May 2023 Sly Flourish Patreon Q&A

Dungeon World is one of those RPGs that has a different style than other games when it comes to prep. The first session is really a world-building session involving the character. But once that world is built, the eight steps can fit in just as well as any other RPG. You still need to know the characters, build a strong start, outline scenes, develop secrets and clues, understand the NPCs, monsters, and locations that might come up and drop in interesting treasure. That stuff is pretty universal once you get past the first worldbuilding session.

It's all a matter of perspective. If a dread lord is really trying to break in, they might simply not believe it or ignore it or not even *see* it. That's what I did in my games. The hags had their own motivations and were unmoved by the comings of the incursions until they met the final hag who became aware of it by seeing an artifact from one of these other worlds. She couldn't ignore it then. I think we can run the hags like we run any other major NPCs. What are their goals, quests, and motivations and how would they react to the impact of both the characters and the incursions. Treat them like real people and think through their eyes. How would /you/ act if you were them?

All of that sounds like it could work. The flashback idea is definitely one I've used. Mostly, if the impact of the flashback is something reasonable they would have done, there's no check and no penalty. If it's something important, like bribing a guard, I could see it using up inspiration and, if it makes sense, hit dice. Give it a try and see how it works!

Good question. I don't really know. Could the gods just be a mysterious force no one understands? Like the Force in star wars? I don't know how to reskin it without coming up with just another form of gods. Good luck!

Hi Gábor! Any of the advice you find in the Lazy GM's Resource Document can be used for any purpose, including commercially, with the attribution listed in the document: https://slyflourish.com/lazy_gm_resource_document.html As far as other advice I offer on the show, you're certainly free to discuss it and describe it however you want on YouTube videos. It's always great if you attribute it back to me and offer a link to https://slyflourish.com in the notes of the show. Hope this helps!

I think the work of Raging Swan is very much like this. Also MT Black's work and the work of the Arcane Library.

For maps, not really. You could put a folder for maps under your system agnostic folder and then expand it all out when you're loading maps into a VTT. I know a mac lets you do that but I'm not sure about a PC. Sorry I'm not more help! Consider asking in the Sly Flourish discord server and see what people are doing.

Lines and veils and the "Pause for a Minute". Also the summary of the campaign and the one-line bond that connects characters together and to the story and drive of the campaign. As far as house rules go, not really. Those all look good. Maybe some replacement spells from Tashas for spells like Summon Woodland Beings.

Like many aspects of the problem player question, there are a few stages one might take: 1. Try to address it during a session zero before the campaign begins. Make sure it's very clear what sorts of behaviors you expect from players and what sorts of drives you expect from their character. If they want to go a different direction, help them build a character that wants to *cooperate*. 2. If it's too late to do that, the next step is to talk to the player offline. Ideally you do this in person or during a voice conversation – not in text or email. Use all of the techniques for a healthy crucial conversation: Address the problem, not the player. Recognize where they're coming from and what they want. Make it clear what the issue is and how to resolve it. Come to an agreement. 3. If that doesn't work and it's still disruptive at the table, it might be best to part ways. "Unfortunately I don't think this is the game for you." Remember not to pick on them particularly. Maybe they just want a different kind of game than you offer. But make it clear that you can't run the kind of game they want based on what's happening in the game. This isn't a perfect answer or approach. It won't always work and it doesn't fit every situation. But hopefully it gives you ideas.

Hi Chris! I'll be talking about it on the Talk Show this Sunday morning and it'll be up on YouTube this coming Monday!

Take a look at the storyline you have going on and think about how you can streamline it a bit. What are the big beats that *have* to happen and how can you draw the path to get there soonest. Lots of stories narrow down as the focus shifts – think about how they do this in books or movies or TV shows. Get back to the basics. Cut off some loose threads. Maybe even have a mid-campaign session zero to talk to the players about which parts of the campaign they want to focus on and then focus just on that. Hope that helps!

