Article Archive
The Lazy Dungeon Master Cheat Sheet
20 May 2013: Improvisation skills are critical to the path of the Lazy Dungeon Master. Only those who can build adventures, characters, and encounters quickly on their feet can hope to run a great game with little ...
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 ...
Reskinning D&D 4e Monsters
5 November 2012: Of all the best D&D 4e tips you might pick up, few are as powerful as reskinning monsters. Many previous articles discuss the technique and this article will serve as a hub for the idea, a referen ...
DM Tips Twitter Archive: October 2012
02 November 2012: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for October 2012. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! #dnd tip: The #dnd adventure novels can give you a lot of goo ...
Tips for Running the D&D Next Playtest
29 October 2012: In May of 2012, Wizards of the Coast released the open playtest of the next version of Dungeons and Dragons, currently coined D&D Next. Over the past few months, WOTC has updated the playtest pack ...
Five Tips for New Dungeon Masters
22 October 2012: Note: this article updates the two original Tips for New Dungeon Masters articles dated 27 September 2010 and 12 October 2009. Running an Dungeons and Dragons game can be an intimidating experience fo ...
Using Tyranny of Goblins in Your 4e Game
15 October 2012: This past week I received a review copy of the Dungeon Command: Tyranny of Goblins skirmish pack. Instead of discussing or reviewing it as a skirmish product, I plan to discuss how you can use this pa ...
4e Game Session Checklist
8 October 2012: Note: This article updates the original dated 13 April 2009. In Sly Flourish's Dungeon Master Tips I describe a checklist for preparing your 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons games. Today we're going t ...
DM Tips Twitter Archive: September 2012
5 October 2012: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for September 2012. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! My new elf thief just spent 5,000 gold on adventuring equip ...
Reusing Poster Maps
1 October 2012: I'm a huge fan of poster maps as a simple aid for Dungeons and Dragons encounters. In short, they're cheap, easy to set up, and portable. A good portfolio of poster maps can carry your games for many ...
Character Building Sessions
24 September 2012: Focusing on the goals of the PCs and our players might be the most beneficial activity we can perform when building our adventure or mini-campaign. D&D veterans like Teos Abadia spend up to an hou ...
Finding Players
17 September 2012: Of all the difficulties facing your D&D game, the greatest will always be finding and keeping a great group of players. Some groups have managed to stay together living through adventures for deca ...
Designing the Sword Collector
10 September 2012: In July 2012, Wizards of the Coast published my D&D Insider adventure The Sword Collector. This short adventure includes a double-length encounter focused on the mushroom pool map included in the ...
DM Tips Twitter Archive: August 2012
7 September 2012: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for August 2012. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! In case you missed it, @wizards_dnd published my latest articl ...
Dungeon Command Tiles for Improvised Encounters
4 September 2012: With the latest Dungeons and Dragons miniatures game, Dungeon Command, Wizards of the Coast gave us a new set of inter-locking dungeon tiles we can use in our regular D&D games. These tiles give u ...
Zone-Wide Environmental Effects
27 August 2012: We DMs are always looking for new ways to shake up our encounters. Breaking down our encounters, we find the following components: Monsters: The beasts the PCs fight in a battle. The environment: The ...
Tips for Gardmore Abbey
20 August 2012: The thrice-Ennie-nominated super-adventure Madness of Gardmore Abbey contains a wonderful sandbox adventure four 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons characters. Running an adventure of this scale, howeve ...
Gaming Convention Survival Guide
13 August 2012: Note: This article has been updated from its original 28 March 2011 edition just in time for us to use it to prepare for Gencon 2012. Gaming conventions are our pilgrimages to nerd mecca. They let us ...
D&D Miniatures Buyer's Guide
6 August 2012: This article updates the original "Four Tips for Buying D&D Miniatures" published 25 May 2009. Much has changed in the past three years since the writing of that article. Changes in global economi ...
DM Tips Twitter Archive: July 2012
03 August 2012: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for July 2012. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! #dnd tip: For powerful solos, let them convert debilitating stat ...
On Far Realm Fiends
30 July 2012: A couple of months ago, Wizards of the Coast published Far Realm Fiends, an article that fills out the list of monsters at the high epic-tier. The article includes some high-level far realm beasts, a ...
Drawing Players Into the Game
23 July 2012: Before we begin, I would like to ask for your help. I have the distinct pleasure and honor of being nominated for an Ennie award this year. If you enjoy this article and the others like it, I would gr ...
Tying PCs to Published Adventures
16 July 2012: A while back on Twitter, HeverOfMarikest asked about best ways to tie PCs to published adventures. While published adventures give us a great deal of pre-built encounters, a hand-full of NPCs, some go ...
Easier Initiative Cards
9 July 2012: Back at the Dungeons and Dragons Experience in February of this year, I learned a new way to handle initiative tracking perfect for the lazy dungeon master. I learned it from organized play tzar and p ...
DM Tips Twitter Archive: June 2012
02 July 2012: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for June 2012. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! Looks like my Astral Sea monster article comes out this month! Y ...
Writing Great Flash Fiction
25 June 2012: Flash fiction, small focused stories running usually less than three hundred words, have a great place in Dungeons and Dragons. Whether used as pieces of read-aloud text, adventure summaries, or email ...
Jenga D&D Puzzles
18 June 2012: While skill rolls represent the majority of non-combat challenges in D&D, they aren't particularly exciting. Because of this, many DMs have learned how to incorporate mini-games into their adventu ...
Using D&D Next's "Advantage" In Your 4e Game
11 June 2012: One of the more interesting mechanics from the D&D Next playtest is the handling of "advantage" and "disadvantage". In short, when a creature has advantage, that creature may roll twice on an atta ...
DM Tips Twitter Archive: May 2012
08 June 2012: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for May 2012. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! Troll and Toad Tuesday #dnd mini: The Spectre! A great re-usable ...
NPCs for the Caves of Chaos D&D Next Playtest
4 June 2012: In late May 2012, Wizards of the Coast released the first D&D Next playtest including a short adventure, the Caves of Chaos, built on the original 1st edition Keep of the Borderlands adventure. Th ...
D&D Next Caves of Chaos Character Relationships
28 May 2012: On 24 May, Wizards of the Coast released the first playtest of D&D Next, the next iteration of Dungeons and Dragons. This playtest includes five pre-generated characters, a basic set of the rules, ...
Steve Townshend on Dungeons and Dragons Improvisation
21 May 2012: Recently on D&D Insider, Chris Perkins wrote an excellent article called Triple Threat discussing the importance of improvisation in D&D. When I read the article, the first person to come to m ...
Dungeon Master Survey Results
14 May 2012: Back in late April I created a survey to assess Dungeon Master game preparation habits. I received 804 responses from DMs running many different variants of D&D over many different periods of time ...
