Announcing Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster!

by Mike on 8 June 2026

For the past year I've been working on a new book. I've kept it somewhat quiet, only more recently showing chapters (and eventually the entire second draft of the book) to our fine Hero-tier Sly Flourish patrons.

Now we're ready to announce the project and I can't be more excited about it.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/slyflourish/rise-of-the-lazy-game-master

Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster

Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster is the next book in the Lazy GM book series standing alongside Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, The Lazy DM's Workbook, The Lazy DM's Companion, and Forge of Foes.

The Kickstarter for Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster begins in early July.

Follow the project right now at:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/slyflourish/rise-of-the-lazy-game-master

Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster is going to be a roughly 160 page book, available in hardcover, PDF, EPUB, and Markdown, full of advice to help you run great RPGs by preparing less.

Stand-Alone and Complementary

Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster is a stand-alone book for lazy and aspiring lazy gamemasters. You don't need any of the previous books to get tremendous value out of Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster. It stands well side by side with other Lazy GM books, bringing new angles to the concept of lazy gamemastering and new tools to help you prepare and run awesome games.

This book isn't a rewrite of Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master. Return focuses on three main lazy GM activities: preparing your game, running your game, and thinking about your game.

Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster breaks down the concepts of lazy gamemastering into the following topics:

The eight steps of Lazy GM Prep expanded by eight years of experiences and feedback.
Single session, short, and long campaign prep and execution.
Adventure types – what works well, where the traps lay, and how to customize the eight steps based on the adventures you're running.
Quest models – those that work well and those that don't.
The Lazy GM's Toolkit with sixty tools, tips, and tricks to run your games.
Example adventure scenarios using the eight steps.
Piles of random tables and maps to inspire your adventures.

The Same Eight Steps – Expanded

Your copy of Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master isn't obsolete! We're focusing on the same eight steps that made Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master a best-selling and award-winning book on the art and craft of RPG game prep.

Instead, Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster takes eight years of experiences and feedback since the publication of Return and expands the eight steps, providing concrete examples of its use, sample (and playable) eight-step-based scenario outlines, and tons of random tables to help you generate ideas.

System Agnostic

Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master was already valuable for GMs running games from many different RPG systems and Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster continues to support GMs running different RPGs including D&D (2014 and 2024), Shadowdark, Daggerheart, Dragonbane, Dolmenwood, Nimble, and many more systems. While the book focuses on folk-heroic and high-heroic fantasy RPGs, most of the material in this book can support RPGs in many different styles and genres. Whatever game you're running, you'll find value in this book.

Kickstarter in Early July

The Kickstarter for Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster begins in early July with a 36 page fully laid-out preview downloadable with a single click. Veteran- and Hero-tier patrons of Sly Flourish will have access to the preview soon while Hero-tier patrons have access to the full text of the book in an early draft to enjoy what I have so far and offer feedback.

I hope you'll continue your journey with Sly Flourish by supporting Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster. Please tell your friends and share this URL so they can follow the project and get an alert when the project goes live!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/slyflourish/rise-of-the-lazy-game-master

Thank you for continuing to support our work! Let's prep and run some awesome games!

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Last week Michelle and I were at 1d4 Con enjoying lots of games with lots of awesome people. That meant we didn’t have a talk show or other videos last week.

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:

Introduce no more than three new NPCs at a time. Use visuals to make them distinct.
Draw small maps of larger dungeons as the characters explore them.
Expose the world’s history through monuments, statues, and artwork.
Build a custom cheat sheet for your campaign with lists of ancestries, historical figures, and factions.
Take turns around the table in and out of combat.
Get to second level quickly.
Keep a list of skills in front of you.

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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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