Today we're going to release a new Lazy DM Cheat Sheet designed to make it easier for you to improvise D&D NPCs, story seeds, and dungeons.

Download the Lazy Dungeon Master Cheat Sheet (50k PDF).

How Best to Use This Chart

This PDF is intended to be printed on two sides of a single sheet of 8.5" by 11" card stock. It's intended to fit into your DM kit, wherever you plan to run a game.

This chart is intended to take your heavy load when you're called upon to improvise at the table. You can use this chart in a number of ways. You can simply run down a list to choose the best option for the room or NPC you need, or you can actually roll a d20 and let chaos guide your story. Some of the tables, like the dungeon rooms, can be rolled twice to see what it is now and what it used to be back when it was originally designed. This adds an extra layer of richness to any room you design.

For example, the party may enter a dungeon chamber. It is furnished as a (rolled a 3) set of dungeon cells but, looking deeper into the room's past, you see it was once, many centuries ago, a (rolled an 8) library. Beyond the iron cages in the corners of the room, the room contains (rolled an 8 on the details table) statues that appear to be weeping in the alcoves and (rolled a 13) rumbling counterweights behind the walls. In the center of the room is a (rolled an 18 on the room effects table) serpent statue, eyes gemmed with brilliant rubies. Poison drips from the statue's mouth. Before you can investigate further a band of (rolled a 3) goblins bursts through the opposite door. The statue begins to spit acid while the goblins rush in!

Designed For Any Fantasy RPG

This sheet is specifically designed for any traditional flavor of fantasy RPG. Whether you play Dungeon World or D&D 4th edition, D&D Next, or Pathfinder; this chart was designed to help you. It doesn't include many of the standard mechanics and difficulty checks often needed. You'll want to add another chart to contain those, if required. Many systems, like D&D Next, Dungeon World, and Pathfinder have systems easy enough to memorize. The 4e DM Cheat Sheet can give you want you need for 4th edition D&D statistics.

Other Great Cheat Sheets

The Pathfinder GameMastery Guide has a whole pile of fantastic tables to build adventures, characters, treasure, and encounters on the fly. Though focused on Pathfinder, many of these charts work well in any fantasy RPG. These tables include random NPC generation, plots and plot twists, treasure, dungeon generation, and random encounters for dungeons, cities, wild lands, inner, and outer planes.

Few books do a better job helping DMs prepare to improvise games than Dungeon World. Though it contains a complete game system, the true value of this book comes with the advice it gives DMs to improvise games instead of planning them out. It also includes some NPC generating lists.

If you liked this article and the cheat sheet, take a look at the Lazy Dungeon Master. You might also enjoy Sly Flourish's Dungeon Master Tips and Running Epic Tier D&D Games.

Relax.

If we consider our worst games, how often were those games thwarted by our own frustration, our own stress at running a good game, and our own desires for a game to run a certain way? How often do we stress out when our big boss encounter turns into the final credits to an episode of Benny Hill? What happens if we were to simply let go and take it easy? How do we learn to relax?

Today we're going to look at how this one simple word, this one idea, can take us from frustration to enjoyment in any game we run.

Let Go of How Things "Should" Be

Madness lies in the chasm betwen "should" and "is". As soon as we can let go of how we think our game should be, we can sit back and enjoy how it actually goes. We can be surprised and delighted by the strange twists and turns our game can take.

This is very hard to do and is a major topic in The Lazy Dungeon Master. We love to control our games, we want to prepare heavily so we can guarentee our players will have a great time. It turns out a lot of this preparation can be counterproductive. Instead of letting the game take on a new natural course, we try to force it down the path for which we've prepared. Much like the child who realizes he doesn't control the world around him, we DMs grow frustrated with the fact that things didn't go as planned.

Don't Care About Your Villains

Villains die. They often die harder, faster, or in situations too embarassing to repeat. We want our villains to appear powerful and threatening when very likely they will be pinned down and mocked before they are casually disemboweled by the PCs.

The less we care about our villains, the less we worry about such things. Sometimes a normal mook might give the party a rough time. Turn THAT guy into the villain. Another time your big bad boss might die after only a hit or two. So be it!

This goes for NPCs too. At a panel at Gencon 2012, Chris Perkins described how his group threw a vital NPC off a cliff after first meeting him. Never build an NPC you can't afford to have thrown over a cliff. People can live and die in these games. Go with it like Joss Whedon, a writer who has little problem killing off main characters in his fiction. These sudden deaths may become far more memorable than the lives of the NPCs you might force yourself to save.

Plan Loose

Sticking to a strict D&D adventure plan is a lot easier when you don't have one. Instead of detailing out every encounter and every scene, just keep loose guidelines. Focus your attention on the first scene you want to open with and let things go from there. You'll want enough material handy to guide your players if they look bored and in need of direction, but you'll likely come up with a few ideas on the spot. When in doubt, throw some mooks and some interesting environmental effects at them and let them have fun bashing some guys. Random encounter tables can be the only plan you really need.

Remember What Matters

Above all, remember what truely matters in your game. Focus on the fun of the game. Enjoy the company you keep with your friends during the game. Laugh. Have a good time. Keep this in mind and hang onto your game with a loose grip. Your group is likely looking for the same thing you are — a relaxing time with friends. Focus on that first and let the rest of the game come as it does.

Relax.

Last Week's Great D&D Reads

Here's a list of last week's great D&D-related articles around the net.

• Master game master Robin Laws writes about how to handle dialog between multiple NPCs (something that often puts your group to sleep) in his article Talking At Yourself.
• Industry veteran and author of D&D 3.5, Monte Cook, writes about the balance between players and GMs and how it works in his upcoming game Numenera in the article Game Mastering Numenera.
• D&D Next lead, Mike Mearls, describes how subclasses will work in D&D Next in his article So What Is a Subclass?.
• Forgotten Realms creator Ed Greenwood describes how to make maguffins more interesting in his article The Cargo that Bites Back.

If you liked this article, take a look at the Lazy Dungeon Master. You might also enjoy Sly Flourish's Dungeon Master Tips and Running Epic Tier D&D Games.

• Tomb of Horrors
• White Plume Mountain
• Expedition to the Barrier Peaks
• Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth

A few months ago I had the opportunity to run White Plume Mountain using the D&D Next playtest. Today we're going to take a look at some ideas for running White Plume Mountain using the latest D&D Next Playtest packet. Please note, I received a free review copy of the Dungeons of Dread before writing this article.

Converting White Plume Mountain to D&D Next

Converting White Plume Mountain to D&D Next is very easy to do. The speed of combat in D&D Next matches very well with the speed of combat in 1st edition AD&D so the overall pace of White Plume Mountain will remain the same when you convert it to D&D Next. You shouldn't even need to write anything down to convert it. The most recent version of the D&D Next playtest includes conversions of all the monsters in all four adventures in the Dungeons of Dread book.

You'll have to wing the damage on traps and skill checks but this can be easily done by looking at the D&D Next difficulty ladder and the damage you'd typically find on an appropriate level monster.

Tie Characters to the Dungeon

If you're running White Plume Mountain as a single adventure, you'll want to ensure your characters are tied to the main storyline of the adventure. Consider arranging three kingdoms nearby to the mountain, dwarf, elf, and human. The humans are seafaring fisherfolk whose lord held the powerful trident, Wavecrasher. The dwarves dug deep using the great power of Whelm. The elves hid and protected a dark blade from another world known as Blackrazor. Now all three kingdoms have lost these weapons and a note from a wizard long considered dead is all that lies in their places.

Tying the PCs to each of these kingdoms helps build in a motivation for them to recover the weapons from the ancient dungeon. A set of fiasco style relationships can do this job very well.

You might use a tip from Dungeon World and ask your group some leading questions once they have picked an alliance with each of the three cities:

• "What friend of yours entered White Plume Mountain and never returned?"
• "What distracted you from your duties long enough for Whelm to be stolen?"
• "What made you fear the powerful magic of Blackrazor, sword of the otherworld?"

You can add your own questions as ideas come to you from reading through the adventure.

A Three Part Quest

White Plume Mountain runs very well as three independent adventures, one for each of the three main wings. Let your players choose the path they want to take and give them opportunities to leave, recover, and return to the dungeon. You might consider running the dungeon as a more dynamic environment, with factions that move throughout the dungeon and change the environment from visit to visit. Use the three wings of White Plume Mountain and three treasures contained within them as the main quests that keep your players involved in the adventure.

Don't Force Combat

White Plume Mountain contains numerous situations that could fall easily into combat but don't have to. Don't force your players to engage in any battle when the might be able to think their way through. Perhaps they can negotiate with the band of brigands near the floating waterway. Maybe they can find a way past all of the monsters in the inverted ziggurat. Reward your players for inginuity instead of forcing them into a fight they might have avoided.

I, Keraptis

White Plume Mountain lacks a clear storyline describing how Keraptis stole the weapons and why he would bother to lead adventurers into the lair. You might convert the entire dungeon of White Plume Mountain to the inner workings of a lich. The entire dungeon IS Keraptis, and he amuses himself with the torment of mortals like lab rats. You could take an idea from the more recent iterations of Tomb of Horrors by making the entire mountain a channel of negative energy. The dungeon seeks to devour the hopes, dreams, and lives of those who enter and feeds off of the energy they provide.

However you choose to incorporate Keraptis, it is up to you to make him a key part of the story and the villain. The adventure itself does not do as suitable a job on its own. However you run it, you and your group are sure to enjoy this fantastic adventure.

If you liked this article, take a look at the Lazy Dungeon Master. You might also enjoy Sly Flourish's Dungeon Master Tips and Running Epic Tier D&D Games.

If you know of good resources not on this page, please email them to mike@mikeshea.net or tweet them to @slyflourish.

Mike McVey has a series of articles on the Wizards of the Coast website posted over a decade ago called the Paint Like a Pro series. This eight-article series goes into all of the steps and details needed to paint minis.

Dr. Faust's Painting Clinic has a series of excellent how to articles and videos to give you tons of tips and examples on how to paint miniatures better.

