December 2022 Sly Flourish Patreon Q&A

As a matter of fact.... Yeah, I heard about Dungeon23 just a couple of days ago and I think I'll give it a shot! Indeed I'm thinking of a megadungeon that sort of slices through a lot of the areas of the City of Arches. We'll see if I can keep it up!

Hi Keotep! I'm a fan of using a mixture of random treasure and treasure selected for the characters. I like using a wishlist from players so I can aim items that they'll really want, use, and enjoy. I talked about it more here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0hiVQz96g0&list=PLb39x-29puaoZke5BVk7fjyyyjWXcxCu1&index=1&t=169s and also talked about it in Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master (chapter 10 page 33).

Easiest, by far, is to simply call them undead. Give them the undead type and you're done. You can also shake things up by giving them some of the resistances or traits of other undead. Zombies have undead fortitude. Skeletons might have vulnerability to bludgeoning. Spectral undead might drain life. Look at the undead stat blocks and see what traits you want to add to your undead variants. It's easy to do and can be a lot of fun in the game. The biggest thing to remember is to focus on their in-world descriptions. What makes them appear like undead in the game itself? You can go far with good narration.

I definitely combine monsters of the same type into a single initiative. That's the default: From the Player's Handbook: "The DM makes one roll for an entire group of identical creatures, so each member of the group acts at the same time." I also often use static initiative of either 12 or 10 + the creatures' dexterity. This is an optional rule on the Dungeon Master's Guide. It's probably worth a conversation with your players to let them know you're going to group monsters together.

I think it's fine to give them the information they need to move forward. Some players just aren't as invested in keeping track of everything as we are. Sometimes there's one player who does a better job and that can be reinforced with them. Otherwise, I'd say doing everything you can to suggest that the players take notes in some system that lets them share them with the rest of the group would work best. This might help: https://youtu.be/TRVtf4Lig6o

Good question! I'd recommend the following for similar magazine-style content: Elven Tower: https://www.patreon.com/elventower/ CZRPG: https://www.patreon.com/czrpg/ MCDM: https://www.patreon.com/mcdm/

Well, there are a couple of answers. First, WOTC is almost certainly going to remain the dominant TTRPG. Teos Abadia wrote a great piece about this: https://alphastream.org/index.php/2021/11/30/why-no-rpg-company-truly-competes-with-wizards-of-the-coast/ I also think there's almost certainly going to be a schism between those who want to stay with 5e and those who want to move forward to One D&D. Quite likely the larger group will be the people moving to One D&D but the 5e people may be loud about their intention to stay with 5e. The good news is that we get to choose our path. Nothing short of reliance on a digital tool that moves forward on its own (like D&D Beyond, which isn't a small thing) prevents us from playing whatever version of D&D we want to play. We'll see!

It's hard to say but yeah, probably 5e and its variants. I'm all for trying out new slices of 5e including Level up 5e and the like. I'd also be interested to try out the new 13th Age and whatever Rob Schwalb comes out with based on Shadow of the Demon Lord. I also think one can houserule a lot of the best parts of One D&D. So we'll have to see!

I too hear awesome things about Obsidian. I'm already sort of wired into Notion but I think Obsidian can do a great job too. It has a ton of cool D&D plug-ins worth checking out. The only reason I'm not using it is inertia.

I would probably dork with death saves if you really want the game to be more deadly. I really like the idea that every character gets three death saves *total* + 1 per level. Once they fail a death save, it's gone forever. If they run out of death saves, they're dead without the possibility of revivify or other lower level resurrections. If you do put something like this into your game, make sure your players know about it and agree to it in your session zero. You can always mess with the dials to make things more deadly. The nice thing is you can try it out, see how it feels, and change things up to get the effect you want.

It'll all depend on how many creatures are attacking or making the saving throw. You can do something simple like subtract two success and add 1d3 successes. There are ways to add variance but if you want to add variance, I think the table does a better job.

So many thoughts! I'm working on an article, not for Sly Flourish but just to have handy for questions like this, that helps me get my head around the whole topic. Here it is: https://mikeshea.net/thoughts_on_the_ogl_1_1.html There is a bunch of wild speculation and doom and gloom predictions that I think go beyond what's really happening but yea, the OGL 1.1 looks to be really bad. I doubt I'll use it. I'll just stick to using the OGL 1.0a for my stuff.