I'd definitely go with pre-gens at first. I don't have any data to support it but I think the general choices of "which class do you want to play" is easier than doing ability allocation and all of that jazz. I'd get together with your GMs before the event if you can and give them good guidance on how to run the games. I'd also stick to simple adventures intended for about 2 hours instead of trying to go four. Maybe one mission from Dragon of Icespire Peak could work. Maybe one or two parts of Dragons of Stormwreck Isle could work but that might go long if roleplaying takes a while. Good luck!

You can certainly lower the die to a lower die like a d4, d6, or d10. The D20 is nice because every side is a clean 5% chance so it's really easy to figure out the odds and sliding up and down the DC scale increases or decreases those odds by 5%. D100s are too granular. D10s might be too general. I think the d20 is a great evolution in dice. So did the Egyptians =) https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/551072 Because Lightning 5e is intended to teach new players how to play 5e, I'll be sticking to the d20.

Yes! and Yes! I'll be talking about it on the Talk Show this Sunday morning and it'll be up on YouTube this coming Monday. My part, so far, is small but it's something I've spent a lot of time on so I think it'll be great.

My wife and I used to go to gencon every year for more than a decade but a few things happened. Before Covid, it was really hard to get a hotel room within walking distance. It was also *really* expensive to fly there and stay for the days. We started going to Origins instead which we enjoyed and was much easier to get into. Then covid hit and we've only been to one convention since, 1d4 Con in West Virginia because it was close. That was awesome and we didn't get sick! I don't know what our plans are for bigger conventions. We're not going to Gencon, though. Sorry!

Great question! You can still use the characters as your focus point and expand out the world to support them. This could be done during or after a session zero when you have some idea what characters they're bringing and what general backgrounds they're interested in. Then build out the world to support those particular characters. Say you end up with a wizard, rogue, cleric, fighter, and paladin. You can talk to the wizard player about her origin, where she came from, and then fill that out after the session zero. The rogue might have a former thieves guild or a seedy city they came from – you can build that out. The cleric needs a god but not *all* the gods, so you focus on that one particular deity for that one faith. The fighter might have come from a particular war so you build out that bit of history. Just like you start with the characters and spiral out *physically*, you can also spiral out just from the lens, looking backward and forward, from the character themselves. This trick works well for cities as well. You don't have to fill out an entire city but ask what locations each of the characters might enjoy visiting and flesh those out. So, overall, run a session zero, get a feel for the characters, and build out the world from their perspective. Let me know if that works!

Hi Moozure! I think it can be adapted to the Forgotten Realms. It sort of expects to be plopped down in a typical temprate village-like setting but with some reskinning it could probably fit in Thay. I think the four villains could easily be reskinned as Red Wizards and their dark machinations. I think it could work well that way. I'd be sure to bring a plot to the book based on Thayan influence. I think Ushulux could be a great Red Wizard frenemy. You'll want to have some way for the characters to go to a friendly area to restock and rest and what not that's the equivalent of Red Tower. Maybe it's another plane or dimension or something. Maybe it's just a village the Red Wizards tend to leave alone for some reason. I think it could be fun!

I'm not really a fan of systems for things like chases. I think it works better to run such things in the narrative. If the characters have abilities to help them in the chase, let them use them. If they want to try things out and roll ability checks, let them. I wouldn't worry about things like distances other than the idea that monks and rogues move much faster than other characters. I'd try to abstract it; focusing on the situation, the complications, the goals, the win states, and what the characters want to try. Stay open to their ideas and not to the rigidity of any sort of chase system.

Hi Evan! I think my best advice is to really think about great characters in fiction; books, movies, TV shows, etc. If you listen to audiobooks you can pick up how the reader handles voices of characters. Then try it yourself. Try out the voices the audiobook narrator is using. Also, get into the head of the NPC. Who are they? What do they want? What are they trying to do to get there? How would they react to what is happening in the conversation? I find this far more useful than a list of traits or a bunch of DCs. Get into their heads and try to respond as they would respond. Be them for a bit.

