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July – September 2025 Patreon Q&A (Patreon)

Published:
2025-07-10 16:00:07
Imported:
2025-07
Tags:
Q&A

Content

Welcome to the Sly Flourish Patreon Questions and Answers thread for July, August, and September 2025!

Ask your monthly RPG-related question in the comments below!

Every Friday morning I answer every question on this post. Some questions make it to the Lazy RPG Talk Show or fuel an RPG Tip video or Sly Flourish article. Don't be upset if your question doesn't make it to the show – only a handful do.

As you consider your question for the month, please

search the SF Patreon Q&A database, the Lazy RPG Talk Show Topic Database, the Sly Flourish website, and the Sly Flourish YouTube Channel to see if I've done an article or video on your topic previously.

focus your question on tabletop RPGs.

stick to one question each month.

keep your question brief. I love your stories but I get overwhelmed.

Comments

Sam P.

Hey Mike! How do you keep progressing your three villains/fronts without throwing too many simultaneous plot movements at your players? E.g., if the PCs are currently focused on stopping Villain 1, how much do you have Villains 2 and 3 keep executing their plots in the campaign’s background (or foreground)? I don’t want my players to feel punished for focusing on one villain over another, or feel like there are an overwhelming number of plot points for them to address, but it also doesn’t make sense to me that a villain would be sitting around doing nothing instead of doing bad guy stuff. As always, thanks for all you do!

Egill Rúnar Viðarsson

I’m wondering how to calculate damage output using Forge of Foes for ongoing effects. Similarly how we spread the damage over actions, bonus actions, reactions and legendary actions, where exactly do we put ongoing damage in regards to number of characters affected, etc? The case is the following effect after the monster (Smelter Demon from Dark Souls as base) hits with an attack: The target must succeed on a DC 21 Constitution saving throw or become poisoned. While poisoned in this way, the target can’t regain hit points, and it takes 21 (6d6) poison damage *at the start of each of its turns*. The poisoned target can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success.

Worth Baker

Hi! My wife is TTRPG-curious, but has in the past found herself overwhelmed and a little bored by D&D combat (both in terms of complexity and length). She asked if I could try running a game that's more focused on exploration in a low/no-magic setting (ex. a conspiracy in 1920s New York or an Oregon Trail style game) for her and some friends. I've been looking for systems/modules that could work for something like this, and am thinking a modified version of a rules-lite system like Kids on Bikes / Kids on Brooms could work well, but I'm curious if you have any suggestions or experience running this kind of game? Thanks for all you do!!

Tom Morris

I am currently running 4 groups in a world of my own creation in Weird Wizard. They each play 1 week out of the month and have their own focus: Wild Explorers, Sailors, Faithful defenders of commoners and Investigators for the Magic Academy. They are all at about 3rd out of 10 levels. Everyone is having a ton of fun, and we’ve even had a few crossover sessions. I would like to kick off a world-spanning apocalypse where each group must take on their own challenges eventually culminating in a scramble to stop the world ending at level 10. What is your best advice for plotting 4 separate fronts out that converge in this way?

Gustavo Campanelli

I would say, if anybody in one of the groups has temporal powers, give them visions. If that is not true, do it the Harry Potter way and have one of the teachers in the Magic Academy be the one to have it. If more than one group has the means, both groups need this. Then you break the story up for each realm, The wild explorers go to a wilder place to do it, the magic academy goes through planar magic, the sailors need to contact somebody in the middle of the see where there's nobody or it's not easy to find, and the faithful defenders need to sprad to defend the whole planet. Of course, you can plan this differently. If you can, I suggest you read Crisis on Infinite Earths, which is a series of comics going through a whole multiverse and collapsing into one universe.

Gustavo Campanelli

For something so specific you either modify a game risking taking it out of it's comfort zone, find the perfect game (that might be just the Myths of Cthulhu minus the elders, or Young Centurions) or go to a more generic game, like BRP (Basic role playing) which incidentaly is what powers Myths of Cthulhu, or Fate Core which incidentaly powers Young centurions, or GURPS (Generic Universal RolePlaying System). All three of these can run the adventure, but you might want to revise and limit the skill list.

