Adventure Types in Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster

by Mike on 20 July 2026

Our Kickstarter for Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster continues to march on! If you haven't, please check out the campaign, enjoy the free 36 page PDF preview, and, if you dig it, support the project. Backing this Kickstarter is one of the best ways to support the work we do here at Sly Flourish. If you're already backing the project, please, share it with your friends!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/slyflourish/rise-of-the-lazy-game-master?ref=2pmml2

Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster can be loosely broken up into four big sections:

The eight steps of Lazy GM prep, each expanded with eight years of new experiences and feedback.
Prepping and building lazy campaigns.
Ten common adventure types.
The Lazy GM's toolbox.

We've covered what's new with the eight steps for lazy GM prep and the chapters covering prepping and running lazy campaigns. Today we're going to talk about adventure types. Next week we'll talk all about the Lazy GM Toolkit.

Common Adventure Types

I've been pondering adventure types ever since reading Robin Laws's Adventure Crucible. I wrote a series of articles on Sly Flourish covering adventure types but these articles aren't the same as what we cover in Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster. When considering adventure types, I had to consider what the most common adventure types were. When we're sitting down to prep and run our games, what common models do our games often fall into? I ended up with ten common models.

For each of these models, I wanted to understand what made each model different from one another and how we can use the models to help us prepare and run our games. Here's the common approach we take for discussing each model in Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster:

How do you prep for this adventure type?
How do you customize the eight steps for this adventure type?
What common procedures do you follow when running this adventure type?
What are some common pitfalls when running this adventure type? How can they go wrong?
What can you do to mitigate these pitfalls?

Each adventure type includes lots of examples, including rollable tables, to show what an actual adventure looks like that follows this type and help you get into the weeds for preparing your adventures.

The Ten Adventure Types

Here's a list of the ten adventure types we cover in Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster. The list is loosely prioritized by the most to least common adventure types with some exceptions like "Mashups and the Undefined".

Scene-based Adventures. The most common adventure type in which the characters follow through a series of scenes and situations. You can think of this as the "default" adventure type.

Dungeon Crawls. A common adventure type in which the characters travel through a hostile location where each room might contain a unique danger. We included this adventure type in the free 36 page sample of Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster so you can see what these adventure types look like.

Infiltrations and Heists. Adventures in which the characters infiltrate a fortress, stronghold, manor, or other location. There they must navigate neutral or hostile forces while achieving a goal. Infiltrations and heists often require planning ahead of time and subterfuge and stealth while engaging in the heist.

Investigations and Mysteries. Adventures in which the characters investigate situations — often traveling from one location to another while gathering clues, talking to NPCs, and maybe fighting some hostile forces, but mostly they’re focused on learning the truth of a situation.

Downtime. Adventures in which time spreads out and characters go on individual quests or conduct personal activities such as researching magic, meeting with old friends or comrades, learning important lore, building magic items, or engaging in other longer-term activities.

Overland Exploration and Travel. Adventures in which the characters travel from one location to another. While this chapter talks about both hex-crawls and point-crawls, the lazy approach for exploration and travel is to set up an interesting situation between two locations.

Roleplay and Intrigue. Sometimes our adventures focus on the conversations the characters have with the NPCs in the world — convincing them of a course of action, discovering clues, uncovering secrets, or otherwise changing the course of the campaign.

Combat. Sometimes our adventures focus on combat. The characters get into a scrape with several groups of enemies, fighting waves of enemies, or facing dastardly bosses.

Defense. In defense adventures, the characters must defend a location from a larger force. Defensive adventures focus on preparing the defense, engaging in reconnaissance, and facing off against the oncoming force.

Mashups and the Undefined. Few adventures or sessions actually focus exclusively on one single adventure type. Instead, they're often a combination of several different adventure types or follow a model all on their own. This chapter talks about how to use the structures for prep and play from other adventure types and put them together to run your own particular adventure.

Example Scenarios

Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster also includes specific adventure scenarios for each adventure type. These adventure scenarios follow the eight steps — more filled out than you'd typically have for your own notes since I'm communicating the adventure type to you. Each of them follows along a campaign arc and can be used in several ways:

They act as good examples of what game prep looks like when following the eight steps.
They show how your prep might be different from one adventure type to another.
They can inspire your own adventures.
You can run them as one-shot adventures with some modifications for your own desires, your own world, and your own characters.
You can run them as a full campaign arc if you dig the whole story.

Bringing The Eight Steps To Your Own Adventures

The adventure types described in Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster are designed to help bring further practicality to the eight steps of lazy GM prep. The steps themselves offer a solid framework for getting your hands around the prep for your game. When mixed with these adventure types, you know what you can focus on to support the style of play you and your players will enjoy in the next game you run.

I hope you'll check out the Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster Kickstarter. We're really proud of it and overjoyed that so many folks are excited for the book. If you're already supporting it, thank you so much and please share it with your friends!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/slyflourish/rise-of-the-lazy-game-master?ref=2pmml2

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video.

Patreon Questions and Answers

Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers.

Talk Show Links

Here are links to the sites I referenced during the talk show.

Last week I also posted a couple of YouTube videos on Modifying Published Adventures and Hunting Lashmaraq – Dragon Empire Prep Session 72.

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

Keep charts handy to be able to improvise monsters during the game.
Give improvised monsters a single notable feature to make them unique and set them apart.
Track damage with /s and Xs for five or ten points of damage inflicted. Round to the nearest five.
Give adversaries unique weapons and armor in your descriptions.
Know your group's tolerance and desire for descriptions of violence and gore. Ask them.
Use clocks for countdowns or stages of success. Represent them with a die you spin up or down as things progress.
Print maps. Write quick one or two word evocative labels.

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This work includes material taken from SlyFlourish.com by Michael E. Shea available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license.

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