The Reaper website hosts a series of articles on how to paint miniatures in a section called The Craft.

The Reaper Bones Unofficial FAQ answers a lot of questions about the Reaper Bones themselves.

Cool Mini or Not has a ton of great articles on painting minis. Some of the more recent articles focus on painting Reaper Bones.

These sites alone should give you a ton of material to process, though the best way to get better at painting miniatures is to get started painting! For myself, I started by painting on the miniatures I cared about the least — the monsters for which I already have tons of pre-painted miniatures. As I get better painting these, I'll start work on the heroes and villains.

If you have other excellent resources to share, please email me the links and let me know what you love about them.

This Week's Good D&D Reads

Here's a list of some other great Dungeons and Dragons articles recently posted.

Ed Greenwood describes in vivid detail the fascinating and intricate lives of those who deal in the the Stench Carts.

Your friend and mine, The Angry DM, discusses the subtleties of action adjudication in his eloquently entitled article Adjudicate Actions Like a Motherf$&%ing Boss!.

Former D&D designer Dave Noonan writes an excellent article describing how elimination can make for a more focused campaign in The Power of Subtractive Design. This style of limitation is a great way to run a game, in my opinion.

D&D Next lead, Mike Mearls discusses a new approach for skills and feats in D&D Next in his article entitled Feats and Skills and Options, Oh My!. A recent tweet of his states that he built a level 8 Next PC in 15 minutes.

Phil Vecchione at Gnome Stew jumps on the Dungeon World bandwagon with an article entitled 3 Things Dungeon World Is Doing That Should Be In Your Game. If you haven't already heard, the Dungeon World core book is a fantastic book to read whatever version of D&D you happen to play.

If you liked this article, take a look at the Lazy Dungeon Master. You might also enjoy Sly Flourish's Dungeon Master Tips and Running Epic Tier D&D Games.

There's no reason we can't steal this idea and add it into our normal d20 games like D&D 4th Edition, the D&D Next Playtest, or Pathfinder.

Climbing the DC Ladder

All recent editions of Dungeons and Dragons included a difficulty check ladder. Next and Pathfinder have relatively static DCs from easy to hard that start at about 10 for easy stuff and go up to about 25 for really hard stuff. 4th Edition's ladder is a bit more complicated. You can find a full copy of the ladder on the DM Cheat Sheet.

As characters attempt things with easier or harder difficulty, the DM chooses a different DC. Typically, PCs either succeed when they meet or exceed the DC and fail when they roll below it.

It doesn't have to be this way. Instead of picking a single DC, we might pick a range of DCs to represent shades of grey. For example, Say a PC is drawing negative energy out of a powerful magical pillar tied to the Shadowfell (a level 15 challenge for our 4th edition game). The low DC is 15, the medium is 22 and the high DC is 30. Instead of succeeding or failing, we can describe different results depending on which DC they make. Rolling below a 15 for example, causes tremendous negative energy feedback resulting in 3d6+18 necrotic and lightning damage to the PC attempting the check. A roll between 15 and 21 has no negative effect but didn't succeed in drawing out the energy. The wizard cut off the connection before getting hit for the feedback. A roll of 22 to 29 successfully draws the energy out of the pillar. A roll of 30 or above represents the PC not only drawing energy out of the pillar but infusing herself with that energy. She now has advantage on all arcane casting until the end of the encounter!

Winging It

Many DMs already do something like this. They don't have a fancy chart giving them a range of successes or failures, but when they hear about a particularly high or low roll, they describe a greater success or terrible failure. Sometimes, when a player sees how low he or she rolled, he or she might describe the critical failure without the DM's help.

This turns DCs into an analog gauge rather than a binary "success" or "failure". There's not a lot of preparation required for this sort of change. You just hear what the number was and change your description of the results depending on how much higher or lower the result was. You might keep some mechanical tools at your disposal to reward particularly low or high rewards such as a +2 bonus to the PCs next attack roll, a D&D Next style "advantage" or "disadvantage", or some other potential mechanical effect.

Fail Forward

A lot of game masters and newer RPG systems have discussed the concept of "failing forward". Instead of a failed skill check resulting in a monologue of disaster from the GM, a failure can put PCs in a tough spot instead — rocking them back on their heels, stealing some valuable resources, or forcing them into a more desperate situation. Dungeon World describes these ideas throughout and many other systems often give them a nod.

Failing forward means putting PCs on a new track, a more difficult track, that still propels the story forward. It's not easy to do. Saying "no, you fail" is a lot easier than changing the course of a scene. This is why a lot of us haven't done this for most of our DM lives.

Adding levels of success puts a lot of pressure on us. Instead of two tracks we could have twenty. This is where a truly skilled DM can come up with a dozen variants of what happens. You can't plan for this, you have to be ready to improvise. Improvisation is they skill of the Lazy Dungeon Master.

Partial Successes

Describing partial successes is likewise hard. With a partial success, you give something and you take something away. PCs may get what they want, but not through the obvious method or in the way they want it. Complications occur. Maybe they got attention when trying to pick that lock. Maybe they absorbed the magic of the rune and have to pour it out before it devours them. Something good happens and something bad happens. You have to decide what they are. Like many storytelling areas of D&D, this could potentially be a bit of negotiation between you and the player. Stretch your improv muscles with a bit of "yes and" back-and-forth.

Overachieving

What if the PC blows way past the DC? Reward them for it. Show them how much better they are than this. For story-based skill checks its easy to describe how much better they did.

Consider the scene in Romancing the Stone when our heros approach the local drug kingpin in his lair and he looks out the little slot and says "You're Joan Wilder? The novelist??" and lets them right in. That's a critical diplomacy check right there. Maybe that cynical guard is actually a huge fan of the PC asking the question. Maybe the PC had saved the villain's cousin six years back like Jake Hoyt had in Training Day and it ends up saving the lives of the PCs. Overachieving should never get a PC in trouble. It should offer something even greater than what they had set out to do in the first place.

A Conversion to Analog

Audiophiles often discuss the better sound of analog tube amps. Instead of turning sound into ones and zeros, analog audio systems preserve music in the way our human ears absorb it. Likewise, the stories we tell during our D&D games don't have to be simple ones and zeros. We have entire ranges of actions and reactions that can occur from the random rolls of the dice. Hopefully this article gives you a few ideas for adding your own shades of grey to your D&D games.

This Week's Great D&D Reads

Here's a short list of this week's good reads in Dungeons and Dragons.

• Master storyteller, Ed Greenwood, describes the strange twisted counterfitting activity of Imroad Gaskulyn the gnome.
• The She DM posted this excellent list of Medieval Jobs helps you fill out the details of any fantasy city.
• An article by Scott McNulty describes the joys of Dungeons and Dragons for normal folks in Roll for Initiative.
• Sarah Darkmagic describes the background on the medieval jobs of Midwives.
• For those of you who got in on the Reaper Miniature Kickstarter, you can pick up some excellent miniature painting tips in these articles on how to paint like a pro.

If you liked this article, take a look at the Lazy Dungeon Master. You might also enjoy Sly Flourish's Dungeon Master Tips and Running Epic Tier D&D Games.

This sort of organic storytelling can breathe life into our D&D games. Instead of plotting out a story, we can focus on deep and interesting NPCs and how they smash against the heroes of our adventure in new and unpredicatable ways.

In this article we're going to look at three villains from Deadwood and discuss how they might act and react in your unpredicatble character-focused D&D game.

George Hearst

The portrayal of the gold mining emperor, George Hearst, is that of a driven and ruthless man. He has one goal: to find and extract "the color", his term for prescious metals, particularly gold. Anyone who gets in his way gets crushed.

Hearst is an excellent villain, one perfect to reskin and stick into your game. Good villains have a real purpose for what they do, something that they seek that pushes them over the edge. Like Hearst, they might appear warm and intelligent only to drive a mining pick into your hand should you frustrate them. Even physically, Hearst makes a great model. He's an overweight bearded man with a back pain that pushes him into fits of fury beyond his own intelligence. His sidekick, Captain Joe Turner of the Pinkertons makes a perfect sub-villain as well.

Al Swearengen

Though difficult to categorize as a villain, Al is no doubt a ruthless man. He is both smart and murderous, always seeking the upper hand whether it's in a duel of tongues or blades.

In your D&D game, Swearengen might be a perfect dark quest-giver. He might be the character giving instructions to the party, a necessary evil one must follow for a greater good. When building a character like Swearengen, you'll want to ensure he never pushes the party too far against their morals but still seeks his own opportunities for profit. An NPC quest-giver like Swearengen isn't afraid to send two groups after the same treasure to see which one becomes the victor.

Swearengen's dialog always dances outside of the traditional paths. He seek to unbalance those who speak with him, whenever possible. "Do not repeat back to the the things I say in different words".

Francis Wolcott

Wolcott is probably the worst villain in all three seasons of Deadwood. He's a murderer of women who manages to use his business ties with Hearst to hide from justice.

As a villain in your game, Wolcott might be the same murdering psychopath we find in the show. Perhaps, in the world of Eberron, he is a murderous Dragonmarked noble of a house the PCs don't want to cross. The key is to make him as untouchable as possible but still clearly a villain the PCs despise and deal with.

Deadwood, a pool of NPCs

Deadwood is full of wonderful characters to steal for your campaign. It is the perfect example of a show driven by the actions of characters instead of the stories of the writers. Characters in Deadwood might appear stereotypical on the surface, but a deeper look reveals some wonderful meaningful characters that might bring new life to your game.

This Week's D&D Reads

In case you missed them, here are some other excellent D&D articles posted over the past couple of weeks:

• Amazing Stories posted an interview with Mike Mearls, senior producer for D&D Next. It has a good history and current discussion of the direction WOTC is taking this latest edition of D&D.

• Forgotten Realms sage, Ed Greenwood, describes how Toril's upper 1% spends their money in Noble Investments.

• Over on the Penny Arcade Report there's an excellent article about a game development couple and their independent game, Legend of Dungeon. How do you hook the players at your table in the first five minutes?

• Ed Greenwood describes a man with the unique job of saving adventurers for a fee in The Lone Wizard.

