running games for 8 years; I actually "ban" much less than I did in the 4e days where there was simply too much to allow everything. Long answer! Hope that helps!

Hi Mark! First, it's great that you noticed this! Few people do! One question is whether the two people that hardly engaged were upset by this or not. If it's online, it's really hard to determine if they're doing fine or if they really want to engage more. I think your approach of, as a player, engaging with their characters is a good one. Ask them questions about their characters and see how they respond. Again, if it's an online game, you can send a private message to the DM and let them know you've noticed this. You're not being selfish about it or heavily critical so I think it's ok to do so unsolicited. You're not mentioning any criticism of their DM style. You're instincts here are great. Thank you!

Hi A Marquez! I appreciate that people would love to see something like that (it's probably not as many people as you'd think). I'd love to do another short-run adventure like Dragon of Icespire Peak with Enrique Bertran. That was great fun and I think I could get the production value much higher this time around. There's so much work in putting up a livestream game. It's really hard to do well and there are so many of them that I don't think I'd be bringing anything special to that slice of the hobby. I also frankly just don't have the time. It takes a lot of extra time to get a streaming game together and I think I offer more value in other areas of this hobby. Third, I just enjoy playing regular games of D&D with my friends without the added pressure of an audience. I remember hearing Kate Welsch talking about wanting to just play in her own game and what a luxury that is when you're streaming games all the time. I have that luxury now and I don't want to give it up. Thanks for the interest!

Hi Stephanie! I really haven't given them much of a look. I wish I had more to offer!

Hi Mario! Sounds like a cool idea! You can foreshadow in lots of ways including pieces of dungeons sticking out of the ground. Take some of the chambers of the original Tomb of Horrors and have them appear on their own stuck out of the hillsides of Prismeer. If you're playing a domain of dread as they're written in Van Richten's Guide, keep in mind that they're prisons for their dark lords. Who is imprisoning Acererak and why? Does he know it's a prison? What torments him there? Alternatively, you can skip the idea that it's a domain of dread and, instead, describe it as a planar incubator for the dead god Acererak attempts to resurrect. This would fit well into Tomb of Annihilation I think. Good luck!

Hi Matt! Some people just dig new stuff! I think it's great to read up and explore other game systems and we can learn a lot by playing them if we have the time and the opportunity. Not all people feel this way, though, and your players may not. As you say, they may humor you but we don't want to take their charity too far. Maybe it's possible to put together another group of players who *also* enjoy trying other RPGs while keeping your main group with the system they like. If you all like trying new things, go with the gods! Nothing says you have to stick to one system. I still love running 5e after eight years or whatever of running it, so it's no burden. I was happy to have the opportunity to run other systems for my Sunday group including Blades in the Dark and Numenera. I'm also happy to switch them back to 5e because I still love and am very comfortable with 5e. Don't worry about looking outside of 5e, it will only make you a better GM.

Hi Chris! There's a couple of things that might help. First, you can use a line like "you're confident you've fully explored this room" to make it clear they've found everything if they're spending a lot of time searching one room. This is definitely a "tell, don't show" sort of situation. Just tell the players they've exhausted all they're going to get to get the game moving forward again. If the players have a clear drive towards a goal, they're likely to skip everything except the drive to the goal. One thing you can do is put items they need in areas you want them to explore. You can even do this during the game, moving "keys" to rooms you want them to explore and find other things. They need the key to get where they need to go so they'll go hunting for it. If you have a secret and clue you know the characters need, you can just keep repeating it and eventually they'll get it. Repetition is the best way to get them to pick up and remember vital clues. Hope that helps!

Hi Robin! I have a couple of articles that might help: https://slyflourish.com/framework_for_one_on_one_dnd.html https://slyflourish.com/balancing_combat_for_one_on_one.html and this video: https://youtu.be/DZ7vaEqlh6o The Lazy DM's Companion also has a section on one-on-one games. Hope that helps!

This depends on whether you mean a homebrew adventure or a published adventure but the answer is yes in both cases. I always try to offer some sort of meaningful choice at the end of an adventure, some hard situation where the characters must choose. Do they kill the bad guy or try to rehabilitate them? Do they take the powerful artifact or try to destroy it? Which one of the three factions do they form an alliance with? Do they make a deal with the ancient evil that can give them so much useful information or power? I do this all the time and I love it. My players know I'm going to do it, too, and remark on it. To me, one way to make sure it's a valuable question is to put yourself in the seat and ask if you'd be willing to make either of the choices. If you lean only one way, likely so will your players and its worth trying to make the other choice more enticing.

