November 2022 Sly Flourish Patreon Q&A

Hi Mystic! I don't have fantastic advice for this but you might check in the DM's Workshop or the other channels on the Discord server. There are other DMs who run for kids that might have something to help. I have seen some kid-friendly character sheets on the DM's Guild that might help. Giving them more simplified characters so they can understand what's going on can help. Just some thoughts!

That depends on how much you want them to have Ashsnarl in the campaign! If you think it's cool, let them go with it. If you think it's going to be a pain in the ass letting them drive around a big dragon tank all the time, make it harder to use or require a special fuel. I don't think it burns off of coal. Maybe special Grendleroot stuff that has to be infused in a furnace they have to find or something like that. Put a limit on how often they can use it.

I'd check in with the players to see if *they* feel like it's getting slow. This sort of low-pace dungeon crawl may be working for them. But if its not working for *you*, you could do things like keep the circumstances moving so they have to move faster or things are going to happen without them. Make that sense of urgency clear to them so they stay on the move. The world is moving on around them! I wouldn't put that pressure on all the time but it can help. Another thing you can do is make it clear to them that they've explored everything they're going to find. Like the final line in a computer prompt. "You feel you have fully explored everything there is to find here". "but what about??" "You feel you have fully explored everything there is to find here". Of course, don't screw them with this "oh, you didn't look under the desk!". If you say it, you have to mean it. Just some thoughts!

Sounds cool! I think we can do something like this without needing a subsystem if we think about potential encounters and how the characters might avoid them with talking or sneaking around or something like that. I find players often bring this sort of thing to the table themselves so I don't think I'd have to put a new subsystem on it. Instead, I think understanding the situation and reacting as the NPCs would react can lead to this same outcome a lot of the time.

Sure! If that works for you, that can work great. it can also help when getting attacked by a bunch of monsters at once. You can group it together into one or two rolls or whatever. The Cypher system works like this too. There's a bit of "go out to the shed to get the belt" feeling to this, though. Punishing the characters for their crappy die rolls. But yeah, if you and your group dig it, go with the gods!

In the Sly Flourish Discord I ask for and use spoiler tags to help my players avoid spoiling stuff. I also don't talk about my game that much (except in my shows). Instead, I might focus on or ask about particular things that don't spoil the story but help me figure things out. I think also sticking to adventure threads or forums helps. Players hopefully aren't lurking around in forums or threads focused on the adventure in which they're playing. I think we probably overweight unspoiled stories. I have players who have played in the same campaign multiple times because they just love seeing what happens. The more our adventures and stories avoid focusing on "surprises" and instead just unfold as the situation unfolds based on the actions of the characters, the less we have to worry about spoilers.

I've used the physical representation of legendary resistances before. It's a great idea to tie legendary resistances to an in-world physical representation like glyphed scales on a dragon or ioun stones surrounding the head of a lich. I haven't used much else but I love a lot of what I read.

It didn't make it into Hoard of the Dragon Queen but Wolfgang Baur and Steve Winter talked about a scene during the Long Road section of that book where the cult of Lovitar are throwing themselves in front of carts or into spiney bramble bushes to show their devotion to their sadistic god. I thought that was pretty funny. I wrote more about it here: https://slyflourish.com/on_the_road_part_2.html Another funny one was when the characters, traveling through the sewers of Zobeck, found a ritual chamber used by a bunch of cultists – sort of like the community center for cults – which happened to be in use by a bat cult. They were about to sacrifice someone by throwing them into a big pit. One of the characters thorn-whipped a guard into the pit instead, fulfilling the ritual themselves. The other cultists shrugged and enjoyed watching a huge demon bat come out of the pit. Good times. A deeper question is "why do I like cults so much?" I just watched two movies: Hereditary and Midsommar which (spoilers) involve cults. I think it has something to do with the deep potential lore of such groups. The uncovering of their dark secrets. The draw to the forbidden. Cults are often more interesting than just pure horror elements like murders or whatever. Something about the rituals and why they do what they do is more interesting, I think. The decomposition of a conspiracy. It's all fun and interesting to me.