Gustavo Campanelli

Questions to help you rethink the problem. Are all three villains on the same step of execution of their plans? Are they on a similar timeline till the final step or do some of them require years to get there? finally, Is your group the only group of adventurers in the land that is going for one of those three?

Benjamin Conard

I just had a game session fall flat. I could tell the players weren't as engaged as usual. Thinking back on it I've had several bad game sessions across multiple game systems lately, and the one thing they all had in common is they were adventures entirely made up by me. It is clear my adventures are more focused on set piece events rather than player agency. What should I focus on when creating adventures to prioritize player choice?

Carl Buford

Hi Mike! Something I love to do and somewhat frequently do as a GM is introduce new people to the hobby. When I do this, I have a consistent internal dilemma about which system to use. The tension I have is generally between the “complexity” of the system vs the “obscurity” of the system. A system like 5e can be great to teach new people because of the sheer volume of existing content online that they can search on their own after the game if they were intrigued. A more obscure system like shadow dark is a little easier to teach people, but loses some of that independent “google-ability”. All the way on the opposite end would be a home brew system that I have used before to teach people that is very streamlined for new players, but isn’t really “google-able” at all. I wonder if this is something you’ve encountered at all. What are some things you consider in this trade off when teaching new RPGs of simplicity vs. popularity?

Kevin F.

I’m curious what your thoughts and guidance would be on using The Lazy DM approach with solo play. Sometimes it’s difficult to find a group based on geography or timezones and some of us have to resort to solo play. How would you approach something like this?

Oliver Winegar

Hey! One of my dnd players is going to start joining us online. The rest will still be in person. What are your tips for helping keep that online player immersed with the rest of the group?

Doug Powis

Hi Mike. I am running a long form campaign (Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus) which I am a certain distance into and I now need to wrap up in 10 sessions (around 3 hours a week). I know the common advice for one-shots is to cut from the middle, but do you have any advice for condensing a lot of content into a small amount of time while avoiding removing too much agency from the party? Thanks for all the advice, I literally quartered my prep time with the Lazy Dungeon Master!

Jason

Hi Milke, quick question, I hope. When starting out a new campaign, do you let the players pick what subclasses they will use, even if starting out at Level 1? I keep going back and forth on the pros and cons and would appreciate your views. Thanks

Michael Shea

This is a good question! I think you want to have a handle on the dial of how fast the villainous plots and quests are progressing. Too fast and the players will feel like they can't keep up and whatever choice they make ends up moving them one step forward but two steps back. I think its ok to slow down villainous quests so that the players don't feel like they missed something or took the wrong choice but still get a sense that things are moving forward in the world. You can always dial up or down the pacing of a villainous quest.

Michael Shea

I think the 5e designers assumed that an ongoing effect would last one round. Thus, if you're doing additional ongoing damage, you just subtract it from the total damage. Players are pretty crafty at figuring out ways to avoid the damage. Forge of Foes isn't intended to be an exact science – you're free and encouraged to tweak things based on your own experiences and you can give yourself some wiggle room even when running a monster - removing or reducing the damage of attacks if the ongoing damage appears to be doing a fine job on its own.

Michael Shea

I haven't played it but something like Cypher system with Old Gods of Appalachia might work. There are free samples to get a feel for it. Dresden with FATE might work too or Nights Black Agents or Cthulhu Confidential which uses a more exploration and skill-based system called GUMSHOE which is a lot of fun. You might try the lighter-weight Shadowdark but that's more dungeon crawly than investigation-based.

Michael Shea

I think it would be fun to have one big thing, one big kaiju style monster or other world-ending event that affects all four groups instead of an individual one for each of them. Some sort of massive coming event. A world-destroying sentient moon that eclipses the sun – that sort of thing. It can be fun for your groups to all know the others face the same thing and it can be easier on you to manage it. The effects this world-threatening force has could be different for the four groups -- sea monsters, strange corruption of magic users at the academy, monsters coming out of the woods and threatening the commonrs, and maybe the exodus of the fey folk.

