February 2023 Sly Flourish Patreon Q&A

Hi Bo! I really don't have any experience running a turn order for dungeon exploration. I break out of initiative and let the characters explore in free form. I haven't played Shadowdark myself so I can't really say how well it works but the idea that initiative is basically "Around the table" makes things easy to track in or out of combat I think.

Damage! Throw that damage around. Nothing makes a monster more dangerous than adding damage. The only other thing to worry about is getting pinned down by save or suck abilities (or just plain suck abilities). You can't go wrong with a damage aura either, though.

Sounds interesting! It also sounds complicated. I typically don't have the bandwidth to design such things for my own games but if one does, why not give it a try!

March's Q&A will come out next Thursday. The Kickstarter put me behind =) There are a couple of ways to add shopping for magic items. Many of the NPCs, including the Hourglass Coven could offer to buy or sell magic items. I think it's fun to think about the kind of currencies that work in the Feywild. Memories, dead toads, teeth of children, the whispers of a sprite; these are the commerce of the Fey. Pretty much any of the NPCs in Prismeer might become a merchant of sorts. Fuel them up with a handful of weird random magical items and you're all set. Wishlists can work well too. Knowing what the characters want and then seeing the overlap with random rolls on a magic item table can make things really interesting.

I think a lot of RPGs, including Gumshoe (I've mostly played Nights Black Agents) can still benefit from these steps. Sure, combat might be less important but that's really only one step. Same with threasure. For a gumshoe-based system you might just make slight modifications to the eight steps. Treasure might become macguffins – things that link physical objects to your secrets and clues. A focus on the characters, a strong start, an idea of what scenes might play out, the secrets and clues the characters might discover, the locations they might explore, the NPCs they might talk to, the enemies they might face, and the objects they might find – I think those are pretty system and setting independent and can work for gumshoe as well as 5e or any other RPG.

I think it's always useful to focus on the next game you're going to run. It helps laser in on what really matters. What helps for *that* game? What do you need for that game. Find the sources that inspire you for that game. I think reading a lot of supplements is great, though, and not a waste of time. I think there's a lot of things we probably waste our time on far worse than reading good RPG supplements. But don't worry if you don't see how you're going to /run/ them. Instead, just focus on running a great game for your friends in the next session you're going to run.

Hi Bernie! The lazy encounter benchmark is a loose gauge so it doesn't take lots of things into consideration including magic items. There's no great way to balance it. If you find your characters are really powerful and handling those deadly fights with ease, you can increase the benchmark in two ways. First, you can pretend there's an extra character in the group (pretend there's six instead of five and so on) and recalculate that way. The other way, which is a little easier, is to assume they're a level higher. The first method is a slight increase to power. The latter can be considerably more difficult. Try them out and see how they work!

We may have to have another look at the table to see how things turn up. Monsters with too many hit points can be a slog and we did aim the table to be a bit more threatening with damage and a little less in defense but we may have gone too far. You're always free to up or lower the HP as needed so we probably won't put a range on there. Thanks for the feedback!

This can definitely be a problem with published adventures. Good ones give you the tools you need while "bad" ones make you do a lot of work to move them forward. I talked about this with my Scarlet Citadel game. It takes a lot of work to wrangle it into the sort of adventure I want to run. You can always toss off the adventure part and fill in the setting with your own adventures. You can also try to wrap the adventure with your own stories, NPCs, plots, and motivations like I'm doing in my Scarlet Citadel game. I had to do the same thing in my Rime of the Frostmaiden game. /Why/ would the characters go to this place? You might use some of the motivations in the quest builders and adventure seeds in the Lazy DM's Companion for inspiration.

Hi Mark! Chapter 10 from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master has some discussion of this and the Treasure Generator on page 22 of the Lazy DM's Companion makes rolling for treasure pretty easy. Here are some tips: When the characters go to a town or city, tell them that anything in the PHB gear is available up to a certain GP value. The smaller the settlement, the less high-value things they have for sale. It may be 50 GP or 100GP or 1000 GP. For magic items, roll on the uncommon random treasure table three times. Those items are available for sale. I don't have an easy answer for how much they cost but probably 1,000 to 2,500 gp. Periodically asking your players for their magic item wishlist is also good to do – not just for shopping but to seed such items in treasure as the characters hunt for them.