That's a hard problem. I too have that hesitation. I'm a big believer in the worry and anticipation of death without actually doing it. I think even having the conversation isn't enough. People may *say* they're totally into hard core character death until it happens and then they're mad. It's probably the biggest low that can happen. You also have the problem of what to do with the player while everyone else is playing. Character generation, particularly at high levels, is time consuming. The player is completely disassociated from the game because their one interface point is gone. That all needs to be considered. I'm not a hardcore DM who says characters must die all the time and death must happen or the game isn't challenging. That's not my style. I don't think it's bad to pull punches if you don't have a clear way to handle it but if the circumstance really puts a character down into the dirt, it's probably best to go with it and then lean in on how to help that player get re-engaged with the game.

Hmm! Good question. Food? I'm generally not a fan of gift cards but a gift card to a local game shop isn't bad, with an intention of picking up some cool miniatures or other accessories they want. Offering to pick up their subscription to D&D Beyond or to their favorite music streaming service might be good. Gift cards for products on their VTT of choice? A fancy dice tray or dice vault or actual dice? The Oracle Story Generator for Nord Games looks really good or many of the fine products at inkwell ideas (https://inkwellideas.com) also stick out. Those are some off the top of my head.

I run three-hour games and find that I can pack a lot of fun stuff into them. Two hour games might definitely be harder. The number of players you have is going to be a big part of this. Six players take more time to get through material than four. That's a big one but not one you probably have too much control over. I think making sure you keep things moving, move the pace forward, and talk to your players about the issue. It also might just not be a problem. Let things go a little slower and think of your game like a one hour serial TV show instead of a big epic movie. Hope that helps!

I've done this before and it can be like learning a new system. One thing I do is bring it to the players so we're all learning the system together. It really helps if we're all on the same side, all learning how to play together, instead of just the GM bringing everything to the players. Certainly there's a comfort in 5e. I know I felt that after running Blades in the Dark and Numenera for a while. When running those games, it definitely helped that I could count on the players to help me noodle through a rule. The same is true for third-party 5e supplements. We're all on the same page learning the game together.

Hi Brad! First off, I'm not sure its accurate that more people prefer the grid now than they did. While a lot of games have moved virtually, I'm not sure that changes the results of my previous surveys on the topic. In 2018, *fewer* players preferred the grid than in 2016. I should run another poll for better data. Here are those surveys: https://slyflourish.com/facebook_surveys.html#combat https://slyflourish.com/2016_dm_survey_results.html As for the "Tyranny of the Grid" article, I say a lot of it still stands. Expense is probably the only detriment that really doesn't apply to online play. VTTs are cheap and tokens are plentiful. Tools like Owlbear Rodeo are very fast to set up and maps are easy to get from places like DysonLogos but I know a lot of DMs who still spend tons of time and energy setting up fancy dynamic-lighting-based maps in Roll20. It takes them hours to set up a game. So I think there are things we lazy DMs can do to use VTTs faster and more effectively and I think gridded combat still only has to be one tool in a wide toolbox of ways for us to run combat encounters. Much of that from Tyranny of the Grid I think still stands. Thanks for the question!

First, good on you for seeing that it's already a potential downward beat. It also sounds like the potential capture wasn't forced on them but a matter of circumstance, which is also good. Forced capture is a common and not terribly fun plot idea. Having a handful of potential ways they can deal with the situation in your back pocket is good and then work with the players as they try things out. Try to put yourself both in the shoes of the villains and the captors and see what ideas make sense given the situation. Did the guards miss the fact that the spellcasters still have their spells? Did they miss a magic item? Whatever you do, it's not great to have some outside group come save them. That can feel as demoralizing as being captured in the first place. Offering options is fine but give them the agency to find their own way out.

You have to wing it. How much of an impact do those companions have in the battle? Are they as useful as a full other character? Because the lazy encounter benchmark is a loose guide already, there isn't an easy way to change the math up for smaller impacts. There are two dials we can turn with the benchmark though – one for small changes and one for big changes. The big change dial is to treat the characters as though they're a level higher than they are. This can be really big if you cross from 4 to 5 so be careful with that level jump. The other dial is to pretend they have one more character than they have. If you find one character is really really powerful or they have items or companions that really change up a battle, you can treat them like they have an extra member in the party.