Running Mini Campaigns
7 May 2012: Back in 2008, Phil "The Chatty DM" Menard wrote the article Afterschool Tropes Special: The Campaign as a British TV Series that changed how I run D&D. A long campaign can fizzle out for many reas ...
DM Tips Twitter Archive: April 2012
04 May 2012: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for April 2012. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! #dnd tip: A good piece of 250 to 500 word flash fiction in an e ...
The Campaign Folio
1 May 2012: In her excellent book on the process of art, the Creative Habit, Twyla Tharp discusses her use of banker boxes as a way to store all the junk she collects when working on a creative project. During th ...
The Mastermind Puzzle
23 April 2012: Good puzzles are a great way to keep your games fresh and interesting from week to week. A good set of puzzles on hand helps you stay away from simple and continual skill checks. As puzzle games go, t ...
Steve Townshend on Adventure Design
16 April 2012: In mid March 2012, I had the opportunity to spend an hour discussing adventure design with D&D freelancer Steve Townshend, author of Madness at Gardmore Abbey, the Monster Vault 2, the Monster Man ...
Battle Map Comparisons
9 April 2012: Note: This article has been updated from the original article posted 3 August 2009. Today is a glorious day to run D&D games. Long gone are the days of yellowed graph paper as the only option for ...
DM Tips Twitter Archive: March 2012
6 April 2012: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for March 2012. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! Fascinated by this excellent analysis of damage per level and w ...
Player Driven Stories
2 April 2012: Video game bad boy, David Jaffe, recently spoke out against games that force-feed you the story of the writers and directors instead of building a game that lets the player build their own story. For ...
Patience
26 March 2012: A recent twitter conversation discussed the top virtues of good dungeon masters. One particular trait continued to come up and it was one that struck a particular chord with me: patience. I'm not a pa ...
4e Damage Dice Calculator
19 March 2012: While the DM cheat sheet works very well for giving you a nice generic dice damage expression at any level and with a variety of situations, sometimes you want a little more control over the dice you ...
Keep Things Moving
12 March 2012: Nothing can suck the joy out of a game faster than a lack of action. We DMs love our story. We love the worlds we create and the depth of our characters and our villains. We want to explore them, we w ...
Character Driven Dungeons and Dragons
5 March 2012: Recently DM to the superstars, Chris Perkins, wrote an excellent article, the Storytelling King, on his tips for building character-focused games using the ideas of Stephen King from his book On Writi ...
DM Tips Twitter Archive: February 2012
03 March 2012: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for February 2012. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! #dnd tip: Remember that being a DM is being a showman. Work ...
Gloomwrought House Rules
27 February 2012: I recently finished running a level 8 to 13 mini-campaign based on the Shadowfell, Gloomwrought and Beyond accessory and the Heroes of Shadow sourcebook. I used a few interesting house rules to keep t ...
Inception Skill Challenge
20 February 2012: Inception isn't a movie you might get right away. On the surface, it's a great thriller and a solid science fiction movie. At its core, however, it is simply a heist movie. Think of it like Ocean's El ...
Fiasco-Style Relationships
13 February 2012: There are few games more different from D&D than the story-focused RPG Fiasco. In Fiasco, a group of players determine backgrounds, relationships, actions, successes, and failures through cooperat ...
DM Walk-Away Kit
6 February 2012: They finally found you. After years of tracking you down, the Company uncovered your secret lair and plan to take you down...tonight! But you got a tip and you're on the way out the door. You have you ...
DM Tips Twitter Archive: January 2012
03 February 2012: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for January 2012. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! Here's to a new year of dice rolling and monster slaying! Hap ...
Tile Tools: Toolbox Liner and Acrylic Sheets
30 January 2012: Overall, I'm not a big fan of dungeon tiles. Dollar for dollar, I find poster maps to be the best quality encounter accessory we can get. That said, poster maps don't include the flexibility we often ...
Monster Group Bosses
23 January 2012: Boss monsters need help. We've discussed the problem and potential solutions before but it's worth returning to the topic again. Boss monsters; whether they be elites, normals, or solos; all act like ...
Building a Modular 4e Game
17 January 2012: There's been a lot of talk and speculation about the new edition of Dungeons and Dragons, particularly in WOTC's attempt to build a more modular form of D&D. Of course, we'll all be keeping an eye ...
Getting the Most from the Book of Vile Darkness
9 January 2012: This month, Wizards of the Coast released Robert J. Schwalb's Book of Vile Darkness supplement for 4th edition D&D. Today we're going to look at how to squeeze the most use out of this product for ...
DM Tips Twitter Archive: December 2011
6 January 2012: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for December 2011. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! Ran a skill challenge based on Inception tonight. The player ...
Default Feats
3 January 2012: From time to time you might be called upon to build characters for other players. Whether it's for a one-shot game, a convention game, a guest player, or a player who simply cannot be bothered to main ...
Sandbox Gaming Podcast with Erik Scott De Bie
27 December 2011: Last month I had the excellent opportunity to spend an hour talking with Erik Scott De Bie, fantasy author and freelance game designer for Wizards of the Coast. Erik worked on Shadowfell: Gloomwrought ...
Abyssal Plague Environmental Effects
19 December 2011: This past week, Wizards of the Coast published my second Abyssal Plague article, Abyssal Plague Epic Threats (DDI Subscription required). This article contains four epic-tier Abyssal Plague monsters i ...
2011 Poster Map Buyer's Guide
12 December 2011: The Battle Map Comparisons article on this site continues to be a popular draw. We all love our encounter maps and there's a lot of potential options available. The more we use these options, the more ...
Building Great Traps
5 December 2011: Good traps are hard to find. Using the rules as written, you might expend a monsters-worth of experience from your encounter experience budget and have the whole party avoid the trap completely. Today ...
DM Tips Twitter Archive: November 2011
03 December 2011: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for November 2011. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! #dnd tip: Try running your game without a DM screen to keep ...
Heroic Tier Boss: Aspect of Graz'zt
28 November 2011: Last week I discussed the advantages of a level 1 to 10 campaign but one thing such a campaign lacks is the feeling of facing truly powerful and devastating enemies. The Neverwinter Campaign Sourceboo ...
The Sweet Spot of 4th Edition
21 November 2011: As much as we love 4th edition D&D, the design begins to break down as levels increase. The scaling power of PCs makes it harder and harder for 4e dungeon masters to build challenging encounters. ...
Inherent Bonuses and Random Loot
14 November 2011: In October 2011, Monte Cook wrote a Legends and Lore article entitled Magic and Mystery that discussed some of the problems with the magic item system of 4th edition. It's an article worth reading, bu ...
Dave Chalker on Epic D&D
7 November 2011: Recently Dave "The Game" Chalker, my friend and editor of the Ennie-award-winning gaming blog, Critical Hits spent an hour talking about the conclusion of his epic-tier campaign. As you can imagine, D ...