• Former D&D designer, Dave Noonan, talks about building multi-stage bosses using D&D Next in Better Boss Battles Part 2, a sequel to Angry DM's original article on the topic.

If you liked this article, take a look at the Lazy Dungeon Master. You might also enjoy Sly Flourish's Dungeon Master Tips and Running Epic Tier D&D Games.

After writing articles and statistics for both Yan-C-Bin and Olhydra and with Imix and Ogremoch statted out in the Monster Manual 3, Cryonax remained the only evil elemental prince yet to be converted to 4th edition by Wizards. As the cover subject for Heroes of the Elemental Chaos he definitely needed to see some attention. When I had the chance to build him, I took the opportunity to make him the toughest 4th edition creature I could. As he stands, I believe he is the most dangerous creature ever officially published for 4e.

In this article I'm going to discuss the mechanical design concepts of Cryonax as a high-epic threat designed to challenge a group of level 30 PCs. To learn more of his background, the descriptions of his mountain and the endless potential adventures below it, and his mortal servants, you will have to subscribe and read the article itself in Dragon Magazine issue 421.

Challenging The Peak of the Epic Tier

Cryonax is designed to challenge a party of level 30 adventurers. If you've followed other articles on this site, read my book on Running Epic Tier D&D Games, or run high-epic 4e games yourself, you know how hard this can be. When I sat down to build Cryonax, I used every idea I had and considered every tool allowed by the rules of 4e to keep him protected from 30th level PC shenanigans and help him dish out some serious pain. In my playtests, he did just that. After some development tweaks by master developer Chris Sims, he came out even stronger.

Brutes Hit It Hard

The easiest way to beef up any monster one plans to design from scratch is to make it a brute. Because of his size, appearance, and the nature of the other elemental princes, it made sense to make Cryonax a brute and the statistical benefits make him much more dangerous. Brutes have lower AC but make up for it with increased hit points and damage. Since damage is a multiplier (usually 1.25 x normal damage) his damage output more than makes up for the lack of AC. At level 34, this damage is off the charts. I expect PCs won't have any trouble hitting Cryonax whatever his defenses, but when he hits back, they're going to notice.

Easy Ways To Increase Threat

Cryonax has a couple of simple features that make him significantly dangerous. Threatening Reach is an easy way to give a solo monster lots of actions in a round. With Cryonax's size of huge and his reach of 5, he threatens an area of 13 x 13 squares.

Cryonax's Fury gives him a ton of basic attacks on his own turn. Mixed with one of his three action points, he can dish out 10 to 20 attacks on his turn. His Spit Black Frost ranged basic attack can hit two creatures per shot, thus spraying up to 20 different attacks if he uses an action point. You'll probably want to mix up his melee and ranged attacks to give it some variety.

Due to the ferocity of combat at 30th level, Cryonax will want to use action points every round he can. Battles don't last three full rounds at this level. You probably don't want to be too much of a dick and pour all of Cryonax's attacks on a single PC. They're intended to be spread across the group, but that option is available if you need to break through some sort of powerful damage-negating defense and, if he's marked, make sure to have the marker feel the pain of drawing that sort of attention.

Cryonax's Breath of Chilled Death is as close as we typically come to a save or die. At level 30, however, dropping a PC to 0 hit points usually means you're kicking in some sort of epic destiny power, so I wouldn't worry about it actually killing anyone. Dropping PCs below 0 definitely gets a player's attention but with so many negative hit points available, they're usually far from dead.

Cryonax's Shardstorm is his built-in environmental effect. This doughnut aura is intended to keep PCs within a reasonable range of him so they don't just fly around and pepper him with arrows.

Circle of Protection from Bullshit

Specialized defenses are most important for solo creatures in the epic tier, otherwise they will be completely incapacitated for the entire battle. Cryonax has a few built in defenses to make him harder to pin down and stick in a box. His Epic Resillience converts most action-stealing status effects into vulnerability and combat advantage. This helps whiddle away his massive hit points without removing his threat. His Primordial Charge helps deal with any movement-reducing effects. Because it is limited, he should probably only use this when he is really pinned down. Cryonax's blindsight mitigates the blind status effect as well.

Level 30 PCs have a lot of unique effects that the above defenses might not cover. As a DM you have a few choices. You can just live with that and hope it doesn't make him completely useless as an opponent or you can cheat and expand the above defensive effects to include other debilitating status effects. That can very easily seem like cheating to players, however, so you want to be careful.

Cryonax Nightmare Mode

As he stands, Cryonax should be a considerable challenge for a level 30 party. Extremely robust PCs and extremely tactical players might want an even greater challenge, however. For this you can upgrade Cryonax into "hard mode" with only a couple of changes. First, you'd increase the damage of his Shardstorm aura and the Black Frost zones to 50 damage instead of 25. No PC will want to stay in that for very long. Second, when bloodied, reduce the safe area of the Shardstorm to 5 squares instead of 10. This gives PCs a choice of staying in a shardstorm and taking 50 damage or stand within his threatening reach. It's an awesome hard choice for PCs that will have even level 30 PCs scrambling.

However you run him, Cryonax should be a very powerful foe for high-end epic PCs. If they find themselves on the path to face him, you are in for an epic battle indeed. For more tips running epic battles, take a look at Running Epic Tier D&D Games. You can also read my two other D&D books, the Lazy Dungeon Master and Sly Flourish's Dungeon Master Tips.

I've been critical of Dwarven Forge from the point of view of the Lazy Dungeon Master. I have quite an investment in Dwarven Forge pieces (it's called an investment when it costs more than your first car). I've used my Dwarven Forge collection for years when running my games but lately I've been using it less and less.

So why did I back the Kickstarter? I'm hoping to use these in a new way, a lazier way, and today we're going to discuss my hypothesis in how the Lazy Dungeon Master might make the most from the Dwarven Forge Game Tile Kickstarter.

Only Four Pieces

One of the great ideas Stefan and his team had with the Game Tile Kickstarter is focusing on only four basic pieces: the wall, the corner, the floor, and the door. A good number of these four pieces can build an infinite number of potential layouts for your game. Beyond keeping the manufacturing costs reasonable, these four pieces help keep DM's lives simple by giving us only four items to choose from when building out a room. Unlike Dungeon Tiles we don't have to go poking through a thousand tiny pieces to find just the right one. With four clearly distinct pieces we know exactly which piece we will want at any given time.

There are definitely disadvantages to having so few pieces. It's hard to ensure each layout doesn't look exactly the same as every other layout. To help with this, we'll need to accessorize!

Pimp Your Game Tiles

There are lots of ways to make your Dwarven Forge layouts unique. We can go back to our unused boxes of Dungeon Tiles and pick out lots of interesting floor tiles such as magic runes, circles of blood, thrones, fire pits, and others. Though these tiles aren't 3d, we can make them pseudo-3d by placing them on a raised floor piece. This works well for thrones and fireplaces and the like. Use a tiny piece of sticky tack to keep the tile from sliding around on the Dwarven Forge floor piece.

If you happened to get in on the Reaper miniature Kickstarter, you can use some of the unpainted miniatures to act as statues. Like the tiles above, you can use some sticky tack to stick them on a floor piece and raise them up a bit from the rest of the layout. The dungeon dressings and fiery Reaper miniatures can add a lot of flavor to the layouts as well.

To stay lazy, keep a baggie of the most useful dungeon tiles and dungeon dressing miniatures at hand so you can build out a room without a lot of poking around or having to plan it out ahead of time. Spend your time preparing to improvise instead of planning out details in something your players might never see.

Durability

The proposed durability of these new Dwarven Forge pieces also help us lazy dungeon masters by ensuring we don't have to take too much care of them. As demonstrated in the video, we can likely just stick the whole sets in a plastic basket or even a big bag near our play area. When the party enters a room or a section of a dungeon, we can just whip out the pieces we need, build it up real fast, and run it in place.

Dwarven Forge pieces have always been rugged. I've long since stopped using the foam boxes to store them and just stuck the whole sets in a set of plastic boxes on shelves. Still, I've taken enough care of them that I haven't been able to simply build a layout in the middle of the game. I'm hoping that can change with these new tiles.

My overall goal and desire is to be able to build interesting dungeon layouts as I need them during the game instead of trying to build out complicated layouts ahead of time. I dream of keeping a plastic basket next to the table. When I need a room, a hall, or a simple layout, I can pull out the pieces I need and build it like a game of Bastion.

How Many is Enough?

It's hard to figure out exactly how many of these sets one should pledge on. I ended up with two painted sets figuring that, by the end of the Kickstarter, it will end up more like three. Five is probably too many to easily store. One set probably isn't enough to build a good-sized room or a series and network of hallways. If you can afford it, I'd go for two sets, either painted or unpainted. I haven't seen the unpainted but they look good in the pictures. I imagine they would work out well enough but the painted are very nice indeed and fit well with existing sets.

An Experiment in Lazy Dungeon Mastering

I don't have these new game tiles in hand yet so I don't know if my experiment in using them as an aid for the Lazy Dungeon Master will work well or not. It will likely be nine months before I know for sure. In the mean time, I'll ponder and dream and use my existing pieces to see how it works out. Once I know for sure, I'll rewrite this article based on my actual experiences.

This Week's Good D&D Reads

Here's a list of some great D&D articles you might have missed this week:

• In The Wizard Did It master storyteller Ed Greenwood describes how to make the science of magic work in your D&D story. Don't just let "magic" take the blame, make sure it makes sense!
• In Story on the Fly Advice Jeff Greiner and Tracy Hurley talk with James Wyatt of Wizards of the Coast on how to build D&D games on the fly. James has some excellent tips and advice. This episode is well worth your time to listen.
• Scott Rehm, The Angry DM posted an excellent rant (I can't think of another more appropriate word, maybe manifesto?) discussing the importance of GMs as the focal point for games. I agree with everything up until the "You can't be a lazy GM" part. I sure hope he's wrong. I think, deep down, however, we agree. Even being a lazy DM requires a lot of work. The Story Game GM takes the conversation further in his blog post For the Love of the Game.

