Sly Flourish

Roll to Target

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Roll a die to see which character a monster targets.

I roll to see who monsters target almost all the time. It's my default behavior for a monster. I usually only target specific attacks when it makes clear sense to target a specific character – like a cleric concentrating on a powerful buff or a wizard who banished a monster's demonic ally.

Some GMs bristle at the idea of rolling for targets and that's cool. Not every idea works for every GM's style. I'm a loose GM when it comes to monster tactics. I'm into the evolving story – a story that breaks away from any preconceived notions I have every time I roll the dice. Of course, intelligent monsters may be selective because that's part of their nature and it fits with the story – but if there's any chance an intelligent enemy might select between a couple of different targets, I roll to see the result.

Avoiding Adversarial GMing

I argue rolling to see who a monster targets helps break away from the adversarial GMing that sometimes takes place at the table. If we're being super-tactical on the GM side of the table, our players might stop feeling like we're all sharing a story together and instead think they're competing against us – the GM at the table. Instead, when we’re rolling to see who a monster attacks, we all know we're watching the dice change up the story.

Roll in the Open

I also roll to target attacks in the open – along with attack rolls themselves. Again, when everyone sees the dice results, they know you're not picking on one particular player – unless there's good reason the monster would select one specific target. Sometimes the dice sure do though. A commonly misunderstood reality of randomness is that it often has streaks.

Describe Your Thinking

If you do decide to have a monster select a particular target, describe the monster's line of thinking. "The lich knows you're the one concentrating on that powerful spell so he's definitely going to target you." With such vocalized decisions, players understand why their character might be the target of a villains' wrath.

A Simple Idea with a Powerful Shift

Rolling to see who a monster attacks doesn't feel like a huge change in the game, but it can have a big effect. It moves the game away from feeling like a tactical chess match and lets you enjoy the story as it unfolds just as much as the players.

Give it a try.

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: Dreadful Blessings Deep Dive – Help Boss Monsters in 5e Meet Their Intent and Ceruleus the Clockwork Dragon – Dragon Empire Prep Session 67.

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:

Give players time to wind things down after a big climactic moment in a campaign.
Aim for four players at the table.
Try different RPGs. Convince your players by offering only a handful of sessions.
Write down encounter benchmarks and improvised monster stats so you can improvise both monsters and encounters during the game.
Narrate quickly and get to the characters’ decisions and actions fast.
Every new region has its own internal politics into which the characters can get tied.
Intelligent magic items make fantastic tag along NPCs.

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Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Defending Out of the Fun

Mon, 25 May 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Kelsey Dionne, the creator of Shadowdark, was on the Dungeon Master Diaries podcast and mentioned something that clicked in my head in a way I had never considered. Kelsey mentioned that she can tell when a player designed a character class instead of a gamemaster because the player-built custom classes almost always include ways to get rid of the things that make Shadowdark challenging in the first place – encumbrance, light, rations, and so on.

There's an oft cited quote about game design from Raph Coster's book, a Theory of Fun. The quote is summarized by Soren Johnson on the Designer Notes blog from way back in 2011.

"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game."

If we consider this quote and Kelsey's insights as a lens, we might notice these behaviors in some players focusing particularly on defense. Focusing on defense is textbook loss aversion. Anything players can do to further protect their characters, they'll do, even if it leads to the game becoming boring – maybe for them, the GM, or the rest of the group.

When I get vexed with something in an RPG, particularly D&D or 5e, it's almost always a defensive or threat mitigation issue. Hospitaler's blessing from back in the 4th edition of D&D gave characters other than the paladin hit points every time they were attacked which led to the characters leaving a beholder fight better off than when they started. The 5e spell heroes' feast used to give the whole group immunity to poison damage, making huge swaths of monsters significantly less threatening and some monsters, like ancient green dragons, were a joke. WOTC fixed this issue in D&D 2024, thank the gods.

In a recent Dragonbane campaign I played, getting attacked by monsters was really rough on the characters. Monsters don’t roll to succeed on an attack – they just do damage. Characters can dodge but doing so uses up their turn which also sucks, particularly if they fail to dodge and take the damage anyway. Needing to use an action to dodge makes the heroic ability Fast Footwork really good because you can dodge without taking your turn by paying three will (a common resource in Dragonbane). On top of taking this heroic ability, players started boosting their evade skill making it easier and easier to dodge. Later in the campaign, when most characters had Fast Footwork and a high evade, battles went from frustrating to boring. They might fight powerful monsters like blood demons or vampires and the result was losing some will. I’m oversimplifying – there's more to it, of course – but that’s the crux of it. Focusing on maximizing the evade skill and continually using Fast Footwork defends out of the fun in Dragonbane but that line of fun between frustrating and boring can be thin.

For a long time I've been vexed by the 5e shield spell. It's just too powerful. That +5 bonus to AC stacks with disadvantage and it's always useful at every level of play. The higher level the characters get, the more spell slots they're willing to spend to keep that +5 bonus up. It also interrupts the flow of the game so much that I have to pause before I start throwing attacks to ask if the recipient is thinking of casting shield so I can slow down.

Players love shield. It's likely the best 1st level spell in 5e. Talk about banning it or nerfing it and players go berserk. Why? Because it's so good.

But I'm not talking about banning or nerfing shield. Instead, when we consider a players' desire to defend themselves out of the fun, there are other things GMs can do that aren't so confrontational.

Here's the big one, particularly for 5e – be wary of giving out defensive magic items.

A +2 shield doesn't seem like a big deal, but that extra +2 stacks with everything. If we look at high-end magic armor, like +3 plate and a +3 shield, we now have a character with an AC of 26.

Characters get a ton of threat mitigation capabilities in 5e just through class abilities, subclass abilities, and spells. We don't need to help them further by rewarding a lot of defensive magic items. Instead, make magic items with cool non-defensive abilities. Maybe give them a suit of infernal plate armor that casts fire shield once per day. Sure, they get fire or cold resistance for that one encounter but the real fun is the damage monsters take for hitting them. Now players want to be hit.

D&D 2024 has a bunch of trap magic items in it – items that make the game harder for the DM to run. The biggest culprit are the terrible crafting rules in the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide. Using those rules, it's far too easy to make any magic item a character wants – including items that make the whole game harder and less fun to run like custom enspelled items with, you know, six charges of shield in them. This poor GM found out the hard way that rings of resistance no longer require attunement which means every character can wear ten rings of resistance if they craft them. Instead, let characters build magic items only when they get a specific component required to make the item. See Lazy 5e Crafting Guidelines for more on this topic. Limiting crafting components lets you control the pacing of these new items.

Practical Advice

So what are some practical tips for keeping players from defending themselves out of the fun?

Be careful giving out high-AC magical armor. Keep bonuses to just +1. Spice them up with one-use-per-day spell effects.
Be careful giving out other defensive magic items like rings of resistance, displacer cloaks, too many rings of protection, and other defensive magic items.
Limit crafting. Use wish-lists and scavenger hunts to locate one particular item they need to make a juicy magic item and use this to steer them towards fun offensive items instead of defensive gear.

Above all, remember that many players seek anything to reduce the threat to their characters. It's a huge drive for them. But if they truly get what they want, the game isn't much fun anymore. Understand this drive and let it help you decide what rewards they get, how you manage encounters, and ultimately how you run your game.

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 What Is the Lazy RPG Talk Show? and Moldheim – Dragon Empire Prep Session 66.

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:

Leave at least an hour for a big boss fight.
Think about what each character enjoys doing in combat. Build encounters to suit.
Use random tables to inspire ideas.
Build set pieces with interactive features for big meaningful battles.
Consider the in-world purpose of the puzzles you include in your dungeon.
Include multiple paths and secret passages in your dungeons.
Watch the clock and pace your session to fit the time you have.

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Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Draw Small Maps

Mon, 18 May 2026 06:00:00 +0000

You don't need to get fancy when drawing maps for your RPG. Nor do you need to rely on hundreds of dollars of tiles, terrain, pre-printed maps, or computer hardware to run your games. Instead, draw small simple maps and let your players fill in the details with their limitless imaginations.

When I got back to running games in person after two years of isolation during Covid, I came to a strange conclusion – I had no idea how to handle physical maps at the table. Somehow I had managed to use maps during decades of previous in-person games but after using digital tools like Owlbear Rodeo and maps from the Dyson Logos map gallery, I couldn't remember how I was supposed to reveal maps to my in-person players the same way I could erase fog of war on a digital map.

I got better.

People use a lot of different approaches for representing maps at their tables: in-table TV sets, fancy 3D terrain, dungeon tiles, pre-printed maps, map books, paper maps with acrylic sheets over them, and more. You can hear me talk more about different options to represent maps at our gaming tables in the YouTube video Maps for In-Person Games.

For me? I went back to the old ways. I returned to the venerable Chessex battle mat and drew maps as we needed them.

In particular, I draw small maps to show off larger dungeons. These small maps aren't square perfect. They're loose approximations that show rooms and chambers as the characters explore them. Tiny little hallways connect small rooms and chambers in a loose way.

You don't need to add a lot of detail but some basic map symbols work well. I'm a fan of the Dyson Logos Map Legend with some basic shapes anyone can draw to represent things like statues, doors, firepots, beds, and stuff. Print a copy of the key out and stick it in your GM kit.

If you really want to go simple, you don't need to draw out full hallways. Instead, draw a line for a hallway and a circle or square for the larger rooms. These stick and box maps are easy to draw and still give players a clear understanding of the layout of the dungeon they're exploring.

If you're a fan of fancy pre-printed battle maps, 3D terrain, or computer hardware that lets you use virtual tabletop maps in your home game – that's awesome. You can still keep small map drawings in your GM toolbox when you need to draw a complex location in a small space without a lot of time. Give it a try.

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 Adventure Types and City of Arches Spotlight.

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:

There’s a fine line between a challenging battle and one that feels unfair.
Mix easy battles and hard battles.
Build encounters by what makes sense in the story.
Convince your group to try other RPGs by offering to run them for just a few sessions.
Add interesting monuments and terrain features to your combat encounters.
Aim for four to five players.
Ask players for potential magic items and rewards they might like. Use the answers to seed treasure a few sessions out.

Get More from Sly Flourish

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Defining RPGs with Tags

Mon, 11 May 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Over on the Lazy RPG Talk Show I talked about defining the OSR, my attempt to try to better define what separates one RPG from another.

I think it's useful for GMs to be able to describe RPGs to one another and to our groups so we know what separates one game from another and what we might expect when we run a particular game at the table. Terms like "OSR" aren’t really clear outside of Matt Finch's four principles for old school gaming:

Rulings, not rules.
Heroic, not super-heroic.
A world that doesn't conform to the power of the characters.
Player-testing, not character-mechanics driven.

I thought better defining the characteristics of RPGs can help us talk about them so today I offer what I like to call "tags". These tags help define various aspects of RPGs so we can better clarify what separates one RPG from another. The list below isn't all-inclusive or definitive. I'm sure you have your own way to describe RPGs but I think taking a shot at defining these tags might help. I also don't expect these tags to become a new IEEE standard or ALA classification guide. But, for me, I think these tags help me talk about what makes RPGs different from one another.

Genre

RPG genres are largely self-explanatory and again, these terms aren't all-inclusive.

Science Fiction
High Fantasy
Folk Fantasy
Dark Fantasy
Science Fantasy
Apocalyptic Fantasy
Horror

System

System tags describe the ruleset a game uses. Here are a few of the big ones.

5e. Based on the 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons and the various 5e system reference documents. Examples: D&D 2024, D&D 2014, Tales of the Valiant, and Level Up Advanced 5e.
Powered by the Apocalypse (PbdA). Based on the rules and style of play from Apocalypse World. Examples: Blades in the Dark (sort of), Dungeon World, and the Avatar RPG).
D20. Built on rolling a 20 sided die and likely loosely based on the 3rd edition version of D&D. Examples: 13th Age.
Mechanics Lite. The game and the characters have simple mechanics and it's fast to generate a character. Examples: Shadowdark, Cairn RPG, and FATE.
Mechanics Heavy / Crunchy. Games with more detailed mechanics for playing characters in the world. Examples: Pathfinder, 5e, Daggerheart, and Draw Steel.