There's a powerful phrase that can help here: "You thoroughly explore the area and find nothing else of note or value". This is a queue to the completionists that they've exhausted the location and can safely move on. Even on a fogged battle map you can say "the other areas are blocked by debris". Sometimes, though, you want to give some locations where the completionists can enjoy searching every nook and cranny, making sure you telegraph to the story-focused players that this is the "right" direction. Of course, you can't go wrong having an out-of-game conversation explaining these two phases of the game, making it clear to the completionists that sometimes its easier to just move forward and they're not "missing" anything and to the story-focused players that sometimes they'll want to explore every corner to find what they want and need. Hope that helps!

Yes! I'm going to give it a spotlight on the show this Sunday! It's a pretty awesome idea and a good deal.

I try not to typecast my games too much by saying one game is more political intrigue and another is more hack and slash. Sometimes campaigns flow back and forth between one style and another. Mostly, I try to follow the idea of "villains" (or "Fronts" if you prefer), their individual motivations, and the quests they go on to get there. This might be politics. This might be assassinations or theft or other power plays. I'd say start with the people. Who are they? What do they want? What are they going to do to get there? Steal archetypes from a movie or TV show if you're having trouble with ideas. Then drop in the characters and see what happens! Some of the NPCs will work with the characters. Some work against them. Things change based on the actions the characters take. Think of it like a big pool table with each ball a character. When they collide, who else do they collide with and where do they head next? Which ones smash into others and which ones end up in pockets off the board? https://slyflourish.com/pool_table_barovia.html Good luck!

You can't go wrong throwing a set of the books from Dragon of Icespire Peak. It has a bunch of small adventures from 1st to 6th level and character creation guides for a handful of classes. For me? I'd throw in a couple of printouts of Lightning 5e, a few Dyson maps, and some adventure generators from the Lazy DMs Companion along with other parts of my DM kit. Here's an article about my convention kits: https://slyflourish.com/lazy_dm_tools.html https://youtu.be/7dZrA2JKuYE

Hi Clym! I think your best bet is to show them a /real/ kraken later in the game. Maybe they see it eat a ship from far away or something like that. Oh, that one you fought and defeated? That was just its offspring! As far as calculating XP, I'd give them XP you think fits the challenge rating of the Kraken they faced, not the one in the book. Maybe a CR 10?

Oh boy! Yeah, Empire of the Ghouls is the deep end of campaigns in Midgard. It goes *everywhere*. In order to get your handle on the lore, stick to the campaign book and the Midgard Worldbook. Don't bother to add in other sources unless you're ready to open up. There *are* some marvelous tie-in sourcebooks like Zobeck – Clockwork City and the Southlands campaign book, but you only need to add them if you're ready. I'd start with the specific regions the characters are going to be in. Start with the Crossroads and Zobeck. Read up on that section in the Worldbook. Then, in chapter 2, it's worth reading up on that section in the Worldbook as well. I also think its worth reading up on the gods of Midgard in Chapter 12. Write up your own random table of gods and, when the time is right, roll on it and wrap a deity around items, monuments, NPCs, locations or anything else. This lets you paint the world with Midgard lore as you run it.

Sometimes a player just wants more out of the character and the game than you as the GM can give them. It's usually worth having an out-of-game conversation one-on-one to describe this. It feels like this could be what I refer to as a "spotlight" problem. One player simply wants more of the spotlight than their 1/5th or 1/6th of the group. If they're disappointed that you're not interacting enough with them through their spirit, that's probably worth this out-of-game conversation. The idea that the spirit isn't in the control of the player is important too. It's /your/ NPC and maybe it's just silent. Such tag-along NPCs are a fantastic way to open up the history of the world, though. They're great vehicles for secrets and clues. Trying to come to an agreement about how much actual screentime the spirit will have is probably something to work out out of the game.

Hi Mat! What ever works for you and your group works. Your friend doesn't get a vote. It's worth hearing other peoples' experiences but none of that should hold weight over what you and your players want around your table. That's the only thing that matters. That said, one option is to leave variant humans and custom lineages available but they don't get an extra feat along with anyone else. If people really want those species, they can choose them knowing they're probably missing one other ability. I don't think it hurts the diversity of the game. The world you create determines what species make sense for characters. I would recommend having a discussion with it during your session zero to make sure you're all on the same page.