Michael Shea

First, don't be too hard on yourself. If you can find a way to talk to your group and stomach potential criticism, it might be worth seeing what their perspective is. You can also try different styles for your own homebrew adventures. What is the choice in front of the characters? That's a question I think we can ask ourselves in just about every scene. What options exist? What actions can they take? Sometimes we write adventures that plod along from one scene to the next without any real choices in front of the characters. Mixing multiple random encounters together sometimes creates these choices. Do we stop the mutant bears from clawing down the bandits? Will we miss out on something if we don't? Are we helping the enemy if we do? Thinking of each scene from the perspective of the possible options in front of the characters might help. But I don't know if that really nails the issue in the same way asking players what they've liked from previous adventures and what they want to see more of might.

Michael Shea

Personally, I really think Shadowdark is a fantastic introduction to the hobby. I've introduced new players and seen new players introduced with Shadowdark and they really took easily to it. The nice thing is that Shadowdark's mechanics are close enough to 5e that if they end up shifting over to D&D 5e, it will still be familar to them. The same is true the other way – those familiar with 5e will recognize things in Shadowdark. https://youtu.be/wfLiE9XvlqY?t=2141s

Michael Shea

I don't think the 8 steps of the Lazy GM really work well for solo games which are heavily improvised. You don't typically plan out a session for a solo RPG – at least the ones I've played. I think running solo games is a great way to get in some fun RPG play and cross-train our improv brains for games with more players at the table. But yeah, I don't think I'd bother with the eight steps. All of the solo rules I've seen have their own approach that I'd follow for running a solo game.

Michael Shea

I have a regular game where one player is online and frequently I have one online player in other games I run. Here are a couple of tricks: - Remind the rest of the group to help you include the remote player in the game. Ask them to include that player in their conversations. This can help you all remember they're out there. - Write down the character names in front of you and use that to call on characters throughout the game. This puts the remote player on the same playing field as the other players.

Michael Shea

It's pretty tricky to time a campaign out to ten sessions. I'd probably have a loose outline of what you hope to get done across the ten and then check it after every session. I've run episodic campaigns using Shadow of the Weird Wizard and that worked pretty well but you have to be rigerous about what you expect to get done in a session. I'd expect whatever your plans are to take twice as long as you think so maybe plan five big arcs that run two sessions each (building them as though they'll only take one session) But be ready to improvise. Be ready to pull stuff out. Re-evaluate between every session to see how things go. Save the final session for the big confrontation. Good luck!

Michael Shea

I leave it up to them but I make it clear what sources are available for people to use. I think a lot of players like to think about what subclass they'll choose and I don't see a reason to get in the way of that. I worry about the world and the adventures and let them worry about their character. But I do like limiting overall source material to just one or two books just to give the campaign a particular flavor.

Benjamin Conard

Excellent. Thanks for the answer Mike. I"ll bring it up with them and see if their thoughts line up with mine and what they liked/disliked.

David James Shepherd

Hi Mike, First time caller! When you reviewed the early 2024 material you talked about how the new rules may slow down combat. Did this play out as you thought? Do you have any advice on making ‘24 combat zip along? Thanks and best regards, Dave

Jackson Foster

I am currently making a website that is a D&D Beyond Alternative. Whilst good, I feel there are a lot of issues with D&D Beyond that I want to address. Software that runs better and can be stored locally, better UI that is more interactable with abilities (similar to BG3), easier implementation of homebrew and third party rules and content, and better tools for GMs, such as a better encounter maker, content sharing etc. My main question I wanted to ask, if you could add any feature to this, what would you want to see? Keeping in mind this is still an indie thing with no official backing. What tools would you like to see available for players and GMs?

Tom Morris

I'm looking at Schwalb's old book Elder Evils right now for ideas (if you are going to steal, steal from the masters!). I like the "same threat, different manifestations" idea. I just need to plot it out on a timeline or something I guess. It would be fun to try and design some. If I could ask another question, I would ask about "dungeon epics" to bring them together. Next month!