Character Roles in the World

What roles do the characters have in the world? What are they like compared to common folk?

Folk Heroic. Characters are similar to the other people in the world. The characters are just the ones who decided to pick up a sword and go into a cave instead of being a farmer. Examples: Shadowdark, Cairn, and Old School Essentials.
High-Heroic. The characters are special in the world or become special after a level or so of play. They may already have had a profession before becoming an adventurer. Examples: D&D 2014, Dragonbane, and Pathfinder 1.
Super-Heroic. The characters are unique in the world and significantly more powerful than most people in the world, even at low levels. Examples: D&D 2024, Daggerheart, Draw Steel, Pathfinder 2, 13th Age, and 4th edition D&D.

Gameplay Style

How does the actual game play out? What does it look like when you play?

Narrative / Theater of the Mind. Gameplay takes place mostly in conversation, including combat. Examples: Dungeon World, Cypher / Numenera, Daggerheart, Shadowdark, and 13th Age.
Tactical / Gridded. Combat uses specific distances and involves elements that work best or require playing on a gridded battle map. Examples: D&D 4th Edition, and Draw Steel.
Player Testing. Players mostly interact with the world by describing what their character does regardless of their character's abilities or role in the world. GMs test players and ask what their characters do in the world instead of asking for rolls. Examples: Old School Essentials, Cairn RPG, and Shadowdark.
Character Testing. Players mostly interact with the world by rolling checks on the skills their characters have. Examples: Dragonbane, Draw Steel, Pathfinder, 13th Age, and 5e.
Group World Building. Players are involved in building out the world. Examples: Daggerheart.

World Interaction

How do the characters interact with the world and how does the story unfold during the game?

Scene Driven. The game mostly follows a set of scenes prepared by the GM ahead of time. Even though there's agency for the characters to determine the outcome of a scene and the direction to new scenes, most of the prep for these scenes occurred ahead of time. Scene-based games often have some form of combat encounter balancing. Examples: D&D 5e, Daggerheart, Draw Steel, Pathfinder, 13th Age, and Numenera.
Emergent. The story of the game builds from the decisions of the characters and where they go. GMs pave the path at the table based on player decisions and often the generation of scenes from random tables. Examples: Dolmenwood, and Old-School Essentials.
Procedural. The game has clear fixed procedures for combat, overland travel, dungeon exploration, downtime and more. Examples: Shadowdark, Dolmenwood, Old School Essentials.
Deadly / Dangerous. The world is a deadly and dangerous place. You may go through several characters during a campaign. Examples: Old-School Essentials, and Shadowdark.
Resource Focused. The game pays attention to rations, lighting, storage, and encumbrance. Examples: Shadowdark, Cairn, and Dolmenwood.
Resource Abstracted. The game doesn't pay much attention to rations, lighting, storage, and encumbrance. Examples: 5e, Draw Steel, Daggerheart, and 13th Age.

Applying These Tags to Games

What if we take the above tags and apply them to actual games. What does this list look like?

D&D 2024. 5e, super-heroic, scene driven, character testing.
Shadowdark. Mechanics-lite D20, folk heroic, narrative, player testing, procedural, resource focused, deadly.
13th Age. D20, super-heroic, narrative, scene driven, character testing, resource abstracted.
Shadow of the Weird Wizard. D20, high heroic, narrative, character testing, scene driven, deadly.
Dragonbane. High heroic, narrative, character testing, procedural, scene driven, resource focused.
Daggerheart. Mechanics heavy, super-heroic, narrative, scene driven, character testing, resource abstracted.
Draw Steel. Mechanics heavy, super-heroic, tactical, character testing, scene driven, resource abstracted.

What Do Your Tags Look Like?

When you think about how you define your own favorite RPGs, what terms or phrases come to mind? How do you describe your favorite game to your fellow GMs or your players?

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 YouTube video on Putrescent Hestor – Dragon Empire Prep Session 65.

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:

Resolve NPC versus NPC conflicts quickly. A D6 swinging one way or another is all you need.
Ask players where they go and what they do when spending time in town.
Ask players regularly for a magic item wish list. Drop in items as they make sense in the story.
Challenge powerful characters with waves of combatants.
Ask players for their desired arcs or character goals as you close in on the end of your campaign.
Celebrate player birthdays.
There are many styles of RPG play. Explore what style suits you and your group best.

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Buy Sly Flourish's Books

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Quantum Ogres and the Eight Steps

Mon, 04 May 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Opponents of the dreaded "quantum ogre" argue that players lose agency if you move encounters to whatever path players choose. Breaking down encounters into the separate components of the eight steps from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master – secrets, locations, NPCs, monsters, and treasure avoids moving entire pre-defined encounters from one spot to another and instead lets you build contextually relevant encounters based on the choices of the characters, the situation in the world, and what's fun for the table.

What Is a Quantum Ogre?

If you're not familiar with the concept of the quantum ogre, here's the original blog post with the term as best as I can find, and a rebuttal article for the concept. The quantum ogre defines a situation where the GM build an encounter and, no matter what path the characters choose, the characters face that encounter.

Some GMs argue moving encounters this way takes away meaningful choices for the characters. No matter what path the characters choose, they're facing the same ogre. Why have a choice at all? Others argue that the illusion of choice is what matters. We're all playing games here – who really cares if an encounter moves? Maybe that ogre encounter is a lot more interesting than whatever the GM can improvise at the moment.

What's In an Encounter

We're focusing on the ogre here, but there's more to an encounter than just an ogre. Deciding that the characters face an ogre in the woods isn't particularly interesting – other features to our encounter to make it interesting. We talked about the criteria for an interesting situation in Building Single-Encounter Situations. Components of an interesting encounter can include:

A monument or backdrop
Weather (if it makes sense)
A situation
Attitudes and behavior
A "draw" (something to interest the characters in getting involved)

We might roll randomly to determine some of these things. The Lazy GM's Resource Document includes tons of tables to help you improvise some of these components. Others you can generate using a table-less oracle die.

Maybe you pre-roll some of these concepts and maybe you improvise some of them at the table depending on what happens in the game and what paths the characters choose. It's not a quantum ogre if the characters' choices change the encounters they face.

Building Encounters with the Eight Steps

The eight steps of lazy GM prep break out your prep into components to help you improvise situations, scenes, and encounters as you need them during the game. The eight steps split prep into locations, monsters, NPCs, secrets and clues, and treasure.

Then, during the game, you can build the scene – choosing the right components for the location, situation, and best opportunity for fun at the table.

Is that a quantum ogre? Some GMs might say it is, but choosing such things randomly seems to be ok. There's no GM thumb on the scale if you're rolling randomly. You might, for example, make a 1d6 list of the monsters the characters might encounter on their journey and roll on it for any given encounter along the way. You might mix two encounters together to build an interesting situation. I think it's just as fine deciding that a particular monster makes for an interesting situation without rolling but your own opinions might vary.

I also think it's ok to put some of these situations together into different scenes and drop in those scenes where they make sense. This isn't a situation where you have only one scene you dearly love – you have several scenes – but you're choosing the one that best fits the moment.

Meaningful Choice

The key here is to value the players' choices. You don't want to set up meaningless choices where the characters pick a path and their choice doesn't matter. When improvising scenes from your prep, ensure the scene you improvise benefits from that choice. Did they go into the wild woods to avoid being seen by corrupt guards along the main road? Show them some wild creatures and an overgrown monument with some lost treasure. Did they decide to brave the main road regardless of the corrupt guards? Let them run into some of those corrupt guards threatening some strange pilgrims carrying a grim reliquary and see how they react to it.

Don't ignore player choices – build off of them.

Prepare to Improvise

The real fun of tabletop RPGs comes when no one knows what's going to happen and we discover it together. A mix of tools, preparation, and improvisation helps us build meaningful and interesting situations without taking away the agency of the players to choose the paths they choose.

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 The Simplest Quest Model and Ossuary of Mot Part 2 – Dragon Empire Prep Session 64.

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. My list shrunk a little bit so I'm doing fourteen of them this week! Here are this week's tips:

Use maps and terrain for exploration and roleplaying as well as combat.
Use visuals to tie players to the world you're describing.
Write the names and a quick description of improvised NPCs the minute they show up.
Run mid-campaign session zeroes to get everyone back on board if things slip away.
Use "pause for a minute" to ensure players are behind the actions of other characters.
Embrace players who run into danger but ensure other players are on board with their antics.
Write a short list of things that happened in a session right after the session completes.
Build situations with locations, inhabitants, events taking place, and hooks to draw in the characters.
Bring back popular NPCs. Where are they now?
Good situations have several ways to get into them, several ways they can play out, and several possible conclusions.
Two groups engaging one another at a location is a great lazy framework for a dynamic situation.
Foreshadow the coming doom.
Prep the tools you need to improvise challenges, threats, monsters, NPCs, and encounters.
Build playlists of ambient music you can play behind your game – combat, suspenseful, and relaxing.

Get More from Sly Flourish

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Every Roll Doesn’t Need a Mechanical Outcome

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Not every roll needs a mechanical outcome. Sometimes a successful or unsuccessful roll can, instead, result in a fictional outcome without a mechanical component.

As GM's we're drawn to the mechanical outcomes of the rolls players make in a game. There needs to be a consequence for a roll – good or bad – and that consequence needs to matter. Mechanical outcomes feel like they matter.

Let's look at overland exploration and travel. Lots of RPGs have some form of overland exploration and travel systems. The characters take on roles like pathfinder, scout, quartermaster, leader, and potentially others. When the characters travel, you have your players roll checks to see how well they do. If they roll well, they succeed in their job – traveling without being detected, finding potential dangers along the journey, following the right path, and not getting dehydrated along the way.

If they fail, we're drawn to include some sort of mechanical detriment. Maybe they suffer a level of exhaustion. Maybe they can't rest. Maybe they get some form of toe-fungus that affects their movement speed.

Sometimes, though, we can just describe what happens based on the roll – good or bad. If they do a good job, we describe what went well. If they do a bad job, we describe what went poorly. It doesn't need a mechanical result. We're telling stories in our RPGs – not just doing math and filling out simulated income tax forms. The story matters. Players feel it when their characters fail even if they don't get a -2 to their attack rolls.

The idea of story-focused results on rolls goes beyond travel scenes as well. Maybe you have a character who wants to climb to an upper story window. It's not the most superheroic activity but it can be challenging. So you ask the player for a roll. Typically you'd say if they fail that they crash to the bottom and don't make it up. That just steals their action, though. They can likely try again the next round but is that really interesting?

How about instead using the results of the role to determine how well they make it up there. On a high roll, they hop right up and smash through the window like an action star. On a low roll, they scramble up, kicking at the tiles and pinching their pinky in the window jam. But they still make it up either way.

There's a concept in RPGs called "failing forward" in which, whether a character succeeds or fails at a task, the story still moves forward. Focusing less on the mechanical outcome of a successful or failed check and more on the outcome in the story gives you ample opportunities to fail forward. A thief might have trouble picking a lock (after their player rolled a failed check) but they still get it open. It just took longer and some noise might have put some nearby guards on notice.

One way to think about whether it's worth tying a mechanic to a roll is whether it's actually fun for a player. Using rolls, particularly bad rolls, to flavor the story is often more fun for players than just applying a mechanical punishment for their bad luck. This feeling is especially true if it takes away from a character's ability to do something. Not being able to climb up to a window isn't particularly interesting or fun. Succeeding, but not with a lot of grace, is funny and doesn't take away their agency.

Use the dice to change up the story as it unfolds at the table and let go of the need to continually tie mechanics to every roll the players make.

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 Play Solo RPGs – Lazy GM Tip and Ossuary of Mot – Dragon Empire Prep Session 63.

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:

Avoid detrimental effects players had no chance to avoid.
Bring back long lost NPCs and villains.
Reward magic items that extend a character’s breadth instead of depth.
Let the flow of a battle follow the story taking place.
Use a mix of theater of the mind, quick sketches, more detailed battle maps, and fancy terrain to fill out different combat environments.
Prep the tools to help you run improvised combat encounters.
Spend time understanding how monsters work in your game and tweak them to suit the fun at your table.