DM Tips Twitter Archive: October 2011
4 November 2011: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for August 2011. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! #dnd tip: Time to go look for that bargain-bin halloween props ...
Auto-damage Effects
30 October 2011: We DMs have a lot of things to balance when building encounters. We want mechanics that are fun for our players and fun for us. We want mechanics that keep the threat of a battle high. We want mechani ...
Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium Random Loot Tables
24 October 2011: Introduced in the earliest days of D&D, random loot tables have been woefully lacking in 4th edition. With a lot of excellent updated items in the Dungeon Master's Kit and Mordenkainen's Magnifice ...
Dungeon Effects
17 October 2011: Wizards's latest Organized Play program, Lair Assault: Forge of the Dawn Titan, includes an interesting twist: dungeon-wide effects. This single-encounter adventure includes dungeon-wide effects that ...
Increase Epic Aura Damage
10 October 2011: While most math in 4th edition scales linearly, player power scales on an increasingly steep curve. While monster damage increases by about 1 point every level, player healing increases even faster. W ...
DM Tips Twitter Archive: September 2011
7 October 2011: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for August 2011. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! By the way @dndtweets also pulls from @4eblogs so you probably ...
Poster Map Visual Index
3 October 2011: The published poster map is one of the greatest tools of the lazy dungeon master. It gives lazy DMs a large, high quality map full of great details for environmental effects and terrain powers. Figuri ...
Introducing DnDTweets.com
26 September 2011: You're a busy person. You have a regular game to prepare, a family to pay attention to, and a full time job. You don't have time to surf Twitter every ten minutes looking for D&D news. Yet there's ...
Skill Challenges with Quinn Murphy
19 September 2011: Back in mid August I had a chance to talk to Quinn Murphy, the lead writer for the website At Will. Quinn has spent significant time thinking about and designing skill challenges, one of the more chal ...
Randomly Selected Character Themes
12 September 2011: Introduced in the Dark Sun Campaign Setting, character themes add a new layer of mechanics and story to your players' PCs. While typically players would choose a theme to fit their character, today we ...
Tools of the Lazy Dungeon Master
6 September 2011: Note: Since writing this article, I have published a new ebook on this topic called The Lazy Dungeon Master. If you enjoy this article, please take a look at the book. Good dungeon masters know where ...
DM Tips Twitter Archive: August 2011
2 September 2011: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for August 2011. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! I think published poster maps are one of the three best lazy D ...
Three Powers for Solos to Shake Status Effects
29 August 2011: Solos need help. A while back I wrote about the economy of actions and the devastation that limiting those actions can have on a powerful solo monster. In short, a daze, stun, or dominate against a so ...
Reduce Table Transactions
22 August 2011: Running a smooth game requires a lot of management at the table. There are a few easy tricks, however, to keep things running smooth. A good DM, for example, learns how to manage the flow of informati ...
D&D Essential Conversations with Kato Katonian
15 August 2011: After Gencon 2011 I had a chance to have a conversation with the internet’s Kato Katonian about D&D Essentials, D&D 4e design improvements over time, 4e’s broken bits, and limiting ...
Alternate Weapon Breakage Variants
8 August 2011: In practice, Dark Sun's weapon breakage rules don't really work that well. While the concept helps define the world of Athas, it's a mess when used in practice. I won't spend a lot of time talking abo ...
DM Tips Twitter Archive: July 2011
5 August 2011: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for July 2011. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! #dnd gencon tip: Only pack the books you absolutely need. Most o ...
Three Tips for Running a Level 30 Encounter
1 August 2011: Running an epic-tier game is challenging enough, but running a level 30 game is something else entirely. Today, we’re going to look at three tips for running a level 30 encounter that keep the g ...
Dissection of a Plague Demon
25 July 2011: Last week my third DDI article, Creature Incarnations: Abyssal Plague Demons, was published on the D&D Insider website. Today we’re going to take some time to put these beasts out on the sla ...
Making Stun and Dominate Not Suck
18 July 2011: Stuns and dominates are no fun. They aren’t fun for the players and they aren’t fun for the dungeon master. They steal away the most precious of resources: actions, and leave everyone invo ...
Chris Sims and Mike Shea on Encounter Design Podcast
11 July 2011: A couple of weeks ago, over on the Critical Hits podcast, I had the opportunity to talk to Chris Sims, freelance game designer, former WOTC designer and editor, and fellow writer over at Critical Hits ...
DM Tips Twitter Archive: June 2011
7 July 2011: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for June 2011. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! Very much looking forward to running my group through this Gloom ...
Encounter Optimization: Monster Mix
4 July 2011: Today we begin a new series of articles entitled “Encounter Optimization”. The intent of this series is to explore ways to build encounters that provide a fun fast challenge for D&D 4t ...
Interview on the Id DM: Ego Check
27 June 2011: Michael, (the Id DM on Twitter) of The Id DM blog just posted an interview with me called The Ego Check: Mike Shea of Sly Flourish. I try to avoid bringing my ego too much into the site here. I'm far ...
Calculating Monster Damage
20 June 2011: Since the Monster Manual 3, monster damage has changed drastically. Charts like that found in the most recent Dungeon Master’s Screen, the update to the Dungeon Master’s Guide, and my own ...
Monster Makeover: the Demilich
13 June 2011: Last Friday, my second Monster Makeover article, the Demilich, was published on D&D Insider. This was a particularly difficult monster to make over, given the importance of the soul drain and the ...
Four More Skill Challenge Worksheets
6 June 2011: A few weeks ago I talked about Skill Challenge Worksheets, a way to add a more mechanical and gamey feel to the abstract concepts of skill challenges. Today I'm putting up four additional skill challe ...
DM Tips Twitter Archive: May 2011
3 June 2011: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for May 2011. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! And, of course, including Combat Outs in every one of your battle ...
Terrain Effects and Terrain Props Podcast
30 May 2011: Randall Walker, @deadorcs on Twitter and writer at Initiative or What, spent some time with me discussing terrain effects and terrain props in our D&D games at the Critical Hits podcast. You can l ...
Monster Optimization: Pimp My Kalarel
23 May 2011: Each version of D&D has a different key villain in my mind when I think about it. For me, 4th edition’s key villain is Kalarel, the Scion of Orcus that first appeared in Keep on the Shadowfe ...
Power Creep in 4e Podcast
16 May 2011: Back in the beginning of May I had a chance to talk with Matt James, published WOTC author and webmaster of Loremaster on Power Creep in 4th Edition. We talked a lot about the issues surrounding the g ...
DM Tips Twitter Archive: April 2011
13 May 2011: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for April 2011. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! #dnd tip: Try designing puzzle encounters that have set goals i ...