There have been a lot of ways to handle mass combat in various D&D games but the one I've found works the best is to handle mass battles in the narrative of the game instead of having a system for it. Give the characters things they can do that steer the battle themselves but let the bigger battles take place off screen. There was an old Unearthed Arcana for mass combat that might help: https://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/2017_UAMassCombat_MCUA_v1.pdf Good luck!

Hi DJ! I talked about this topic here I think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKcPyKdUSPs&list=PLb39x-29puaoZke5BVk7fjyyyjWXcxCu1&index=2&t=2950s and here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2kVG2w73Z8&list=PLb39x-29puaoZke5BVk7fjyyyjWXcxCu1&index=8&t=2129s Let me know if it answers your question! Thanks!

Hi Arash! Anytime the characters lose an item, you're already deep in the negative beat hole. They're already not feeling great because they have to do a bunch of work just to get where they already were. So giving them a chance to get it back and start making progress again is good. It may be too late at this point. You might have already figured this out, but I'll offer my thoughts anyway. First, you can offer multiple options in the encounter itself. They don't just need to defeat the BBEG. They need to recover the item. You can clarify this to them if they don't see the option themselves. I'd certainly try to find ways for the characters to get some advantages in the situation. Maybe luck goes badly for the big bad guy. Maybe another foe of theirs decides now is the exact time to jump into the fray. Think of the combat encounter as its own whole adventure and add ways for the characters to engage with it in ways that isn't just beating down the bad guy. Hope that helps!

I don't have a good process, really. Stuff hits my desk (or my desktop) and I try to remember it. Certain publishers have products so good they stick out in my mind. Drakkenheim and Ptolus are good examples. The site https://adventurelookup.com/adventures seems to be a popular way to look up adventures. I haven't used it much but many recommend it.

A big question that's on everyone's mind! Both my fellow TTRPG producers and many DMs I've talked to talk about how Midjourney and ChatGPT can change our hobby and our industry, in both good ways and bad. What do I think? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I think, when we see exponential growth like this, it becomes equally harder to predict what will happen. Look at what smartphones have done to our world in just 15 years. I think, right now, they're a great aid for DMs. I think they fill in gaps where we didn't have anything else. I also think they're not that much better than rolling on random tables and letting the results shake up our brains into new and interesting areas. The results read more naturally but I don't know that they're *that* much better than a few rolls in a Raging Swan book (or the Lazy DM's Companion!). Midjourney is something else though because there was no random generator for images like this. Being able to generate specific NPC portraits that hadn't existed before is powerful. There's also the moral question of what such a tool does to artists, who have always struggled to make money on their craft. For filling in some blanks as DMs? Probably fine. For putting into published work? Probably not fine. I think we're going to have to see what it does in the end but it's exciting stuff!

Thank you for sharing!

My own DM, Chris, gave us a Rod of Rulership in the campaign he ran for us. His trick was to integrate it into the larger story. It wasn't about us sending swaths of NPCs into our own battle, it was about commanding legions in a larger war. Using a Rod of Rulership to command armies works much like running a war in any D&D game and my best advice for running a war is to run the war part off-screen and focus on the characters and what they're doing. So the army can take care of one big group of creatures while the characters focus on the big nasties right in front of them. Of course, what stops the characters from bringing their favorite 50 soldiers with them wherever they go? Logistics. It's probably worth talking to the players out of character to say "it's impractical to bring fifty soldiers with you on your quest and journey – it'll also slow the game down to a crawl. Why don't you command your legions to do one thing while you guys focus on another". Hope that helps!

To me, the big thing to remember is where the ideas of the Fey Realms came from - the land of the faeries. I think Kobold Press has really knocked this out of the park with products like Book of Ebon Tides and Court of the Shadow Fey. I'd recommend looking at those if you want some good atmosphere. Also, go back to the classics. Look at old faerie tales, brothers Grymm, and the like to put yourself in the whimsical and yet still dangerous land of the fey. Their whole lore, their whole mannerisms, all of it is different than the prime world.