A lot of third party publishers have their stuff on sale. Check out this article and see what's on sale: https://slyflourish.com/notable_third_party_products.html Amazon also has a huge sale in the US for WOTC-published D&D books including a $16 players handbook. That's bananas.

So far the rumor mill leads me to think the most likely (which may not be that likely so keep that in mind) is that they'll try something like the Game System License again that 4th edition had. Bean-counters hate the idea of a perpetual license like the OGL was. They want control and a limited license gives them control but puts a lot of risk on publishers who use it. I'd say its less likely we'll see a true One D&D or 6e SRD that uses the existing OGL (or something like it). I think they want something more like what the DM's Guild has and what the D20 license of 20 years ago has which gave WOTC the ability to pull it back and revoke it when they wished. That license is why Paizo formed Pathfinder. *How* likely is that? It's hard to say. There's a huge amount of uncertainty. That said, I think we can do a whole lot just under existing copyright and trademark law. I don't know that the sort of thing I want to produce requires *any* sort of license. Look how well Raging Swan Press has done without any license.

Should they? Sure. Will they? That's up to them. The WOTC design team is almost certainly all DMs themselves so they see how things work out too. I don't think they *don't* want to support DMs but sometimes it feels like they're focusing a lot on players. I think its very easy to take an "us and them" approach to this sort of thing. "WOTC hates melees!" I see all the time on Reddit. That's just not the case. How will it turn out? Who can say. Keep filling out those surveys =)

Hi Keotep! This is a fantastic and very important question – one so important that I don't know I'm the right guy to answer it but I'll try. I think forming deeper and longer-lasting friendships is really hard in this day in age. Social media gives us the impression of building relationships but they're loose, fleeting, and delicate. I think running D&D games for people online is better than just interacting with someone over a social media site but it can still take work to strengthen those friendships. I think there are a few things we can do to help strengthen these potential relationships: - Get their names. When you connect with someone online, take note of them. Write down their info. Learn something about them. Get their email address. - Reach out to them. Let them know you had a good time and it was nice to meet them. Ask if you can keep in touch. - Invite them to other games. Ask if they'd be interested in a one-on-one game. - If you happen to be local, ask if they want to go grab a coffee or lunch sometime. This sort of stuff can feel uncomfortably intimate but that's part of a social pressure we often put on ourselves. Don't get me started with the problems of toxic masculinity many men live with and under. That's something we ened to get past and it's hard but doable. Of course, we also don't want to be creepy. If someone doesn't seem to be comfortable increasing the depth of a friendship, we should accept that and keep it where you're both comfortable. I have friends I'd go fly across the country for and others I'm happy to keep as the occasional text message. One bit of nerdy stuff that I do is actually keep track of my contact with my friends. I don't want to forget people so I actually try to note when I've talked to my friends and even schedule time to reach out using a future to-do on my to do list (I use Omnifocus on my iPhone). I think maintaining friendships is as important as maintaining our health. I think it *is* maintaining our health and our society today has made it harder. It's worth our time and energy to do what we can to build, rebuild, and maintain our friendships. Good on you for taking note of it.

Hi Starmont! That's a really tough spot to be in. I've seen it where a player just rolls like crap for a whole night and its a real drag. Luckily, math can be our friend here too! It's unlikely they'll *keep* rolling bad. The more rolls the more those rolls will even out. If someone's rolling poorly, ask for more rolls. Give them more chances for rolls. In a one-on-one game, make sure they're rolling for their sidekick character too. Give them lots of options for advantage and inspiration. Set up environments to offer advantage in the right circumstances and telegraph those environmental bonuses. You can also move some of the story away from the dice. Use their backgrounds, classes, or proficiencies to learn more about the world without requiring a roll. If they do particularly well roleplaying, don't ask for a roll to convince an NPC of something. Move that to the success of their approach. So those are my two pieces of advice: find ways to ask for more rolls and move other parts of the game away from rolls so their class, race, background, skill proficiencies, and other factors lead them to their successes.