The Skill Challenge Worksheet
9 May 2011: Different players have different opinions on skill challenges. Some love the chance to interact in the world while others see them as a speed bump between battles. For this latter category, we can try ...
Get Your Players To Say "Done"
2 May 2011: We're all looking for tips and tricks to get our game to run smoother. We've tried changing how we build encounters. We've talked about how to limit PCs. We've talked about table tricks to speed thing ...
Interview with Dave Chalker on "The Out"
28 April 2011: Last week I had the opportunity to sit down with Dave "The Game" Chalker, editor of Critical Hits on "The Out". Dave wrote about this method to build unique, dynamic, and speedy combats in his article ...
Scaling Solo Monsters
25 April 2011: A reader on Twitter asked about scaling solos the other day so today we're going to take a quick look at what you can do to scale solo monsters up from one level to another. To begin, read Chris Perki ...
Monster Makeover: Shademaw the Ancient Black Dragon
22 April 2011: Yesterday Wizards of the Coast published my first of hopefully a series of Monster Makeover articles entitled Monster Makeover: Shademaw the Ancient Black Dragon. The intent of this article is to buil ...
Monster Optimization: The Beholder
18 April 2011: In case you haven't heard, the Monster Vault is the definitive source for 4th edition monsters. With two years of updated mechanics since the release of the 4e Monster Manual, the creatures in the Vau ...
DM Tips Twitter Archive: March 2011
14 April 2011: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for March 2011. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! #dnd tip: Make heavy use of the DCs and Damage Per Level charts ...
Gamma World Adventure: The Dark Freighter
11 April 2011: The following short Gamma World adventure was inspired by this award winning zombie safehouse design and a conversation between Tracy of SarahDarkmagic.com and myself. I originally designed it as a sh ...
Avoiding the Early Out
4 April 2011: Dave Chalker's "Out" is one of the best advanced DMing techniques you can pick up. It keeps encounters unique and interesting, keeps your game focused on your story, and keeps your battles short and t ...
D&D Challenge Adventure: Gravemyst
21 March 2011: This year at PAX East, Wizards of the Coast sponsored the second Dungeon Master's Challenge. Dungeon masters were to come to PAX East prepared to run a level 8 adventure for a group of unknown players ...
Three Examples for Ending a Battle Early
14 March 2011: You've heard me talk a lot about Dave the Game's "Out". Though a bit of an advanced trick, once you get your head around building "outs" into your encounters, they will run smooth and fast and every o ...
Adding Skill Challenges, Knowledge Checks, and Puzzles to 4e Encounters
7 March 2011: A while back I talked about how to get back your players' attention. In it I briefly describe holding a player's attention by keeping them busy at the table bu running your table like a three-ring cir ...
DM Tips Twitter Archive: February 2011
4 March 2011: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for February 2011. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! #dnd tip: Powerful villains should have some protection mech ...
Building Simple Skill Challenges
28 February 2011: In D&D 4th edition there are few areas less clear than how to run great skill challenges. Some groups love them, some hate them. Some DM's have no problem with them, some feel like they're steerin ...
Designing 30 Minute Skirmishes in 4e
21 February 2011: Long battles are a big common complaint of D&D 4th edition. Most encounters can take an hour to 90 minutes with very few taking any less than 45 minutes. There are lots of things you can do to spe ...
Sly Flourish's Running Epic Tier D&D Games
16 February 2011: This last weekend I officially released my latest book, Sly Flourish's Running Epic Tier D&D Games. With a such a narrow focus, this is definitely a labor of love. Running an epic game is hard, th ...
Dave Chalker and Mike Shea on Paragon D&D
14 February 2011: Today we have a recorded discussion between Dave "The Game" Chalker of Critical Hits and myself on his recent completion of a paragon tier campaign. In this recording, you'll hear about Dave's game, h ...
DM Tips Twitter Archive: January 2011
12 February 2011: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for January 2011. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! I will probably milka months-worth of DM tips out of the Expe ...
A New DM's Guide to Keeping Things Simple
7 February 2011: I recently received a note from a reader what a likely common delemma for new DMs. Today we'll look at his note and discuss potential solutions for simplifying his game and getting things on track for ...
Limiting 4e Source Material
24 January 2011: It's been two and a half years since the release of Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition. For the past 30 months Wizards has released dozens of sourcebooks and hundreds of Dungeon and Dragon magazine arti ...
DM Tip Twitter Archive: December 2010
21 January 2011: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for December 2010. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! #dnd tip: Use a sheet of 20x by 30x acrylic from Home Depot ...
Extreme Reskinning: Young White Dragon into Cyborg Assassin
17 January 2011: One of the greatest strengths in 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons is the ability to re-skin one monster into another. I don't know if we had this ability in previous versions but, for some reason, the ...
The 5x5 Method for Antagonists
10 January 2011: I'm a huge fan of Dave Chalker's 5x5 method for campaign design. If you don't know about it, go read his primer on the topic and come on back. The 5x5 method lets you build an open world for your play ...
2011 D&D Gaming Goals
3 January 2011: It's nice to hit the reset button on life every so often. A new year gives us this chance. We can start fresh, with new goals and new plans to get us where we want to go. This is no different in our c ...
The Best of Sly Flourish
27 December 2010: With over 130 articles over the past couple of years, it's easy to lose some of the most useful Sly Flourish posts in the general noise of the site. Below you'll find my favorite ten Sly Flourish arti ...
Refine Your Stories
20 December 2010: Rumors on the internets say that the Valve team responsible for the game Portal spent significant time testing their game during development. One of the things they continually tested was the story of ...
DM Tip Twitter Archive: November 2010
18 December 2010: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for November 2010. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! RT @criticalhits: Junkulator: #gammaworld junk generator htt ...
Five Reasons to Love Gamma World
13 December 2010: Unless you've been living inside of an empty can of beans, you've heard all about Gamma World, the recent 4e-based post apocalypticdds RPG released this past fall. Players most certainly love this gam ...
Interviewing Potential Players
6 December 2010: The hardest part of running a great D&D game is finding a great group. Getting five people together who all have the same drive for D&D that you do is a daunting challenge. Even harder than fi ...
Pimp My Orcus
29 November 2010: Of all of the creatures in the monster manual 1 most worthy of an update, none needs it more than Orcus, the Prince of Undeath himself. Since the beginning of D&D 4th Edition, there have been thre ...
Guest Article: Artifacts are for the Dungeon Master
25 November 2010: Note: The following is a guest article by our very own Jeff Greiner, host of the Tome Show and creator of Temporary Hit Points. I want to thank Jeff for letting me crash his podcast so many times and ...
Understanding the Economy of Actions
22 November 2010: We're going to get a little gamey in today's article, putting on our lab coats and drawing equations out on a chalk board. Today we're going to talk about the economy of actions in D&D 4e and how ...