Fantastic question! Because I want the game (and the world) to feel as solid as possible to the players, I don't want to shake things up too much by changing the rules. I do have some houserules that are son ingrained in me that I forget they're even house rules. For example, in my games, everyone starts with a single session use of inspiration. They get one free re-roll. Often they don't get it back. I think that works better than any of the other inspiration mechanics I've seen floating around. I've seen other houserules like drinking potions is a bonus action that worked just fine (turns out bonus actions are almost as sought after as normal actions so it still affects the action economy). I'll make lots of rulings instead of rules depending on the situation. I make a lot of deals like my idea of Cinematic Advantage (https://slyflourish.com/cinematic_advantage.html). I mostly try to drop in these new ideas in a way that lets me take them back out again. I'll try things for just one encounter, for example, and if it works, maybe it shows up again. I'm all for people making the game their own but much in the same way I think it's extremely valuable to fall back to published campaign worlds, I think we should have a really good reason to change the rules of the game. Top three rules: - Everyone starts with advantage at the beginning of the session. It doesn't carry over and you're not likely to get it back in the session. - We can make deals to do cool cinematic actions often giving you advantage on your next attack after a successful skill check. - Monster statistics like hit points, number of attacks, and damage are more what we'd call a guideline than an actual rule.

yes! I love them and could definitely see them helping in prep. I love using random prompts to push my brain out of stereotypical troughs. I wrote more about it here: https://slyflourish.com/randomness_creativity_and_dnd.html

Hi there! I'd definitely check out Kobold Press's "Courts of the Shadow Fey" which is all about this sort of thing. Book of Ebon Tides also by Kobold Press touches on it as well. I think the main thing is to consider the NPCs, what they want, what they're doing, and how they might react to different things. Are they tricksy but easily intimidated? Are they all about noble protocol? Think of them like a D&D character's background. What is their background, ideals, traits, flaws, and bonds.

Hi there! There's lots of interesting things going on with AI in the RPG space. Last month it was image generation. This month it's text generation. I can tell you that I'm not in the camp of "oh my god, we won't have DMs in a year". The whole reason we like this hobby is because of the human connection. Really, underneath, these AI bots are just well-tuned random generators (with nested probabilities so deep no one can tell exactly what they're doing underneath). Just like a good set of random tables can give us great ideas, so can these prompts. I really haven't spent enough time with ChatGPT to see what it can offer but like any random generator, I bet it can offer us a lot to fire off our imaginations and make awesome games. So yeah, I think they could be pretty cool.

I really try hard not to introduce new rules or house rules because it can be like running on shifting sand for players. The baseline 5e rules are really solid and don't need a lot of work, in my opinion. If your rules are so big that you need to off-set them with a free resurrection, that's probably a lot of big rules. One thing to consider is changing things behind the DM screen so you can try it out and throw it away if it doesn't work. You can try out a new type of encounter rule for just one encounter and, when that encounter's done, throw it away or not. A lot of the answer to your question would depend on the rule you're talking about. Thanks for the question and welcome to the hobby!!

Hi JM! I wrote all about this here: https://slyflourish.com/ability_check_toolbox.html The section on full table rolls I think hits your question. Thanks!

I don't worry about it because I try to stay in the context of the story. I'm not sure exactly what spamming a long rest means. If they have the opportunity to take a week off, they can do so. If a dungeon or location is so static that they can rest after every encounter, probably that dungeon is too static. The main thing is that I don't typically worry about character attrition. I just let things go how they go and use the dials to change up difficulty if needed. Mostly I try to keep my head in the world and ask what makes sense in that world. I'd ask my players to do the same. There are some tricks like saying "these haunted halls will offer you no comfortable rest. you can take a short rest here but no long rest". It's a little gamey but it works.

