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 Dungeon Masters
- How to be a Great Player
- Running Theater of the Mind Combat
- The Lazy Encounter Benchmark
- Strengthening Friendships through D&D
Latest Articles
- How Many Rounds of Combat Are Ideal? - 2 Oct 2023
- Share PDFs With Your Players - 25 Sep 2023
- Limit Sources While Using D&D Beyond - 18 Sep 2023
- Run Homebrew Adventures in a Published Setting - 11 Sep 2023
- Re-Using Secrets and Clues - 4 Sep 2023
- Use a Damage Pool for Lots of Monsters - 28 Aug 2023
- Building a D&D Situation – Castle Orzelbirg from Empire of the Ghouls - 21 Aug 2023
- How Do You Feel Rolling a Crit? - 14 Aug 2023
- Ask Players to Describe New Character Abilities - 7 Aug 2023
- Understanding the Six Truths of Your Campaign Setting - 31 Jul 2023
- View All Articles
Sly Flourish's Books
- The Lazy DM's Forge of Foes
- Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
- Lazy DM's Companion
- Lazy DM's Workbook
- Fantastic Lairs
- Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot
- Fantastic Adventures
- Fantastic Locations
The Lazy GM's Resource Document
Some material in the Lazy DM series has been released under a Creative Commons Attribution license in the Lazy GM's Resource Document.
Older Books
The following older books are available here for free under a Creative Commons license.
RPG Community Links
A few sites and services to connect to the larger RPG 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
- Choose the Right Lazy DM Steps
- Running Session Zeros
- Review the Characters
- Start Strong
- Secrets and Clues
- Choosing Monsters
- Lazy D&D Prep through Handouts
DM Tools
- Tools of the Lazy Dungeon Master
- Safety Tools and Pause for a Minute
- Lazy 5e Cheat Sheet
- 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
- Lightning Rods — Showcase Powerful Character Abilities
- Campfire Story Prompts During Rests
- Easy Initiative Cards
- Notable 5e Products
- Random Generators: Names, Monuments, Relics, Traps
DM Advice
- It's Five Minutes to Game Time
- The Ability Check — The Only D&D Subsystem You Need
- Improve Pacing
- Upward and Downward Beats
- Spiral Campaign Building
- Quest Pattern — Three of Five Keys
- Running Heists
- Running Downtime Sessions
- Creating Villains
- Drawing Maps
- Build Resilient and Evolving Villainous Plots
- Recovering from a Bad Game
- A GM's Reading List
Combat Encounter Building
- Tracking Combat in 5e
- Running "Theater of the Mind" Combat
- The Lazy Encounter Benchmark
- Abstract Battlemaps
- Choose Monsters Based on the Story
- Dials of Monster Difficulty
- Reskinning Monsters
- Running Hordes
- Let Go of Defined Encounters
- How Many Encounters per Day?
- Run Easy Battles
- Running Wars
- Running Set Piece Battles
- Improving Boss Fights
Running D&D Online
- Experiences Running D&D Online
- Two Years Playing D&D Online
- Awesome Tools for Online Play
- Playing D&D over Discord
- Organizing Digital RPG Materials
- Interviewing New Players for Online Games
Campaign Outlines
- A World Without Heroes — A 1st to 20th level Campaign Outline
- Harvester of Worlds — A Githyanki Campaign
- The Hunger — A Gnoll Campaign
- Demogorgon Must Die
One-on-One D&D
Rules Discussion
- 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
D&D Surveys and Polls
- A Study of DM Tricks
- D&D Twitter and Facebook Polls
- Analysis of DM Traits
- 2016 D&D Survey Results
- 2012 D&D Survey Results
WOTC-published D&D Adventure Guides
- Guide to WOTC's D&D Adventures
- Running Dragons of Stormwreck Isle — The 2022 D&D Starter Set Adventure
- Running Lost Mine of Phandelver from the 2014 D&D Starter Set
- Running Dragon of Icespire Peak from the D&D Essentials Kit
- i6 Ravenloft and Curse of Strahd
- Tomb of Annihilation
- Wild Beyond the Witchlight
- Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat
- Ghosts of Saltmarsh
- Storm King's Thunder
- Waterdeep Dragon Heist
- Out of the Abyss
- Rime of the Frostmaiden
- Descent into Avernus
Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.