Empire of the Ghouls covers a much larger section of Midgard than Scarlet Citadel does. The writing in Ghouls isn't exactly lightweight but it covers more ground per paragraph than Scarlet Citadel does. I find it easier to digest and run, although Ghouls does need work which I've talked about in my current Ghouls videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLb39x-29puaolX3T6CTCA7gYbgZiIXgXQ So no, I don't find Ghouls has the same problem as Scarlet Citadel. Ghouls needs work but I'd still recommend it. I can't recommend Scarlet Citadel.

it's calculated roughly with the lazy encounter benchmark (https://slyflourish.com/the_lazy_encounter_benchmark.html) but it's definitely looser (which is how you should think about the benchmark anyway). It's just to give you a rough gauge how this monster might play out in a game. A group of four 20th level characters could take on two CR 20 monsters. Level 20 characters have a *ton* of resources at their disposal. That said, test your characters out as you run higher level games. Remember it's a loose gauge at best.

I just asked this question to a larger group on the Discord server to get views that *aren't* from another old straight cis white guy. That'd be my first recommendation. I'll come back to this one when I have some better answers from a wider group of people before I start throwing in my opinions (as we straight cis white guys tend to do =)).

Great question! I talk about some of this here: https://slyflourish.com/lazy_dm_tools.html and here: https://youtu.be/Qr-Wb-Szedo Here's a quick list: - A Pathfinder Flip Mat - A list of random names - The Lazy 5e Cheat Sheet (https://slyflourish.com/revised_5e_cheat_sheet.html) - 3x5 index cards - Generic monster tokens (https://slyflourish.com/crafting_lazy_monster_tokens.html) - Face cards - The monster stats by CR chart from Forge of Foes (https://slyflourish_content.s3.amazonaws.com/forge_of_foes_preview.pdf) - A handful of printed Dyson maps - The Lazy DM's Workbook and Companion

Hi Michael! This sounds really interesting but I'm not sure I understand the question. Can you restate it? I'm not sure what it means to go from dungeon maps to dungeon scenes. As far as lazy map making, I really want to try more stick and circle style maps with more advanced maps for important chambers. On Wednesday I ran a dungeon map from Dysons but used Dwarven Forge for the two important rooms. That worked pretty well.

First, there isn't a wrong way. If it works for you, it's working. Some GMs spend time ahead of time building each combat encounter out with all of the bells and whistles (multiple types of monsters, interesting terrain, interactive features, special win conditions, etc). Others, like me, wing it right at the table. For me, I usually have a rough idea whether a combat encounter might take place but I leave a lot of it up to the moment. Maybe they figure out how to get around the angry mechanical spiders. Maybe they fight them. I don't know until it happens. You pretty much can see my prep system in my prep videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLb39x-29puaqbHmqvQufhsCVyFpZj3Ugn When I'm running, I see where things go and exploit my prep to run combat encounters. I use pacing and beats and the dials of difficulty to manage the encounter for the situation in the world and the feeling of the game.

Breaking people up into groups and recruiting some other GMs to run players through the first scenario of Dragon of Stormwreck Isle can work. I'd focus on pregens before I'd jump into character creation. Character creation takes a long time and I'm not sure its the best way to get started with D&D. Instead, they can make the choice of which pregen to go with and go from there. Once they've learned the basics of the game and want to make a character, then they can work together to do so. My goal would be to take the 15 people and break them into three groups of five or four group of four-ish and have them actually play instead of trying to teach in a classroom style setting.

This is a good question and a tough one. I think it behooves GMs to always be thinking about how to move things forward. Sort of like "Strong Starts" but just about anywhere. It's really up to the GM to keep things going, know *where* they're going, and motivate the characters to get there. For NPC interaction, the NPC themselves can take a walk or otherwise depart from the scene. It's easy to get caught in the conversation and let the player guide its end but the NPC can do it as well. Pacing is just a really hard GM skill to pick up. Monte Cook says its the most vital of GM skills, and it can take a lifetime to master (if one ever can). Always be thinking how the game can go forward is my best advice. It's not great but hopefully it helps.

I had never heard of it! I love the idea and Morrus's countdown dice sounds really great. It's a cool idea. I've used count-up timers like the 13th Age escalation die but this has some fun randomness I think could be really fun. I'll have to try it out. Thank you for sharing it!