Micheal Rackintyre

On your recent reading and reflections on treasure parcels, you talked about the issues with some 2014/2024 magic items being overpowered especially when no requiring attunement. Have you ever considered letting players have the item as written, with the exception that it now does, or a powerful attunement item takes 2 or even 3 slots?

Caleb Ludrick

How can you incorporate OSR/Shadowdark sensibilities into a 5e game without undermining player character choices or conflicting with 5e's core design philosophy? For instance, OSR games prioritize player ingenuity over dice rolls, but when I reward room searches based solely on how players describe their approach rather than calling for Perception checks, players who invested heavily in Perception based skills feel their choices were meaningless.

Kevin Tones

There are three settings I intend to include in my new campaign (5e24 based), Tomb of the Black Sands, Hot Springs Island, and Magical Industrial Revolution (Endon). Have you run or played in any or all of these? If so would you have any recommendations?

kratus of devon

Thanks for being such a valuable resource to the community! In my current 5e game I spent some time designing the climactic dungeon. As I was working on the location’s page in obsidian, I found myself slipping into the natural rhythm of having sections for secrets & clues, locations, NPCs, monsters, and treasure. By the end, I had most of the 8 steps in this location page for a dungeon that has taken 5-7 sessions to crawl through. I know that when you write published adventures you use a similar structure. Do you have any advice for integrating a location/adventure that is written this way into your prep and use at the table? My goal would be to avoid being too redundant, but also not relying on one prep document to carry through multiple sessions.

The Scrumgeon

How do you handle campaign/adventure secrets that your players/characters know vs secrets they don't yet know?

zyzzyr

Hi Mike, do you have any advice on things to include to address mid-campaign blues? My current campaign is 35 sessions in and we have ~ 25ish sessions to go to complete my (homebrew) adventure. We're at a point where the players are far enough into the story that the initial wave of enthusiasm is in the rear view mirror, far enough in to know generally how to solve the big challenge, but far enough away that the end isn't in sight. This has happened in multiple campaigns I've run and played in, so I assume this is true for others as well. Do you have any tips or tricks, perhaps certain types of encounters to include, or perhaps things to avoid, to avoid doldrums mid-campaign? By the way, I've been listening to your show for a year now and I've incorporated a lot of your advice. I've been playing and GMing for 40 years but the current campaign I'm running is by far and away the best campaign I've ever run. This is in large part due to your advice - so thank you!

Adam B

Hey Mike! In Waterdeep, after two unambiguous villain arcs against Xanathar and Manshoon, the players have started a morally ambiguous “Cold War” against the Cassalanters. A peaceful resolution is likely the most interesting and desirable outcome for my players. The players are decently high level at 9. Tensions aren’t such that they’d be harassed by devils yet, so how can I keep the combat pillar (the strongest in my opinion) going in this arc without it being pointlessly easy, detracting from the investigation, or breaking the verisimilitude of Waterdeep?

Elias

Hey Mike, I sometimes feel like creating Characters that are of older Age are more difficult for me. Usually at our table new characters start at a low level, thus having none or very little exprience points. But from a narrative perspective this character should be experienced, just by the virtue of being alive for a while, no? For me it's also less believable that they would have gone through life without utilizing or exploring their class features. Do you have any recommendations on how to bridge this gap between game systems and in game narrative? Thanks a lot!

Sam

(CAVEAT: I’m only about halfway through reading my copy of City of Arches, so if you answer this in the book itself feel free to just ignore this altogether- I’ll get there eventually!) If you could pick any (other) published campaign setting to insert the City of Arches into, what setting would it be, and how would you do it? I’d particularly love to hear how you might use set up CoA as one of several locations the players might visit, rather than as the central quest hub.

topher mehlhoff

Do you have any thoughts on or methods for recapping at the beginning of a session? It always feels like a chore, but I think players (and GM) benefit from the refresh. Are their ways to make it more enjoyable?