If you liked this article, take a look at the Lazy Dungeon Master. You might also enjoy Sly Flourish's Dungeon Master Tips and Running Epic Tier D&D Games.

• They take a lot of time to read and understand before we can run them at our table.
• Because we didn't write them, we're not nearly as familiar as we might be if we had.
• Our group or our DMing style may not fit the original written intent of the adventure.
• As written, adventures don't change based on how PCs change the story.

These issues aside, published adventures have much to offer if they are used correctly. With the recent release of classic D&D adventures in PDF we now have a huge library of published adventures to use in our games, whatever our favorite system. Today we're going to look at a few ideas to keep in mind as we consider running published adventures at the table.

Take the Time to Read It

One of the biggest mistakes we can make with a published adventure is not giving it the attention it needs. The real price of an adventure isn't the eight bucks we spend on it, it's the time we need to spend to absorb and understand it. Here's an important tip when considering published adventures:

Published adventures don't save you time. Most often they will take you more time to prepare than a homebrew adventure.

It's not simply the time needed to read through the adventure. Our time also gets swallowed up as we consider how we'll actually run this at our table. You don't always have to read every adventure you acquire. You're always free to skim read it and incorporate the best parts into your own game.

Focus On Fun

It is easy to get caught up into the psychological trap that tells you you have to run a published adventure "by the book". After all, someone went through all the trouble to write out the adventure step by step. There's an inherent flaw in the design of most published adventures — they can't, won't, and probably shouldn't go according to plan. That's the fun of a tabletop game. That's the advantage of having a human brain developing the game as the players play through it.

Instead of worrying about how close to the rules you're running the adventure, focus your energy on ensuring your group is having the most fun out of it that they can. Skip boring parts, rewrite quests, collapse huge sections of the dungeon or re-populate it with monsters that resonate well with your players. Spend your time focusing the adventure around the interests and desires of your players.

It's Not An Adventure, It's a Mini-Setting

One way to ensure your head is in the right place is to think of the adventure as less of a sequential story and more of a mini-setting. Think of it and use it as a sandbox of locations, encounters, quests, and NPCs your party may encounter as they explore the boundaries of the adventure. Focus on the major themes and the concepts that most resonate with you as you read through it.

A Package of Modular Parts

Thinking of an adventure as a mini-setting is one way to understand how an adventure benefits you. Thinking of it as a toolbox of modular components is another. Think of adventure as a collection of NPCs, maps, encounter areas, and story ideas. Take the ones that work well for you. Steal liberally and use them in your own homebrew adventures if you want. You paid your money, you're free to use published adventures however you want, and you have a responsibility to your group to do so.

Make It Your Own

Make every adventure you run your own. One of the biggest mistakes DMs can make is placing blame on an adventure for a lousy game. Being a DM is hard work but that doesn't absolve you from the following great truism:

As a DM, you are ultimately responsible for the enjoyment of your group. If the group isn't having fun, it's not the adventure's problem. It's yours.

It's up to you to take responsibility for your game and understand that the adventure is simply a tool to inspire you and offer you a package of choices components to use as you see fit.

Hang On With a Loose Grip

Like much in life, you will find the most use and the most fun out of published adventures by not getting too bogged down into the minutia. Squint your eyes and find the highlights that stand out to you. Take out a 3x5 card and jot down some of the more interesting components. Relax a bit and use these adventures to fuel your mind and help you generate your own fantastic ideas that explode outward under the creativity of you and your friends as you play your game.

This Week's Top Reads

Here's a list of some great D&D articles from last week:

• Ed Greenwood discusses his Adventurer-saving super NPC in Elkaskyn Horncastle.
• DM Sage Chris Perkins discusses how he begins his campaigns, including an example campaign handout for his group in Where to Begin.
• The Id DM discusses his 4e-honed PC creation skills within the game Blade Raiders in My 4th Edition Mindset.
• The latest D&D Next Playtest has been released. The latest D&D Next Podcast discusses many of the changes.
• THe Story Game GM describes the importance of using proper names for NPCs in The power of names, and tools to make them work for you.

If you liked this article, take a look at the Lazy Dungeon Master. You might also enjoy Sly Flourish's Dungeon Master Tips and Running Epic Tier D&D Games.

Mash Up Isle of Dread with Campaign Settings

Though designed for a more generic setting, there is no reason we can't place the Isle of Dread within a specific game world to add another layer of flavor. You can set the Isle of Dread off of the eastern coast of Khorvaire in Eberron, for example, and riddle the island with pockets of untouched caches of dragonshard crystals that every noble house would kill to acquire. You might set the Isle of Dread in the Feywild and build a mini-campaign focused on the struggles of the Fey in such an untamed land. You might even set the Isle of Dread in Dark Sun as an oasis in the middle of the Sea of Silt, hidden behind a mirage. Its location might be priceless to the sorcerer kings of Athas who seek it as a staging area for their conquests.

Embrace the Exotic

Whatever setting you place it into, The Isle of Dread is an adventure of the exotic. The isle represents a land cut off from the rest of the world for millennia. Creatures of dreams and nightmare walk the earth. Entire ecosystems exist here that do not exist anywhere else. As you run this adventure, ensure you reinforce this concept and idea with each description, each encounter, each scene, and each roleplaying opportunity. The PCs should feel like outsiders cut off from the rest of the world here. Things they take for granted should become difficult to acquire here. Every beast they battle should have a flavor unique to this world.

You have a lot of opportunity to reinforce these concepts in the starting village of Tanaroa. Though peaceful natives, the Tanaroan's strange rituals and connections to the dead can shake up the stereotypes most parties take for granted. The natives' relationship with what lies beyond their massive door further reinforces the isolated nature of the island.

Random Encounters

As an open-ended adventure taking place across a large island, the Isle of Dread makes heavy use of random encounter lists. You can use these lists for more than simple battles, however. Instead of the stated way to roll for random encounters, try something different. Each time the PCs move into a new hex on the map, roll against the random monster list and note the monster that came up. Now roll 1d6 to determine if the monsters have come before, are there at the moment, or are on their way. On a 1 or 2, the PCs might discover tracks of the selected monster having passed by within the last four hours. On a 3 or 4, the monsters are currently there at the moment and an encounter takes place. On a 5 or 6, the PCs might sense the impending doom of a dangerous foe on the way. Using the monster charts for more than just encounters gives another layer of flavor into the exploration of the island.

An Open World Adventure

The Isle of Dread adventure gives us a small yet open world for our PCs to explore. It gives enough flavor to help the lazy dungeon master run a rich thematic game without forcing the players down any one path. Each group that plays through it will have completely unique stories to tell. With these tips and those found in the the Lazy Dungeon Master, you and your group will have tales to share for the rest of your lives.

This Week's D&D Reads

Here are a few great D&D related articles posted to the net over the past couple of weeks you won't want to miss.

• Ed Greenwood discusses airships in the Forgotten Realms in his article New Ships of the Air.
• The Fourthcore guys released a series of adventures that should bring quite the challenge to your 4e players.
• Monte Cook describes his love for David "Zeb" Cook's work on Planescape.
• Eberron creator, Keith Baker, describes how to handle RPG travel with a travel montage.
• In his article Until the Next Encounter Chris Perkins describes his top 10 tips for being a great DM. A must read.
• A guest submitter for Table Titans describes how a structured game went off the rails and everyone ended up having a blast with the improvised results. Very lazy DM.
• Ed Greenwood describes in detail an unlikely character with a secret origin that runs a business all across the Realms in Horl, Breeder of Mules.

"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 and interesting RPGs. One of these in particular, Dungeon World, received a lot of attention, including the 2012 Golden Geek Game of the Year award. Built from the foundations of Apocalypse World and the roots of old-school D&D, Dungeon World builds a narrative-focused game based on conversations between players and game masters.

Dungeon World's story-building concepts fit well with the ideas of the Lazy Dungeon Master. Dungeon World games grow from the improvised conversations of players and game masters and the interactions of PCs with the rest of the game world.

One particular element of Dungeon World, the "front", has a very interesting effect on campaign building. According to Dungeon World, a front is a collection of linked dangers. Think of it as a sinister campaign moving along in parallel to the actions of the PCs. Larger threat than a typical encounter, fronts encapsulate a series of threats into a single package.

The Dungeon World "front" gives you a new tool #dnd adventure preparation.

Dungeon World relies heavily on the idea of "draw maps, leave blanks". These fronts don't build out entire story arcs; they simply capture a large moving threat that will, potentially, envelop the PCs.

Fronts consist of a set of dangers, each one representing a faction or a challenge tied to the front. Dangers include many components you might be used to such as a band of orcs, a thieves' guild, or a necromancer summoning a powerful beast. These dangers contain the following components that bring them to life:

• The Impulse: The motivation that drives this collection of villainy forward.
• Grim Portents: The steps this threat follows when unchecked by the PCs.
• The Impending Doom: The conclusion should this threat not be stopped or thwarted.

Let's look at a couple of the concepts of the front and how they might work in our D&D game.

The Impulse

Each front has a single guiding force, a motivation, known as an impulse. The impulse encapsulates the motivation that moves a front forward. Think of the nine ringwraiths hunting down the One Ring in Lord of the Rings. Their motivation is very simple; recover the ring and kill whoever has it.

This impulse should be specific and direct; nothing fancy or convoluted. "Become the God of Death" might be the impulse for a front based on Orcus's conquest for Godhood.

Each front moves forward, whether the PCs get involved or not. PC involvement may sway, redirect, or even stop a front. If the PCs choose NOT to get involved, that front moves forward anyway.

Grim Portents

Grim portents represent the steps a front or danger follows as it moves forward. In the original Apocalypse World roleplaying game, these grim portents are called the countdown — an apt title. Whatever this threat is, it moves forward. Things happen while the PCs go about their task. If they face more than one potential front and choose to follow through with another, the front they do not choose moves on to its inevitable conclusion. In Apocalypse World, a clock represents the countdown, broken out into quarter hours for the first three segments and five minute segments for the final three. This representation reminds us of the urgent nature a front represents.