There are tons of dragon-themed monsters in Fizban's Treasury of Dragons and in Dragonlance: Shadows of the Dragon Queen you can use. They have a wide range of CRs if I recall too. When I have some theme like that, I try to go through my various monster books including both Wizards's books and those from third party publishers and see what is the closest fit. Other, alternatively, I just reskin baseline monsters to fit the theme I have. You can do a whole lot with just your description of monsters. More on reskinning here: https://slyflourish.com/reskinning_monsters.html

Sometimes! I might make a version that has some hidden areas I don't reveal. In my latest Shadow Realms romp in Empire of the Ghouls, I showed them the point crawl map I had worked up in GraphViz but it had hidden paths removed. I think it probably helps players to have a visual of where they've been and where they're going. You can also teach the players to keep track of their own with circles and lines and that way they fill it out like they would a dungeon map. Thinking of a point crawl like a dungeon is a really useful metaphor. Would you show a dungeon map? Probably. Consider doing the same thing with a pointcrawl map.

Hi Jason. I'm really sorry for your loss. I too had a longtime player pass away a year or so ago. I talked about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qEv5XKIZ5w&list=PLb39x-29puaoZke5BVk7fjyyyjWXcxCu1&index=2&t=29s I think the best thing we can do is talk together as a group. Offer our remembrances, and move on. I think we can each decide how to handle it in game but I think having their character fade off into the sunset is probably best and easiest so you don't have this in-game situation that keeps reminding everyone of the out-of-game situation. In the case of my friend Bryan, we were running a short Blades in the Dark campaign so it wasn't very difficult. In a more character-driven longer campaign it can be tough. There is a player and character remembrance subreddit that might have more to offer: https://www.reddit.com/r/AdventuresOfGalder/ Again, I am sorry for your loss. Losing a friend is always very hard.

I don't see any reason you can't change it. I think the cost isn't always based on the difficulty of the process or the cost of the material but the current market. If local blacksmiths know that adventurers need silver weapons to defeat those wererats, they might add to the cost. Given the adventurer economy, lots of prices could go way up given the hyperinflation of a dragon's hoard.

Hi Sashaquatch! Great question! Here are some questions I'd ask: * What have you enjoyed about the campaign so far? * What are you looking forward to as the campaign moves forward? * What are you particularly looking forward to with your character? Both mechanically and in your character's story? * Are there any specific things you really want to see happen? * What sort of treasure or magic items are you hoping to acquire? You can ask some of these questions at different times. Sometimes I like to ask for the "stars and wishes" of the players and sometimes I like to ask the characters what *they* think about what's going on in the world. Here's more on the topic: https://slyflourish.com/getting_player_feedback.html https://slyflourish.com/campfire_talk.html

Hi Bo! Yes. Managing time is really hard when time is a factor, such as running a one-shot game in 8 hours. I wrote a little about it here: https://slyflourish.com/watch_the_time.html and here https://slyflourish.com/timing_and_pacing_adventures.html I like to work my way backwards from the ending. So if you know there's a big final battle, expect it to take an hour and make sure you leave that hour aside for that battle. Then decide how much time you need to *get* them to that battle and block that time off. So on and so forth back to the beginning of the game. Build in ways to speed it up. Scenes you can skip. Macguffins you can move to speed things up. Be ready to change it. I'll also say that probably 80% of the time, DMs prep too much material instead of too little. So it's more important to build in ways to remove scenes than to add them. Good luck!

I think you can handle it the same way passive insight and perception are handled – with a floor. So there's a baseline amount of info the characters can learn regardless of their check but they might learn *more* if they roll particularly higher. You can even tell them this "because you're trained in arcana you already know something about this but you can roll to see if you discover something even more". So for those checks where failure isn't interesting or prevents the game from moving forward, you can still just give them the info but rolling might give them something more or might carry over further into the investigation (like getting two pieces of info for one roll).

It's been a while since I've played 13th Age but yeah, I agree, the icon system needs some sort of change. We never understood it very well. I also think it needs to use static damage instead of rolling like 8d8 + 6d12 for a weapon attack. The dice equations later in the game were so big. Off the top of my head, nothing else leaps out as something I'd love to change. I loved a lot of 13th Age.

I'm digging it! It took some time to grow on me but we're now at the point where the new features it has offset the increased difficulty in using it. From a player perspective it's just about as easy to use. Players don't need to sign up; you just give the the link. The DM side is a little harder with added "scenes" and "rooms" but it means you can have more persistent campaigns instead of having to redo everything every time. The initiative tracker plug-in is a good addition too. That was the main reason I decided to switch from 1.0 to 2.0. So yeah, I like it.