JunderlandGames

2 questions. I feel like my players almost always never use the treasure I give them. Before I ask them. What should I do about this? What could my players spend all this gold on? It feels like a lot

Arseni Kritchever

Hello Mike! I'm about to run a game of Urban Shadows and as part of that my group did a very involved session zero which included creating characters, jointly creating the setting, creating a web of relationships between characters, factions, and NPCs, and so on. But now some of my players want to make new characters because they went down the theory-crafting rabbit hole on YouTube/Reddit. This would undermine a lot of what we created together as a group during the session zero which I'm not happy about. So first question: should I let the players make new characters and run a new session zero, or put my foot down and ask them to stick with the characters they already made? And a corollary: what are your thoughts on players actively min-maxing or theory crating characters before the play even begins, because personally it's now sapping my will to run the game in the first place? Thanks as always!

Kreggar

Hi Mike, happy Friday! July question: I have recently embraced the Lazy GM idea of running a homebrew campaign, or adventures, in a published campaign setting. Specifically D&D’24 in Forgotten Realms. How would you go about adding custom locations into the established world? For example, my campaign idea features a specific sort of starting area. Should I find an existing location that matches it closely, or find a relatively empty spot on the map where I can drop in my original creations? Similar to the idea of dropped the City of Arches into Faerun.

Sweet G

I’ve been subscribing to the Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master method ever since I bought the book when it came out. I used it to run my greatest game ever and continue to use it for each game I start up. It is truly the one thing that reduces stress about playing and actually, regularly gets me to the table. I love prepping, thinking about my game, and digging into new systems but nothing (for me) beats hands on table time and your stuff gets me behind the screen more reliably than anything. Keep up the awesome work. Question: I often find myself with some time between Campaigns where I want to be setting things up and getting ahead on some game prep but I always get lost in focusing on the wrong things. What does the Lazy GM method look like for prepping an upcoming campaign or organizing the lazy version of a campaign world for use in a game before you have players and/or characters?

Gustavo Campanelli

I think the best thing to do is to let a GM select the fonts of truth in his campaign. In other words, what books are allowed (and perhaps what classes or subclasses of those books too) so that players then don't have the whole thing, only the subset selected by the GM.

Gustavo Campanelli

Give bonuses or maluses to the dice throw depending on the described actions. This way you favor both. And if you want to account on a bad dice throw making the content unavailable, don't worry, instead of not finding it think about making him find it at a cost. Most probably time, or he nicks a dagger getting to it, or the little purse gets a gash in that'll start tingling behind him as he looses money.

Gustavo Campanelli

Are you sort of recreating Eberron? Not as much politics in your campaign, but the magical insustrial revolution is what makes eberron special.

Gustavo Campanelli

There are ways to handle this. Perhaps in you setting things like a Blacksmith don't have a class, just skill. Same with farmers. So getting a class might require an inciting event that doesn't account for age. Another way of doing this is having had a class but having had some kind of accident that removed it, a curse that ended when his level reached 0 or a mental wipe that doesn't let him use old skills. So, is he now remembering his old class and gaining it back or is he going for another class now? Talki it with your master , give him some ideas and go with something that works for both.

Gustavo Campanelli

It's a GM decision. I inserted it in Eberron, so after having played several days, they saw a flying ship arriving and docking on a different part of town, and then leaving after 3 hours. This signaled to them a bigger world outside the city that's coherent with Eberron while not forcing them to abandon their quest. But you can use any setting, even hombrewed work for this. After all, the players arrived from other places with no memory, so they don't know in which world they are.

Gustavo Campanelli

Offer a single XP if somebody else does it, and offer also an XP if another one helps him a lot in doing it. A single XP ins't much, but it's a free XP for paying attention and helping others remember it all. Sometimes you can offer clariffications through this, offer further information that they seemd to have missed, and do it without taking their spotlight in it. You can even give some information they don't already have but it's in a book they been carrying for ages.

Gustavo Campanelli

Do a 0.5 shorter version and check what changes with this new characters and if everybody else is happy with these changes. Also let them know the greatest corollary of RPG, players will minmax themselves OUT of the fun if left unchecked. So you can let them play those characters letting them know sometimes you'll be targetting the min part of minmaxing.