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House Rules from Various 5es

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 06:00:00 +0000

I've talked about the beautiful mess of 5e before. With so many different 5e-based RPGs and supplements available, we can build our own ideal 5e from the components of several systems and hundreds of supplements. I recently ran what I call my “3x5e” game which included characters from D&D 2014, D&D 2024, and Level Up Advanced 5e running in a single 1st to 20th level game. It worked fine but I don't recommend it. Instead, pick a core 5e system to use as your baseline and then include components from other systems or supplements to augment your core 5e rules.

Each of four big 5e systems (D&D 2014, D&D 2024, Level Up Advanced 5e, and Tales of the Valiant) have their own take on the core 5e rules and each system has components we might want to bring to our game.

Today we're going to look at some modular components from these systems you might slide into your own 5e game, whatever version you happen to be using.

Luck from Tales of the Valiant

Tales of the Valiant has my favorite take on the core mechanic of inspiration — "luck". You can read about Luck on page 130 of the Black Flag system reference document for Tales of the Valiant.

Characters gain luck, once per turn, when they fail an attack roll or saving throw. Characters with luck can spend one or more luck points to add +1 to a D20 roll for each luck spent or spend three luck points to re-roll a D20 roll. If you acquire more than five luck points, you have to roll 1d4 and reset your luck points to the result.

Bringing luck into a system that expects inspiration (or heroic inspiration as it’s called in D&D 2024) might take a little tweaking. Generally, if a character gains heroic inspiration, give them three luck instead.

Luck is completely player-facing which means it takes the whole question of inspiration out of the GM's hands. I've used it now in all my 5e games for years and I love it.

Doom from Tales of the Valiant

Doom is a cheat card for GMs to ensure monsters and villains meet their intention in the fiction of a game. I renamed them into "Dreadful Blessings" in my own games but they do the same thing. In my games, particular villains start with some number of Dreadful Blessings. The GM can spend a Dreadful Blessing to break some aspect of the rules – giving the villain an extra action, removing a debilitating effect, shattering a wall of force, recharging and re-using a breath weapon, and so on. GMs shouldn't use Dreadful Blessings to simply negate a character's agency, the villain only has so many of them, and they're visible to the players so even though they’re a great big cheat tool, they still have limits.

I've used dreadful blessings in dozens of 5e games now, all the way to 20th level. Not only do they take a huge amount of weight off of my shoulders as a GM, allowing me to tune monsters on the fly, but players actually like watching them get burned down as they battle the monster. I swear by them.

Supply from Level Up Advanced 5e

Resource management isn't a huge part of 5e, being a more heroic to super-heroic fantasy RPG. Eventually characters get ways to handle all the food and water they need.

If you want to add a more realistic element of resource management to your 5e game, A5e's "supply" works well. On top of their normal equipment, characters can carry a number of days worth of supplies equal to their strength score. They may find ways to acquire more supply as they travel, but they expend a supply for each day's travel they take.

This feature doesn't remove characters' abilities to acquire supplies magically, but it's a good and easy way to manage rations and resources without a lot of overhead.

Havens from Level Up Advanced 5e

In Level Up Advanced 5e, a "haven" is a safe place to rest without risk of being attacked and the only place you can recover from two or more levels of exhaustion. We can expand this concept, however, to make it clear that there are good places to rest and bad places to rest. You might state that characters can only take long rests in places of reasonable safety — a "haven". Even spells like tiny hut might not provide enough safety in a truly dangerous place — enemies will set up all sorts of traps and fire them off the minute the hut drops.

Requiring a safe place to rest is an expansion of how havens work, but thinking of different degrees of restful places is a good way to have a dial on the pacing of the game.

Exhaustion from D&D 2024

The D&D 2024 exhaustion rules are, for me, a vast improvement over the finicky and cliff-like exhaustion rules of original 5e. The new rules are easy to understand: you take a penalty to D20 checks equal to 2x your level of exhaustion, lose 5 feet of movement per level of exhaustion, and die if you hit six levels (I bet players would prefer a character death instead of -12 on an attack roll). Exhaustion is severe this way. You could make a lighter-weight version of exhaustion, customizing it into its own status effect, and having it be only -1 per level of exhaustion. You could even give exhaustion-like effects to specters and vampires to make them feel a little more like the old-school versions that drained levels.

Surprise from D&D 2024

Surprise in most 5e games gives the surprising group an entire extra round of actions, often with advantage. Given the high impact of the action economy in 5e already, an entire round of extra actions can trivialize many battles before they begin. D&D 2024 simplifies surprise by giving the surprising group advantage on initiative. It’s a simple and elegant solution that doesn’t trivialize battles but still gives the surprising adversaries a good leg up in a fight.

Variable Ability Checks from D&D 2014

D&D 2024 switched over to a more rigid action structure for most ability checks. There are "search" actions and "hide" actions – each with a standard DC of 15. Tool-use also focuses on specific DCs. This change makes it easier to adjudicate these checks but removes the situational application of difficulty classes baked into 5e. Instead, you can ignore these base DCs and stick to the old way of just picking a DC based on the situation and having players roll against that number.

Hiding is a good example, the new D&D 2024 hide rule requires making a DC 15 check to hide from anything. This check doesn't make a lot of sense if you're in the forest by yourself. The old way had you roll your stealth check and note the number to match against the passive Perception of nearby monsters. That made more sense to me and it's easy to slide back into our own rules.

Just a Taste

These examples are just a taste of the sorts of things we can bring into our 5e games from any 5e system. You can harvest species, spells, magic items, subclasses, backgrounds, feats, monsters, and more from your favorite 5e systems and supplements and build the 5e that works best for you and your group.

Build your ideal 5e.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Last week Michelle and I took a much needed vacation so there’s no new videos or podcast links from 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:

Scale boss monsters with the number of characters by increasing hit points and numbers of actions.
Show players conflicts between multiple NPC or monster factions.
Set up scenes as situations in which the characters can involve themselves in several ways.
Expose heroic tales and folklore through monuments and ancient decorations.
Prepare a named NPC the characters can meet and talk to in each scene — even combat. Who’s the likely survivor?
Reward magic items that extend the characters’ capabilities and options instead of boosting the one thing they’re already good at.
Use visuals whenever you can to draw players into the world and make it feel real.

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Let's Learn Together

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Note: This article was originally posted on 21 December 2015.

"He never assumes that he knows more than you do. He says: 'We'll learn this together.'"

Annette Kowalski, Bob Ross's Strange Afterlife

Mastery means different things to different people. To some, mastery is an end goal, a level of proficiency that shows one's true capability and understanding of something. To others, mastery is a path, a continuing road one travels to improve at something.

The ideas I post here on Sly Flourish aren't the end of understanding how we run RPGs. They're a beginning. Every article, every tip, and every idea is an experiment based on a hypothesis.

My style of writing can give the impression of direction and finality. It's easy to pick up "you should do this". Vigor is a byproduct of brevity, to turn a phrase from EB White.

But the real theme of the tips I share is "let's try this out and see how it works". Sometimes these ideas work well and we can continue to iterate around them. Sometimes they don't. Some GM tips work well for some GMs but not others.

There are over eight hundred articles on SlyFlourish.com going back to 2009. I guarantee some of those ideas don't work. There are a lot of ideas here. Some ideas still work and I continue to iterate on them. Some ideas we tried, discussed, and later tossed aside.

The ideas on this site don't live in a vacuum. These articles live beside hundreds of thousands of other sources of great GMing ideas. The last fifty years have given us countless ideas for running great games to sift through and find new golden nuggets to bring to our own games.

None of us are ever done learning. There aren't any real "master" game masters. We're all trying things out every game. Some of us play a lot. Some of us think about it a lot. Some GMs are great. Some aren't. But none of us are done unless we just plain quit. We're all learning from each other and, hopefully, we're all keeping open ears and an open mind so we can all grow.

You won't find an end-state of game mastery on Sly Flourish even if it sounds like it sometimes.

Instead, we're all going on this journey together.

Let's learn together.

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 YouTube video on the Journey to Starhoof – Dragon Empire Prep Session 62.

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:

Let NPCs evolve based on events and conversations. Don’t presume their arc.
Try different games.
Talk to your players about what they love and what they don't dig in your RPG of choice. Seek out those games that bring fun for the entire group.
Nothing is official except what you run at your table.
Play lots of games with lots of people.
Learn from the world and bring what's valuable to your own table.
Keep things simple.
Focus on what matters for your next game.

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Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

What Separates Adventure Types?

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 06:00:00 +0000

A while back I wrote a series of articles talking about adventure types. I got the idea from the excellent short book by Robin Laws called Adventure Crucible. Here are those articles:

I've been thinking about adventure types again, wondering if these nine adventure types are the right ones or if any common types are missing.

But why bother defining these types of adventures at all? Why does it matter?

I think defining adventure types matters because it changes how we prepare them, how we run them, the common problems we might have with them, and how we solve those problems. Those factors are the criteria that, I think, separate adventure types from one another and are worth understanding specifically.

For example, how we prepare and run an infiltration and heist adventure is different from how we prepare and run a dungeon crawl. These two types of adventures can feel similar. Both take place in big sprawling locations. Both have the characters moving from room to room, facing challenges. Both have goals the characters want to meet.

But dungeon crawls aren't the same as infiltrations and heists. In infiltration and heist adventures, the characters often have more information about the location they're infiltrating. They have a plan and approach they can figure out ahead of time. Characters likely want to be much sneakier during infiltration and heists than they are crawling around in a dungeon. The location in a heist is often more dynamic than that in a dungeon. Monsters may run from room to room alerting their friends in a dungeon crawl but often each room is its own little situation and the characters aren't as worried about blasting a bunch of goblins with a super-loud thunderwave than they would be while breaking into a noble's manor.

We prepare dungeons differently than we do infiltration and heist adventures. We prepare investigations and mysteries different from roleplaying and intrigue adventures, even though they share similarities.

We run these adventure types differently too. The roles assigned to the characters for overland exploration and travel aren't the same as the roles characters have when crawling through a dungeon.

Adventure types give us a clear structure, most of the time, of the things we can focus on during our prep and when we run our games.

GMs love clear structures and processes. This passion for procedures is the secret of the eight steps of Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master – the eight steps give us a process and structure for the limitless possibilities we face when preparing a game for our friends. It brings the infinite stories we might create down to the practical things we need at our table to help us share those stories.

Adventure types give us process and structure. They guide us on where we should spend our time during our prep and what procedures we can follow when it comes to running our games.

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 YouTube video on The Death of Kal – Dragon Empire Prep Session 61.

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:

Watch out for too many downward beats in a dungeon crawl. Add fun and useful encounters as well.
Add interesting NPCs in dungeon crawls.
Spread attacks to different characters even if the dice have you picking on the same one.
Paint dungeons with interesting secrets and clues about its history and previous inhabitants.
Alter fun-sucking abilities for a more enjoyable game.
Damage is the universal scary mechanic.
Let the characters hunt monsters in a dungeon instead of it always being the other way around.

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Because of X, You Know Y

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Connect characters to the fiction with second-person narration:

"Because of X, you know Y."

"Because of X, you know Y" is a simple model to connect characters to the fiction of your RPGs. In this model "X" is a characteristic of the character such as their class, background, culture, ability, or skill. "X" can be anything about their character that means they know something. "Y" is the thing they know or learn, such as a secret or clue.

Because you're a hunter, you know an unnatural corruption grows in the Magna Woods characterized by a strange violet hue.

Because you're a knight, you know that the dragon emperor Eledain defeated the demon Sathmog with a sword empowered with part of his own soul.

Because you're trained in Arcana, you know that the glyphs on this stone can be manipulated to enhance magical spells.

Breaking Away from Context-less Lore Dumps

GMs often have a bad habit of dumping lore on players without much context. There's all sorts of history we want to impart on the characters. We have all kinds of world knowledge we want our players to absorb.

But such lore is often disconnected from their characters. We just spew out the lore and we're done with it.

Instead, we can make the spewing of such lore an active connection to the character. It's not us spewing lore, it's their own characters recalling it. The characters know this stuff because of choices their players made in who they are. They're learning stuff because of the skills they chose, the backgrounds they picked up, the cultures their character came from, and so on.

The character is an active participant in the spewing of lore because it's a part of them.