You'll have to dig into the OGL and the SRD you choose to make that choice but I don't see anything in it that removes your ability to include your own rules for simplified combat. The OGL and SRD is really about saying "if you choose this license, here's a bunch of stuff you can directly copy into your game and here are some specific things you can't". Combat rules aren't one of the things you can't include. The main thing is not violating trademarks or copying material from other D&D books that isn't in the 5e SRD.

I like four or five players. I think that's the right mix of lots of different fun personalities meshing together but not so many that no one gets the spotlight. I could definitely see three players being good too.

That's a hard thing to balance and I don't think there's one-size-fits-all answer. I'd say look for opportunities where a side-quest can be fun and drop them in – but not too many that it distracts from the main body of the game. You can also look at how more yam-shaped adventures do it like Storm King's Thunder, Curse of Strahd, or Tomb of Annihilation. Where can you expand the threads of your campaign to offer options that all lead in the same general direction. Take a look at the three-of-five-keys model for example: https://slyflourish.com/three_of_five_keys.html The main thing is to set up situations in which the players can choose their approach. That's often enough to break away from railroading them.

Hi there! Each of the dials actually can serve a different purpose. The "number of monsters" dial helps with action economy. Does the encounter simply need more actions or more targets to hit the mark you intend for it? The "number of hitpoints" dial has to do with how fast or slow the battle is going. Has the battle become long and boring? Reduce hit points. Are things happening too quickly? Increase them. The "damage" and "number of attack" dials both increase threat. Damage is a fine-tuning dial where number of attacks increases or decreases damage a lot. The number of attacks dial is also often more noticeable to players than the damage dial but it's easier to implement. Giving a monster an extra attack doesn't require any math where adding damage means figuring out how much to add. So each dial has its purpose in tuning the battle. The dials don't really have a tier of play change. You sort of have to wing it or figure it out yourself. I think the Lazy DM's Companion has some guidelines on how much to add but the point is that you can turn the dial as much or as little as the battle requires.

To put it differently: How do you connect unconnected storylines? How do you motivate players to go to where the next adventure starts?

Hi Steven! Keep it short! If it's lengthy, consider how you can make it shorter. If you had to summarize the lore in one, three, or five bullet points, what would those bullet points look like? You can put something like this in a handout so people can read it and hang onto it but if its more than one page, it's too much lore (in my experience). Break up big hunks of lore into a bunch of smaller and more mysterious pieces the players can piece together to see the bigger picture. We DMs (I do this myself all too often) love to spout lore. Try to keep it lean as much as you can.

I'm not trying to be "that guy" but there's a lot of other role playing games that have what's called "playbooks" basically all of the character abilities for that class are on the character sheet and it can make it easier to figure out what your abilities are.

Hi Lukas! My current go-to is the idea of progress clocks from Blades in the Dark. The main advantage over a skill challenge is that you can improvise them on the spot instead of planning them out. This gives you and the players freedom to interact with the scene as though it's the real world instead of following some skill-challenge flowchart. Hope this helps! https://slyflourish.com/progress_clocks_in_dnd.html https://youtu.be/iVrGcXto5RM

I would say "think it as if we were back in the eighties and roleplaying games had been born some months ago". Alternatively "Think it as if every adventure could devolve into the tomb of horrors" to signify that it has a different sensibility and you need a different approach as you are not as powerful as in 5e.

Hi Austin! I answered similar questions to this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egmrwp2dNhU&list=PLb39x-29puaoZke5BVk7fjyyyjWXcxCu1&index=14&t=1440s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDMiwd7IOPM&list=PLb39x-29puaoZke5BVk7fjyyyjWXcxCu1&index=6&t=2127s https://youtu.be/XSFZoHJ8a9g?t=2424s The main thing to think about is the overall story that fits high level play. What sorts of locations will they go to that warrant high level characters? What sorts of threats will they face? Games of 17th level and above are very different than those of lower levels. The stakes are worldly or universal. The threats aren't just combat threats – they're threats to entire cities or even planets. And big threatening battles are going to take a long time, so be ready for that! So my big advice is to think super-heroic in the scale of the threats they're going to face.