Building a glowing crystal prop video
18 November 2010: Here's a video I recently shot on building a scintillating portal prop. If you liked this video, consider using this link to purchase your own multi-colored tea-lights or bookmark this link to purcha ...
Five Reasons to Love Auras
15 November 2010: Most of the articles on this site have taken a broad look at ways to make your monsters challenging and fun. Today, howver, we're going to dig deeper into one particular attribute found most often on ...
Writing Awesome Read-Aloud Text
8 November 2010: Not all of us can improv like Robin Williams. We can't spout off Tolkeinesque descriptions of fantastic locations while our friends stare at us with a half a slice of pizza in their hands. We may unde ...
DM Tip Twitter Archive: October 2010
5 November 2010: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for October 2010. Get daily DM tips athttp://twitter.com/slyflourish! #dnd tip: To scare your powergamers, hit them with fearsome st ...
Monster Optimization: Pimp my Tarrasque
1 November 2010: Few monsters invoke such emotional responses from old-school D&D gamers like the Tarrasque. A beast of wanton destruction, a destroyer of worlds, and unique among the cosmos; the Tarrasque should ...
Five Inspirations for Gamma World
25 October 2010: With the recent release of Gamma World, dungeon masters all across the world are shifting their perspectives to think up new adventures in a bizarre new world where multiple realities crash together i ...
Monster Knowledge Cards
18 October 2010: After a certain point in a battle, we can grow weary of constantly comparing attack rolls to the monster's defenses. At this point anyone who was paying attention would likely know the defenses of the ...
Making Awesome Dungeons
11 October 2010: So twitter is all a twitter (cough) with conversations for and against dungeons. I fall on the pro-dungeon side myself. I see dungeons as a staple in fantasy roleplaying games and Dungeons and Dragons ...
DM Tip Twitter Archive: September 2010
8 October 2010: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for September 2010. Get daily DM tips athttp://twitter.com/slyflourish! Got some cool dungeon 3d accessories from Mage Knight: http: ...
The Eight Most Useful Lords of Madness Minis
4 October 2010: Wizards of the Coast recently released the Lords of Madness Dungeons and Dragons Miniatures set. It's been a while since we've had a new minis set and this set is clearly designed to give you lots of ...
Dungeon Tile Master Set Video Tips
30 September 2010: Earlier today I recorded a video of a review and tips for the D&D Essentials Dungeon Tile Master Set. You can watch the video below. If you like these tips, please take a look at Sly Flourish's D ...
Four Things Every Solo Monster Should Have
20 September 2010: Building the perfect solo creature is a good mix of art and science. We want a solo creature to really threaten a party. We want them to act as the giant creature that wets a thousand suits of armor. ...
Monster Optimization: Rebuilding the Lich
13 September 2010: Liches are my favorite monster in D&D. They are ancient beyond imagination and twisted by black magics older than any living mage could even begin to understand. They've forgotten more lore than m ...
DM Tip Twitter Archive: August 2010
10 September 2010: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for August 2010. Get daily DM tips athttp://twitter.com/slyflourish! .@DnDPrincessAria I have the Dark Sun Creature Catalog. It's gr ...
Effort-based Experience Rewards
6 September 2010: In his blog, In the Eye of the Beholder, D&D producer Greg Bilsland states that experience points are a good way for a newer dungeon master to build battles and award PCs for their efforts. In thi ...
Defining Skills: Arcane, Nature, Divine
30 August 2010: Update: OK, this probably wasn't a great idea. There appears to be a lot of overlap between my ideas for how to use these skills and actual rituals. I'd still like to find a way to make skills more sp ...
Three Encounter-Changing Effects
23 August 2010: It's hard to come up with a unique encounter week after week. We DMs have to constantly seek new ways to make each battle different from all of the others. Creatures can help to a point but their mech ...
DM Tip Twitter Archive: July 2010
21 August 2010: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for July 2010. Get daily DM tips athttp://twitter.com/slyflourish! #dnd tip: use MM3 solos as a model for older ones. What do they d ...
Monster Optimization: Pimp My Ghoul King
16 August 2010: Running tough high epic-tier battles is hard to do. The combination of feats, powers, and items possessed by our PCs push them well beyond their equivalent effectiveness at lower levels. Yet to keep s ...
Epic-Tier Pitfalls
9 August 2010: I recently read an excellent post on Enworld that described one DM's experience running two epic-tier campaigns. I've recently been at the tail end of an ongoing 1 to 30 campaign, with a group of PCs ...
Run your game like D&D Encounters
2 August 2010: Wizards of the Coast has been supporting a new style of play they call D&D Encounters. Players get together at their friendly local game shop each Wednesday and run through a single big encounter. ...
Gencon 2010 Schedule and DM Kit
31 July 2010: So I'm heading to Gencon next week for my favorite four days of gaming! I'll be seeing the other RPG bloggers, checking out WOTC's new stuff, talking to their designers and developers, and rolling a h ...
Monster Optimization: Solo Githyanki Psionist
26 July 2010: In a recent epic-level game, my party was soon to come up against a Chaos Ship full of Githyanki pirates. I wanted a strong leader for these pirates, someone they would fear and someone who could stee ...
Status Effect Alternatives
19 July 2010: There's been a lot of talk about status effects. If you've played a game above level five or so, you've seen the grind that can come from a deluge of status effects. Being stunned or dazed (save ends) ...
DM Tip Twitter Archive: June 2010
15 July 2010: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for June 2010. Get daily DM tips athttp://twitter.com/slyflourish! #dnd tip: Watch out for too many dazes and weakens - they general ...
Monster Optimization: Vampires
12 July 2010: Vampires are a staple monster in nearly every Dungeons and Dragons campaign. They invoke a common sense of mystery and dread, something we would almost love to be and certainly love to kill. Today we' ...
DM Tips book released
9 July 2010: This week I released Sly Flourish's Dungeon Master Tips, an e-book focused on giving you useful tips to help you prepare and run awesome 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons games. You can learn all about ...
Three D&D Tips from Breaking Bad
5 July 2010: Breaking Bad is one of the greatest television dramas in the past twenty years. With an amazing depth of character, great writing, and wonderful cinematography, Breaking Bad makes us wince but never l ...
Dwarven Forge Buyer's Guide
28 June 2010: If you're a continuing reader of the site or you've visited my Flickr album of D&D pics, you'll notice I'm a big fan of Dwarven Forge. I wrote about these heavy resin-based 3D dungeon props in my ...
Desert of Athas Dungeon Tiles, Environmental Effects and Terrain Powers
21 June 2010: With the recent release of the Desert of Athas D&D Dungeon Tiles, we now have many options for desert environments of all types. It is up to us to turn these environments into exciting, dynamic ar ...