Step One of the Eight Steps

We have many options when reviewing the characters in step 1 of the eight steps of lazy GM Prep such as reviewing:

Their names (can you remember them all off the top of your head?)
Their classes, backgrounds, species and other details.
What powers they have that the players like.
What monsters might act as good lightning rods for them.
What magic items they have and what they might want in the future.
What stories came up during their campfire tales.
The stars and wishes of their players.

and other related things.

We can also think about what their characters know based on who they are and how that might manifest during the game. These days, I focus on connecting characters to the game through character-driven secrets when prepping my games. What might the characters know about what's happening in this next session?

Connecting Characters to the Fiction

Changing how we dump lore – moving it from a passive description from GM to players to something their characters know and pass to one another – can have a profound effect on the game. Instead of sitting back, mouths slightly open as you describe the five inner rings of the sinister network of the Aurum, your players can get excited about the information they know because of the choices they made. A passive lore dump becomes knowledge that connects their characters directly to the fiction of the game.

Because of X, you know Y.

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 Dragonbane Review on Youtube.

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:

Let NPCs evolve based on events and conversations. Don’t presume their arc.
Clarify when the players can trust an NPC to avoid pushing the story into deep tangents.
Let downed villains offer vital information to save their lives.
Set things up so the story at the table can surprise you.
Complicate battles with waves of monsters.
Reward powerful single use magic items.
Show players the evolution of the world from the actions and reputations of their characters.

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Buy Sly Flourish's Books

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

General Purpose Domains

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 06:00:00 +0000

While custom faction lists help you flavor NPCs, locations, monuments, items, and other things in your game; sometimes you don't have a clear list of such factions ready to go.

Here's a list of forty generic domains – they could be gods, 13th Age style Icons, or any other sort of flavor you want to add to your game. Use these lists to build your own pantheon or use them as a guide to choose gods from an existing pantheon from the Forgotten Realms, Midgard, Eberron, or even real-world gods if they suit your campaign.

Roll on these domains to flavor items, locations, monuments, NPCs, or any other objects in your game.

Major Domains

Light
Dark
Life
Death
Nature
War
Trickery
Knowledge
Tempest
Harvest
The Hells
Love
Fire
Water
Earth
Air
The Sea
Undeath
Magic
Creation

Minor Domains

Murder
The Abyss
Serpents
Insects
The Void
Blood
The Hearth
Stars
The Hunt
Beauty
Music
Prophecy
The Wilds
Seelie Fey
Unseelie Fey
Shadow
Wine
Metalwork
Revelry
Beasts

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 What's Your Villain's Backup Plan? – Lazy GM Tip and Save the Sultana – Dragon Empire Prep Session 60.

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:

Reward unique magic items that expand a character’s capabilities such as area attack spells for a fighter or healing for a rogue.
Build scenes from the lore of the world.
What hooks the characters to get involved in a situation? Secrets? Loot? Heroism?
Reskin existing monster stat blocks with the flavor of whatever your devious mind can imagine.
Do mid-campaign check-ins to see how players enjoy the campaign you’re running.
Use campfire tales to hear what characters think about from their past and future.
What is the potential non-combat solution to any given hostile situation?

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Buy Sly Flourish's Books

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Experiences Running a 20th Level Multi-5e Game

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Nine years ago I talked about my first experience running D&D 2014 from 1st to 20th level. Recently I ran an eighteen month long 1st to 20th level 5e game set in the City of Arches. It began while the City of Arches sourcebook was still in draft and, by the time we finished, the book was in people's hands all over the world.

We began this campaign using Level Up Advanced 5e as our core 5e variant. Neither D&D 2024 nor Tales of the Valiant had come out yet and I wanted to try something different than D&D 2014. About halfway through, when those other 5e systems had come out, I opened up the campaign so players could shift their characters to those other systems if they chose. Some chose to switch, some didn't. One new player brought his D&D 2014 character in. We didn't have any Tales of the Valiant characters but we did have three D&D 2024 characters, three Level Up Advanced 5e characters, and one D&D 2014 character for the rest of the campaign, up to 20th level.

I learned a lot from this campaign and I wanted to share my most noteworthy experiences.

Running Multiple 5es Worked Fine

You'd think it would be a huge mess to run three separate 5e variants at the same table but it worked fine. It helped that I employed one of the most powerful lazy GM tips: not giving too much of a shit. Sure, the rules sometimes clashed but we worked through it. Drinking a potion was a bonus action for some characters but an action for others. The differences between characters and their rules weren't hard to figure out and we all got a laugh out of them.

Rarely did it matter that we had a mix of 5e characters. Players enjoyed their own PC rulesets and the rest of the mechanics worked fine. We did ignore a bunch of Level Up Advanced 5e rules after a while since they didn't affect most characters. Supply didn't matter too much and we never played with weapon breakage or masterwork weapons.

Otherwise, everything ran fine with characters from multiple 5e systems – no weirder than running characters from one system with a lot of subclasses from different sources.

Running this “3x5e” campaign proved to me that D&D 2024 and all the other 5e variants are compatible enough that I don't think we have to worry about it.

Mashing up all this great 5e content from so many different publishers is what I call embracing the beautiful mess of 5e. 5e is a resilient RPG platform with hundreds of publishers and thousands of products. We GMs can use them all together to build the 5e we want for our table.

Luck and Doom are Awesome

While no players used Tales of the Valiant for their characters, I did use two features of Kobold Press's take on 5e in my game, which have now become staples in every 5e game I run: luck and doom.

Luck replaces inspiration in 5e. Instead of awarding inspiration, characters gain luck once per turn when they miss on an attack or saving throw. They can carry up to five luck points at a time. If they get a sixth luck point, they roll 1d4 and that's how many luck they have. They can use one or more luck points to add +1 to a D20 roll or use three luck points to re-roll a D20 roll.

Luck is completely player-facing so now it's an element of the game I need not worry about except to ask if players have luck when they're close to hitting a target or not. It's fantastic.

Luck takes away the pain of missing consistently because however poor you do, you’re always gaining luck. It’s a great little upward beat on the downward beats of failing attacks or saves.

I also brought in Doom Points from Tales of the Valiant into my 3x5e game (and now all my 5e games). I called it "Dreadful Blessings" to give it some in-world flavor. You can read all about Dreadful Blessings to learn more about how they work.

Dreadful blessings completely changed my relationship with high-level 5e. I no longer need to worry about all of the characters' gamebreaking mechanics because now, I too have a gamebreaking mechanic to ensure boss monsters meet their intended impact in the story. And, most importantly, players liked it. They recognized the value of it and also enjoyed it when they managed to burn away a boss's dreadful blessings – something I never saw players bother to do when facing monsters with legendary resistances.

I used dreadful blessings all the way to 20th level and every major boss they fought met their intention in the fiction – they were deadly and scary without feeling cheap.

Forge of Foes for Improvisational Monsters

I used a lot of Forge of Foes guidelines to improvise monsters during my game and they worked great. Forge of Foes let me improvise monsters often and care less when they got ripped up with powerful character abilities. Usually some core stats and a single special feature was enough for non-boss monsters.

Modern Monsters Hit Hard

I also used a lot of monsters from the 2025 D&D Monster Manual and they held up well. Monsters from the D&D 2025 Monster Manual monsters pour out damage and they're easy to run. The 2025 Monster Manual was one of my favorite RPG products of 2025.

I'm Ready for Something Lighter

I love 5e and I really enjoyed my 20th level 5e game but I was ready to run some lighter RPGs like Dragonbane, Dolmenwood, Shadowdark, 13th Age, or Shadow of the Weird Wizard. Our group ended up with Dragonbane which I love and I'm still running my Tales of the Valiant game, of course.

I’m sure, when I'm ready, I'll be running 5e again.

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 is last week's question and answer.

5e Threats of Death

Talk Show Links

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

Last week I also posted a YouTube video on Journey to Valera – Dragon Empire Prep Session 59

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:

Add layers of monsters to dungeons and lairs. Who hunts the hunters?
Include two or three factions to dungeons so players have groups to work against other groups.
Mix scenes and pacing between combat, exploration, and roleplaying.
Try both offering your own game summary and having players summarize. See which works for you.
Roll with unexpected comedy.
Scale monsters so they meet their fictional intent. Are they as dangerous as they should be?
Refine the tools you need to run your game. Enjoy the ritual of prepping them before a session.

Get More from Sly Flourish

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Play Solo RPGs

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Solo RPGs are a fantastic way to engage in the tabletop RPG hobby. They stretch your imagination in ways you wouldn't expect, help you get better at improvisation for the games you run with your friends, and let you capture the joy of being a kid again.

I've been enamored with Dragonbane but I hadn’t played it when I first got it. I picked up the incredible boxed set which not only includes a full copy of the core book but a solo toolkit as well. In about an hour I built a character and ran a quick scenario all by myself.

And it was awesome.

I'm not a stranger to solo RPGs but I haven't played a lot of them — mostly Ironsworn and Thousand Year-Old Vampire. Shadowdark also has the free Solodark rules for playing Shadowdark by yourself but I haven't tried it myself yet. Though I don't play them often, I really love solo RPGs.

Playing solo RPGs also makes you a better game master and potentially a happier person.

Making Sense from Randomness

Games like Dragonbane and Ironsworn focus heavily on the idea of prompts and oracles. They don't spell out every potential outcome for you like a Choose Your Own Adventure book might. You roll dice and they seed ideas in your head – ideas you piece together into your own story. You wouldn't come up with this story just sitting and thinking about it, though. The story comes from your brain's desire to put pieces of a puzzle together and fill in blanks with a framework fueled by die rolls and random tables.

It's wild to experience when a solo RPG really comes together – piecing stories together in your brain from a few rolls on tables – but it's exactly the sort of thing we do when we GMs prep for our group games.

While we're playing our solo RPGs, we're improvising the entire session from a few dice rolls and some prompts in a book. This cross training can improve our improvisation skills at our group-focused RPGs – building cohesive stories out of a bunch of ideas, descriptions, and random dice rolls at the table.

Being a Kid Again

Children love to live in a world of imagination but we tend to lose that drive when we get older. We consume fiction, but we don’t often produce such fiction. Many of us enjoy the feeling of letting our imaginations wander when we're playing RPGs with a group but doing so by yourself is a different experience. We don't have to take in fiction from others – the fiction comes from us. It isn't a superior experience. It's just different. But it’s really fun to experience.

When I sat down to play Dragonbane by myself, I built a whole little adventure story in my head in 40 minutes – one in which my heroic scholar, Illyriana the Plump and Learned, convinced a harpy to let her go by giving her a bedroll, fighting a bunch of skeletons coming out of sarcophagi while looking for a secret entrance, stumbling through a bunch of fire traps face first, and eventually taking on some cultists attempting to summon a demon. Illyriana wasn't successful. She was captured by the cultists and put on the slab for sacrifice as the demon stepped into the world. But my sage had one more trick up her sleeve. With a well-placed Myths and Legends check, she spoke to the demon using the demon's true name and, with a successful persuasion check, swore her allegiance to the demon in exchange for her life. The demon made quick work of the cultists before disappearing into smoke that filled Illyriana's lungs. She saved her life but gave up her soul.

Quite dramatic for a 40 minute story mostly in my head but it reminded me exactly of the sort of fun games I played with myself in my earliest roleplaying memories in the late 80s.

It's a rare thing to capture your childhood like that.

No Substitute for a Group

Playing RPGs solo is a fantastic way to enjoy the hobby, stretch our imagination, improve our improvisation skills, and recapture the joy of playing by ourselves. It's no substitute for the critical importance of getting together with our friends. Instead, solo RPGs are a wonderful augment for this wonderful hobby – letting us enjoy the feeling of building fantastic stories in those quiet moments where playing with a group just isn't possible.

Play solo RPGs.

If you want to hear me talk more about solo RPGs, listen to my appearance on the Solo Roleplayers Podcast.

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 Lazy 5e and D&D Magic Item Crafting and Journey to Siwal – Dragon Empire Prep Session 58.

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:

Let players flash back to town if they forgot to buy something they wanted last time they were there.
Keep the pacing moving in town sequences so it doesn’t end up being one conversation after another.
Consider non-combat alternatives to random encounters.
Build situations that can be approached with combat, subterfuge, or negotiation.
Wrap locations and encounters in the lore of your world.
Let players know when one of their special abilities might be a benefit to a given situation.
Understand the statistical relationship between characters and monsters. Tweak monsters to suit your group and game.