Hi Kiel! I answered a similar question previously involving roleplay scenes. Here's the link: https://youtu.be/PK5KCZtO1YA?t=1001s I think if everyone's enjoying it, you can take a break! But it's worth asking and listening to quiet players who might be bored, at which point you may want to move things forward either with some event occurring or by smash-cutting to the action.

Howdy! I just answered this question in the last part of the last month's Patreon thread. Here's the answer just to save you a click if you missed it: 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.

Hi Borius! Accurate self evaluation is hard and I don't think I'm ready to query my friends on my weaknesses but I'll give my self-evaluation a shot. I don't think I'm very good at being detail oriented. I let major arcs fall apart. I forget NPCs all the time. It's really hard for me to hang onto the details and bring them back. I lose track of character threads. I lose track of all sorts of things as I just run forward with my lazy games. Sometimes this leaves things unfinished or too fuzzy to keep the game feeling real and cohesive. We forget about NPCs traveling with the characters. We forget why we're in a dungeon. Stuff like that. I try to make up for this by querying the players regularly about what *they* care about so I can at least focus on that. They'll remind me if they had a thread they really wanted to see completed. I also don't run tactical combat as often as I think some of my players would like but I'm more interested in keeping the story moving forward myself so that's just something we live with I think.

There are a bunch of potential ways to run minions and hordes. You can take a look at what MCDM is doing with Flee Mortals and see if that works for you. The idea that a minion is killed on any successful attack or failed saving throw but has a passive damage threashold equal to its hit points is pretty good and fast. The right minion system shouldn't be a slog – it should be an action-packed extravaganza! Go with the "all minions only have 1 hit point" for example and you never need to track anything. Group minion attacks together so you're only rolling a couple of dice for a big group of monsters. The Lazy DM's Companion has a minion system I prefer over the one in the Lazy DM's Workbook. You can find it in Uncovered Secrets Volume 1 in the Patreon Rewards as well. Find the minion system you like the best and give it a try!

Hi Kirk! Instead of a single big campaign arc, you can mention the separate smaller arcs going on in your West Marches game. What are the big factors going on in the world? Is there a darkness growing somewhere? Is there a war going on? What's happening in the world around the characters? Even if it's three or five different things, it gives them an idea about what's happening. Are rival adventuring groups hunting the same tombs? Are groups getting murdered out in the wilds? Does the threat of a great dragon shadow the town? You can have a lot of different threads that still give the players freedom to choose which ones they want to start investigating. It might work for some West Marches games but the idea of a completely static world really isn't the sort of world I typically run but I think having a bunch of different things going on is a fine campaign to run.

Hi Anthony! I'd build a town around the characters as much as I could. What do *they* want in the town? https://slyflourish.com/build_cities_around_the_characters.html There's a video link in that same article.

Hi Ambroix! I'm not sure what "let it flow" means but I do have a rough outline for writing an adventure that I follow. If you look at the most recent Patreon adventures I wrote, they have the base style I try to follow: I usually have a summary of the adventure, a little bit of background or history, some secrets and clues (something not a lot of other adventurers have), descriptions of potential scenes, and locations with location descriptions. Take a look at the adventures in Ruins of the Grendleroot and those fit pretty much what I'd recommend.

I think there are lots of ways to keep the deadly feeling of Icewind Dale going without killing the characters. Curses, infestations, dead NPCs, and general descriptions of the constant cold and dark. I think throwing the occasional deadly encounter at them can work. Those coldlight walkers are badass. I think we can do a lot with just descriptions.

Hi Tim! You might be able to help with this by limiting character options. You could, for example, ask them to stick to non-multiclass characters, maybe even non-feat-based characters using the default subclasses for their characters. If you didn't want to limit it that much, stick to just the Player's Handbook material. I'd take a little time and talk to your players about it, stating your concerns and what they think they can do to help mitigate it. 20th level games *can* take forever so be ready to spend most of the time in a single big battle. Good luck!

Hi Edmund! Here's my top list for in-person tools to run great lazy D&D games! https://slyflourish.com/lazy_dm_tools.html You can also check out what Zipperon Disney did for Dragons of Stormwreck Isle. Fantastic crafting ideas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BklZZyKGfZ4 There are lots of fantastic D&D crafting videos on YouTube as well. Good luck!

Boy! You know, nothing leaps to mind! If I think of something, I'll come back and post it.