DM Advice: Contention At The Table
14 June 2010: We're going to try something a little different with this article today. I received a note from Youseph Tanha, a writer for Stargazer's World that I thought would be of interest to a lot of Dungeon Ma ...
DM Tip Twitter Archive: May 2010
10 June 2010: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for April 2010. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! #dnd tip: Model your fantasy towns and cities after the economi ...
Three Tips to Prepare for the Monster Manual 3
7 June 2010: Back in mid-May I had the opportunity to ask Greg Bilsland some questions about the Monster Manual 3. You can find the full text of that interview over at my Critical hits article: Monster Manual 3 In ...
Three Cool Story Ideas to Avoid
31 May 2010: The night before writing this I ran a bad game. It didn't appear bad when I wrote it. I followed a lot of my own advice. I spent time in the eyes of the villain, thinking about what he wanted and how ...
Skill Challenges for Combat Groups
24 May 2010: Some groups love role playing. They love weaving detailed intricate stories among themselves. They love thinking how their character would think. They love sitting back, closing their eyes, and imagin ...
Monster Optimization: Pimp My Beholder
17 May 2010: There's few creatures as iconic in Dungeons and Dragons as the Beholder. A ball of intellect and destruction, beholders should always bring terror to those who find themselves facing one. A party that ...
DM Tip Twitter Archive: April 2010
13 May 2010: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for April 2010. Get daily DM tips athttp://twitter.com/slyflourish! RT @DM_Simonides: #dnd DM Tip: Remember: its about the players; ...
Providing Real Choices
10 May 2010: "With the Kobold prince slain and his bodyguards broken across the floor, you find yourself with two choices: the left door or the right door." This has long been the traditional choices offered to pl ...
Making Terrain Fun
3 May 2010: Often, perhaps too often, we DM's focus on building terrain as a challenge to PCs. In later levels in D&D 4th Edition, it can become hard to keep the challenge and threat high for our PCs and terr ...
Three Ways to use Music in your Game
26 April 2010: When writing the script for his films, Quinten Tarrantino likes to sit in his music room spinning 78s of his favorite yet forgotten tunes to get his mind wandering. "I am always looking for some cool ...
Monster Optimization: Grells and Quicklings
19 April 2010: We're back for another episode of Monster Optimization where we twist the screws a little harder and send those fancy pants Monks and Seekers back to their safe little points of light. Today we're goi ...
Three Monster Powers to Speed Up Combat
12 April 2010: Speeding up combat is a constant desire for a lot of DMs. Most experienced DMs have come up with a variety of tips to keep things fast. Some recommend focusing monsters around Skirmishers and Artiller ...
DM Tip Twitter Archive: March 2010
8 April 2010: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for March 2010. Get daily DM tips athttp://twitter.com/slyflourish! #dnd tip from @newbiedm: AWESOME resource for fantasy names and ...
How to Protect Your Elite Villains
5 April 2010: From a storytelling angle, we all love the big bad evil guy (BBEG). We love our main villains whether they be Sarumon or Hans Gruber. They are the mastermind behind the treachery faced by your PCs and ...
Three D&D Tips we can learn from Farmville
1 April 2010: For the past two years, Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition has suffered through constant bombardments that it is "Too WoW Like". This has become the flag of the angry old-school gamer whose eyes glow re ...
Monster Optimization: Immoliths and Inferno Bats
29 March 2010: It's time for another Monster Optimization! This time we're going to dive into the middle of the paragon tier with the Immolith and Inferno Bats. These beasts are both level 15 which would make them a ...
Harrowing Halls Terrain Effects
22 March 2010: With the Harrowing Halls dungeon tile set, Wizards gives us some fun and excellent 3d terrain to spruce up our encounter settings. When designing an encounter, however, it is always worth spending the ...
On Environmental Powers
15 March 2010: The Dungeon Master's Guide 2 is likely the best D&D 4e book published for Dungeon Masters. One of the great additions to this book, and to the 4e system in general, is the concept of "environmenta ...
Pimp My Mindflayer
12 March 2010: Note: This article was originally published by me on the Wizards D&D Community site on 11 March 2010. There is a certain class of creatures we hold to a higher standard than the others. While kobo ...
DM Tip Twitter Archive: February 2010
11 March 2010: DM Tip Twitter Archive: January 2010 Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for February 2010. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! #dnd tip: Have a spymas ...
DM Tips Video: Building a Portal Prop
8 March 2010: Here's a short three minute video on how to build cool props for your D&D game. In it, I discuss building a light-up portal for some nasty beast to enter from a foul world. Here's a pic of the po ...
Losing Control
1 March 2010: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Combat Challenge. There's a very good e-book on Lulu that describes the attitudes and philosophies of the 0e D&D Dungeon Master called "A Quick Primer fo ...
DM Tips Seminar Podcast
25 February 2010: Earlier this month, at SynDCon, I had the privilege of running a Dungeon Master Tips seminar with my friends Dave "The Game" Chalker and Matt James. We discussed preparation aids and tools one could u ...
Monster Optimization: Anatomy of a Dracolich
22 February 2010: In one of my recent games, our level 22 party traversed the twisted mountains of madness in northern Death's Reach. There they faced a beast of great power and ancient dark magic - the Dracolich Ashen ...
Quests for Villains
15 February 2010: "You sent them to their death," said Akti. Arantham turned his black eyes to the ice-lich. "Uganan knew this - I could see it in his eyes. "It was necessary," said Arantham. "With the power of the sou ...
DM Table Tip Video: The Portable Dungeon Master Kit
13 February 2010: Here's a short video showing off the gear I brought with me to SynDCOn today. It's intended to show all of the bits of stuff one might need to run a game on the road. Enjoy! ...
DM Tip Twitter Archive: January 2010
11 February 2010: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for January 2010. Get daily DM tips athttp://twitter.com/slyflourish! #dnd tip: Give dragons a ranged breath weapon that shares thei ...
DM Table Tips Episode 1
8 February 2010: This is the first of a series of short videos focusing on Dungeons and Draogns 4th Edition table tips. In this episode we're going to look at using black t-shirts as a fog of war, pipe cleaners for ar ...
Three D&D Tips I Learned From Dragon Age
1 February 2010: Quite a few D&D players and DMs have been all about the Dragon Age these past couple of months. While not a perfect game, it shows just how far computer and console RPGs can go. There's a lot to l ...
Monster Optimization: Foulspawn Mangler + Foulspawn Seer
25 January 2010: In previous Monster Optimizations we've looked at the Bodaks and Wights, Shadow Dragons, and Ghouls and Deathlocks. In Today's Monster Optimzation we're going into the high heroic tier with a nasty co ...
Sly Flourish on the Tome Show 124
23 January 2010: I had the wonderful opportunity to join Jeff Greiner (aka, @Squach) on the Tome Show 124, released last night. Jeff and I talk in detail about the Foulspawn Seer / Foulspawn Mangler monster optimizati ...