Get More from Sly Flourish

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Do the Eight Steps Work for Other RPGs?

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Yes.

I wrote the eight steps from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master at the beginning of the era of D&D 5th edition but, at the time, I had played a lot of other RPGs that sprung up between 4th and 5th edition D&D. Though the steps assume a single GM builds, prepares, and runs campaigns, adventures, situations, and sessions; the steps support systems with many different rulesets.

Which Systems Work with the Eight Steps? Which Don't?

The eight steps can work with nearly any RPG where there's a single game master and one or more players. Games with more free-flowing narratives in which the players build big pieces of the story as you play might not work as well. In my own experiences, I've used the eight steps to run over a dozen different RPGs and only Blades in the Dark gave me any trouble because of how the moves shifted the reality of the story. Blades had a fair bit of player-driven narrative that made solidifying steps like locations, monsters, NPCs, and rewards difficult. Even still, steps like the strong start and secrets and clues still worked fine in my Blades games.

But the eight steps worked for just about every other RPG I’ve run and I’ve heard the same feedback from many other GMs. I wouldn't expect the eight steps to work for solo RPGs, nor would they work with more open-ended story games like Fiasco. But for games with a somewhat pre-defined narrative hosted by a single GM and multiple players, the eight steps work fine.

Let's look at each of the eight steps and consider how they might work for different RPGs.

The Characters

Assuming your RPG has the players take on the role of the characters and, assuming you know who those characters are during your prep, this first step is almost always a useful one. Spending time considering who the characters are, what their hooks are into the next session you're planning to run, what story-based and mechanical features they possess – all of these things are useful to review for just about any RPG.

The Strong Start

Games begin somewhere and ideally that beginning draws players into the game. This step is heavily independent from the system you chose. Somehow you have to bring your players into the game, whatever that game is, and a strong start is a great way to do it. The strong start is largely universal.

Scenes

Some games definitely have a more free-flowing narrative where you don't pre-define your list of scenes. But the “scenes” step was always intended to be a loose list on the things that might happen — not a hard checklist of events that will happen. “Scenes” is the catch-all step with a great deal of flexibility whatever RPG you happen to be running.

Secrets and Clues

Any time a game has opportunities for the characters to learn something about the world, about the situation, about their adversaries, or about their allies — secrets and clues are useful. Some games might lean into them more than others but almost all games have lore the characters learn as they play. Mysteries and investigative games need a good deal of useful secrets and clues connected enough to bring the characters from one point in the story to the other. In other systems, secrets might be the backdrop painted on the walls of the location they explore. But secrets always give our games texture and I haven't found a system yet where defining ten things the characters might learn wasn't a useful step to prepare.

Locations

Adventures (or sessions) have to take place somewhere. Whether you're delving into dungeons deep or investigating the mysteries at Miskatonic University before the coming of the Great Old Ones, you need places the characters go to and investigate. What material you outline in your list of locations might change depending on the game you're running but having a list of possible locations, especially a list that lets you choose the right location depending on the choices of the characters, is useful in most RPGs.

NPCs

The characters meet NPCs in most RPGs. Listing those NPCs with important characteristics and the hooks is a common activity, regardless of the system you choose. What you note down may change, but listing NPCs the characters interact with is as common as having places to go.

Monsters

Not all RPGs have the same types of adversaries. The monsters list is mostly there to support lists of combat-focused adversaries and, for some games, it might not make sense. This step is a good example of the flexibility of the eight steps. Each step lets you note what you need for the session you're going to run and enough flexibility to cut a step if you don't need it. Often you'll want a list of adversaries but sometimes you might not. If you don't need it, cut it.

Rewards

Not all RPGs have tangible rewards. Some games have currency. Some have magic items. Some have nothing at all. Like monsters, you'll have to decide if it's worth listing out rewards the characters might acquire. This step might include useful items for the continuation of their quests and investigations or it might include fancy weapons that enhance character abilities. This step might also list out character boons that aren’t physical treasure if your game focuses more on character growth through less tangible boons. This step captures a common element to many RPGs, but not all of them.

Modeling the Simulated World

When we think about what the eight steps capture, they don’t capture game mechanics. They mostly capture things in the fictional world we build and explore with our players. This focus on in-world prep often makes the steps ubiquitous across RPGs which, at their core, are about exploring fictional worlds and situations with our friends. Thus, the eight steps are useful in almost any RPG you happen to be running.

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 Rolling for Monster Targets and The Sarklan Desert – Dragon Empire Prep Session 57.

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:

Handing out loot is a strong start your players will love.
Find or design low power magic trinkets you can reward often.
Tie magic items to the lore of your world.
Have monsters surrender when they reach zero HP instead of just dying.
Understand the difficulty dials for your RPG of choice.
Offer three options and have players choose their path at the end of a session.
Write down rules questions and look them up after the game. Make a ruling during the game so you keep things moving.

Get More from Sly Flourish

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Greed, Heroism, and Wonder

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Motivate characters to go on quests by pulling on their drives of greed, heroism, and wonder.

What motivates the characters to go on adventures? Why would they risk their lives delving into dungeons deep and facing lethal traps and brutal monsters instead of staying safe in their village tending to the goats?

There are lots of motivations but here are three big ones:

Greed. The characters want riches and treasure. They want tangible rewards.

Heroism. The characters want to save the world, protect the weak, and thwart evil. They want to make the world a better place.

Wonder. The characters are driven by a desire to explore the unknown, learn lost secrets, and uncover that which has lain buried in the ground for thousands of years.

These three hooks can help motivate the characters in your games to go on adventures. You can reinforce these hooks during your session zero ensuring that characters have some reason to go on adventures. Ideally, they might be motivated by all three.

Tying Motivations to Quests

When we put quests in front of the characters, we can ensure we're tying in one or more of these motivations – again, ideally all three. Let's give it a shot by generating a quest with some random tables found in the Lazy GM's Resource Document.

Halia Oxbelly, a dwarf archaeologist, wants the characters to disable a flooded serpentine glass eye at a giant-kin ziggurat inhabited by animated plants.

What motivates the characters to go there? How about the potential for lost and undiscovered treasure (greed), the satisfaction of uncovering the lost lore of the ziggurat and its giant-kin creators (wonder), and the need to prevent the kudzu-like growth of the animated plants due to the flooded serpentine glass eye (heroism).

Hopefully one or more of those goals is enough to get the characters off to that giant-kin ziggurat!

Other Motivations

Greed, heroism, and wonder are three strong motivations but there are many others. Here's a list of twenty other possible motivations:

Revenge
Personal discovery
Fulfilling a family obligation
Seeking an heirloom
Burying a secret
Running from something
Hunting someone
Fulfilling a vow or prophecy
Building an organization
Dethroning tyranny
Revealing a secret
Curing a curse
Saving someone
Building a reputation
Protecting fellow adventurers
Ending a threat
Acquiring a trophy
Proving one's self
Escaping from somewhere
Enacting justice

Each character may have their own motivations driving them towards adventure. Again, you and your players should ensure that their characters' motivation leads towards the quests you plan to put in front of them during your session zero.

The Continuing Motivation of Greed

Another consideration for a character's motivation is that they continue to motivate. If a character's motivation is simply to earn enough to live comfortably, that puts an end-state on their motivation. Once they earned enough money to retire, why would they still continue to go out on adventures? Wonder and heroism are endless but greed may not be. Luckily, it seems greed as a motivator in the real world has no end and it need not end for the characters either. The accumulation of wealth and treasure can continue indefinitely.

Implanting Motivations in Characters and Quests

Having three big motivators for adventure – greed , heroism, and wonder – gives us a powerful tool we can use in two places: character creation and quest creation. Keeping these motivations in mind helps us tie characters to quests so players can always answer the question about why their characters would partake into such dangerous adventures.

Motivate the characters to go on adventures with greed, heroism, and wonder.

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 Hack Counterspell and Sel'ket's Sting – Dragon Empire Prep Session 56.

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:

Watch out for monster combos that make it impossible for characters to break free.
Use a monster’s action denial abilities sparingly. Players want their characters to do stuff.
Know the dials to increase and decrease monster threat for your RPG of choice.
Get as quickly as you can to “what do you do?”
Offer meaningful choices.
Be ready for NPCs to join that party or have a good reason that they can’t or won’t.
Give dungeons multiple entrances.

Get More from Sly Flourish

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Use Slashes and Xs to Track Damage

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 06:00:00 +0000

My friend Elizabeth at Patchwork Paladin had a cool idea to use roman numerals to track damage done to monsters. I've modified this idea slightly, tracking damage done to monsters with /s and Xs.

We already have a a few common ways to track damage done to monsters:

Subtract damage from the monster's hit points on every hit.
Add up total damage done to the monster.
Use some type of digital tool to track damage.

I've used the second one, tracking damage done to monsters, for a long time. For some reason, adding is easier than subtracting, so keeping a tally of damage done to the monster isn't too hard.

But lately I've switched to using /s and Xs. Here's how it works:

Mark a / for five damage.
Cross the /, turning it into an X, for 10 damage.
Keep a separate tally of |s for each individual point.
When the | tally hits five "||||", cross it off and mark another / in the main tally.
Alternatively, round damage up or down to the nearest 5.

Every fifty points or so, five sets of Xs, I'll start a new row. That way, I can see very easily every 50 damage done to a monster. This method worked really well in my 3x5e game where we had 20th level characters fighting monsters with 600 hit points or more. The technique isn't needed if you have monsters with, say, fewer than 25 hit points.

I found several advantages in this approach:

There's no math. Just mark damage done as it's done.
You can see visually how much damage a monster has taken by the big block of Xs.
You don't have to cross anything off or erase anything. Just mark the damage.

A Dirty Trick – Round Up or Down by 5

Here's an even faster trick that's sure to upset some folks. Round the damage the monster takes up or down to the nearest five. If they take 22 damage, mark XX. If they take 33 damage, mark XXX. For monsters with lots of hit points, the rounding error isn't likely to make much of a difference. Now you don't have to keep track of those |s at all. It's all just /s and Xs. I tried this trick out and it's super fast. Likewise, you can round the monster's hit points to the nearest five so it fits nicely, but that's not really necessary. When you cross over the monster's hit points, it's dead.

If the fuzziness of this approach bothers you, you can, of course, track the remaining damage on a separate line.

Give it a Shot

You might dig this idea or you might not. That's cool. Not every trick is for everyone. Sometimes these lazy tricks stick (like having players manage initiative, static initiative for monsters, static monster damage, "describe your killing blow", and others). Other times they aren't as useful and fade away. The only way we'll know if it works well or not is to try it.

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 Lazy Map Labels and Battling Trivvan – Dragon Empire Prep Session 54.

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:

Reiterate the characters' goal in any adventure, location, or session regularly. Remind them about what's important.
Give new characters the "heroic spark" so everyone knows they can be trusted and save the time of suspicious banter.
Take note of the capabilities of the characters and use it to tune future battles as needed.
Add your own random tables when your system of choice lets you down.
Bathe random encounters with in-world history, lore, secrets, and clues.
Print physical maps or use digital maps to anchor players in the fiction.
Draw the characters into encounters they might otherwise avoid with a desire for heroism, shiny loot, or both.

Get More from Sly Flourish

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

The Many TTRPG Hobbies

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 06:00:00 +0000

There are many separate loosely connected hobbies under the umbrella of the larger tabletop roleplaying game hobby. All these hobbies can be fun ways to interact with the larger hobby and other people who enjoy them. Separating these hobbies from the larger hobby in our minds frees us from having to justify them. We can enjoy them for their own sake.

I love Dwarven Forge tabletop terrain. It's beautiful, functional, and fun to set up and use. I love the company, the creators, and the other fans. For a long time I worried about justifying the high costs of Dwarven Forge (money, time, space, and flexibility) based on its impact in the games I ran. I recognized collecting Dwarven Forge as its own hobby but still felt that it needed to justify its place in the larger TTRPG hobby. How much better were my games with Dwarven Forge compared to those without? 20% better? 10%?

More recently, I've been thinking about RPG industry punditry -- digging into the business of TTRPGs and Hasbro / WOTC in particular. Does such business talk matter to our games? Probably not. But a lot of people enjoy digging into it, debating it, and pondering the future of the RPG business.