Grim portents make the world come alive. There are no monster closets in our D&D games, no static bosses sitting on thrones of bone just waiting for the PCs to show up. Things are in motion towards their impending doom.

Impending Doom

If our band of heroes fails to prevent the front, the front concludes with an impending doom — the dark conclusion of the front or danger. Generally speaking, the impending doom shouldn't be a world-ending event or you force your players to choose it. Impending dooms should be sinister enough to get your players' attention but not so dire that they have no other choice but tackle it.

Structure Without Railroading

The format for fronts gives you just enough structure to help you form an idea of what is going on in the world without so much structure that you force-feed your story to your players. As Dungeon World and Apocalypse World state, we should draw maps and leave blanks. The blanks you leave give you and your players the freedom to fill in aspects of the story not yet defined. It gives you room to improvise during the game, building the story around the actions of your players, a story far more fantastic than any you might have written ahead of time.

Fronts are a great focused tool to build just enough structure to run a game without so much that you steal control away from the story that unfolds at your table.

If you liked this article, take a look at the Lazy Dungeon Master. You might also enjoy Sly Flourish's Dungeon Master Tips and Running Epic Tier D&D Games.

If the embedded video below does not work, you can watch the entire discussion on Youtube.

Recent Top Reads

Here's a list of my choices for some of the more excellent D&D related articles over the past couple of weeks:

• In Master of Suspense Chris Perkins describes how to keep a party on the edge. My own group never would have gone for this but it's an interesting way to tell a story.

• In Rob's RPG Code of Conduct Robert Aronson outlines his rules for cooperative RPG gaming at the table. Not all of these fit for every group but they're a great conversation starter. Which of the Roleplay Dickery lines do you cross? For myself I tend towards Clown, Bystander, and the Twink.

• In Can vs. Should Robin Laws discusses how a simple word change can change an entire viewpoint of a game. What is optional and what is required in your own games? How can changing "should" to "can" end up giving your game a bit more flexibility for you and your players?

• In A World Worth Saving Chris Perkins describes how we can cast NPCs in a better light, making them good at whatever it is they do. There's a fine line between a proficient NPC and an NPC that upstages the party, however, so ensure the NPC isn't good at all at the things the PCs are.

If you liked this article, take a look at the Lazy Dungeon Master. You might also enjoy Sly Flourish's Dungeon Master Tips and Running Epic Tier D&D Games.

A Specific Theme

A good lair assault style adventure focuses around a single theme. In the critically acclaimed Lair Assault Kill the Wizard, we had a theme already in mind: drow assassins hunt down a wizard who is building a drow-destroying creation of some sort (Spoiler: it's a big drow-eating pacman construct). When building your own lair assault, find a clear overall theme for the scenario and reinforce it throughout your design with goals, environments, new game elements, and the monsters you select.

A Clear Goal

Similar to the concepts of a Combat Out Lair Assaults all have a clear and focused goal. Building an adventure or encounter in the style of a lair assault means setting one of these clear goals. Such goals might include thefts or heists, the specific destruction of a single creature, solving a particular puzzle, activating four beacons of power, or any other in-game mechanical goal. Killing all of the monsters is rarely the primary goal for a focused adventure like this. Instead, pick a specific goal the PCs can achieve while fighting off the hordes of monsters you plan to throw at them.

A Focused Battle Map

Lair Assaults have a clearly focused battle areas. You can easily simulate this focused area with the right poster map. In particular, the Haunted Temple, Vaults of the Underdark, or Shattered Keep map packs include some excellent poster maps upon which you can focus your scenarios.

These battle maps should have lots of powerful environmental effects both dangerous and advantageous to the PCs. The mixture of good environmental effects, a clear theme, and a focused mechanical end-state add new and interesting variables to your 4e game.

New Game Elements

A focused scenario like this gives you some room to add new gameplay elements. These might take the form of puzzles or some other random elements. In the Kill the Wizard lair assault (written by yours truly), players could accomplish achievements by betraying fellow drow. In Attack of the Tyrantclaw, players could create their own defensive elements to fight on their behalf. Try adding in some new gameplay elements to the game that reinforce the feel you're shooting for with the overall scenario. Try to keep these elements simple, however, so it doesn't make a long battle even longer.

Environmental Constraints

Lair assaults are a great way to be a dick with your overall environmental effects. You can put in some excellent zone-wide effects that always take place. Add damaging effects to teleports or critical hits. Hinder healing effects. Change how marking targets works. Again, you don't want to be too brutal with these effects since entire character concepts might fall apart. Don't negate their powerful abilities, challenge them!

To Hell with Fair

When it comes to encounter balance, take the gloves off and go crazy. You can throw two or even three waves of monsters at PCs, if they are a high enough level. Don't worry too much about perfectly balanced groups of monsters. Send them in as it makes sense. You might not even separate the battles and just run one long initiative with some environmental effects or options for resetting encounter powers.

Plan Ahead for a Long Battle

Because of the tactical nature of a scenario like this, expect the battle to take significantly longer than you might expect. It's not unheard of for lair assaults to take three or four hours for one or two encounters. Give your game some room so you don't have to rush people through it. Expect things to take a while and you'll all have a lot more fun during the game.

Not Just for Lair Assaults

A focused scenario like this doesn't have to be a stand alone event. You can easily fit events like this into your ongoing campaigns for a more board-game-style challenge in the middle of your longer campaign. If you're making it very challenging, have a good plan should the party completely wipe out. You don't want to wreck your game just because a battle like this went south for the PCs.

A Chance to Break the Rules

Scenarios like this are your chance to break the rules of 4e D&D. This isn't for inexperienced DMs, however. You'll want to have a good feeling for how encounter balance and character power works in D&D so you know what rules you can break. Once you've designed the scenario, sit back, give them hell, and have some fun.

If you liked this article, take a look at the Lazy Dungeon Master. You might also enjoy Sly Flourish's Dungeon Master Tips and Running Epic Tier D&D Games.

There are other ways to give more freedom to your players without making it too hard for them to decide what to do. Dave chalker discussed the 5x5 method, a great method to structure a sandbox game that gives general guidance to the campaign and a few interwoven stories for the PCs. Today we're going to discuss another simpler option: the three choice method.

The idea is simple. At the end of your night's adventure, you propose three potential paths the PCs might take. Each of these are reasonable and rewarding choices - there isn't one clear "right way" to go. Your players must vote to head for one particular path before they leave the table. Once they have chosen, you know exactly where they plan to go at the next session.

This method doesn't follow the full concepts of the the Lazy Dungeon Master. If you're not quite up to simply winging it the night of the adventure, this method can help you give your players some clear choices and still provide enough direction for you to plan out your next session.

Simplifying Campaign Design

This "three choice" style of campaign is more focused than a full sandbox campaign but doesn't make your players feel like they have no say at all in the direction they go. It helps you keep your campaign more focused and puts your energy in the right place — building adventures, encounters, and scenes you know your group will see. Instead of being forced to plan out five or six potential areas, you can now plan out just the areas your group already decided to go.

Developing the Choices

Coming up with the three choices will actually take some planning up front. Instead of simply building out an adventure for your next game, you must build the adventure and plan out the three potential choices for the one after that. Some of these choices might get re-used throughout your campaign ("You still have that old treasure map you found.") while other choices might shut off for the PCs ("The gnolls have killed all the sacrifices by this point and fled back to the mountains.")

Three Choice Guidelines

Here are a few guidelines to make the most out of the three-choice style to adventure planning:

1. Don't fall in love with any one choice. Your group will probably catch on and pick the one you wanted.
2. Plan each choice equally and plan it only enough to know you could write a good day's adventure out of it.
3. Make your players choose a path at the end of a game, while they're all still at the table. Don't expect to do it over email. While that would seem like a good idea, you'll likely only get one or two responses instead of a majority and those who didn't respond won't feel committed.
4. As you prepare for your next game, plan out the three potential choices they will have at the end of it.

Staying focused on the right thing

A method such as this, and it's bigger brother, the 5x5 method, helps you focus your time, energy, and attention on the parts of the game your players are most likely to see. It builds a structure that lets you plan down one particular course without forcing your players down only a single path. It gives them structure but room within that structure to tell a unique story instead of one already scripted for them.

Taking the Lazy Path

If you want to follow more of the concepts of the Lazy Dungeon Master, consider leaving the choices in the air at the end of the game instead of forcing your group to choose. Leaving the choices open until the next session forces you to avoid planning a single night's adventure. You simply can't know which way the players will want to take things. If you don't know the path, you can't spend a lot of time preparing it. Instead, they choose at the beginning of the next session and you use your tools of improvisation to take things as they come.

Last Week's Great D&D Reads

Here's a short list of the best D&D related articles published on the net last week:

• Ed Greenwood discusses the details of underground dwarven trade routes in The New Underways.
• Chris Perkins describes how love plays a part (or doesn't play a part) in his own campaigns in Where's the Love?.
• Dave Bernazzani of RPG Geek reviews the Lazy Dungeon Master.
• Mike Mearls describes WOTC's current focus on fighters and how optional rules work in D&D Next in this week's Legends and Lore.

If you liked this article, take a look at the Lazy Dungeon Master. You might also enjoy Sly Flourish's Dungeon Master Tips and Running Epic Tier D&D Games.

Avoiding the Commonplace

The friendly town inn is a common choice for a home base, almost too common at this point. An adventuring guild or a small set of rooms above a farmhouse might be a good choice at the lowest levels. By the time the PCs have a few adventures under their belts, they should be able to afford a place of their own.

Let the players decide upon and build out their home base. Give them options but don't force a solution. They will come up with the one they enjoy the most. Sometimes this might be the headquarters of a former villain, such as the Duergar outpost in Thunderspire Labyrinth. Other times they might end up building it themselves.

Don't Attack the Home Base

As much as you think it's a good idea, consider avoiding conflict in their home base. This area is meant as a fortress of solitude, not an encounter area. Sometimes you might violate this, especially of the PCs call upon it themselves by summoning some creature or using it as a hide out from evil eyes, but in general, don't use the defense of a base as a plot device. It should feel comfortable and safe to them, too many attacks against it and it becomes as chaotic as the rest of the world.

