Sly Flourish

Relax

13 May 2013: If there is any one single of D&D dungeon mastering advice I can give, it all comes down to one simple word. Relax. If we consider our worst games, how often were those games thwarted by our own f ...

Running White Plume Mountain

6 May 2013: Wizards of the Coast recently released a collector's edition of four of the most memorable 1st edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Modules in a package called the Dungeons of Dread. These adventures ...

Miniature Painting Resources

29 April 2013: With the recent shipping of the incredible Reaper Bones miniature kickstarter rewards, its time to learn how to paint some minis or freshen up our skills. In short article, we're going to offer a list ...

1d20 Shades of Grey

22 April 2013: One of the things that makes Dungeon World unique among D&D off-shoots is the inclusion of a core mechanic with partial successes. Instead of a mechanic with only either success or failure, such a ...

Three Villains from Deadwood

15 April 2013: The HBO series Deadwood is one of the greatest examples of organic storytelling. There's no central plotline or story to Deadwood. This isn't Battlestar Galactica or Lost which pretends to have a stor ...

Tentacles of Terror: Creating Cryonax

8 April 2013: In March of 2013 I had the honor of writing up a Dragon Magazine article on Cryonax, the Elemental Prince of Ice (DDI Subscription Required). After writing articles and statistics for both Yan-C-Bin ...

Dwarven Forge Game Tiles Kickstarter for the Lazy Dungeon Master

1 April 2013: This past week Stefan Pokorny, the creator of Dwarven Forge, announced the Dwarven Forge Game Tile Kickstarter. In short, for $170, you'll get two to three sets worth of painted Dwarven Forge pieces l ...

Using Published Adventures

25 March 2013: Published adventures are a blessing and a curse. Our purchases or subscriptions gives us access to high quality, professionally developed material we couldn't make on our own. That said, published adv ...

Isle of Dread for the Lazy Dungeon Master

18 March 2013: Originally written in 1981, the Isle of Dread is a classic and memorable open-ended adventure. Wizards of the Coast recently included an updated Isle of Dread adventure in their current D&D Next p ...

Dungeon World Fronts in D&D

11 March 2013: "Dungeon World's concept of fronts improved my D&D games immeasurably." - Mike Mearls The power of the internet and the independent backing movement of Kickstarter has led us to a host of new an ...

All About Ashes of Athas with Teos Abadia

5 March 2013: On Friday, 1 March, had the opportunity to spend an hour with D&D freelancer and organized play veteran Teos Abadia to discuss his stewardship of the Ashes of Athas living campaign. In this video ...

Building Your Own Lair Assault

25 February 2013: The Lair Assault organized play program brought a more competitive form to our traditional D&D 4th Edition games. Lair Assaults put PCs into challenging and focused scenarios, giving them a main g ...

Three Choices

18 February 2013: Debates have raged for years between sandbox games and those run "on-the-rails". In sandbox gaming, PCs are free to explore entire worlds on their own, with little direct influence from the dungeon ma ...

Building a Home Base

11 February 2013: Every group of adventurers needs a place to hang their hats when they're finished with their exploits for the week. A good home base should make the PCs, and your players, feel comfortable and relaxed ...

Dnd Tip Tweet Archive

7 February 2013: Twitter's recent Twitter archive feature makes it much easier to download and process our entire twitter postings. For nearly four years I've posted daily weekday #dnd tip tweets to Twitter and now I' ...

Ever-present Villains

4 February 2013: It's tough to keep outstanding villains in the minds of our players. We tend to bring them only physically and in the direct position to be killed before anyone ever gets to really know them. There ar ...

The 4e Elite Villain Template

28 January 2013: For five years of D&D 4th edition we've suffered with watching our boss villains get stun-locked in a corner and smacked up like a nerd in dodge ball (yes, I sympathize with the nerds in this meta ...

Tools of the Lazy Dungeon Master Video

22 January 2013: "When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine." - Pablo Picasso The Lazy Dungeon Master ...

Using Curse of Undeath in your 4e Game

14 January 2013: In November 2012 I received a review copy of the fourth Dungeon Command miniature skirmish faction pack, Curse of Undeath. Like Heart of Cormyr, Sting of Lolth, and Tyranny of Goblins; Curse of Undeat ...

3x5 Card Campaign Design

7 January 2013: In another of his fantastic article entitled Humpty Dumpty Conundrum, Wizards of the Coast producer and professional dungeon master, Chris Perkins, discusses his use and review of his one page adventu ...

DM Tips Twitter Archive: December 2012

04 January 2013: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for December 2012. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish. I can't thank @TheIdDM enough for getting @jkbono and I in t ...

Three Motivations for Your Villains

31 December 2012: Note: This article has been updated from the original version posted 29 June 2009. Motivation is the key to great characters and few things ruin a good character like a poor motivations. Poor villains ...

You Are Not Prepared

24 December 2012: Every Wednesday evening I have a panic attack. It happens at the same time every week, in the exact same place, on my way out of my office building to the parking garage at about 5:30 pm. At that exac ...

Paizo Face Cards for the Lazy Dungeon Master

17 December 2012: A good lazy dungeon master always seeks out the tools to help run games on the fly. Being lazy doesn't mean being unprepared; it means having the right aids on hand to give us the most flexibility to ...

Leave Things Unfinished

10 December 2012: Sometimes the best stories are the ones in our heads. Sometimes the best stories are the ones in the heads of our players. We shouldn't fear leaving our stories unfinished. We shouldn't worry about l ...

DM Tips Twitter Archive: November 2012

07 December 2012: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for November 2012. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish. #dnd Halloween game: the village of Tanaroa rose their ancie ...

Announcing The Lazy Dungeon Master

3 December 2012: On 1 December 2012, I released my latest Dungeons and Dragons advice book, The Lazy Dungeon Master. This book brings together the experiences of many dungeon masters who found that the less structure ...

Common Dungeon Master Mistakes

26 November 2012: It's often better to be positive than negative when writing advice for dungeon masters. Sometimes, however, it is worth looking at the bad so we can better understand the good. Today we're going to lo ...

Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition Buyer's Guide

19 November 2012: While we pay much attention to the D&D Next Playtest there has never been a better time to dig into the 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons. After four years, we have the most polished 4e products ...

Running Ravenloft with D&D Next

13 November 2012: The playtest of D&D Next works very well with old-school AD&D modules including the second greatest adventure of all time, Ravenloft. The fast nature of D&D Next and the simplicity of its ...

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