Gustavo Campanelli

You can do it as you wish, it's a published setting, but when it arrives at the table it'll be your setting. Your idea of searching an appropiate area is good, replacing some of the established might break something in the setting.

Kreggar

Hey Gustavo, thank you for sharing your thoughts.

Sam

For sure! I’m definitely not looking for “the one true way”, but I get a lot of inspiration of seeing examples of how other DMs do things. In your game, was the CoA physically located on the Plane of Eberron, or did you have an arch in Eberron that led to the CoA?

Gene Brode, Jr.

Piggybacking off of Gustavo, check out TM van Dalen’s stuff on DM’s Guild such as Volo’s Vetted Vendors, etc. It uses new locations that can fit anywhere, but we as the contributors got to create them to fit in a generic locale as well as a specific street in Waterdeep for example. If you make a new town obviously that’s different. But small places are easy to add to official settings.

Gene Brode, Jr.

Hi Mike, thanks for hosting these Q&As. I have been running a 5e PBP homebrew setting for the past 4 years and running a couple other 5e games as well. While I love some of the official content, I’ve grown bored of 5e and all the rules. Especially while trying to remember so many Avrae commands on Discord. I tried making my own game but put it aside. I looked at other systems and dabbled in Shadowdark, Knave 2E and Cairn. Then Daggerheart came out and I got excited once again. Now that I’m trying my hand at running a DH PBP, I need monsters that don’t yet exist. I know you probably don’t have tons of experience with Daggerheart since it’s so new, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on lazy (or not-so-lazy) monster creation for that system.

Jackson Foster

Don’t worry I’ve already started, it was one of the first things I wanted to work on. GMs can select what sources to include, and dropdown from there, you can select specific character options such as subclasses, species, feats and spells

Predrag Dimitrijević

Hello, Mike! I've been thinking a lot about Solo RPGs (truly solo, with just one player being both PC and GM). The one game I've found that tickles my interest is The Scarlet Heroes from Kevin Crawford (which I'm sure you've heard about). The most briliant thing in that book is the way the damage is dealth, and the way monster health is calculated. He used monster Hit Dice (HD) as HP. And When dealing damage, you consult another table: 1 - No damage 2-5 - 1 damage 6-9 - 2 damage 10+ - 4 damage When dealt to the player, he detracts the damage from his HP. When dealt to a Monster, he detracts the damage from monster's HD. There are also fray dice and other mechanics, but this one, to me, is what makes Scarlet Heroes special, because, you can port it to other OSR games that use HD for monsters. Now the question - Do you feel this mechanic can be ported to 5e as well? But instead of HD (which are not really a thing in 5e), one would use CR as a monster HP. So, a CR 1 monster basically has 1 HP, CR 2 has 2 HP and so on. And we are still using the damage table.

Michael Shea

Hi David! So far I haven't found D&D 2024 rules to slow the game down any moreso than any of the 5es. I'm running a 3x5e game for my Wednesday game where we have characters from D&D 2014, D&D 2024, and Level Up Advanced 5e all at the same table and I wouldn't say the 2024 characters are any slower. I don't think there's any way to add something like weapon mastery and *not* have it slow down a little bit but how players play probably has a bigger effect. So far, I'm happy with D&D 2024. It's been solid at my table and I wouldn't say any other version is better than the others.

Michael Shea

I think there are a few features. First, the big thing I think we're missing is a good self-hostable open-source character builder. I feel like all the rest can be built without much trouble (I like to think I've done so with the 5e Artisanal Database). But character builders are hard. I think maybe focusing on a more open-ended character builder that lets players easily add the features of their class would work instead of one that tries to calculate everything. One problem is, of course, that not all the material can go in it and be distributed legally so a character builder that focuses on the 5.2 System Reference Document but lets users add in other stuff on their end would be valuable. It's a tough problem though!