Hi Andrew! I have a few videos where I prepare for a single session game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYkn1qzLt2Q&list=PLb39x-29puaqbHmqvQufhsCVyFpZj3Ugn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7yA98Tqpxo&list=PLb39x-29puaqbHmqvQufhsCVyFpZj3Ugn And more here as well: https://slyflourish.com/choosing_the_right_steps.html Hope that helps!

I'm currently in the middle of a Grendleroot campaign ( started at lvl 1, now up to lvl 4 all in Blackclaw Mt.) I'd LOVE to hear about your experiences in the enclave!

I had a long-time player who only played with his phone. I'd focus a lot on the narration and static visuals instead of a virtual tabletop. Discord alone is an excellent platform for running online games and doesn't need much else. If you do use VTTs, Owlbear Rodeo can run well on a mobile phone. I was messing around with OBR 2.0 on my phone just yesterday. It's not ideal but it can work. You can also send static pictures of a virtual map to players on smaller devices. More here: https://slyflourish.com/playing_dnd_over_discord.html

You might talk to each of them independently and ask them if they're enjoying their character. If they're not, you might gently suggest what they might do to make more use out of the character. Using that cunning action as a rogue for example. Otherwise you might let them switch. You can always help them see potential options by describing what their character knows of the situation instead of telling them what to do: "Your rogue can see that those stalagmites would be a great place to hide" for example. Exposing the information the characters would know to give them meaningful choices can help a lot. Remember that players only grab about half of what you describe. Don't be afraid to let them know what they notice.

I always like cursed items that aren't just "gotchas" like "now you're under the control of the grendleroot and you stab your friend!" Instead, I like detriments the players know about and can work into their character. Hearing the whispers of the Grendleroot or even the Black Star would be fun – like hearing radio reception you don't want to hear. It might be a long-term but not mechanical debilitating effect. It's a great vehicle for secrets and clues. Certain monsters might be more attracted to that armor as well if they can hear it too.

I think there are still the same paths and nodes even if the characters can fly over them. There can still be encounters down in those paths the characters might want to get involved in. Local merchants are getting attacked by cyclopes or something like that. I'd be careful doing constant aerial attacks to make up for the lack of combat encounters they'd expect on the ground. That gets old quick. But following paths and landmarks makes as much sense with flying as it does on the ground. You still need to find a location and you can still follow the river to get there. When the characters have flight, it becomes a different kind of game and that's worth paying attention to. The stakes change and, as a DM, you need to be ready to change those stakes. It's not always easy.

Lots of people have different ways to handle random encounters so I don't think there's one *right* answer. I typically don't roll for random encounters during the game. Instead, I'll roll on a bunch of random tables during my prep to fill out locations or scenes. It gives me a little time to make sense of what I roll. I think having a handful of more filled-out encounters ready to go and then picking one of them that fits the situation and pace of the game can work well. I do that pretty often. For me, random encounters aren't just monsters to fight. They're fantastic locations, interesting NPCs, monsters that may be coming or already passed through. Lots of things can happen when we build out a scene or situation and we can use random tables to shake those up. So yeah, in short, I typically don't roll for random encounters during the game. It happens, of course, but most of the time I roll during prep.

Hi Chris! I think the best way to handle this is to run the bigger battles off-screen. Let the characters hand specific missions while larger groups of allies are taking care of other parts of it. It sounds like the upcoming Dragonlance book has some interesting ways for the off-screen battles to affect the characters. I don't know what that will be like. See "War Themed Campaigns" in the Lazy DM's Companion (or Running Wars in Uncovered Secrets Volume 1) for more ideas on running wars with a focus on what the characters are doing. As far as the War of the Dragon Queen itself, see this article: https://slyflourish.com/running_rise_of_tiamat.html Good luck!

It depends on the group but if we're in our characters' heads at all, there should be a reason for them to risk life and limb down in a dungeon like Scarlet Citadel. My group faced three deadly encounters in a row. Any rational person would *never* go there again. For anyone to risk such a thing, there has to be something drawing them that's even more powerful than the risk to life and limb. Gold enough isn't an answer. Also, I wish I'd run fewer deadly battles in a row. They need some feeling of accomplishment to keep going. Whatever style of game we run, I think the reward has to match the risk or there's on reason why the characters would choose that path.