An Evolving Home

As the characters increase in power and stature, their base too may evolve or change. At mid-levels, PCs might reside in their own castle or keep surrounded by happy villagers who look up to them as resident leaders. They might even live within an ancient tree that sits between the mortal world and the Feywild or on an earthmote that splits the boundary between our world and the Shadowfell.

At high levels, PCs might have their own Spelljammer or Chaos Ship that gives them a traveling home base, one filled with portals leading to all the locations and supplies they might need on their journeys. They might reside in a hollowed out asteroid in the middle of the elemental chaos with a fantastic view of a million-year-old storm of fire just below.

A home base should feel like a comfortable pair of shoes or a pillow broken in just right. Discuss the concept of a home base with your players, using their ideas to flesh out the details and build them a place of relaxation and respite.

There's no place like home.

Recommended Reading

Here's a list of some of the better articles on D&D published last week.

• John Arcadian of Gnome Stew gives us some excellent ways to remind us to focus on the goals of our players in A Simple Trick To Keep The Spotlight Moving
• Ed Greenwood writes about the importance of cults in How Many Hidden Cults Is Too Many?
• The Snark Knight shows how to do some Lazy DMing in his article My Lazy Next D&D Campaign

If you liked this article, take a look at my latest book, The Lazy Dungeon Master or my previous books, Sly Flourish's Dungeon Master Tips and Running Epic Tier D&D Games.

For nearly four years I've posted daily weekday #dnd tip tweets to Twitter and now I'm releasing the entire set of these tweets in a single handy package. You can download the entire archive here:

Download the complete #dnd Tip Tweet Archive (500k zip)

The Archive

This zip file contains a set of files, each of which contains over a thousand Sly Flourish "#dnd tip" tweets from 17 May 2009 to 1 February 2013 pulled from the Twitter archive of Sly Flourish.

See Your Twitter Archive to learn more about the Twitter archive.

Archive Contents

Here is a list of the specific files in this archive:

dm_tip_tweets.txt: A simple text file containing all of the tweets with the tweet id, created_at, and text on separate lines.

dm_tip_tweets.html: An HTML5 version of the tweets. Each tweet's HTML contains the tweet id embedded in the <li> tag and the created_at date within a <date> tag. Each URL contained within the tweet has been hyperlinked.

dm_tip_tweets.js: A JSON version of the tweets. This JSON file conforms to the Twitter JSON API. This file has the most data contained within each tweet.

dm_tip_tweets.sqlite: A SQLite3 database containing each tweet. The schema includes the id, text, and created_at for each tweet.

dm_tip_tweets.csv: A comma separated value file of each tweet. It contains the id, created_at, and text. All items have been wrapped in quotes and quotes contained within the text have been escaped with "". It imports directly into Excel.

parse_twitter_archive.py: The Python script I wrote to create this archive. Also available on Github.

Adaptations

It's my hope that people will find new and interesting ways to use these bite-sized D&D tips in all sorts of other projects. Maybe you want to put a random tip up on your blog once a day. Maybe you want to quote it in your new free ebook. Maybe you'd just like to set them up as a daily koan to ponder. I'm hoping you will find all new and great ways to use these D&D tips beyond what I've done here.

If you have an idea on using these in your commercial product, send an email to mike@mikeshea.net to let me know about your idea and I'm sure we can come to a reasonable arrangement. Most important to me is that DMs get tips to help them run awesome games.

Updates

I plan to update it every six months. This archive will take over for the monthly Twitter archives I used to publish to Sly Flourish in the past.

The Twitter Archive Parser Source Code

I wrote a python script that parses through the data downloaded from the Twitter archive and exports it to the formats you see above. The Python source code is included in the archive as well. The code is released under the same license as the rest of the content. I'm releasing the Twitter Archive Parser to Github as well.

License

These tweets and the Python source code for parsing the Twitter archive is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License. You are free to share, copy, distribute, transmit, remix, and adapt the work as long as you attribute it to Michael E. Shea at http://slyflourish.com/, share the work under the same license, and do so for non-commercial purposes. If you have a commercial idea, a note to mike@mikeshea.net to discuss it. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/.

If you want to give back, please take a look at the Lazy Dungeon Master, Sly Flourish's Dungeon Master Tips and Running Epic Tier D&D Games.

Handsome Jack

Of all the villains we might have met in video games recently, it's hard to beat Handsome Jack in the action RPG game Borderlands 2. From the introduction all the way until the last bullet fired, Handsome Jack defines "presence". This is a villain we love to hate. Throughout the game, that hatred changes from annoyance to revenge to even feeling a little bit sorry for him. His character has quite a bit of emotional range and, in turn, changes your own feelings towards him.

The presentation of Handsome Jack in Borderlands 2 is a fantastic model to follow in your #dnd games.

None of this would have worked if Jack hadn't hacked your comm-link right from the beginning and kept in touch with you throughout the rest of the game. It's unlikely that our D&D games have many comm-links, but there are other ways we can make the personalities and actions of our villains known.

The Cutscene

We might tend to avoid cutscenes in our D&D games. We might fear expanding the views of our players beyond the perspective of their characters. Cutscenes, however, might be a great way to expand our players' view of the whole game beyond that of their PCs.

Between-game emails with a short bit of flash fiction can clarify a villain's actions or personality. As our game progresses, so do the plots and plans of the villains, something we can describe in these bits of flash fiction.

You can also use cutscenes directly in your game, describing scenes outside of the point of view of the the characters. Keep them short, however. Your players probably didn't show up to hear you tell them a story you made up before they got there. You might even time yourself to make sure you don't monologue for too long.

Use short narrative or emailed flash-fiction to describe the actions and progress of your villains.

The Intelligent Item

We need look no further than Lord of the Rings as an example of the villain as intelligent item. A magic sword containing a slice of the malevolence of a demon or a magic crystal tied to the villain's psyche are great ways to make villains practically a member of their band. The game Diablo 3 has a great set of quests involving the skull of an old wizard seeking its reformation through the actions of the party. Throughout these quests we get bits and pieces of the wizard's history and motivation before he manifests and we put him right back into the ground.

The Aftermaths

Following in our villain's wake can be a great way for the PCs to understand the former actions and progress of our villain. Interviews with witnesses or explorations of devastating battlegrounds are great ways for the PCs to meet our villains second-hand.

Things To Avoid

There are a few traps we might avoid when involving villains in the lives of our PCs. Avoid the villain's narrow escape. It's often overused and rarely fulfilling to our players. If your villain is about to face the PCs, be prepared for that villain to get curb-stomped.

The unbeatable villain is one way to prevent this but it results in the same problem — an unfulfilling confrontation. Either one of two things will happen. Your players will realize that the villain is unbeatable and get bored or your unbeatable villain will be beaten. You generally don't want either option.

Thinking Outside the Stat Block

A good villain is more than its statistics. A good villain presents itself into the lives of our PCs in many ways; through actions, results, reputation, curses, and dreams. How will your villain make itself ever-present?

This Week's Great D&D Reads

Here's a short summary of some other great articles on Dungeons and Dragons released this week:

• The Angry DM discusses a new way to explore dungeons in Abstract Dungeoneering.
• Ed Greenwood discusses the detailed eccentricities and personalities of nobles in Lord Crakehall
• The Geek Dad, Ethan Gilsdorf, has a very funny D&D quiz, Prescription Drug or Classic D&D Monster.
• In D&D Next Goals, Part Four Mike Mearls discusses advanced rules and how they can fit into a modular D&D game.
• In Dungeon Magazine Issue #210 we have adventures by Chris Perkins, Steve Townshend, and Steve Winter including Siege of Gardmore Abbey, a prequel adventure to Madness at Gardmore Abbey previously only released as an organized play adventure.

If you enjoyed this article, please take a look at The Lazy Dungeon Master or two previous releases, Sly Flourish's Dungeon Master Tips and Running Epic Tier D&D Games.

Enough.

Today we're going to try a new way to get at this problem: the creation of a boss template.

This template empowers certain creatures, the key villains in our story, with some attributes that help them shrug off the effects that might otherwise remove their threat. Think of them like the blue and gold elite monsters we see in Diablo 3.

Design Principals

When we build this template we want to keep a few principals in mind:

1. It should be fast. Combat should run as fast or faster when we use this template.

2. It should be simple. We want to be able to apply this template in our head, without having to constantly reference things. We also don't want complicated mechanics. It should just work.

Let's look at the template:

The Elite Villain Template

• While dazed, stunned, unconscious, dominated, blind, or weakened; this creature instead grants combat advantage and is vulnerable 5 per tier to all damage.
• When immobilized, restrained, or slowed, this creature instead subtracts 2 from its movement speed.
• This creature can only be pushed pulled or slid up to 1 square.
• This creature cannot be knocked prone.
• While bloodied, this creature adds +5 damage per tier to all attacks.

When Should We Use It?

This template is intended to boost the threat and challenge of specific named creatures. These are your primary villains in your campaign. It isn't intended for every elite or solo, just the ones that matter the most to your game's storyline. Save this template for those battles where a named boss really needs the help.

What's the Story?

Its important that we have a story that ties to these abilities. For larger monsters, it can simply be their extreme age or power. For other villains, they might have tapped into a power source outside the realm of mere mortals. Some might be infused with the essence of the celestials or infernals. Some might be avatars of their God. Champions of the Sorcerer Kings might have a rune etched into their forehead that gives them protections beyond most. Come up with a creative reason for these effects, tie it into your story, and make sure it's consistent across your mini campaign.

Communicating With Your Players

Tell your players about this template early and make it clear when a monster has it. This type of house rule shouldn't come as a surprise. Tell your players about it, explain why it is needed, and make sure they know ahead of time when it is in play. Does this break the immersion? Yes. But we're in the middle of a game here, where players choose attacks based on cards and keywords and dice rolls. We can reveal the mechanics early to help them not waste spells they have been saving up. We still want them to enjoy those powers, yet they shouldn't expect to see them work so effectively on a named boss.