Then it occurred to me – TTRPG business punditry is its own hobby. We can dig into it, debate it, and enjoy it while also acknowledging that it has little effect on the games we love to play.

There are dozens (maybe hundreds) of such RPG-connected hobbies – miniature collecting, miniature painting, live play shows, terrain collecting, 3d printing, VTT setup, LARPing, photography, podcasting, short- and long-form video creation, map drawing, voice work, improv and theater, cosplay, language study, world building, character artistry, dice collecting, and even RPG product collecting. I came to realize that, while Humble Bundles and Bundles of Holding are the best deals in digital RPG products, I'm swamped with more RPG core books and supplements than I can ever hope to read, much less run. But I like them anyway – I like collecting them.

These related hobbies are all valid. They don't have to alter the RPG you run for your friends to justify themselves. They're just fun on their own. Sometimes the output of these hobbies make your game more fun – maybe not enough to justify their cost but enough to make it worth connecting these hobbies together. But these hobbies don't have to make your game better for you to enjoy them. The joy of painting a miniature can be a joy all by itself.

Understanding the separation and value of our related RPG hobbies helps in a couple of other ways. World building as its own hobby, enjoyable for its own sake, may not resonate the same love in our players that it does for us. Recognizing that these related hobbies don't always improve our games also gives us permission to skip a hobby. Someone may love practicing improvisation and voices but that doesn't mean we have to.

Maybe this is an excuse to spend too much money on the RPG hobby. I always try to reinforce how inexpensive this hobby can be and many of the related hobbies of TTRPGs are likewise free. Others, like miniature and terrain collections, can be quite expensive.

I think this understanding of the different related RPG hobbies is valuable. I think it helps us avoid continually justifying our own RPG-related hobbies or critique the hobbies of others. We all get to enjoy how we want to engage in the umbrella of TTRPGs and share our passion with the rest of the world. It's such a wonderful and powerful hobby to be a part of. It matters.

And I'm happy to be a part of it.

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 Choosing Your RPG and Assault on Third Heaven – Dragon Empire Prep Session 53.

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:

Help players enjoy some of the relaxing minutia of the process for camping, and resupplying between adventures.
Clarify current quests and have players choose one near the end of your current adventure.
Use NPC pictures so players can see who they’re interacting with.
Steal ideas from everywhere — books, tv, movies, comics, and other games.
Replace adventure NPCs with those tied to the backgrounds of the characters.
Try to include one action-focused encounter in each session.
Put yourself in the shoes of your NPCs and act as they would act.

Get More from Sly Flourish

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Lazy Campaign Building Checklist

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Recently I had the unique experience of running two session zeros in the same week. Preparing, running, and building campaigns off of these two session zeros helped me refine my own checklist for lazy campaign building which I offer to you today. The checklist below includes links to longer articles on related topics.

Initial Campaign Planning

Before you begin in earnest, consider your system, world, and theme and get your players on board.

Choose an RPG system.
Choose a campaign setting.
Conduct informal conversations with players about your choices to get buy in. See Get Players to Play Other RPGs.

Pre-Session Zero Campaign Prep

Prepare for your session zero.

Come up with your campaign's hook.
Come up with your campaign's truths.
Think up any worldbuilding questions you want to bring to your players like starting location details, gods, factions, and other unique things. Focus these questions on the things you actually want answers to.
Develop your campaign one-pager.

Run Your Session Zero

Spend a session talking to your players about the campaign you're all going to enjoy.

Go over the campaign one-pager.
Discuss the bonds that tie characters to the theme of the campaign and to each other.
Optionally, have players choose a starting faction.
Optionally, have players answer worldbuilding questions.
Go over Lines and Veils.
Go over "Pause for a Minute".
Have players build characters together.
Run a short adventure if you have the time.

After Your Session Zero

Your session zero is complete, now it's time to build off of it and get to the next adventure you're going to run.

Embrace spiral campaign development.
Flesh out the starting location with details important to the characters – what locations do they need to set them off on adventures and to recover from them afterwards?
Prepare three quests players can choose from for the characters next adventure.
Use the eight steps to build future adventures and prepare for your next session.

Develop the World

At this point you hopefully have enough to start putting adventures in front of the characters and running games. Now you can step back and flesh out the larger world around the characters, continuing to focus on the characters and spiraling outwards.

Develop three villains with their own goals and quests.
Develop additional factions: one or two good, shady, and bad. Tie them to villains as needed.
Develop or use an existing practical pantheon – gods and religions the characters worship, discover, or face off against.
Develop a practical history – elements the characters can discover as they explore.
Build a faction list you can roll on to flavor monuments, items, NPCs, locations, or encounters.
Use the magic system and economy of your system of choice. Keep it simple. You can always add more advanced things later if you want.

Prep and run your next game!

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 YouTube video on The Twin Dragons – Dragon Empire Prep Session 52.

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:

Be wary of Groundhog Day adventures where characters repeat a time loop. They can get repetitive and frustrating.
Don’t discount simple adventure structures. An NPC wants the characters to do something at a location.
Seed two or three future quests while the characters finish their current one.
Ask players regularly what they’re enjoying about the game and what they want to see more of.
Write down notable characters’ abilities so you can offer situations where they can showcase them.
Add relics — flavorful items with a single use of a powerful spell — to your treasure rewards.
Keep things simple.

Get More from Sly Flourish

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Your Own Prep Framework

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Having a framework for your RPG prep is more important than having the perfect framework. Build your own flexible RPG prep framework from your own experiences and the experiences of other GMs. Prep your games, run your games, evaluate your framework, and modify it to help you run better sessions.

I have no illusions that Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master's eight steps for game prep are the perfect RPG prep framework for all games and all GMs. Instead, I think the popularity of the book comes from simply offering a framework – a flexible one that GMs can easily adapt to their own needs.

Lots of RPG books offer advice for prep but, because they want to write for as many people as possible, they stop short of having a clear set of steps and a clear framework. Instead, these books are often filled with loose general advice that doesn't really help GMs when they're sitting down to prep their games.

So Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master offers the eight steps:

Review the characters
Create a strong start
Outline potential scenes
Define secrets and clues
Develop fantastic locations
Outline important NPCs
Choose relevant monsters
Select rewards

The book is also clear about refining and customizing these steps for your own process and your own games.

I think this two-part approach makes Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master's prep framework valuable. It offers clear steps to help you prep your game and encouragement to customize the steps to fit your own style.

Learn, Prep, Run, Evaluate

What process can we follow to build and evaluate our own prep framework?

Learn
Prep
Run
Evaluate

This cyclic approach helps us continually refine our prep as we learn from the experiences of others, go through our own prep, run our games, and evaluate the results. We read stuff from other GMs, prep our own games based on what we've learned and what experiences we’ve had, run our games, and see how our prep served us during our game. Then we tweak our process based on our experiences and go through the cycle again.

Learn, prep, run, evaluate.

What Do We Evaluate?

To know whether our prep is working, we have to know what we're measuring it against. Like our prep, we might have our own evaluation criteria but here are some ideas:

Did my prep help me run a fun game?
What prep did I use during the game? Did it work?
What prep did I not use? Do I still need it?
Was there anything I wanted that I hadn't prepped?
Did my prep help me improvise as the game moved in new directions?
Did each element of my prep have a low or high impact? Was each element worth the time when considering its impact?

Some of these criteria might not matter to you and you might have other criteria you use to evaluate your prep. The point is to have some sort of criteria so you know if your prep is working or not.

Different Processes for Different Games

Even when tailored for our own style, how and what we prep for our games changes depending on the kind of game we're going to run. Running a session based on the continuation of a dungeon delve in our home campaign world is different from running a one-shot session for players we've never met using a published adventure. Our process for prep has to be flexible enough to handle the different types of games we run. I offer four different takes on the eight steps in my Choosing the Right Steps article but there are certainly other situations and approaches as well.

Each of us has different things we might want to prep and a different process for doing so. We can learn from one another through the books we read, the videos we watch, and the forums we engage in to help us build our own prep process. Then we can conduct our prep, run our games, see how it worked out, and continue the cycle again.

Step by step walk the thousand mile road.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

I was at PAGE3 in Philadelphia last week so there wasn't a Talk Show, Lazy GM Prep video, or any other stuff like that. I'll be talking all about my experiences at PAGE3 on the next Lazy RPG Talk Show, (also available as a podcast). I'll link to the various topics in the next newsletter.

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:

When in-game conversations get tiresome, have NPCs move the story onward.
Use maps and handouts to give players another dimension of play.
Leave a little decompression time at the end of a session.
Ask players what they have enjoyed in your game and what they want to see more of.
Old monuments at campsites are a great vehicle for secrets and clues.
Try to give hints when the characters are on the wrong track.
Give players the option to engage in certain battles so they can choose their gameplay.

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The Simplest Quest Model

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 06:00:00 +0000

An NPC wants you to do something at a location.

This scenario is just about the simplest quest model you can have and yet it provides a powerful template to build fun adventures for your RPG.

Just fill in the blanks:

Who's the NPC?
Where do they want you to go?
What should you do there?

We can fill out these three questions with results from random tables if we're having a hard time filling them in ourselves. You can find random tables for all these questions in the core generators of the Lazy GM Resource Document.

Here are three examples using the generators above for NPCs, locations, items, conditions, descriptions, and origins.

Ethan Stardazer, a shifty halfling, wants you to go to a shattered ethereal warren to find a decrepit smoky coin.

Elsebee Riddletongue, an optimistic catfolk, wants you to go to a forsaken crystalline vault to recover a monstrous windswept mask.

Baragon Shadowmaker, an enthusiastic celestial, wants you to go to a bloody obsidian tomb to bury a secret.

We still have questions to answer, of course. What is Baragon's secret? What is the bloody obsidian tomb like? What creatures lurk there? What reward does Baragon offer?

But these prompts go a long way to get our minds moving in a direction. We can wrap them in our own gods and factions to tailor them for our game. Grab a Dyson map that fits the theme of our location. Pick out a handful of monsters from our favorite monster book. Fill in some details as we go through our eight steps of lazy GM prep.

Why?

Motivation for both the quest NPC and the characters to follow through with the quest is a consideration as well. Three easy motivations include:

Discovery. What wonderful sights one might see if they fulfill the quest.
Greed. There's a juicy reward for those adventurers who undertake the quest and succeed.
Altruism. They want to save the world.

More Advanced Quest Models

We have other more advanced quest models at our disposal for a richer adventure or campaign through-line:

and we have a solid list of adventure types including:

But the simplest quest model – an NPC wants you to do something at a location – is one of the easiest to fill out and use to build a fun adventure for our game. Keep this quest model in mind, fill in the blanks, and you're off on an adventure.

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's last week's question and answer.

Taking Notes During the Game

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 Losing Yourself in the Fiction and Journey to Nurduran – Dragon Empire Prep Session 52.

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:

Show the characters the results of their choices and actions in the world.
Use monuments as vehicles for secrets and clues.
Ask players to describe what their characters are thinking and feeling while camping and resting.
Note improvised NPC names and where the session ended in your post-game notes.
Review your prep notes an hour or so before your game.
Remind players of the goal of their quest often.
Customize published adventures for your players, their characters, your own desires, and your ongoing campaign.

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Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Location Moves

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 06:00:00 +0000

When we're prepping and running locations and monuments, think about what features those locations or monuments have that can act for or against the characters. Imagine the locations themselves are characters – what do these locations do?

I just started playing Daggerheart and really dug Daggerheart's "environments". Environments are like stat blocks for locations, with a lot of stuff packed into a short space. Environments include a flat overall difficulty, a list of potential inhabitants, some "impulses", and features.

Each environment almost feels like it could contain a whole session of play in a half-page of material.

Today I want to focus on two components of environments: impulses and features.

The "Cult Ritual" environment in the Daggerheart core book, for example, has the following impulse:

Profane the land, unite the Mortal Realm with the Circles Below.

This impulse is what this environment does.

It also has four features:

Desecrated Ground
Blasphemous Might
The Summoning
Complete the Ritual

Each feature has mechanics tied to it like making the whole environment nasty for characters, beefing up the main bad guy, pushing minions into attacks meant for said bad guy, and summoning demons.