They got it about half-way through the adventure and returned it to the unicorn who gained an astral one and then the physical one stayed with the character who recovered it as a magic item. That worked out well. They knew they had the blessing of the celestial unicorn and could still keep the item as a rod of healing or something like that.

I'm afraid I can't review homebrew stuff. I'm just swamped. Sorry!.

Abstract maps can help people get a visual idea how things are lining up in battle without worrying about grids or detailed maps. Here's more on how I use abstract maps: https://slyflourish.com/the_abstract_battlemap.html

It depends on the purpose. Sometimes a publisher might ask for a particular challenge rating but most often they ask for a creature first and you determine the challenge rating as part of the iterative process of building the creature. When I built the vampires for Flee Mortals, I didn't have a CR in mind to begin with. I had a general range of CRs I talked about with James Introcaso, the lead editor of Flee Mortals, but if they ended up one or two above or below, that wouldn't be a problem. The best way to calculate CR is to look at other comparable monsters of that challenge rating and ask if its hitting above or below that weight class. I tend to stick to the 5.1 SRD monsters so I don't get too much float in CRs by looking at newer monsters or monsters from other publications. The tables in the DMG also give you some idea about what general weight class a monster should hit but the best gauge is comparing it to other monsters and seeing how it looks. And then there's playtesting which tells you if the monster runs at the intended challenge.

The players might be telling you that they're not that interested in downtime if they grab on to every hook and run with it. Secrets and clues are usually the *results* the characters learn during downtime instead of the things leading the characters *into* downtime. Downtime has worked best for me when I'm able to offer a menu of activities they can follow; some story focused, some character focused; but focused somehow to offer the players some interesting things to follow. During these activities they may learn things on their own, which come from our pile of secrets, and then they might grab those and run off on an adventure. Downtime is generally tricky to run in my experience. It's not nearly as clear as running other type of activities in our game.

I'm not really sure. What you might do is look at the other sorcerer metamagic abilities and see what those point costs are and ask yourself if you'd be willing to spend points like that on an ability like the arcane weaver function. I'd probably say 1 or 2 points but your mileage may vary.

It sounds like a really cool idea. 5e is sort of built on the idea that spells are already accessible but you could create a list of some magic the characters have access to and other spells they must "discover". Level Up Advanced 5e has some cool "rare" spells the characters can discover as loot. That's a fun way to do it.

You might have a mid-campaign session zero. You can talk to the players about it, restate either the starting goal or a brand new goal, and talk to the players about finding motivations with their characters to seek out that goal. A session zero is a great time to make *sure* the characters are invested in the arc of the campaign. It's harder to do it in the middle but I think it can still be done. You can create a brand new theme or focus for the campaign based on what you can squeeze out of the current motivations for the characters. What would draw them to focus on a single big threat (or maybe three big threats) and get them all headed in that one direction?

Hi Jun! I'm still pretty inexperienced in it. We do have an AI thread going on the SF Patreon Discord. I also talked a little about it here: https://youtu.be/cXhFbDp1kX4?t=3551s https://youtu.be/1-zltP88JVY?t=2707s

I think its worth having a visible map when crawling a dungeon. I just answered a similar question above so let me put it here as well: I like to use larger maps for dungeon crawls, often from Dyson Logos. I'll put the whole map in a tool like Owlbear Rodeo and use the fog of war to show what they've explored. One trick is that I almost always boost the size up 2x so a single square is ten feet instead of five. This drives players who focus on the grid nuts but it gives a lot of room to explore and makes everything bigger. I think its worth showing a map of some sort, even if its pieces printed out on paper or snapshots shared through Discord. Trying to describe a dungeon crawl can get really confusing quickly without some sort of visual.

Hi Andrew! I don't focus too much on it but in general I might mention it if its clear they don't have either a front-line fighter or a healer. With the two of those, you can pretty much have anything else and the game still works. So I'd steer the group to have one front-line character intended to absorb damage and take on big guys toe to toe and one healer able to keep the others on their feet. It also really helps to have a "face" character with good charisma scores to handle character interaction and potentially characters good with other skills. There's a distinct advantage to having the players build their characters together during a session zero to clearly see if there are gaps like this and address it before players get too rooted into their characters. It also helps them balance out their skills so the group doesn't have a big gap in skills.