Powerhouse Dragons
18 January 2010: Dragons are the absolute staple monster in Dungeons and Dragons (hell, it's even in the name). 4th Edition did a great job of breaking these beasts out from the rest of the pack with the concept of "s ...
James Bond Encounter Design
11 January 2010: One of my favorite holiday traditions is watching as much James Bond as I can over Thanksgiving and Christmas. This year, while watching the new Casino Royale, I was thinking about how each action sce ...
DM Tip Twitter Archive, November 2009
7 January 2010: Somehow I missed posting my tweets from November. Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for November 2009. Get your own daily DM tips athttp://twitter.com/slyflourish! #d ...
DM Tip Twitter Archive, December 2009
7 January 2010: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for December 2009. Get your own daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! Great #dnd article from roleplaying tips: 9 Things ...
Monster Optimization: Ghouls and Deathlock Wights
4 January 2010: Since posting my first Monster Optimization article on wraiths, I've had a lot of requests for some optimizations at the heroic tier. Today we're going to set up an optimized encounter at around level ...
Evernote for Dungeon Masters
28 December 2009: I am a huge fan of Twyla Tharp's book, The Creative Habit, and I've written before about the "idea box" for Dungeons and Dragons. In my spare time I am always looking for new and interesting ways to c ...
Giving 4e an Old School Feel
21 December 2009: 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons has a clear focus on "encounters". Each encounter usually (not always) consists of a setting, like a big room, with a bunch of creatures carefully calculated out to me ...
Monster Optimization: Shadow Dragons
14 December 2009: Most monster optimizations require a careful combination of monsters to bring about truly devastating effects. Today, however, we're going to look at a single creature whose power is quite remarkable ...
Ten Ways to Challenge Powerful Parties
7 December 2009: If you've been reading other Sly Flourish articles, you might have seen a common thread - challenging players. In my experience, as D&D 4e PCs get up into the paragon tier and above, it becomes ha ...
Scaling 4th Edition for Six Players
30 November 2009: We'd all like to have a perfect set of five players every time we play D&D but in the age of constant busyness, it can be harder and harder to achieve. One way to get close is to build a pool of p ...
Magic Gems for Item Reward Flexability
23 November 2009: One of the bits I often toss to the side when planning out a series of adventures or even a campaign is loot. With the vast array of possible loot available in 4e and the picky tastes of my players, I ...
DM Tip Twitter Archive, October 2009
19 November 2009: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for October 2009. Get your own daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! #dnd tip: For a change, have a monster that can swit ...
Monster Optimization: Mind Flayer + Umber Hulk
16 November 2009: Welcome to another edition of Monster Optimization. Like last time, in our look at Bodaks and Wights, we will find a particularly lethal combination of monsters to challenge the toughest party. I want ...
Creative Uses for Minions
9 November 2009: We all love minions (or we should) but sometimes, particularly at paragon and above, it can be hard to find a good use for them. We might throw sixteen minions instead of four but the result is the sa ...
Dungeons and Dragons 4e: Hard Mode
2 November 2009: 4th Edition player characters are a stout bunch. With thousands of magical items and thousands of possible powers, there is an incredible array of possibilities for PCs. If your players are particular ...
Monster Optimization: Wights + Bodaks
26 October 2009: Welcome to the first article in our new series: Monster Optimization. Players might have all of those fancy character optimization forums and wikis with seventeen rulebooks worth of ways for their pal ...
Ration Tracking System
19 October 2009: Back in August, at Gencon, I had more than a couple of really excellent and informative conversations with Quinn from At Will. Like a lot of folks, Quinn has an amazing amount of passion for the game ...
How to Handle Player Resistances
5 October 2009: Recently, during my paragon-tier campaign, player resistances have come into much greater effect than I expected. In running a battle of Fay Lingerers from the Monster Manual 2, it became clear that t ...
DM Tip Twitter Archive, September 2009
1 October 2009: \#dnd tip: Mix open map and dungeon encounters to give your players a variety of battlefields. \#dnd tip: When running a Demilich, remember the Soul Drain is the primary attack. Damage almost doesn't ...
Dwarven Forge Tips
28 September 2009: I'm a big fan of Dwarven Forge, though the expense can hardly be justified. Today we're going to look at four tips to get the most out of your Dwarven Forge investment. This article assumes you have a ...
Tips for Running Paragon
21 September 2009: With the 4th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons out for a year now, some groups have breeched into the Paragon tier. This month we will see the release of the second Dungeon Master's Guide with a focus o ...
Three Acting Tips for D&D
14 September 2009: During the "meet the press" event at Gencon 2009 I had the opportunity to pick the brain of David Nett, a professional actor and creator of Gold: The Series. During our conversation, I asked him for t ...
Running Solos the Monster Manual 2 Way
7 September 2009: During the Wizards of the Coast Epic-Level seminar at the 2009 Gencon, the group discussed the differences between Monster Manual 1 and Monster Manual 2 creatures. One of the members of the audience a ...
DM Tip Twitter Archive, August 2009
3 September 2009: Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for August 2009. Get your own daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! #dnd tip: Not every battle has to be in wide open roo ...
How to Get Back Your Player's Attention
31 August 2009: Anyone who has DMed for any length of time has seen it many times. Combat in 4th Edition D&D takes some time and during this time, the attention of our players will wander. They go read their othe ...
Four Tips for Running Solo Creatures
24 August 2009: One of the great improvements of D&D 4th Edition over previous editions is the inclusion of minion, elite, and solo creatures. Finally we have a mechanic for powerful bodyguards and that single bi ...
Four Tips for Character Development
17 August 2009: With the refinement of combat in 4th edition, it is easy to forget what separated D&D from the tabletop wargame from which it evolved. Character. Today we will discuss four tips for helping your p ...
Four Principles for House Rules
10 August 2009: Our ability to modify the game we play, to customize it around the desires of our players and our own desires as well. The desire to tinker with systems is what drove us to run our own games in the fi ...
DM Tips Twitter Archive: July 2009
6 August 2009: Below is an archive of DM tips posted throughout the month of July to mySly Flourish Twitter feed. Enjoy! #dnd tip: Everyone in Eberron has been affected by the Last War. Everyone knows someone who di ...
Four Questions with Robin Laws
27 July 2009: Recently I had the great opportunity of asking Robin Laws four questions about running 4th Edition D&D games. Robin is the author and co-author of many roleplaying game books including the D&D ...
Four Tips for King of the Trollhaunt Warrens
20 July 2009: Our intrepid adventurers, just escaped from the vile Pyramid of Shadows, find themselves traveling south into the realm of the Trollhaunt where they might help save a city from the clutches of a vile ...
Four Tips From Robin's Laws
13 July 2009: It wasn't until a few months ago that I learned about the little book written by Robin Laws, the prolific game designer of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, known as "Robin's Laws to Good Game Mastering". Thi ...