I definitely tend to focus on location-based adventures. The characters get a quest, there's some sort of strong start, and then they go explore a location. If I don't go in with an existing premise, I'll try my hand with some random tables to generate a quest and a quest NPC, and see what happens. Then I'll find a map, often from Dysons, that fills in the location. If it's a fancier published adventure, I'll draw my own map and hire a cartographer to make a good version. I'll spend some time thinking about the flow of the adventure. How long is it? How can a DM shorten it up or extend it? Often I'll fill out the other 8 steps from Return to make sure it's helping a DM run it. I'll make sure it has secrets and treasure to discover and that there's some meaningful choice at the end of the adventure. What do they do with the cursed item? Do they let the villain go? What's an interesting choice you can leave the players with at the end? That's pretty much it I think!

Hi Andrew! I think pictures are a great way to do it. While online play makes it harder to bring across an NPC, it is much easier to find and share an image. I'd also consider picking a character archetype from popular fiction and letting the players know who they're like: "This is just like Michone from Walking Dead" or "This guy is just like Belloq from Raiders of the Lost Ark".

There's no reason you can't make that a house rule. I often let the players decide if villains die regardless of the type of attack. https://slyflourish.com/do_they_die.html

Wanting to keep prepping is natural! We love our world and we love whats going on! There are areas where we can focus that attention and areas we might want to steer away from. When you're done with your baseline prep, here are some high-impact things we might spend our time on that can still help our game: - Delve deeper into the lore of our world – published or not. - Come up with cool handouts or props we can show the players. Find art we can show off if we're doing it online. - Think through the eyes of our villains. What do they want? What are they doing? What quests are they on? - Build pointcrawl maps for overland travel. Don't fill it out too much but fill in some interesting adventure locations, monuments, paths to follow, secret paths to discover, and the like. Some things we probably want to avoid are: - Building too much out for adventure locations the characters might not see. - Building storylines that depend on the characters doing certain things. - Drawing lots of maps or noodling around with VTTs when we're not likely to use it or its too much tech for not enough value. - Thinking too far ahead in the story of the campaign. - Custom building boss stat blocks when we can just reskin existing ones. Hope that helps!

First, I'd check in with the player and make sure *they* dig the idea of being a wererat. If they don't, I'd let a *remove curse* take care of it. If they *like* their character being a wererat, maybe *remove curse* simply doesn't work. The curse is too great and requires too much to cure. Maybe a more powerful spell is required maybe there's another quest to get rid of it. We can make up anything we want. But, above all, I'd see what the player thinks of it.

Hi Chappy! I think there are a couple of things that can make a world feel alive. History is one of them. Lore that you lay out in small bits as the characters explore the world – just enough to draw them in and make them want more. The other is *movement*. What things in the world are *changing*. Empires are growing. Wars are being fought. News is happening. What's going on with the vampire empires of Morgau while the characters are traveling north? What has changed in the world? Villains also move. Who are your three big villains and what are they doing right now? What are they up to? What quests are they on and how are they accomplishing them? Here's more: https://slyflourish.com/sharing_secrets.html https://slyflourish.com/resilient_villainous_plots.html https://slyflourish.com/thinking_through_the_eyes_of_our_villains.html

Every so often I'll roll a die to see which way the winds of fate roll but its' not any sort of fancy system. I'll just grab a die, figure out what happens on evens or odds, and give it a roll.

I have a couple of articles that may help: https://slyflourish.com/reading_published_adventures.html https://slyflourish.com/read_the_books.html I try to have a good understanding of the adventure overall but I'm not going to read every room description until I'm close to running it. The more you read, however, the better its likely to go. Adventures like Scarlet Citadel benefit a lot from a deeper read.

Sure! I use it often and often "just go around the table". If the scene dictates that the monster goes first, the monster goes first. Otherwise, the characters go first. We then just go around the table instead of rolling initiative. In online play initiative rolling is so fast that we just use it but for in-person games side initiative is nice and fast.