Probably two big things. First, get the rules to the players so they can help you understand them as well as themselves. Work on it as a group activity where you're all responsible for understanding and digesting the rules – not just you. Second, I'd focus on a one-shot or limited number of sessions beginning at the lowest level of the game (assuming it has levels). Don't dive into a big campaign. Give it a session or two to see how it feels and help you and your players get comfortable with it. I'd also probably run a session zero after you and the players have had time to read the rules to discuss how it works, talk about the campaign you want to run, and get into it. I also wouldn't spend a lot of time talking about the rules instead of just playing, though. Get into the game. Let it be messy. Look stuff up when you need to. But get playing. Fast.

Hi Benjamin! I don't have any experience running an OSE game so I can't say for sure but having used the Lazy DM style with other RPGs, I think it should work just fine. I don't think there's anything specific to OSE that would require a different set of steps. Give it a try and see how it goes! For hex-crawling, all of that can feed into your "locations" step. Each notable location within a hex is probably worth noting in your prep. I wouldn't go too crazy with it, filling out a hundred hexes with details instead of focusing on the three hexes surrounding the characters.

My own polling supports your conclusions. Most GMs become GMs because they want to play and no one else picks up the mantle. That said, I think GMs who *remain* GMs do so because that part of the game suits them and they enjoy it. Some people enjoy being the master of ceremonies and others just want to jump in and play once a week. I think there are certain people for whom these games really become something more than a weekly past-time and *they* find themselves in the GMs seat because there's so much more to do as a GM. It's interesting to think how game systems can make GMing more suitable. I found Numenera to be a fantastic system to GM and found Blades in the Dark particularly hard for me (though not for other GMs). I'm not exactly sure what an RPG can offer me as a GM that draws me in more. Simple and easily improvised mechanics are one part. Good session-building tools is another. I haven't dived too deep into it but Worlds Beyond Number seems to have a lot of awesome tools to help GMs build worlds and adventures.

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I'm not great at it! I do have a notes section in my Notion notebook and I do keep paper in front of me for in-person games but I'm still not great at it. That tends not to be too much of a problem, though, except for NPC names. I forget names all the time so I try hard to write down a name the minute its spoken. I'm also helped by players who take notes during the game themselves and I can ask them to help me fill in the blanks. I recommend asking your players to take notes and asking them to help fill in your blanks.

Because they're reasonably similar games, I think the thing to focus on between Pathfinder 2 and D&D are the differences in mechanics and character building. I'd definitely start at 1st level and go slow, letting the players learn the system as you run it. For other systems, I think one-shot games are a great way to do it and to reinforce what sorts of things players might /think/ work a certain way because of D&D that don't actually work that way. Don't spend *too much* time trying to explain the differences, though. Instead, just get into the game in a one-shot and let them experience it while playing. One thing that can really help is to get the players on your side with regards to reading and understanding the rules. Share the rulebook with them using something like Google Drive with download and printing permissions turned off and ask them to help you understand and interpret the new rules. I did this with both Cypher and Blades in the Dark and it was really helpful.

There's a balance between making an adventure easy to run and making it fun to read. I think the design philosophy of Scarlet Citadel was to lean in on old-school dungeon crawling games and that required a lot of text not just to describe what's in a room but how it plays out and how the GM should handle it. That style isn't really for me and my lazy style. It also doesn't help that that sort of killer-GM old-school style isn't the style I like to run. I want a character-focused evolving story of high adventure, not a deadly romp through a series of ever-more dangerous chambers without a real purpose or goal. So I have to do a lot of work to run it. Eventually when I'm done I'm going to give my review and assessment. Right now I'd say its fun but it requires a fair bit of work as a DM to wrangle it into the right style for me and my group.

My friend Jeff Greiner at the Tome Show does this all the time. There are a bunch of ways to do it. You can make one of the adventures the core adventure and one of them like side quests. I did this when running Tales of the Yawning Portal alongside Storm King's Thunder. You can also run them in parallel, each with their own villains doing their own things and let the players decide which direction they want to go. The only pitfalls is that eventually the characters are likely to focus on one plotline and let the other one die out so too much prep of too many big adventures may not serve you. When I've done it, I usually have one core adventure and then steal elements from other adventures to widen it out but I don't typically run three side-by-side like Jeff does.