Four Skill Challenge Tips
6 July 2009: Skill challenges are mysterious business. While D&D 4th edition gives us the most refined combat system in over thirty years, the skill challenge system clearly has room for improvement. Unlike th ...
DM Tips Twitter Archive: June 2009
2 July 2009: awesome tip of using a double dog dish as a dice roller from @unclebear : http://tr.im/qnB8 send email to specific players to give them info only their character knows. Be careful not to drive a wedge ...
Three New Ways to use the Monster Manual 2
22 June 2009: With the recent release of the Monster Manual 2, Wizards of the Coast added a much needed variety of new creatures to off-set the wide variety of new PC classes, races, powers, and abilities released ...
Tome Show: Monster Manual 2
16 June 2009: Last week I had the great pleasure of joining Phil from ChattyDM and Quinn from At Will as guests on Jeff Greiner's The Tome Show discussing the Monster Manual 2. I'll be posting a longer article disc ...
Three Tips for the Pyramid of Shadows
15 June 2009: Note: This article contains spoilers for Pyramid of Shadows. If you plan on playing in this adventure, skip this article. With Pyramid of Shadows, Mike Mearls and James Wyatt have re-created the Gygax ...
4e One Year Later Tome Show Podcast
10 June 2009: Last week I was one of a handful of guest bloggers who had the opportunity to discuss the past and future of D&D 4th Edition with James Wyatt and Chris Perkins of Wizards of the Coast on The Tome ...
Build Worlds, Not Stories
8 June 2009: There are dozens of components that make a good D&D game. Encounter design, rulesets, table management, theatrics, fair rulings, map and tile layouts, props; all of these combine to build an enjoy ...
DM Tips Twitter Archive: May 2009
5 June 2009: Below is an archive of DM tips posted throughout the month of may to my Sly Flourish Twitter feed. Enjoy! Cut and fold 3X5 cards horizontally for init cards and vertically for status effect cards. #dn ...
Skill Challenge Tips in Tome Show Podcast
4 June 2009: A couple of weeks ago I had the privilege of speaking with Jeff Greiner on The Tome Show (subscribe with iTunes), a podcast dedicated to 4e Dungeon and Dragons. In the episode we had two topics: buil ...
Four Ways To Get Your Imagination Back
1 June 2009: Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition is a rules-heavy game. Only a year old, we have dozens of books with thousands of pages of new powers, items, feats, and monsters. We have a combat system refined over ...
Three Tips for Thunderspire Labyrinth
18 May 2009: Kalarel has been defeated and the dark portal has closed, at least for now. Not all the kidnapped slaves of Winterhaven have been recovered, however, and their tracks lead into the Thunderspire Labyri ...
Tips For Running One-Shot Games
11 May 2009: Dungeons and Dragons is a game meant to be played week by week over a long period of time. Sometimes, however, we just want to play some quick D&D with some friends. Maybe we have a group that onl ...
DM Tips, 1 May-8 May 2009
8 May 2009: Below is the digest of this week's Sly Flourish DM Tips published from the SlyFlourish Twitter feed. Follow today! Have an old villain open an abyssal gate in the sewers of your PCs' home town with Du ...
Getting Ideas for D&D
4 May 2009: In his excellent book, On Writing, Stephen King discusses the most common question he receives when he's talking to his fans. "How do you get your ideas?" seems a common question given to many fiction ...
DM Tips, 22-30 April
1 May 2009: More DM Tips from the SlyFlourish Twitter feed! Need a quick attack or defense score? Try level+4 for a base attack and level+14 for a base defense. Use + or - 2 to tailor it. #dnd Very much liked the ...
Three Tips for Keep on the Shadowfell
27 April 2009: Update: Wizards recently released Keep on the Shadowfell and the 4e Quick Start Rules for free on their website. The tips below can help make this excellent free adventure even more fun. Though nearly ...
DM Tip Twitter Archive: April 15-22 2009
23 April 2009: Below are the tweets for the seven days between 15 and 22 April 2009. Un-cursing a possessed Treant during combat made for a fun skill challenge when the treant was bloodied. Good for earthday! \#dn ...
Three Cheap 4e Game Aids
20 April 2009: We all know the primary needs for a good D&D game. Books, dice, pencils, miniatures, a battle mat, these are all either required or very helpful in playing D&D 4th Edition. There are, however, ...
DM Tips Twitter Archive: April 2009
18 April 2009: While Sly Flourish the web blog will focus on bringing you an article a week focused on making your D&D 4th Edition game better, that's not the only place we'll provide tips. Subscribe to http://t ...
D&D Dungeon Tile Tips
5 April 2009: With the recent release of Dungeon Delve and the strong push to table top combat in D&D 4th Edition, D&D Dungeon Tiles are becoming more and more important in people's games. While the truly i ...
Build a Twyla Tharp Style Campaign Box
29 March 2009: I've spent the past couple of months reading Twyla Tharp's book, The Creative Habit. Over the past couple of weeks, as I finished the book, it dawned on me how many of these habits - habits formed by ...
Dungeon Delve Review
20 March 2009: The minute I heard about the Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Delve product, I knew it was the product for me. While I have a nice weekly D&D game with five to six players and four hours of play time, ...
Start Here
18 March 2009: This site has a single focus: to build the better Dungeons and Dragons dungeon master. These articles are written by Mike Shea, a gamer and writer hailing from Vienna, Virginia. Along with these artic ...
Pyramid of Shadows Adventure Review
7 February 2009: This review is intended for Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Masters. It will contain spoilers. If you plan on playing through this adventure, stop now and go read some Penny Arcade instead. Pyramid of ...
Manual of the Planes Review
1 January 2009: After my happiness with the Draconomicon, I looked forward quite a bit to the Manual of the Planes. Who doesn't want to read about the powerful and dangerous outer worlds? Who doesn't want to find out ...
Draconomicon Review
1 January 2009: What would Christmas be without a fine tome filled with horrors buried in the deepest darkest depths of the known worlds? Pretty lame, if you ask me. Lucky for me, I was the proud receiver of Draconom ...
Dwarven Forge Caverns Review
28 December 2008: Every time I open a new box of Dwarven Forge dungeon tiles I am always surprised how much I love them. All concerns about the price, all concerns about the "investment", all concerns that my money wou ...
Dwarven Forge 3D Dungeon Terrain
5 August 2008: You know you're beginning to fall too hard into D&D when $100 a set for 3-D dungeon pieces seems reasonable. You really know you've hit heroin-levels of addiction when you look in your dining room ...
Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition Review
3 July 2008: Dungeons and Dragons has been a staple in my nerd pedigree since I was 16 years old. I've played on and off since high school, playing D&D 2nd edition and D&D 3.5. For most of this time I was ...