I might consider giving the Blackweald more allies. Think about what the Blackweald grows into if its left unchecked for another hundred years. Maybe it rules over a small kingdom instead of just a city block? I'd move the scale of everything up to kingdom-wide instead of just city-wide to move with the scale of the 11th level jump. https://slyflourish.com/tier_appropriate_adventure_locations.html

I started running Numenera because of your prep series! I had a bad view of it from playing with a GM whose style I disagree with, but you (and one of my players) gave me some perspective.

I'm not sure Paizo is still considered a major competitor these days. Maybe back in 4e it was close but now, not so much – particularly when it comes to overall branding. I've only run Pathfinder paths when I ran Pathfinder itself and it's been a while so I don't know how they'd hold up in 5e but adventures are often pretty easy to convert and the overall themes and feelings of Pathfinder fit well with those of 5e so I don't see a problem. As far as Pathfinder putting out 5e content, I think its interesting and fine but I can sure see why people are mad they support 5e but not Pathfinder 1. From the latest Roll20 Orr Report, PF1 is twice as popular as PF2. https://blog.roll20.net/media/orrreport-2021-q4-long.pdf

Hi Michael! I think combat-focused games can be fun for a short while but I think the real strength of D&D is in the stories we share. I think a battle arena sort of scenario can be fun in short doses but I think even the most mechanics-focused players want some sort of story to tie things together. I think one can also wrap a lot of interesting NPC interaction and discovery into a combat encounter too. Good luck!

Hi David! The Lazy DM's Companion on page 30 describes scaling up the benchmark for 11th level and 17th level. It goes up to 3/4 at 11th level and 1:1 at 17th level. These are extreme (80 CRs at 20th level!!) but I bet they work out as "deadly".

Hi Bernie! I have a couple of articles on the topic that might help: https://slyflourish.com/passive_perception.html https://slyflourish.com/flow_of_trap_detection.html Let me know if those answer your question!

I think there are a couple of things we can do. First, if we're offering up new character options they can't get in Beyond, that is an incentive to move to a paper character sheet. Second, my biggest tip for managing a paper character sheet is to **write down page numbers** on the sheet so you can reference things easily. It takes just a little bit of work up front but helps considerably during play. I have two groups currently using paper character sheets. I'll ask them for their best practices as well.

I think that can lead to the players feeling like they made mistakes they can't recover from. I think having workarounds is great but if they kill someone they later realize they could have avoided killing – like one of the hourglass coven – that could be a problem. I think I'd still mention in my session zero that many if not all of the encounters have alternatives to combat and death. I might still drop in some clear combat encounters, though, just to see if that's the sort of gameplay the players enjoy.

Hi Stapled Spine Fanzine! I'd certainly try to address this with all of the players – asking them if they're interested or would prefer to avoid secret plots and plans being conducted by other players. Some groups might like this sort of thing. Others might find it gets in the way of the rest of the adventure. I tend to lean on the latter side of things. It's a good thing to cover in a session zero or even break out of the adventure mid-campaign and have the conversation before you let the players go off on secret plots.

I'm pretty sure Midgard was cool before I started diving in but thank you =) I did see those rules and they did look cool. I don't think I'd put them into play as-is though. I don't liked to be locked into something like that. Instead, when the timing is right, I might offer some extended downtime between major arcs in a campaign. This can work well in my Empire of the Ghouls game, for example. There are some good clean breaks between chapters. Otherwise, you're sort of forced to move things too quickly if a session ends in the middle of a dungeon or something like that. So, where it makes sense? Sure. But I wouldn't be beholden to it.

For me, lazy DMing and tactics don’t mix particularly well. I tend to focus so much on the story. I’ll have to think about this one more.

Hi Alex! See the question above by Lech. I'll paste my answer here to save you some time: I'm all for boxed text. I like it as a DM and I think it's useful to write into a product. There's good boxed text and bad boxed text, of course. Keep it brief. Keep it focused on the important parts. Get to the decisions and actions of the characters as soon as possible. I don't think every room needs it but I think it can help in larger areas. As a DM, though, don't write down boxed text. It takes too much time. Just jot down the notes you need to remind you about what you were thinking.

