Sly Flourish
Helping game masters run great roleplaying games.
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Favorite Articles
- Playing D&D can Save Your Life
- How to Play D&D
- Top Tips for Game Masters
- The Eight Steps for Lazy Dungeon Masters
- How to be a Great Player
- The Lazy Encounter Benchmark
- Running Theater of the Mind Combat
Latest Articles
- The Many Right Answers of the TTRPG Hobby - 18 Nov 2024
- Two Goals for Improving Your Game - 11 Nov 2024
- Using Obsidian for Lazy RPG Prep - 4 Nov 2024
- Scenario Model: Opening or Closing the Portal - 28 Oct 2024
- Use Physical Tools for Online Games - 21 Oct 2024
- The Simplest Way to Annotate a Map - 14 Oct 2024
- Ten Types of Stonework Decorations - 7 Oct 2024
- The Best LLM for Generating RPG Stuff – Your Brain - 30 Sep 2024
- Running I6 Ravenloft with Shadowdark RPG - 23 Sep 2024
- Find Local Players for Tabletop RPGs - 16 Sep 2024
- View All Articles
Sly Flourish's Books
- The City of Arches
- Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
- Lazy DM's Companion
- Lazy DM's Workbook
- The Lazy DM's Forge of Foes
- Fantastic Lairs
- Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot
- Fantastic Adventures
- Fantastic Locations
Subscribe to the weekly Sly Flourish newsletter and receive a free adventure generator PDF!
Lazy GM's Resource Documents
The following material from the Lazy DM series has been released under a Creative Commons Attribution license:
Older Books
The following older books are available here for free under a Creative Commons license.
RPG Community Links
These sites and services help connect the larger TTRPG community.
- TTRPG Blogroll
- Daily RPG Blog Posts
- Sly Flourish's Follow List on Mastodon
- EN World and its communities
- ttrpg.network on Lemmy
Lazy Dungeon Mastering
- Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
- The Eight Steps for Lazy Dungeon Masters
- Choose the Right Lazy DM Steps
- Running Session Zeros
- Review the Characters
- Start Strong
- Secrets and Clues
DM Tools
- Tools of the Lazy Dungeon Master
- Safety Tools and Pause for a Minute
- The Lazy 5e Cheat Sheet
- Using Maps for In-Person Games
- Dysonlogo Maps
- Lazy Monster Tokens
- Using Notion.so for Lazy RPG Prep
- Writing a One-Page Campaign Guide
- Progress Clocks for Complex Situations
- Pointcrawls for Overland Travel
- Replace Flanking with Cinematic Advantage
- Campfire Story Prompts During Rests
- Easy Initiative Cards
DM Advice
- It's Five Minutes to Game Time
- Improve Pacing
- Upward and Downward Beats
- Spiral Campaign Building
- The Ability Check — The Only D&D Subsystem You Need
- Creating Villains
- Build Resilient and Evolving Villainous Plots
- Recovering from a Bad Game
- A GM's Reading List
Running Adventure Types
- Dungeon Crawls
- Infiltrations and Heists
- Investigations and Mysteries
- Overland Exploration and Travel
- Missions and Quest Chains
- Defense
- Roleplay and Intrigue
- Combat
- Mashups and the Undefined
Combat Encounter Building
- Tracking Combat in 5e
- The Lazy Encounter Benchmark
- Running "Theater of the Mind" Combat
- Abstract Battlemaps
- Choose Monsters Based on the Story
- Dials of Monster Difficulty
- Lightning Rods — Showcase Powerful Character Abilities
- Reskinning Monsters
- Running Hordes
- Let Go of Defined Encounters
- Run Easy Battles
- Running Wars
- Set Piece Battles
- Improving Boss Fights
Running RPGs Online
- Experiences Running RPGs Online
- Two Years Playing RPGs Online
- Awesome Tools for Online Play
- Playing RPGs over Discord
- Organizing Digital RPG Materials
- Interviewing New Players for Online Games
- Share PDFs with your Players
One-on-One D&D
Rules Discussion
- Choosing DCs
- Our Ability Check Toolbox
- Darkvision Isn't as Good As You Think
- What Does Passive Perception Show You?
- Handling Surprise
- The Flow of Trap Detection
Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.