Tough question! Basic storytelling story sharing skills will serve you well. A lot of RPGs hang onto D&D styles already because it was first so most games have four to six players with character sheets rolling dice and sharing stories whether it's Pathfinder 2e or Blades in the Dark. I don't know if there's a particular element of 5e that works well in other games. Maybe the idea of exploration, roleplaying, and combat as the focus for activities might work for other games but other games might have their own foci that don't fall into that model. So I'd say that the basics of D&D work well just to understand the structure of the games but I can't think of one big element of 5e in particular that transfers well.

I like to use larger maps for dungeon crawls, often from Dyson Logos. I'll put the whole map in a tool like Owlbear Rodeo and use the fog of war to show what they've explored. One trick is that I almost always boost the size up 2x so a single square is ten feet instead of five. This drives players who focus on the grid nuts but it gives a lot of room to explore and makes everything bigger. I think its worth showing a map of some sort, even if its pieces printed out on paper or snapshots shared through Discord. Trying to describe a dungeon crawl can get really confusing quickly without some sort of visual.

Hi Jason! Welcome back to our wonderful hobby! Your family may have a different style of play they're bringing to the game than you may be used to from the 2e days – which tended to focus on bad choices leading to dead characters pretty quickly. There are a few ways to deal with it. First, remember that they may be having fun the way they're playing and that it's just a different style. Tactical optimization may not be their goal or the part of the game they enjoy the most. Second, you can handle it by letting the players know what their *characters* would know. If they're about to make a really bad decision, maybe reiterate what their characters know about the situation from their own eyes and experiences. Remember that players, particularly new players, are only picking up about half of what you're describing. Third, you can have an out-of-game conversation about some of the dangers in the game that they're not picking up. Sometimes I just joke about this stuff in-game when a villain thanks the characters for not focusing damage or sarcastically talking about horror movies where all the heroes split up. As new players to the game, they may just need to pick up the experiences as they go themselves. Don't lean too hard on punishing them for bad choices but the situations may show them that there are better ways. Most importantly, focus on the fun they're having around the table and lean in on that.

Think of the dragon like an NPC. Give them the ability to shape-shift or even make a simulacrum of themselves. I ran Iymrith from Storm King's Thunder this way and it was *awesome*. https://slyflourish.com/iymrith.html

Sorry, where are you seeing the updated date?

I'd say Iskandar is probably the easiest but Ptolus looks like it'd be the most fun. Of course, let's not forget the City of Arches!!

I'd suggest the Lazy DM's Companion and Lazy DM's Workbook but of course I would! Learning to just focus on the *best* tools you've found and just using that is fine. Maybe shake up which ones you use from time to time but yeah, don't let your library become an anchor. Just pick one and go with it =)

wow! Yeah, I'd strip it down a lot. I recently put together a one-sheet D&D PDF that might help. It boils down a lot of D&D to material you can fit on a single sheet and can help you work with your 5 year old player to build a character built on the concepts. Hopefully it helps! https://slyflourish_content.s3.amazonaws.com/one-sheet_5e.pdf

Hi Snark! I have a couple of previous questions that cover this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkkJlOmGgR4&list=PLb39x-29puaoZke5BVk7fjyyyjWXcxCu1&index=4&t=2164s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3MABNQT5Og&list=PLb39x-29puaoZke5BVk7fjyyyjWXcxCu1&index=18&t=3242s

Yes! This is a tricky problem but I've found a good solution! Google Drive! With Google Drive you can share a PDF with certain people and remove permissions so they can only view it, not print it or download it. This makes it legal to share PDFs with your players. See this desription: https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/9308868?hl=en

First, let them do it! Then do everything you can to be a good player: https://slyflourish.com/be_a_great_player.html Some clips from the Talk Show also cover this topic: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ba5ZgCaYa3E&t=2300s

Take a look through my "top ten notable products of 2022" list: https://slyflourish.com/top_ten_products_of_2022.html and my "Notable Third Party Products" page: https://slyflourish.com/notable_third_party_products.html They have a lot of potential options that might grab you.

Hello! Yes, you're right that sometimes its useful to put them all together and othertimes its useful to list them out. The typical prep we find is to build out each encounter but I find that makes it too cookie-cutter. Instead, I sort of like to think about the whole location and who inhabits it and where they might be. This way I can let the story and pacing of the game dictate what becomes an "encounter". Try both and see which ones work for you!