You could always roll a dice and let luck decide it. And if you are not happy with the result, that already is telling something about what you are really wanting to DM.

You can do a final session where you move the timeline 10 years into the future and let players freely narrate what happened to them, that way both them and you can get some closure.

I typically don't tell them anything about a monster until they see it work. If its clear a character would know that a monster isn't going to be affected by a particular spell, I let the player know. "No, you don't want to fireball those fire salamanders". I don't have a firm grasp on the idea of monster knowledge checks. I think Xanathar's has something about them. The Level Up 5e Monstrous Menagerie has great lore descriptions for knowledge checks you can use. It's a fantastic book.

Hi Victor! For in-person games I've taken to exporting my game prep notes to HTML and then pasting and formatting them in word so I can print them to a single double-sided sheet of paper. Then at the game I use that sheet and I don't open Notion during the game. You're right that sometimes I have a lot of notes for NPCs and sometimes not. If I'm largely running an adventure as written, as I did with Witchlight, I don't need a lot of NPC cards because they're in the book. I ran Witchlight mostly online so I was able to just pull up what I needed in D&D Beyond. For my two Midgard campaigns its not as easy so I make ample use of page numbers in my notes to remind me where I found things and to reference them during the game. More on page numbers here: https://slyflourish.com/page_numbers.html

If you intend for a villain to survive a battle with the characters, you're already railroading. There are some villains, like vampires and lichs, who have built-in ways to survive combat. A simulacrum or a clone or some other sort of villain that isn't the actual villain is another way. It largely depends on the villain but how can that villain be there but not be there at the same time in a way that doesn't feel cheap. Otherwise, if the villain truly is facing the characters, let the characters face the villain and come what may. You can always make another villain.

I wouldn't worry about focusing on the mechanics of a character as much as what the player wants to see for their character. You can start by asking them. What sorts of scenes and situations are they looking forward to for their character? Then engineer the game so some of those types of scenes and situations work. Charisma-based characters do well in roleplaying so ensure there's lots of opportunities to roleplay. I think a lot of DMs get too fixated on combat as the primary pillar of D&D when the other two pillars (exploration and roleplaying) can be just as fun and useful. Here's more: https://slyflourish.com/including_pillars_anywhere.html

I'm not going to nitpick about the difference between an anti-hero and a villain but I think redeemable villains can be a lot of fun. We had one in our Eberron game that worked really well. When you have multiple villains, having some of them change sides can be great fun. Very soap-opera sort of stuff. I wouldn't force it, though. I think having good motivations for a villain and letting those motivations play out organically makes for a fantastic villain. Sometimes those motivations bring the villain in line with the characters. Sometimes not. Think through the eyes of your villain and let it play out how it would play out.

Ah! The dreaded boxed-text discussion! I'm all for boxed text. I like it as a DM and I think it's useful to write into a product. There's good boxed text and bad boxed text, of course. Keep it brief. Keep it focused on the important parts. Get to the decisions and actions of the characters as soon as possible. I don't think every room needs it but I think it can help in larger areas. As a DM, though, don't write down boxed text. It takes too much time. Just jot down the notes you need to remind you about what you were thinking.

Hi Jeremy! Yes! Let the players choose one uncommon magic item if they're above, say, 4th level. Let them chooseanother rare magic item if they're 11th level or above. Let them choose a very rare magic item if they're above 17th level. Give them a couple of potions of healing as well. Nice and easy.

Here's an article I wrote about towns that I think gets to a lot of it: https://slyflourish.com/introducing_towns.html The settlement generator on page 37 of the Lazy DM's Companion (also available in Uncovered Secrets Volume 1) has other useful info. I think all of that can build good settlements for open-world games. Hope that helps!