Sure! You can certainly trade legendary resistances for healing. You'd have to guess how much and I suggest playing it by ear. I'd let the players know, maybe out of game, that you're going to change out legendary resistance works so they know what to expect. MCDM is big on removing legendary resistance and replacing it with something that affects the monster in another way like taking away one of its attacks or giving it some other sort of disadvantage. You can try something like that. 2C Gaming actually lets legendary monsters sacrifice legendary actions to use as legendary resistance. Since legendary resistance is mostly used to help the action economy, reducing actions for lost uses of legendary resistance makes sense. Experiment with it but let your players know what you're doing so they're not surprised and disappointed.

Hi Mikael! There are a few things you can do. You can bum editing time from friends who happen to be good at it. I admit to having done this for my earliest work which didn't make a lot of money. Paying anything less than 5 cents a word is probably paying too little so factor that into your budget. You can offer lower pay and a percent of profits but that can be hard to manage. As for finding editors, consider connecting to people on Twitter and asking around. Be clear about what you need, what kind of product you have, and your expectations. You can also try the DM's Guild and DriveThruRPG discord servers and see who you can find. For early projects, consider going with as few words as you can. Shorter products are easier for people to read, cheaper to produce, usually cheaper to buy, and help you learn the whole process. Good luck!

Hello! Yeah, I love running two, sometimes three games a week. That's a lot for anyone but I manage. This is where the ideas in Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master really shine, if you ask me. You're forced to limit your prep because you simply can't run so many games. I find, for published adventures, it means I tend to skim-read the adventures instead of really diving deep which can be a problem. I'm not a great reader and our attention-pulling world hasn't made me better. It's certainly easier if I'm running the same campaign for two groups and I've never found it boring to do so. I love watching the campaign change depending on the characters running it but it still means I get close to double value out of my prep. Try it and see. Running two totally different campaigns in different systems is harder but not terrible. I probably don't give either as much attention as I like but I think we're all still having fun. Limiting myself to 30 minutes of prep for any game I run lets me run more games and I think that's the real benefit of Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master and the eight steps.

Yeah, there's a lot of advantages piled on dexterity but I tend not to worry about it. There are many times where strength comes into play. Where sheer brawn is required moreso than dexterity and agility. I know I've often let people roll either dexterity or strength for a lot of physical checks but if it bothers you, you can certainly make it clear that strength is the only one to work – as long as failure is still interesting and doesn't halt the game. Constitution is hardly ever used as an ability check because most things that would trigger constitution are done /to/ you, not /by/ you. A drinking contest, though, would be one way to roll constitution checks. Any sort of endurance check might go that way too. It's one thing to lift a big heavy portcullis. It's something else to /keep/ holding it up. As always, a review of what the different attributes call for in chapter 7 of the Players Handbook is useful. Its easy to forget.

Hi S.Morgan! There are a couple of things you can do. One is to remember the sequence of actions. One cannot guide someone who has already made a check. It's not a reaction to someone making a check. It has to be cast ahead of time. This means you can only do it if you know you're going to actually perform a check like picking a lock or something like that. Two, anyone else in the area knows you're using magic so you likely don't use it on diplomacy checks or other social interactions because its a bit like using charm. Someone knows you're dicking with them. Another thing is just not to worry about it. It's not that game-breaking and, for the most part, we want players to succeed on checks. Whatever you choose to do, have a conversation with your player outside of the game to talk about how you plan to run guidance so everyone's aware before you spring any new approach on them. Good luck!

Hi Jason! Yeah, that can be a problem. One way to deal with it is to simply tell the players, out of character, that the celebrations aren’t the same. The sinister nature of the celebrations in Vallaki aren’t the same as the genuine celebrations in Deepdelver’s Enclave. You can also skip the celebrations in Deepdelver’s Enclave. Nothing says you have to have them. Or you can make them less frequent or later in the campaign instead of all the time.

Thanks so much! You can certainly replace one with the other. I forget lair actions all the time. You can also tie lair actions into villain actions. As far as doing them at other time, I think you’re free to try any other way you think it works. Give it a try!

Sure! From what I’ve read, I don’t see a reason why the Enclave or the area around it couldn’t connect to the Radiant Citadel. I’d have to see more in the book but I don’t see why not. Maybe it’s not a full society but more like a small off-shoot coming from a small chamber that whisks the characters through the Ethereal Plane to the citadel.

Hi Simon! Here’s an article that offers twenty ways the characters might find secrets. The Lazy DM’s Companion has even more! https://slyflourish.com/revealing_secrets.html

Hi Matthew! I think I've mentioned it before and I just wrote an article for Sly Flourish on this topic. You can see the article here: https://slyflourish.com/subsystems.html I'm not a fan of sub-systems and supplemental rules for the most part because I feel like we all need to learn new things that we only use once. Often they're not particularly well designed. Instead, I just try to fall back to the good old ability check.