The idea that a location has actions is pretty cool and something we can transfer over to other RPGs.

We don't have to write down the impulses of an environment like Daggerheart environments have, but it's an interesting thing to keep in mind – what is this location's goal? That can seem like a weird question but an interesting one – what purpose does this location serve in the world? What is it doing?

The Moves of Fantastic Locations

In step 5 of the eight steps of Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, we outline fantastic locations for our game. Sometimes these fantastic locations are larger areas with an evocative name and three aspects:

Defiled Catacomb. Oozing sarcophagus, wailing skulls, unholy circle.

Other times we jot down short descriptions of several rooms in a large dungeon. Here's an example list of rooms in one of the dungeons I ran in my Dragon Empire game:

Trapped stairwell, guardian chamber, blood mage dormitories, upper cells, lower cells, blasphemous library, infernal machine (hell rift, torture blades, runic etching machine), treasure vault, archmage quarters, summoning chamber, desecrated decorations of Aten, secret shrine of Heretical Aten.

Some of the rooms have adjectives you can think of as moves such as trapped stairwell, torture blades, blasphemous library, and summoning chamber. These locations can do things. These locations have "moves".

Here's a list of effects from the Lazy GM's Resource Document that can serve as these location moves:

Smoky
Acidic
Bloodied
Burning
Frozen
Poisonous
Necrotic
Thunderous
Ringing
Lightning
Radiant
Shadowed
Oozing
Ethereal
Whispering
Windswept
Drenched
Diseased
Crystalline
Silvered

Many of these effects can serve as "moves" for a location.

The Mechanics of Location Moves

During prep we don't want to have to outline the mechanics of every single room in a large dungeon. Instead, we want enough of a flavorful descriptor to help us improvise what they do and have some general-use mechanics from our system of choice to apply mechanics to the location's move.

Daggerheart has the "Environment Statistics by Tier" table on page 242 of the Daggerheart core rulebook which serves this purpose well. Daggerheart also has two standard conditions, vulnerable and restrained, which we can apply to improvised location moves.

D&D 2024 has the Improvising Damage and Damage Severity and Level tables on page 30 and 31 of the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide. Those, along with the standard DCs of 10, 15, or 20 help us improvise mechanics for locations. We can also include status effects from the standard list of conditions on page 29 and described in the rules glossary of the 2024 Player's Handbook. If you want some conditions that don't have quite the same large effect as the standard 5e conditions, take a look at the weapon mastery effects on page 214 of the Player's Handbook. And, of course, you can apply spell effects from your favorite spells as well.

Other systems often have other improvisational mechanics you can apply to locations. Having a toolbox of damage values and conditions lets you improvise the moves a location might inflict when the characters get involved even if you're just starting with a single adjective like "radiant" or "bloody".

You'll also have to improvise how these moves manifest. Do they have their own turn? Do the characters or NPCs trigger them by doing something or moving somewhere? Are they just always going on? Ensure you don't trap characters or NPCs by having the effects act too often while also debilitating character movement or actions. You don't want to have an environment that activates at the beginning of a character's turn and stuns that character until the end of their next turn – they'll never escape!

Here's a list of common triggers for location moves:

At a set initiative, perhaps at the top of the round or bottom of the round.
Triggerable by a character or NPC, perhaps as a free or bonus action on their turn.
When a character enters an area for the first time or ends its turn there.
One time, triggered by some larger event.
Always on. The effect is continual.

You can end effects a few ways as well. The characters might use an action, bonus action, or a free action on their turn to attempt to turn on or off an effect with a suitable ability or skill check. The effect might have a clock – getting more or less powerful as the clock goes up or down. Some other event might either turn on, turn off, scale up, or scale down the effect.

Example Effects

Here are a handful of improvised mechanical effects based on the rooms I described earlier:

Blasphemous Library. Cursed books, if read, inflict 3d6 psychic damage on those who fail a DC 15 Intelligence saving throw. On a success, a character can inflict an extra 1d6 psychic damage on any damage roll for one hour.
Torture blades. Bladed pillars whirl with spinning metal. A creature who moves within 10 feet of a bladed pillar or starts its turn there takes 1d6+14 slashing damage.
Summoning Chamber. While the cultists in this chamber live, their summoning ritual continues. At the end of four rounds a vrock is summoned from the lower depths, smashes through the ceiling above, and into the city beyond. If all the cultists are slain, the summoning ritual fails.

Locations as Actors

The concept of locations as living breathing things is an interesting way to add more dynamic environments to your game. Give it a try!

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 Five Scenes and Saving Winter's Love – Dragon Empire Prep Session 51.

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:

Offer multiple viable choices.
Have players describe their characters at the beginning of a few early sessions in a campaign. Remind everyone who everyone is.
Include multiple paths, secret paths, hidden chambers, and loop backs in dungeons.
Draw small line and box charts to represent the layout of a dungeon – it doesn't need to be fancy.
Build a local library of your favorite maps. Don't worry about reusing maps you've used before.
Keep an eye on the time. Adjust your adventure early to fit the time you have.
Adjust published adventures to fit your style, desires, and the desires of your players.

Get More from Sly Flourish

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Build Single-Encounter Situations

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 06:00:00 +0000

"Build situations, not plots" is, to me, a vital piece of advanced GMing. Building situations breaks GMs away from directing stories towards the characters and instead develops situations that can go many different directions based on the choices of the players and actions of the characters.

When you watch situations unfold at the table, as the characters interact with your setup, it really captures the joy of tabletop RPGs.

Sometimes situations are single specific scenes – like an encounter along a journey. Other times they're larger, the whole situation at a warlord's keep or a fey court banquet. Today we're going to focus on single-encounter situations.

Setting up situations often requires the following components:

A location
Inhabitants at that location
Something going on

We set up these components without assuming particular outcomes. These situations live with or without the characters. When the characters collide with them, lots of things could happen. There's no script. You haven't pre-determined how it plays out. You're playing to see what happens.

Single-Encounter Situations

Smaller situations take place in single scenes - perhaps the characters running into something interesting on their way along a journey.

The situation could be as simple as some dire wolves eating a couple of dead adventurers at a big fallen tree. Or it could be that, at a ruined watchtower, a dwarven caravan master is upset with a traveling priest for stating the heresy that the smith god Volund is actually in love with the gear goddess Rava.

Add Monuments or Landmarks

For smaller scenes, we can roll on a list of monuments (available in the Lazy DM's Companion and also in the Lazy GM's Resource Document) to create a backdrop for our situation. Add flavor with conditions, descriptions, origins, and maybe a roll on your custom faction list for your campaign.

These monuments or landmarks create a backdrop for the scene. They're also fantastic vehicles for Secrets and Clues.

Add Inhabitants

Situations often require inhabitants. These inhabitants might be monsters, friendly NPCs, or both. If you're stuck for ideas, roll on your favorite random encounter table for the region. If you need some inspiration, I love the random encounter tables from Level Up Advanced 5e. Though made for 5e, they work for lots of fantasy RPGs.

One of my favorite tricks for building a situation is to roll twice and mix two results together. Not all encounters need be monsters or hostile creatures – sometimes it's fun to meet some nice folk.

Set Up the Situation

What's going on at this location? What are the inhabitants doing there? Here's a short list of general activities inhabitants in a situation might be doing.

Sleeping
Eating
Preparing a camp or lair
Guarding
Hunting
Preparing for battle

One trick is to use a table-less oracle die to determine activities – the higher the number, the more extreme or aggressive their activity.

Here's a longer list for more detailed activities. These activities may or may not work well depending on the level of the sentience of the creatures involved.

Searching for treasure
Building something
Engaging in a ritual
Arguing
Taking prisoners
Researching the area
Hunting for something
Protecting someone or something
Preparing for war
Preparing to spring a trap
Decorating
Recovering after a battle
Trying to escape
Seeking revenge
Hunting something or someone
Magically drawn to the area
Gambling or engaged in sport
Preparing to rob passers by
Looking to buy or sell
Scouting for a larger group

You can often use quest tables to determine the activities of inhabitants at a location. NPCs go on quests too!

Attitudes

What are the attitudes of the inhabitants of a location? Attitude is a common consideration for more exploration-focused folk-fantasy RPGs. Maybe a creature is friendly or indifferent to the characters instead of hostile. Here's a short table of attitudes.

Friendly
Curious
Indifferent
Suspicious
Hostile
Violent

Like activity, you can roll a table-less oracle die where hostility increases the higher the roll.

The Draw

Why would the characters get involved in these situations? If the characters sneak up on a battle between two groups of monsters, what would make them want to get involved? We don't need to put too much pressure on this – but enough to at least have the characters question whether they should get involved or not. Here's a list of potential motivators:

They can see some treasure down there.
They get hints that there's some useful information there.
They can save someone.
They see a hated foe.
They might want to protect the monument.
They see hints of interesting lore.
They see a potential ally they can recruit.
A creature has an ingredient they might want to craft a magic item.
They see the opportunity to unveil a mystery.
They see the opportunity to plant some misdirection for their foes.

Tying Encounters to the Larger Story

Some players and GMs complain that these sorts of encounters, particularly random encounters, don't tie to the larger story of a campaign. They feel like filler.

Situations need not be independent from the larger story. We can use our faction list to not only flavor monuments but also NPCs or rewards as well. You might have your own idea how to tie these single-scene situations to something going on with the characters but you can also roll on your faction list and see what comes up.

All the elements of these single-encounter situations are fantastic vehicles for secrets and clues – which are tied directly to the interests of the characters and the events of your campaign. Because secrets and clues are abstracted from their method of discovery, you can apply them wherever they make sense in situations like this – items, locations, NPCs, monsters, and so on.

Use factions and secrets to connect single-encounter situations to the larger story of your campaigns.

Things that Came Before

Along with rolling multiple times on a table to mix two encounters together, you can use your rolls to determine things that happened before the characters arrived. Sometimes a situation already occurred and now the characters are figuring out what happened. Perhaps the characters stumble upon a blood-covered cenotaph of a champion of the Nameless King and find signs of a struggle between some travelers and a band of head-hunting gnolls. The characters see that the gnolls killed some of the travelers but dragged others off to their nearby lair. What do the characters do? That's a fun situation.

Signs of things that happened before are great ways to build investigative situations instead of simply dropping in on hostile monsters. Having the characters investigate events that happened before can also help with pacing if a big battle would take too long.

The Characters' Approach

For overland exploration and travel sessions, we sometimes use character roles to determine what the characters do during their journey. You can read more about these roles in Running Hex Crawls for D&D, 5e, or Shadowdark.

Three common exploration roles include scout, pathfinder, and quartermaster. How well the characters accomplish these roles can determine how they engage in the situations we built above. If the scout does particularly well, the characters can witness the situation without being observed. If they do poorly, the characters may stumble into it. If the pathfinder does poorly, the characters may stumble into another encounter entirely. If the quartermaster does poorly, the characters might find themselves engaging in the encounter exhausted and poorly prepared. You can use the rolls of these exploration tasks as variables to further change the situation the characters get involved in.

The Core Gameplay of Tabletop RPGs

Single-encounter situations encapsulate the best parts of tabletop RPGs. They lay things out in front of the characters and give players the agency to decide how to engage with them. Though focused on a single scene, we can take the ideas of these single-scene situations and expand them out to whole adventures and even campaigns, keeping the focus on putting interesting situations in front of the characters and seeing what happens next.

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.

Last week I also posted a YouTube video on Journey to Winter's Love – Dragon Empire Prep Session 50.

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:

Run a single memorable encounter during a journey between two places.
Use travel roles like scouts, pathfinders, and quartermasters to see how well a journey goes.
If scouts do well keeping an eye out for danger, the characters might sneak up on a dangerous encounter. If they don’t do well, the characters stumble into it.
Offer a few paths the characters can choose from when they journey between two places. Make sure each path has a compelling reason to choose it.
Build travel encounters with weather, monuments or landmarks, potential NPCs, maybe a couple different types of monsters, their activities, and a compelling reason to get involved.
An easy way to change up weather is to roll a D6. The higher the roll, the more severe the weather.
Understand the journey system of your RPG of choice. Feel free to hand-wave it if it gets arduous.