Hi Jordan! I wrote this article to help new DMs get started in D&D: https://slyflourish.com/getting_started_with_dnd.html I think finding the right Discord server to look for new players can help. Over on the Sly Flourish server we have a LFG location where you can note that you're new, maybe pick three players to keep things easy, and run a short and simple adventure to get your feet wet. Welcome to the hobby and I really hope you find a great way to get started! I think you'll love it =)

Hi Dan. That's a hard question. I think having a group conversation about it can help. It looks like you've let them grab pretty much everything if they have bloodhunters and the like. I'm a fan of limiting source material to specific sources. D&D Beyond doesn't make this easy, which is irksome, but it does help ensure players are picking just specific books. Making sure if they pick the weird stuff that they're ready to speak to it helps. Of course, you need to watch it too. Many times players don't read the whole text, jumping onto the cool part and forgetting that it has a detriment they seem to forget. I think having an adult conversation about it can help and, otherwise, just accepting that sometimes you have to look things up. That's ok. And, when you start a new campaign, limit source materials. Good luck!

I'd try Lightning 5e! https://slyflourish_content.s3.amazonaws.com/lightning_5e.pdf You can also try a simplified version of Dungeon World without all the "Moves" per class. Just 2d6 + a stat. Fate Accelerated is also fantastic for this sort of play. I ran it with some very young kids once and they got it. Lots of plusses are good. Lots of minuses are bad. World of Dungeons also has potential but you have to fill in a lot of blanks: http://www.onesevendesign.com/dw/world_of_dungeons_1979_bw.pdf

Woo. That's hard. I wouldn't do it over and over but once in a while is cool. I'm a big fan of the Inception-style mind-heist. A campaign of mind-bending realities lend themselves to lots of interesting visions. One time, in one of my games, the characters repeatedly used a pool that let them invade the dreams of their enemies to steal info. One time they accidentally went into the dreams of a 1000 year old lich and lost themselves in his mind for about a decade before they could make it back out. Great fun. Watch Inception =)

Don't! There must be hundreds of sets of random tables you can use. Most monster books or GM guides include them. Check out the Level Up Advanced 5e Dungeon Delver's Guide, the Lazy DM's Workbook, or Xanathar's Guide for excellent random encounter tables. If you must build your own, keep them small since you're not likely to need a lot of rolls. I do like thinking about what monsters make sense for the next game and maybe whipping up a small list of monsters. Sometimes I roll on it but mostly I pick monsters I think make sense for the situation and that'll be fun given the current feeling of the game.

Secrets and clues! https://slyflourish.com/sharing_secrets.html

Hard question! First, be sure you're not taking away all the toys the players love. Loss aversion is real and you'll be starting off on a very big negative beat if you force them getting captured and losing their stuff. I speak from experience on both sides of this type of story. If the players are on board, say the campaign is *starting* there, you can worry about tracking things as they're used. There's no great system for it that I can think of off the top of my head but we had some resource management in the initial chapters of Out of the Abyss and it was fun, until it wasn't, at which point we moved it to a normal D&D game.

Obsidian is definitely my fallback. Barring that, back to text files like I used to do before I used Notion. I love Notion but I don't think I'm dependent on it. On the DM side, I feel pretty good about not being dependent on any one tool except maybe Discord. I love Discord for online games and would be sad if I had to leave it.

Hey John I totally understand your predicament, as I've been there and it's a common mistake. Just make more gods I do it all the time. You can make an allseer to the gods, and have that be the origin or just make it a mystery one the characters have to discover. Don't worry we've all been there. Your gods can always create new gods and pantheons remember that!

whoo boy. I don't think I'm up to that challenge. I just played Call of Cthulhu which uses a d100 roll-under system. I like it a lot. I really don't have enough experience with it to know how to build a monster for it, though. Sorry!

I find a lot of digital tools to be easier to use than physical tools. PDFs can be searched. Notion pages can be linked. Maps are *far* easier to use online than in person. Except for one thing.... DICE! Dice are so much faster to use on the table. I roll physical dice now for all of my games and having seen a mix of players, some who use physical dice and some who use virtual dice, the physical dice rollers are far faster than the digital ones. So yeah, dice. The rest, though, for me, online just seems easier.