Hi Francesca! Welcome to the hobby! The Player's Handbook has a lot of prices for goods and services listed out. Instead of taking it on yourself, you can ask your players to look it up in the PhB as well. For services, the 2 gp per day for a skilled worker helps set costs. How many days of a skilled worker would this service take? For items, it's probably best to compare it to similar items in the PhB. Take a little time to read through the equipment section of the PhB to familiarize yourself but don't be afraid to ask your players to look it up as well. Hope that helps!

I've found that flash/index cards with bullet points are best for taking concise GM notes. Limit yourself to one flash card for each of the 8 steps. Some of the steps like reviewing the characters may need nothing at all. Keep things like potential scenes to one line per scene as Mike does in his lazy GM prep videos. Describe NPCs with archetypes or pop culture references to keep them brief. You know what you mean cause you wrote it. Hope this helps

How about spending hit dice, reducing maximum hit points or burning attributes. Allowing these to be recovered on a long rest

Hi Sean! Sounds awesome! I think your instinct is right to avoid having the factions fight one another in real time. Instead, having the characters witness the results of the battles can be fun. They might walk in on a fight just about to end. They might interact with NPCs and, through these interactions, change the outcome for one faction or another. You can just roll a single die to see if one faction starts to get the leg up. From the characters' perspective, they can see the results of this war taking place as they explore the dungeon. Seeing one group slain by another. Seeing the remaining veterans of a conflict coming through. That sort of thing. There's lots of fun ways to show the characters the ongoing war without having to actually play it out. Good luck!

Hi Anthony! I hate to admit it, given that it was written by three friends of mine, but I've never really dove into Acquisitions Incorporated. I think it'd be a fantastic way to run the City of Arches though. You might have the characters acquire a key to one of the arches that gives them access to some sort of commodity only they can have access to – a particular food or mineral or service or something like that. It might be this tiny little archway in a nook in some old building that they discover but gives them access to something no one else in the city has access to. Think Being John Malcovich.

Hi Anthony! I think the best way to do this is to focus on one particular ward at a time. This is how Dragon Heist made Waterdeep manageable. You can start to expand the city based on what they want and need but you can start by just focusing on a few locations in one district and fanning out. Give them a home base and some local locations that matter to them and expand out as the story drives them outward.

I definitely tried to have such a tone with Ruins of the Grendleroot, particularly deep delver's enclave. I think you can take a sort of Alice in Wonderland approach with it. Tales of the Old Margreve by Kobold Press has the sort of old-school faerie tale approach but its not exactly whimsical. It can be pretty dark. You might have a look at Grymmworld by 2c gaming as well. Good luck!

Hi Matt! I think running heists for larcenous characters fits very well. Maybe the drive is *what* they're stealing. You might offer up a few different heists for different things and see what clicks. Are they just seeking out magic items? That itself could be the main motivation. Maybe an out-of-game conversation about their characters can help them solidify their motivations in their own minds and help you drive the adventures. Just a thought.

Hi Joshua! I'm not quite sure what you mean by authenticity. If your players happen to know who they are, that helps. Otherwise you might use a herald to speak for and about them. Build up their reputation through other NPCs before the characters meet them. Hope that helps!

Thank you! I'll have to dig into it more and do a spotlight. I think when I got it, it wasn't yet for general sale. I think it is now.

This one is tough. I know my players lean on the chaotic neutral side - I once tried to set them up to become special officers in a cool military but they preferred to freelance. I think they have trust issues haha. I had the most success having them be their own patron, running their own private detective agency in Eberron. It was easy to have them be hired by whatever NPC I needed. In your case, I love the sphinx idea. Maybe it would help if the Sphinx's goals line up with the characters? For example: "I need you to help me retake my lair - in return, I believe my lair has the answer to what monster razed your village/thief stole your heirloom/ingredient for the potion you're trying to invent." Good luck!

Good question. I might run them quickly. I might take some time with it. I don't typically run a 3 hour shopping session. It's not what I typically enjoy and I don't imagine every player loves to hear every other player roleplaying with the local weaver. Sometimes I'll even do it retroactively. I'll speed things up by saying "you can always assume you bought common items at the town so don't worry too much about getting it right". This is sort of the idea of making a check to see if you had already bought the item you needed. One needs to be careful with pacing in shopping trips. It's an easy way to get caught in some seriously slow pacing.

I'd probably read a bunch of systems and see which one captured the style and feeling I was going for the most and stick to what it has written. I don't know that I'd jump on a brand new system and start home brewing. Learn the rules before you break the rules and all of that =) Good luck!

(I'm mainly looking for help with ways to think about this, and how to talk about this, as a DM.)