Top D&D Reads Last Week

Now for a break from our topic, here's a short list of some of the best articles and biggest announcements about Dungeons and Dragons posted last week.

• Wizards of the Coast releases hundreds of PDF adventures and sourcebooks at D&D Classics for all editions of the game.
• Ethan Gilsdorf discusses the D&D PDF Release at his Geekdad blog on Wired.
• Dave Chalker at Critical Hits discusses the release of the back catalog of D&D PDFs including his recommended adventures.
• Shannon Appelcline discusses her descriptions of the D&D PDFs at My History of Dungeons and Dragons Part One
• Ed Greenwood discusses the value of NPC details in Foundation Stones. A great read for the Lazy DM!
• Mike Mearls discusses the differences between basic and standard rules in D&D Next Goals, Part Three.

If you liked this article, take a look at the Lazy Dungeon Master. You might also enjoy Sly Flourish's Dungeon Master Tips and Running Epic Tier D&D Games. This template is the perfect companion to the monsters in the Monster Vault and Monster Vault 2: Threats to the Nentir Vale.

"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 gives you the philosophy, theory, and techniques to make preparation for D&D easier, more efficient, and hopefully lead you to a more dynamic and entertaining game. In the video below, I describe a few of the tools we can use at our tables, during our game, to help us improvise and grow the story from the choices of our players and the random nature of the dice.

You can also watch the video here.

Here is a list of the tools I discuss over the nine minute video:

• Eberron campaign sourcebook
• Parchment paper
• Graph paper
• Colored binder clips
• Random name card
• Paizo Face Cards
• Rory's Story Cubes
• 3x5 notecards
• Initiative Cards
• Retractable Dry-Erase Markers
• Small White Board
• Colored folios
• Paizo Dry-Erase Flip Map
• Acrylic Sheet

If you liked this video, take a look at my latest book, The Lazy Dungeon Master or my previous books, Sly Flourish's Dungeon Master Tips and Running Epic Tier D&D Games.

Use the Curse of Undeath Dungeon Command set as the centerpiece of your 4e #dnd game. (tweet this)

A scenario for level 11 PCs

Curse of Undeath includes monsters considered quite a bit more lethal than those in previous faction packs. The lich, vampire, and dracolich miniature all represent truly dangerous and powerful foes. Level 11 PCs are at the right level to face such dangerous foes. If you're running a one-shot adventure, focusing on level 11 PCs will give players the opportunity to feel the raw power increase of 4e's paragon tier.

If you are running a one shot, consider limiting PC options to Essentials or Essentials + Feywild, Shadow, and Chaos. Use inherent bonuses instead of default magic items to simplify character creation and options at the table. Give each PC a single rare magic item of their level or lower to act as their character's iconic possession.

Stats for the miniatures

For this scenario we're going to focus on the following miniatures and match them up with monsters from the best monster book for 4th edition, the Monster Vault. Here's the match up:

Creative DMs might find ways to re-skin the remaining miniatures to fit monsters or villains they want to include in their games. The Disciple of Kyuss would make for a fantastic villain.

Terrain features

The tiles included in this Dungeon Command set have numerous features we can use as terrain effects in our 4e encounters. Consider the following potential options.

Dude on the Altar: This tile features two firepots flanking a poor fellow chained to a large stone altar. This tile begs to be used as an in-combat skill challenge or roleplaying event. In our scenario, described below, we'll use him as a captured and drained celestial entity but he might just as easily be an undead creation, an infernal prisoner, or a simple human sacrifice.

Firepots: Firepots beg to be used as a simple terrain feature. Here's a quick example. Any creature adjacent to a firepot may, as a minor action, infuse their next attack with +5 fire damage per tier with a medium DC arcana or endurance check. On a failure, they take 1d10 fire damage per tier.

Bone Piles: Bone piles speak to grasping hands clawing out from the shadows of death. Any natural creature that enters a square adjacent to a bone pile is immobilized until the beginning of its next turn. As a minor action, a creature can break free from the grasp with a medium DC athletics or acrobatics check. They may also end the immobilization as a minor action by taking 1d10 damage per tier as the claws tear into their flesh.

Arcane Circles: Let's steal from D&D Next's "advantage" mechanic for the circles. Any creature in the circle can channel arcane energy into their attack by making a normal DC arcane check. On success, they may roll twice on their next attack and take the better result. On a failure, they must roll twice and take the worse result.

Chamber of the Lich Lord

Let's build a small scenario based on the miniatures, tiles, and monster statistics described above. In this scenario a lich named Varaxus captured a celestial servant of Pelor and is draining its celestial power to fuel his most infernal creation, the dracolich Ashwynd. When the PCs enter the chamber, Varaxus's agent among mortals, the vampire master Avaren, defends the chamber with his two vampire servants. During this battle, a sphere of protection surrounds the lich as he performs his ritual upon the chained celestial being (represented by the tile with the figure chained to the altar).

When Avaren the vampire is slain, the two remaining vampires take gasious form and flee. If both vampires are slain and Avaren is bloodied, he takes gasious form and returns to his coffin in the back of the crypt.

At this point, the PCs can break down the sphere of protection with three DC 19 arcana checks as standard actions. Any failure results in 3d6+14 lightning and necrotic damage to the PC attempting the check.

Once the sphere is broken down, Varaxus himself engages the PCs. He begins by summoning two soverign wraiths (the skeletons) and the skeletal tomb guardian. Meanwhile, raw celestial energy flows from the celestial creature, pouring into dark runes on the walls of a dark sealed chamber (the tile with the three doors surrounding the violet magic circle.

Any time the lich takes damage, half that damage is redirected to the skeletal tomb guardian. If the lich is reduced to 0 hit points, the tomb guardian and both of the soverign wraiths discorporate.

Three rounds after the lich begins his battle with the PCs, the walls surrounding the necrotic chamber break open revealing Ashwynd the Dracolich who engages the PCs.

A DC 19 religion or arcana check reveals that the life essence of the celestial entity on the altar is directly linked to the necrotic energy fueling the dracolich. If the PCs choose to slay the defenseless entity, they can immediately inflict damage to the dracolich equal to the dracolich's bloodied value. Otherwise they must take the dracolich down directly.

The battle ends when the PCs have destroyed the dracolich. As an optional victory, they can save the life of the celestial entity.

Creativity through constraint

As described in the article on Tyranny of Goblins, sometimes a little constraint can make for some fun creativity. Finding ways to build an entire D&D adventure out of a single box of Dungeon Command can result in some fantastic adventures. Give it a try.

If you liked this article, please share it on Twitter and take a look at my newest book, The Lazy Dungeon Master. You can also check out Sly Flourish's Dungeon Master Tips and Running Epic Tier D&D Games.

The 3x5 adventure card helps you plan lightly and acts as a campaign scrap book. (tweet this)

3x5 PC Note Cards

Good adventures often stem from the stories of the characters in our games. As dungeon masters, its hard for us to keep track of all the interactions, backgrounds, and drives of the PCs. In Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering Robin Laws describes how to build a player goal spreadsheet that keeps track of all of these variables including the playstyle of the player so you can tap into the things that player likes the most.

As much as our obsession with our hobby may drive us to build a detailed player goal spreadsheet, we can, instead, jot things down on a 3x5 card for that character. We might include the following attributes on such a card:

• Character name (player name)
• Class, Race, primary attributes or skills
• Player's playstyle (actor, explorer, power gamer, slayer). See the Dungeon Master's Guide 2
• The player's goal for the character
• One or two words on the character's history

Keep this summary brief. You shouldn't have to fill out both sides of the 3x5 card in tiny text. It's just enough info to help you guide your adventures as you build them out.

Review your PC 3x5 cards before you sit down to plan out your next adventure. (tweet this)

The archive of our campaign

Like Chris Perkins, we can use the 3x5 cards of our previous adventures as an archive of the campaign. As our adventures unfold, you can jot down interesting tidbits including NPC names or story paths that go off course from any expectation you might have had. As the story changes the interests of the PCs (and the players), write down those changes on the character's 3x5 card to reference in later adventures. When your PCs run into interesting NPCs, you can clip a Gamemastery NPC Face Card to the rest of the 3x5 cards and build a pocket-sized adventure portfolio.

Review old adventure 3x5 cards to help build out future adventures. (tweet this)

Keep it light and simple

The forced constraint of the 3x5 card is an important part in this whole concept. This constraint helps you do as little as possible to run an awesome open-ended D&D game. It's easy to fall into all sorts of complicated actions and interactions, building out a giant cork board full of note cards and colored threads like mapping the Barksdale drug syndicate in the Wire. Don't go overboard. Let your mind wander, let your mind go free. Do as little as possible and let the game expand at the table.

If you liked this article, take a look at my newest book, The Lazy Dungeon Master. You can also check out Sly Flourish's Dungeon Master Tips and Running Epic Tier D&D Games.

I can't thank @TheIdDM enough for getting @jkbono and I in touch. Her cover for The Lazy Dungeon Master makes the book. http://t.co/G9EEtsE5

#dnd tip: Random encounters don't have to be boring. How do those random encounters lead to more interesting story threads?

#dnd tip: How is ending a #dnd campaign similar to leaving a patient? @theiddm tells us! http://t.co/tcvzL89d

Sly Flourish #dnd sacrilege! http://t.co/6DqPhoSU

Funded Fate Core by @fredhicks on @DaveTheGame's recommendation. Kickstarters get a lot more cred when they're "done" before they kickstart.

A very kind review of The Lazy Dungeon Master from @theweem. Thanks, Mike! http://t.co/WlTPddZp #dnd

#dnd tip: Jot down hooks your players come up with during the game so you can wire them back into the story as it unfolds.

#dnd tip: You don't need a thousand monsters. A couple of hundred well-designed ones can be re-skinned forever.

My editorial, "The Exaggerated Death of 4th Edition" just got published to @criticalhits: http://t.co/sRqNQ7CH #dnd

#dnd tip: Need a 4e monster? AC: 15+lvl, Def: 13+lvl, Attack: lvl+5 vs AC, damage: level+8 - there you go.