I never know what I'm going to add or pull away until I do. You mention the environment tags which I actually just dumped because my new datasource doesn't really have them. I know its a potentially useful tag but its sporadic at best. I may add it in at some point. I've been doing a lot of work on it and using it in my games so once I finally feel like it's solid, I'll probably do a new video showing off the features.

Just at the end of Chapter 2! I'm really digging it but I'm changing a lot.

Good question! It's important to note that these are ones I liked. You may have many more and you may not like some of these. We have a new "Great Fiction Club" on the Discord server where we can share such things with one added rule to our regular Discord rules – no criticizing or debating anyone else's great fiction. Here's my list since the publication of Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master! Books Bloody Rose East of West Fairy Tale by Stephen King Gideon the Ninth (but not the others) Kings of the Wyld The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms TV Shows Andor Book of Boba Fett Cadfael Dark Dracula (Netflix three-part series) Foundation Good Omens Locke and Key Love Death and Robots Mandalorian Midnight Mass Peaky Blinders Star Wars Visions The Expanse The Outsider The Witcher True Detective Movies American Werewolf in London Avengers End Game Avengers Infinity War Blade Runner 2049 Clash of the Titans (the old 80s one) Color Out of Space Dune (Vellinvue) Eternals Everything Everywhere All at Once Hereditary It Chapters 1 and 2 Midsommer Nope Pan's Labyrinth Prey Snowpiercer The Endless The Green Night The Pale Blue Eye The Witch Thor Love and Thunder Wakanda Forever Willow

Hi there! The various Kobold Guides including Worldbuilding volume 1 and 2, and Plots and Campaigns are pretty great sources of a bunch of essays from a lot of folk in the industry on this topic. You can find them here: https://koboldpress.com/kpstore/product/kobold-guide-to-worldbuilding/ https://koboldpress.com/kpstore/product/kobold-guide-to-worldbuilding-volume-2/ https://koboldpress.com/kpstore/product/kobold-guide-to-plots-campaigns/ All of the Kobold Guides are like well-published blog posts from lots of people who have been doing this a long time (me included!): https://koboldpress.com/kpstore/product-category/all-products/guides/page/1/

Hey there! It's important to remember that new players don't have any context for these sorts of things. It's hard even for *experienced* players to come up with story elements on the fly. I'd lean in on the improvisational technique of "yes and". Offer a prompt or an idea and, if they're interested in taking it further, they can, otherwise you can go with what you offered. Asking them to just come up with big pieces of their story on the spot can be hard for any players, much less new players. You can also offer it up as homework. Let them unlock something and ask them to spend some time thinking about it with a specific prompt to help guide them and let them figure it out outside of the session over email or something like that. But, above all, remember that new players are still figuring out their character sheets and might not have the neurons wired to come up with elaborate stories for their characters.

Not everything needs to be a tremendous challenge. A level 5 challenge is a 15 more on a d20 without any other factor thrown in. Two steps takes it to a greater than 50% chance of success. So a level 5 isn't really intended to tremendously challenge proficient characters. The important part of Numenera is thinking within the scope of the world. Some things are easy. Some things are hard. What are the challenges in the world that the characters face and what level are those challenges? Maybe they're easy, maybe not. But the story flows from what happens in the world more than the mechanics you put in front of them. The world of Numenera is a big wild place and huge hulking war machines might be wandering out there in the wilds!

Pick your favorite monster books for your given campaign and focus on those. When I'm running Kobold Press adventures, I focus heavily on Kobold Press books with a sprinkling of 5e or A5e monsters when I need to fall back to something basic. When you pick a new campaign, think of one or two monster books you think work well for the theme of that campaign and try out those monsters. This works just like limiting character options for the campaign. We don't want to allow every 5e player option book so we pick one or two for a given campaign. We can do the same thing for monsters and still add a lot of variety to our campaigns without it being overwhelming.

Hi Mark! I think your idea sounds great! The big question is whether you want your two games to share the same world. That might be harder to do because you're each trying to figure out what the other group has done to change the first. It's probably easiest (and laziest) to just run the same campaign but let the two groups live in their own instance of the world and just share the stories of how things worked for each group. You and the other GM can still talk about what happened and what will happen which can help you both a lot, I expect, but not have the difficulty of trying to maintain continuity across both groups. So my recommendation would be to share the same time and same campaign and you and the other GM can share ideas and experiences but run each game separately so you don't have to try to tie together the activities of both groups which can end up being a hassle.

