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Procedures

by Mike on 7 September 2026

Eric F., a fine Patron of Sly Flourish asked about procedural play from games like OD&D, BX, and Dungeon World and asked whether they're helpful, where they're helpful, and how we might use them in different parts of our RPGs.

I think procedures are definitely helpful and I offer three pieces of advice for using them in your games:

Understand the procedures your particular RPG has built in.
Modify existing procedures or add your own procedures to make the game more fun for you and your group.
Discard procedures when they no longer serve you, your players, or your game.

What is a Procedure?

For the sake of this article, an RPG procedure is a series of steps we take to prepare or run a particular type of scene in an RPG. Common procedures include how you run combat, how you manage overland travel, the common procedures for running a dungeon crawl, or the process for taking downtime in settlements.

Rolling a Charisma (Persuasion) check isn't a procedure. Neither are countdown clocks in Daggerheart. The process you and your players go through to define how your characters rest for the night is a procedure. For me, individual mechanics aren't procedures. Procedures are a set of common repeated steps you walk through to run a particular type of scene in your RPG.

Bringing Structure to the Universe

RPGs are limited only by our imaginations and our imaginations can run wild, travel far, and dive deep. We can easily get lost in the vast seas of possibilities. Procedures help us bind our creativity into table-usable processes.

I've stated before that I believe the success of the eight steps for lazy GM prep comes from bringing structure to the nearly limitless and often paralyzing freedom we have while preparing for our games. The eight steps are a procedure we follow when prepping our games – I follow it multiple times a week when preparing my own games. You can watch me do it every week.

And, as Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master states, you're encouraged to modify this structure to suit your own procedures for preparing your own game.

The Procedures of your RPGs

Different RPGs have different procedures for play. Some RPGs have only loose procedures while others define them tightly.

The old-school BX-based game Dolmenwood is packed with procedures with everything from travel, dungeon exploration, downtime in towns, and even smoking weed. It's a game heavy with procedures and many GMs love it for this reason.

Games like Daggerheart are more free-flowing with no set procedures for exploration or travel. Even combat is loosely handled. There's no turn order in Daggerheart – players go when it feels right in the story. Many GMs love Daggerheart for its narrative focus and lack of forced structure. Daggerheart isn't completely without procedures. It includes procedures for running one-shot games and each of its campaign frames includes procedures that reinforce the theme of the frame.

Some GMs lament that D&D 2014 and 5e in general focus heavily on some procedures, like combat, and lack procedures for other elements like exploration, dungeon crawling, and travel. Hundreds of supplements add procedures to elements of 5e to fill in the gaps. Other 5e variants like Level Up Advanced 5e bring structure to exploration in ways the original D&D 2014 books did not.

Whatever RPG you're playing, take note of its procedures. They might not be outwardly apparent so chat with others who run those RPGs to help you understand the procedures of play that might not be outwardly apparent.

Once you at least understand the intent of your RPG, then you can decide what procedures to sue and which ones to ignore.

Choose Your Own Procedures

"Not like this."

It's common for GMs to want clear procedures to run particular parts of an RPG and then, when they see them, say "not like this". This feeling is actually a common reaction to a lot of RPG material we hope to receive but do not yet have in hand.

I have good news! You can make it what you want!

Once you understand the procedures your RPG does or doesn't have, you can decide how to modify those procedures to suit your style or to add your own. 5e doesn't have solid guidance for hex crawling? Add it. There are dozens of supplements and other sourcebooks, like Trials and Treasure by Level Up 5e and Uncharted Journeys by Cubicle 7 that include travel rules you can add or modify. Or make your own if you have an idea of your own that you like. I offer the lazy "single encounter between two places" model of travel which I enjoy.

Picking up and hacking procedures is a great reason to dive into lots of RPGs. See what procedures you like and think about how you can bring them to the games you're playing. You can find several procedures in my lists of adventure types starting with Dungeon Crawls.

Discard What Doesn't Work For You

Even your own selected procedures may not work for you all the time. Discard procedures that don't serve you, your group, the fun you're having together, or the story you and your players build at the table.

Your hex crawling procedures may have worked well early on in your campaign but once your characters gained access to fly, tiny hut, pass without trace, and create food and water; the challenges of travel may have disappeared and walking through the procedures is largely pointless. That's fine. Set your travel procedures aside and hand-wave travel from then on. Maybe bring in new procedures that fit the style of game you're running at that point. 5e in particular changes themes dramatically from 1st to 20th level. Shift your procedures to suit the style of game you're running at the moment.

Like all things in our lazy GM's toolkit, throw out what no longer serves you.

Hard Rules Held Loosely

Procedures help us get a handle on our games in lots of potential ways. They help us, and our players, walk through a common set of steps we all recognize for particular elements of the game. They can also help us prepare our games, following a set of procedures to prepare the next game we're going to run

Hang on loosely to your procedures. Procedures help us run our games. The minute they no longer do that, thank them for their service and set them aside for the ones that do.

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.

Managing Mid- and High-Level D&D Challenge

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 Because of X, You Know Y and The Dragon's Hoard — Dragon Empire Prep Session 79.

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 careful chaining monsters' detrimental effects like chain stunning or putting too many people to sleep.
Take the time to understand how monsters work in your system of choice before going too crazy with improvised monsters.
Spice up combat encounters with evolving terrain and interesting and useful environmental features.
Write down three environmental features for your next big combat arena.
Instead of prebuilt combat encounters, write down a full list of potential inhabitants for the area you’re running and build encounters by what makes sense for the situation or on the roll of a die.
Use a d6 oracle die to determine things like encounters, hostility, behaviors, weather, alertness, and other unknown variables in the current situation.
Clarify options when characters get stuck. Assign a “caller” to speak for the group and make decisions when the group can’t decide.

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