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Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Lazy 5e Crafting Guidelines

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 06:00:00 +0000

This is the third in a series of articles covering the topic of loot, treasure, magic item purchases, and other matters of rewards and economics in 5e RPGs. Other articles include:

Today we're going to look at a simple system for crafting.

Crafting Shouldn't Overtake Typical Treasure

As we discussed in Lazy 5e Magic Item Prices, you likely don't want the crafting of magic items to overtake the acquisition of magic items through traditional adventuring. Going into dungeons, fighting monsters, and finding magic items remains the primary gameplay loop for most fantasy RPGs. The minute you make it easier to craft magic items, the sooner your players care less for adventuring and finding magic items in big piles of loot.

Whatever system you put in place for crafting items, be sure it doesn't remove the value of actual adventuring.

Limit Crafting with Rare Components

You also likely don't want to open up the entire list of magic items for players to craft. For many players, it's far too tempting to optimize their way out of the fun by selecting the perfect magic items for their characters, making them impossible to threaten and their own threat impossible to avoid.

The easiest way to limit crafting is to ensure that specific magic items require specific rare components. You can choose your own thematically appropriate rare components given a particular magic item but Level Up Advanced 5e's Trials and Treasure (and the awesome A5e System Reference Document) includes ideas for rare components for various magic items if you need them.

The key is to make components rare enough that characters can't just go build any magic item they want. Instead, they go on adventures to find this rare component. This requirement also ensures the core gameplay loop of going on adventures and acquiring treasure remains intact.

Who Decides What's Craftable?

Items available for crafting can come from either players or GMs. In some circumstances, GMs drop rare components in the game and the characters discover a new item they can craft. After defeating a black dragon, the characters might find some black dragon scales and learn they can use them to forge some black dragon scale armor.

Other times characters might have particular items they want to craft. Players and GMs can work together to decide if the item is appropriate and craftable or not. The GM can then decide what the rare component is and either build a quest to retrieve it or add it to an existing adventure. You probably don't want too many subquests involving finding the rare component of a craftable item for just one character, so dropping them into existing adventures might be a better approach.

Crafting Costs

You can use the Lazy 5e Magic Item Prices guide as a rough estimate on the costs to craft an item: 500 GP for uncommon items, 5,000 for rare items, 50,000 for very rare items, and 500,000 for legendary items. You're encouraged to customize the cost based on the value and impact of the item. Even if a cost is considered low, that doesn’t mean the components are common enough to build a lot of items. A wand of magic missiles might only cost 500 GP but you can still only craft one of them.

These costs include gathering the other components to make the item, getting a suitable place to work, any magical components required, and so forth. You can also include the cost of a hireling to make the item if you'd rather not have the characters craft it themselves.

Crafting Time

Many crafting systems include a length of time required to craft the item which can go up to several weeks or months. This time spent crafting gets in the way of that core gameplay loop we talked about, though – going on adventures, fighting monsters, and collecting loot. You can't go on adventures if you're hanging out in town for twelve weeks hammering away on your +2 greatsword.

I propose a simpler system – a single unit of downtime.

Each time the characters are in a suitable location for crafting an item – like a well-furnished town or city or their own home base, they can spend their time working on crafting magic items and roll a suitable check. If they succeed, they make the item. If not, they can try again next time they're back at their home base.

Alternatively, the characters can hire hirelings to do the job instead. You can either include a check to see if they accomplish the task or simply let it succeed. The next time the characters come back to town after an adventure, the item is ready.

This method simplifies the whole process of figuring out how long an item takes to craft and doesn't get in the way of the rest of the characters going on adventures.

One of Many Treasure Options

Crafting magic items sits alongside the purchase of magic items and picking up magic items in treasure hoards. Many GMs enjoy offering alternative methods to acquire treasure, and players generally love them too. We want to be careful that the system we put in place doesn't take away from the core fun of the game we enjoy – going on adventures, fighting monsters, and collecting treasure.

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 Experiences Running the D&D 2024 Lich and Tower of Horn and Gold – Dragon Empire Prep Session 49.

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:

Think through the eyes of your villains even in combat. What would they do? How would they react?
Monsters don’t always behave rationally in combat.
Let chases happen organically. Don’t pre-suppose the beginning or the end of a chase.
Use waves of combatants to change up a dynamic combat encounter.
Minions are intended to be blown away or hewed down. Don’t overdo their tactics.
Offer choices near the end of a session so you know what to prep next.
Offer hard choices with potential consequences instead of springing betrayal or curses on the characters.

Get More from Sly Flourish

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Tips and Tools for Timing Sessions

Mon, 22 Dec 2025 06:00:00 +0000

If you're running an ongoing campaign, timing within a session may not be critical. Whatever you didn't get to in one session you'll get to in the next. But if you have a certain amount of material you want to get through in a certain amount of time – whether at a home game or a convention game – timing can matter a lot. Here are some tips to manage timing during your game.

Timing Versus Pacing

First, let's separate timing from pacing. Pacing describes the feeling and movement of the adventure – keeping characters and players engaged in the story without making things so frantic that the game feels overwhelming. Tools like Upward and Downward Beats help manage pacing.

Timing describes what material you're able to get through in what amount of real-world time. Timing and pacing are related but not the same thing. Tools to help manage timing can also improve pacing and sometimes managing pacing also improves timing, but they're really two separate things we can focus on individually.

45 Minutes Per Scene

As a rough measure, assume any reasonable scene is going to take 45 minutes of game time. Some scenes take less time, some take more, but having a rough estimate of one scene every 45 minutes helps you gauge how much material you need to prep and how much material you can expect to get through.

Moving MacGuffins

MacGuffins, the central (often physical) key to any given quest the characters undertake, don't always need to be in the same spot. To manage timing, prepare your adventures so you can move MacGuffins forward so characters can get them earlier or push them back to better fill in the time you have. Movable MacGuffins give you a good dial to turn to manage the timing of your game.

Use Real-World Timers

Use a stopwatch or alarm on your phone to manage time. It's easy to get lost in flow when running your game – we're so focused on the game that we lose track of time. Set your timer every 45 minutes to keep track of the time and measure how fast or slow you're getting through the material you need to run. During prep, consider how far you think you need to be at given points in the game and recognize the scenes you need to get through and the ones you can cut to speed things up if you need.

Shadowdark's one-hour torch timer is a fantastic out-of-world way to keep track of the timing of your game with a clear in-world component to keep pacing high.

Optional Material

Prepare a chunk of your session with optional scenes you can drop in or cut out given the timing of your actual session. These scenes shouldn't just be filler – they should still matter to the game if you run them – but they shouldn't be critical to the game.

Run with Fewer Players

The more players you have, the harder it is to manage pacing. Six players can eat a lot of spotlight time and the variance of timing increases since some players might be quiet or move quickly or take up more time than others. Four players makes it much easier to manage the timing of your session.

Movable Boss Battles

In my yearly Shadowdark Ravenloft game, I set a real-world timer for 45 minutes before the end of the session. That's when Strahd shows up and starts chewing on the characters regardless of where they are in the castle. I did the same thing in my Shadowdark adventure, Crypts of Karigulon, available to Hero-tier patrons of Sly Flourish and wrote about how to do it in the Shadowdark Quick Start adventure Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur.

Movable boss battles don't fit every time-sensitive session but it's a good trick if you can pull it off. Likewise, if you keep your map design flexible, you can move the entire boss room closer to the characters if time is tight. This prevents you from cutting off the climax of the session while spending a lot of time on the "boring middle".

Speaking of...

Cut the Boring Middle

Whether preparing your homebrew adventure or running a published adventure, be ready to cut from the boring middle. Look at the scenes taking up time between the intro and conclusion of the game and decide which scenes you can cut out or shrink down without breaking the story. You might remove a lot of the monsters in a non-vital combat encounter, for example, or eliminate it completely. When timing your session, be ready to cut things out so players can have that satisfying conclusion.

Keep a Hand on the Clock

It's easy to get caught up in the wonder of our adventures that time simply slips by. Hopefully these tips help you manage the timing of your session and focus the time you have on the fun of the adventures you share with your friends.

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 Running a D&D 2024 Death Knight and The Ghoul Emperor – Dragon Empire Prep Session 48.

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:

During prep, write down a way to tie each character to the upcoming events of your next session.
Use maps, NPC portraits, and props to draw players into the world.
Sandwich mechanics with in-world descriptions.
Ask players what they dig about their characters.
Note and review character special features. Describe when they might be useful during the game.
Rework published adventures until you are proud of running them.
Ensure characters can make meaningful decisions in each scene.

Get More from Sly Flourish

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Crap I Keep in my RPG Tackle Box

Mon, 15 Dec 2025 06:00:00 +0000

I'm a sucker for the tools and accessories we use to run RPGs at the table. Today I wanted to talk about the stuff I keep in the tackle box I use at my home game and my in-person game at my friend's house.

This kit doesn't include everything I use, of course. I still need whatever books I need to run the game, my game notes in my fake Trapper Keeper (printed from Obsidian), my dice and dice tray, and my trusty Chessex Battle Mat.

But I have a lot of fun odds and ends in my tackle box that help me run games and I wanted to share.

Lazy Monster Tokens. Not every accessory stays in my kit forever but I love my simple monster tokens. I use them often to improvise combat encounters in my 5e games or to show character positioning on larger maps. This set includes some blue-colored character tokens as well in case I don't have character minis.

Character Miniatures. Two bays of my little tackle box include miniatures for the characters for my two games. Some players have their own minis not included in my kit. I think having good character minis matters a lot. It's not as vital for monsters since I can use monster tokens. If I do bring some real monster miniatures, I often select them during prep and store them in a ziploc bag.

Accessory Miniatures. Some characters turn into bears. Some summon spiritual weapons or little balls of fire. I keep a set of accessory miniatures for these summoned, conjured, or transformed creatures.

Stadtler 315-9 Medium Point Wet Erase Markers. My favorite wet-erase marker, perfect for use on a Chessex Battle Mat or Pathfinder Basic Flip Mat (my two favorites). I keep a bunch of them in my kit but I only need two. Each one lasts about six months of weekly use.

Pencils. I keep extra pencils for players and a nice drafting pencil for myself in my box.

Adhesive Tabs. I keep a set of adhesive tabs in my box to help me tab books when running the game. I mostly use them to tab monsters and, frankly, I don't need them that often because I have tabs already in the book, but it's nice to have if I'm using a book I forgot to stick tabs into. You can pick up these adhesive tabs anywhere you can buy stationary.

Tiny Spray Bottle. A friend of mine gave me this great tiny spray bottle I can fill with water and use to clean up my battle mat.

Cool Metal Tokens. I have some Shadow of the Demon Lord metal tokens in here but any cool coin or token can work. I use these to show off legendary resistances, doom points, or dreadful blessings. Visible tokens make it easier for players to see how well they're knocking down a boss's defenses.

Wet Erase Cloth. I have a little stitch of cloth I can use to clean up my battle map using the little spray bottle to wet the mat down.

Kneaded Eraser. A normal eraser doesn't really work for me so I have an art-style kneaded eraser that works better. I don't use this eraser much so it can probably go.

Blue Sticky Tack. Hidden under the eraser is a glob of blue sticky tack I use to stick characters onto monsters when they decide to jump on top of that dragon (which is like 80% of the time). I can also use it to keep terrain pinned down. My players figured out that statues with sticky tack are usually safe while statues without sticky tack mean they're going to animate and attack so sometimes I have to shake things up.

Index Cards. I can fit a dozen or so index cards on top of the tray and still close the lid. I use index cards to track damage done to monsters these days but they're handy for all kinds of things. I also keep a set of index-card-based initiative tents on top of the trays.

So that's what I have in my kit! Join our Patreon Discord server to share what you have in yours!

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Last week I also posted a couple of YouTube videos on Lazy D&D and 5e Magic Item Prices and Parsis the Hidden – Dragon Empire Prep Session 47.

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Use NPC portraits for townsfolk the characters meet.
Let players annotate their own town or location map as they explore.
Be ready to drop in a random encounter in towns to keep things exciting.
Let players discover betraying patrons early and get inside of their treachery.
Use handouts to capture your players imaginations, focus your prep, and clarify the direction of your game.
Don’t let shopping episodes take too long. Let players manage their own shopping independently.
Keep the spotlight moving player to player when they split up so no one gets left out.

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