Good question! There isn't really a dial like the dials of monster difficulty but there are a few easy things you can do. First, you can always give it a plus bonus more than it had. A +1 to +2 to +3 sword and so on. Another trick is to give it a new single-use-per-day spell-like ability. The higher level the spell, the more powerful it typically is. This gives you a way to build the theme of a weapon. Maybe at tier 1 a fighter gets a +1 shield with a dragon emblem on it that lets him cast burning hands once a day. At tier 2 it becomes a +2 shield and lets him cast fireball once a day. Maybe the burning hands becomes limitless. At tier 3 it becomes a +3 shield, offers resistance to fire damage, and can cast wall of fire. Don't worry about the rarity of the magic item when you're just making it up. Like monster CR, it's a formula only useful until you have actual players with actual character sheets. Good luck!

Not really. I tweak that article every time I run it to match anything new I find but it's largely been working as I want. One thing is that running it online is far easier than running it in person unless you have a good way to reveal the map as you go in person. A big map and fog of war works really well.

Try just one small tweak at a time. Don't change a whole ton of stuff all at once. Jot down the ideas you like and try one every couple of sessions. Triage them to find the ones you think offer the best fun for the game. Also, try out the ones you can do on *your* side of the GM screen. GM hacks are easy for you to try with low impact to players who often want stability and consistency in the game. Hack on your side all you want.

I don't except for the ideas of the beats of a dungeon crawl. I think its easy to try to get wrapped around the math too much and this leads to a more stale game. It's worth keeping in mind how much of their resources the characters have burned up at any given point and maybe give them a chance to refresh things. Otherwise, I really focus on what makes sense given the game world. Sometimes things are easy, sometimes they're hard. We can always work the dials if things stray away from fun. But I don't worry about how many encounters a group can face in an adventuring day and I think trying to do so doesn't actually help the game.

I've the same problem - I always forget to award inspiration. I like the One DnD test material: if a PC rolls a natural 1, it awards 1 inspiration. But it has to be used before the finish of a long rest. I tested this approach in my table as a homebrew rule and works fine.

If you don't mind a split-leveled party, you can start them at 3rd level. For the new player you might recommend one of the simpler builds or even a pregen character and let them know they're free to customize the character as they will once they get their feet wet.

That's a tough one. It's part of their character. I think you might try to set up lightning rods for this sort of thing – islands you *have* prepared, maybe lightly prepared with a quick cave dungeon or something, so they'll have that draw. If they're consistent enough about it, it can be come pretty predictable. Quick adventure generators can be your friend here.

There's no such thing as no GM tweaking. We're always mucking around a little bit. But if you mean with no real mucking around of the dials... I don't think the majority of battles can happen in 45 minutes or less. There's a lot going on at tier 2. That's the point where characters get access to a *lot* of stuff. I definitely think there are ways to bring the battle back within 45 minutes but I think any relatively complicated battle may take longer than that. How to make it faster? Fewer hit points. More damage Fewer monster types Fewer monsters A simpler environment Theater of the mind =D All of these violate your constraints but I think they all work well.

None of the above! At least for me, I see myself as a facilitator for the story that expands at the table. I'm a cook who prepares all the ingredients and then brings them to the table so all of the players and I can cook the meal together. It's not a competition so we don't need a referee. The story isn't just ours so we're not a storyteller. I cheekily refer to myself as an antenna to another world. I'm a facilitator for the story about to happen. Maybe an arbiter of the rules when we need one but only to help move the game forward.

I definitely think including these rules, or at least references to these rules, in your session zero worksheet can help a lot. You might just have to remind them or help them to remind eachother. The *cool* rules tend to get remembered and the lame rules tend to get forgotten. If they're forgotten, we might ask, were they that important anyway?

I run into this sometimes but I tend to do exactly what you do. If it becomes a real problem, I might sit with them to talk about how you feel about it and help them recognize that you're a human being running from the seat of your pants like everyone else. Sometimes when a personality conflict is getting in the way of the game, the best thing we can do is sit with the player and talk through the situation in a non-confrontational and non-combative way. "This is how I feel" or "this is what I'm seeing at the table" sorts of questions. Good luck!

I haven't seen it before but it looks pretty awesome!