I'll probably be continuing to focus on 5e for the time being but I'm eager to try the new 13th Age and Shadow of the Weird Wizard systems. Pathfinder 2e is a little too crunchy and grid-focused for my tastes.

I think looking at the Marvel Cinematic Universe can probably give you some good ideas for high-tier adventures. Think superheroes and the sorts of threats they have to deal with. Going to the outer planes also helps. There's something inherently high level when one steps out of one world and into the next. Check out MCG's Planebreaker book for lots of otherworldly ideas.

This please. I’ve mentioned it several times on various YouTube channels and would love to have someone with reach start the conversation. D&D, because of the OGL, had become the “industry standard” rather than just the dominant player.

I've not played ICRPG but I like those ideas a lot. These are the sorts of things we can houserule into our 5e games if we want or even just use them for particular locations. Maybe an unholy temple forces a check to cast divine spells with a set DC or death saves change to 1d4 instead of three because of some unholy monument. One trick is trying out these house rules tied to a particular location, monument, or monster so we can try them out before we use them everywhere. Cool stuff!

My games only run about three hours with a 10 minute break so they're not much longer than 2.5 hours. I think its a lot harder if you go under two hours but over two hours should give enough time for all the things you're considering. That's about three big scenes in 2.5 hours. A couple of things that can help: - Jump right in with a strong start tied to the rest of the session's activities. - Run smaller battles with fewer foes, fewer different types of foes, and weaker foes. - Get comfortable (And get your players comfortable) running more battles in the theater of the mind. - If you're able, run with fewer players. Run even if players can't make it. Three or four players works better than five or six. During your prep you can think about the scenes and the secrets you're prepping and make sure they're focused on the characters for their development and the story for the campaign. Hope that helps!

I'm not a West Marches guy so I can't offer a lot of advice but I think part of running a West Marches game is that there *isn't* an overarching story. Instead, each little segment is its own story. You might add a loose one over the top of it, some big bad or set of big bads like clouds on the horizon but I wouldn't run them as dynamic villains doing things or you end up with just a normal campaign. Instead, think about your villains like Sauron in Lord of the Rings. He's doing things but they're subtle and take a long time. Each of those things might be something the players select when they're picking which paths to go in the West Marches campaign. Hope that helps!

Hi Brooke! Sometimes it takes me longer but usually because I'm doing something like building a big layout either in Dwarven Forge or online with Owlbear Rodeo. The meat of prep probably hasn't taken me more than an hour in eight or nine years – since I started the whole Lazy DM thing. Generating ideas, for me, comes from a few places: - Reading, listening to, and watching great fiction. - Stealing liberally from that great fiction. - Using random tables to generate ideas and break me out of mental ruts. - Running published materials that give me a head start. - Not letting perfect be the enemy of good enough. This is a good seed for an article, thank you!

You can do what they do with Adventurer's League and run a Table Zero. Try to see who wants to be a GM and run a game for *them* with the adventure you intend for them to run for their groups. I'd say the goblin caves from Phandelver is a good one for a single session. Dragon of Stormwreck Isle is good but probably best over a couple of sessions. Show the potential DMs how you run the adventure, talk to them about what various things mean, and then act as a pit boss during the actual running of the games instead of running one yourself at the same time. Go from table to table and see what help they need. That's how I'd do it probably.

That's a really good question. First, I'd have probably separated the final battle from the rest of the session – extending things out a bit to fill two sessions instead of mashing it up together. That would have helped a lot. I think I'd have made sure that the characters had other opportunities to shine by battling lower level foes so they can use some of their fun abilities instead of fighting all level 8s and 10s. Going too high level too often hurt the game I think.

This is that good time to have a conversation and try to reach a unanimous decision. I'd probably try to find out *why* one of the players ranked it last. If they have specific concerns, you can try to make sure those are addressed when running it. I tend not to put a lot of options in front of the players when choosing a campaign for this reason. Instead, I suggest a new potential campaign that *I'm* interested in and ask if they'd be interested in that. Most of the time they're on board. If not, I toss it and consider a different one but I tend not to bring three campaigns because I don't want split votes.

Ativan