Hi Peter! First, remember that secrets serve you. https://slyflourish.com/secrets_serve_you.html Don't hang onto the whole idea too tight. There's no perfect formula for writing them or revealing them. I try to use secrets as a way to keep the players engaged with the world and the story so I drop them in whenever it seems like a good time to do so. There are many ways ot do so but driving them from the backgrounds and skills of the characters lets you do them pretty much whenever you want. Here's more: https://slyflourish.com/revealing_secrets.html Type "secrets" into the talk show database and you can see a bunch of segments where I've talked about them. Here's the Talk Show database: https://slyflourish.com/talk_show_database_897a3ca6dac5f425b98d1ac85cd6962d/

I think the idea of planting small seeds (pun intended) to disrupt or start a revolution can be fun. Whatever path they take I'd keep the story focused on the characters so they can act and see the results of their actions. Helping them fire up a revolution sounds like a great idea. What quests can you put in front of them to do so? Maybe offer six or eight things they can do and let them choose the three or five they want to do that end up pushing things over the edge and keeping it going once the revolution has started.

I love Professor Dungeon Master but man, that clickbait! I don't think they're in trouble, or any more trouble than anyone else. It's not like their stock dropped 80% like Facebook's did. I think the biggest danger to D&D is the hubris of the current development team and their management. It's easy to think that they got where they are based on their own skills and abilities instead of good circumstance. I worry that breaking backward compatibility with 5e hurts the rest of us, though. I wouldnt normally worry about the quality of the products coming out of WOTC, even missteps like Spelljammer, because I have way more third party products than I can ever run – but if they break compatibility, we're all off on our own islands deciding what we want to run instead of being unified around an edition we all love.

Leveling together is a great idea. I've recently had the characters level in the middle of a session and they've talked a little about it. I've been good about asking them to describe what they picked up at the new level so everyone knows what they have. That's a recent trick of mine that works well for both me and the other players. I talked more about that here: https://youtu.be/W4AJAwEZDQc

I don't typically have a lot of character secrets in my game. In Frostmaiden, where they're baked in, I just let them come out as the player wanted them to. Every so often, if the timing was right, I'd push to bring it out. Overall, I lean towards telling too much. There's always more secrets to discover and it's fun to watch the campaign move forward without holding our cards too close to our chests. So I guess my advice is lean towards giving away too much instead of too little.

I haven't run the adventure yet so I can't say for sure that it works out of the box but it looks like it can. Many of the components of Spelljammer probably work on their own. The ship maps and descriptions, the monsters, the character options, the Rock of Bral – I just don't think they work that well *together* and they're missing a DM's campaign guide.

That sounds like a fantastic idea! I don't know if each player can stand another player talking for ten minutes about their character but five probably isn't so bad, especially with a prompted scene to help them introduce their character. I don't do much more than what I describe in my session zero article: https://slyflourish.com/running_session_zeros.html You can see and hear the prep and results of my various session zeros in my lazy DM prep videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLb39x-29puaqbHmqvQufhsCVyFpZj3Ugn

I'm not sure writing anything helps me DM. They're really two different types of art. Reading and writing helps me write. Playing and running games helps me DM. Often the best way to build up the skills for something is to do that thing but there's certainly some crosstraining we can do. See this article: https://slyflourish.com/path_for_dm_expertise.html To be a better DM, run and play games for different groups in different systems.

I don't know that I'd need more than what's in the current D&D Starter Set. You really don't need much. Maybe a laminated copy of my D&D cheat sheet so you have a portable whiteboard to draw maps, sigils, and other things. https://slyflourish.com/revised_5e_cheat_sheet.html The Essentials Kit is awesome but it even has more than I think I need.

I'm not sure there's a perfect way. First is identifying the situation in the first place. How do you know when a scene has worn its welcome? Then seek the right moment to move the scene forward. Find a break in the conversation. If its only a couple of players getting into the scene, how can you draw other players in? If the scene has worn its welcome to *you* as the DM, it's likely past that moment with one or more of the other players. At that time it's best to get back to the narrative and the story and move the scene forward by restating their current situation and the options they have in front of them or skipping ahead to the next moment of action. I don't know if that helps but it may help you at least understand the situation when you're in it.