#dnd tip: Sort your minis or monster tokens by the method that lets you retrieve the right one the fastest.

#dnd tip: Using a battle map? Come up with some interesting way to use the terrain.

#dnd tip: For a bit of random fun, have magic item vendors with only a random selection of five pieces of loot: http://t.co/4St2pyD3

#dnd tip: Running a low magic 4e campaign? Use Inherent Bonuses and give out only selected rare items of great importance.

If one designed a "pen and paper" RPG from the ground up for remote play (Skype, Google Hangouts, etc) what would it look like?

Great #dnd article by Perkins on using old adventure sheets for new plots: http://t.co/SPCzxY4U Very lazy DM! http://t.co/Qc9lVKy0

#dnd tip: Don't force your players back into the rails if they go off track in your published adventure. Go with it!

#dnd tip: If you're looking for fantastic film-noir characters, check out Way of the Gun: http://t.co/wusfx5CD

Thanks to @TheIdDM for the review of The Lazy Dungeon Master including interviews with myself and @jkbono! http://t.co/GROlBsqv #dnd

Some awesome high-level monsters in the playtest: Balors, Beholders, ASMODEUS!!!, Green Dracolich, Dragons; fantastic stuff! #dnd

This really feels like the first FULL playtest to me. Now we know what #dndnext is really like. https://t.co/zHunNswe #dnd

Not so sure about a level 7 lich. That seems a bit low to me. I can't see a lich below level 12.

Power Word Kill has 23 words in its description and they're all awesome. Especially the two "it dies". https://t.co/zHunNswe #dnd

The save or suck spells are well handled it looks like. Concentration required for the "holds" and dominate only works on living humanoids.

The new DC range is pretty easy to keep in your head: DC 10, 15, and 20 for easy medium and hard. Beats looking at a chart!

#dnd tip: Running Epic Tier? If your group didn't blow up Vecna with a nuclear bomb, you're not playing right: http://t.co/5vkO9v3N

Thanks to @Alphastream for his kind review on the Wizards site: http://t.co/noR0KH23 #dnd

#dnd tip: Monsters seeming stale? Give one or more of them a bit of plot and personality to make things interesting.

Lazy #dnd tip: Keep a list of fantastic terrain and environmental effects handy for improvised encounters. http://t.co/bJ5ZnKzM

#dnd tip: Not hitting any random encounters in Isle of Dread? Show the PCs the tracks of the monsters that came by recently instead.

Gloom by @HellcowKeith is fantastic. Funny, fun, awesome design, and great gameplay. Favorite game at the end of the world.

The Wizard in Kill The Wizard apparently has a Wall of Barlgura. Bad day for the drow. http://t.co/mMOibpR8

The construct just ate its first drow. http://t.co/SL1EOQGE

Some really great lazy #dnd DM tools at this site: http://t.co/Fn6qfN1r

Cthulhmas! (I am so going to hell). http://t.co/ZIl06mgt

Lazy #dnd tip: Build your game by having players summarize previous sessions. It tells you what was important to THEM. http://t.co/oE5YswJQ

Relaxing and reading Apocalypse World. I cant tell if its a game or some sort of cult indoctrination.

Reading Apocalypse World makes me feel like Im going insane but there are some good tips in here.

.@sjbennett123 I get that feeling. Dungeon World feels like a graduate class in RPGs.

#dnd tip: What's the winter holiday in your game world?

Here is a fantastic Dungeon World guide for us #dnd vets. An interesting read. https://t.co/y1iHT2Fg

#dnd tip: Experiment using Theater of the Mind for smaller fights against single monsters without crazy terrain features.

Inn Generator by @Wizards_DnD. A great lazy DM tool! http://t.co/XScG3OUC Thanks @bensrpgpile!

#dnd tip: Don't fall too much in love with roleplaying an NPC. Sometimes your players just want things to move along.

I would love to hear experiences from new DMs who read The Lazy Dungeon Master. Email mike@mikeshea.net with your thoughts.

Fantastic simple #dnd 4e style character sheets for kids: http://t.co/CVxIgSSd I wish we had adult sheets and a system like this.

The pregen character library from Dungeon's Master is fantastic for one-shot or con games. Bookmark it! http://t.co/iGldYcqT #dnd

I'm digging this 13th Age DM Game Aid: http://t.co/BvzE6Hhq Cool stuff @robheinsoo!

Just picked up Story Cubes ( https://t.co/Z7fyqu60 ) based on this NPC generation idea: http://t.co/ISP4GZuo Good Lazy #dnd trick?

Dungeon World Actual Play (Part 1) http://t.co/rhfZzZNl Good play through of this interesting system. Thanks @SarahJNewton!

#dnd tip: Remember the roots of our games as a group of people telling a story. http://t.co/S6rxAR5C

If you enjoyed these tips, take a look at my latest book, the Lazy Dungeon Master or the old favorites, Sly Flourish’s Dungeon Master Tips book and Sly Flourish’s Running Epic Tier D&D Games.

Motivation is the key to great characters and few things ruin a good character like a poor motivations. Poor villains have one dimensional motives - the worst of these being "insane bad guy". He's a bad guy because he's crazy! This motivation is overused, weak, and thin. We can do better.

Likewise, an overly complicated motivation can become muddy and difficult to understand. Instead, choose a clear motivation that is easy to understand, realistic, and, perhaps, easy to relate to. Below are three such villainous motivations. Good motivations from bad guys come down to a single rule:

Good villains think their actions are justified. They think they're doing what's right. - tweet this

Fighting For the Pack

Since the dawn of time, human beings have battled over tribes. Everyone from kindergartners to Nazis know the draw of fighting for the pack, fighting for the flag, fighting for religion, or fighting for skin color. This motivation is easy to apply to any intelligent D&D creature. Orcs fight for their tribes. Giants fight for their empire. Cultists fight for their gods. Even the undead might fight for death against life. Their way is the RIGHT way, the ONLY way and they will fight to the death over it.

The End Justifies The Means

We build laws around ideals. Sometimes, in order to protect those laws, we must break them. Sometimes we must do evil in order to protect good. This is the flawed philosophy of many villains and a great one to use in your game. Consider the wizard who must call on the undead and make pacts with evil to save his city. Consider the paladin who must slay a child prophesied to open up the gates of hell. Consider the lover who must use any power he can to bring back his lost love. The ends justifying the means is a great motivator that drives good people to perform evil deeds.

Wanting To See The World Burn

Sometimes the world has become so twisted, so broken, that only a clean slate will will save it. Like the forest fires that feed the future lives of the Sequoia tree, sometimes the only way to bring new life to a world is to see the world burn. Perhaps it is the furthest form of vengeance, where all life must pay for a single horrible incident. This is a specialized version of insanity - not simply "crazy" but truly vengeful on a global scale.

These are only three of many powerful motivators for villains. For further research, study your favorite movie or book villains and distill down their motivations. A simple statement of motivation can take a flat bad guy and turn him into something really sinister.

If you enjoyed this article, please take a look at The Lazy Dungeon Master or two previous releases, Sly Flourish's Dungeon Master Tips and Running Epic Tier D&D Games.

"You are not prepared!"

I've had this panic attack ever since accepting the ways of the Lazy Dungeon Master. How can I possibly entertain a half dozen of my good friends for three hours when I only spent about five minutes writing stuff down on a 3x5 card? I can't possibly be ready!

When this panic attack happens, I have to instead take a listen to the calm soothing voice (a voice that sounds a little bit like The Id DM) who asks me to analyze those feelings. Where are they coming from? What causes them? What am I really afraid of?

This voice has to remind me that being prepared isn't about doing hard work or spending a lot of time. Being prepared means having the right things on hand to take the game in whatever direction the imaginations of my players and I decide to take it. It means having a good list of random names, a good set of poster maps, a fantastic monster book, some NPC face cards, and just a tiny bit of an outline to keep me comfortable enough to sit down in front of my friends and not throw up on the table.

I don't try to push away the feeling of panic each Wednesday. It will come regardless of what I do. I don't have to worry about that panic attack, though. It's just part of the process. I know where it's coming from. I know what's causing it.

And I know it's full of shit.

Have a happy holidays, my friends. I'll see you in the new year.

Like poster maps, face cards speed up prep time and help you improvise at the table.

A deck full of characters

These ten dollar decks include about fifty cards with pictures of all sorts of NPCs on them. Each card has a picture on one side and room for notes on another. The cards are system agnostic, working just as well for 4e, Pathfinder, or D&D Next. While you can write on the blank-side of the card, consider instead using a small sticky note on each card to note the NPC's name and any traits you want to remember.

Don't buy too many

Like many lazy dungeon master tools, it's easy to go overboard on these cards. Two to three packs are probably enough. You don't want to spend your valuable time sorting and sifting through hundreds of cards looking for the perfect one. You don't want so many you have to come up with some sort of filing system for them. Stick to just a couple of decks such as the Friend and Foes deck or the Urban NPCs. Beyond that and you start to hit diminishing returns.

Take some time to filter out the cards you don't expect to use or the ones too narrow to help you improvise. The crazier they are, the less likely you might be to use them.

Acquire only the tools you absolutely need and discard the rest.

Love the one you're with

While you might find the urge to come up with an NPC and then find the right card, you might have more luck using the deck first to find an interesting face and building the NPC from the card you chose. Use the deck as a seed for the NPCs you create. Build their goals, personalities, and mannerisms once you have the appearance.

Use Gamemastery Face Cards to come up with NPCs on the fly during your game.

An aid to your players as well

These cards help your players remember the names and faces of the NPCs with whom they interact in your game. Some creative DMs even use them as a hit-list of enemies the PCs can hunt down and destroy.

Use face cards as a physical reminder of the NPCs your players have met.

Tools for improvisation

These cards are just one tool to help you spend less time preparing for your game. Instead you can redirect that time to building the tools to help you improvise at the table and let the game grow from the minds of you and your players.

If you enjoyed this article, please take a look at The Lazy Dungeon Master or two previous releases, Sly Flourish's Dungeon Master Tips and Running Epic Tier D&D Games.