Michael Shea

For me, the answer is just to have better control over the magic items that enter the game. It's fine to have rings of resistance that don't require attunement but *not* good to let players buy *all* of them and buy any amount of them. Having one or two players with a ring of necrotic resistance isn't so bad, but six characters with ten rings of resistance is a lot to manage. I think the answer is in taking control ov what enters the game.

Michael Shea

We've talked about this in the Sly Flourish discord server a bit. There are ways to do it but you're taking a lot out of 5e to do it. I think it might be better to just offer to run Shadowdark which has all of that built in and is clearly recognizable as a 5e game to those who play 5e. As far as the specifics of something like perception, you can make it clear that perception shows *something* but they still have to search to find out what. I don't think hiding things is so important that we should limit what a high perception character can find. More on this here: https://slyflourish.com/passive_perception.html

Michael Shea

I think its ok to have one big prep pile that you use for multiple sessions. I still like to have new session notes per session but I'm find copying and pasting over stuff that's still relevant into your new notes is fine. Your notes serve you so you can organize them however best fits your style and the sessions you're running. I'd be wary of having too many sets of notes, though. I think it works best to just have one set of notes – ideally about a page – for the session you're going to run. When I write up my own location adventure writeups and then run them, I'll often skip much of my notes because they're in my writeup. But I still have some notes with things I'm changing around my own group and their situation. Hope that helps!

Michael Shea

I tell them. Secrets can be revealed in lots of ways. Sometimes its a check. Sometimes its something they discover organically by exploring the world *without* a check. Sometimes they just know it. A lot of secrets I reveal to the players through their characters. "You remember back from your latent memories of times past when you battled Karavon the Gray Blade and saw his necrotic blade, Gravestrike, hewing through celestials" Stuff like that.

Michael Shea

I usually don't have much of a plan for how things should go in the future and so I drop in new big things that can feel like entirely new adventures. Sure, you destroyed the Key of Worlds and prevented it from being used against the City of Arches but now there's a grim citadel on the horizon called the Dread Necropolis that's building an army of undead to attack the city! I think having new arcs to a campaign can keep them fresh and leaving these arcs undefined until you're getting close to run them might help keep things fresh. Imagine if you were just starting the campaign now with new characters that happen to be at their current level. What would that *new* campaign look like? I'm so glad you like the show! Thank you!!

Michael Shea

I'm not sure why devils aren't the answer. Is it possible there's an arch devil at work in the background that wants the characters out of the way that might be disconnected from the Cassalanters? They've made a pact with a devil, if I recall. What if that devil is acting independently from them? That might be a fun avenue for the more peaceful resolution.

Michael Shea

Old people can start new jobs. They're whole life they may have just been a balcksmith, like Gustavo says, and only now do they find themselves in the position of having to be a fighter. Honestly, I woudn't worry about it too much. It's one of those elements of realism that doesn't matter all that much if you ask me.

Michael Shea

Oh wow. There's so many! COA is really designed to fit well into any setting so it's less about finding an ideal setting for COA and instead finding the setting you want to run and fitting it in. I think it would work well on the Sword Coast of FR on the eastern side of the Anauroch desert or in the Southlands of Midgard or just about anywhere in Eberron. It really depends on the feeling you want for the rest of your campaign moreso than an ideal place for the City of Arches itself. I actually ran the COA "vanilla" in my Wednesday group, with no default setting and just used the general gods described in COA and those in the Scions of Light and Lower Twelve docs.

Michael Shea

I like to ask the players to do it. I've been doing this for years now. It's not always perfect. Sometimes its a little ham-fisted. But it still helps me see what the players remember and it brings them into the game more than if I just did it myself. It's also worth reinforcing to them that it's valuable to keep notes so they can remember what happens session to session.

Michael Shea

I really don't worry about players using the treasure they get. My job is to give it to them. They get to decide what they want to do with it. The only thing i'd recommend to them is having a quartermaster who keeps track of all loot and thus you have some double-entry book keeping. The quartermaster keeps track of all loot coming in and who got what and each character sheet has the loot that character acquired. That way you can validate who got what an when. Other than that, it's up to them. Regarding gold, I like to give the characters a home base and let them upgrade it with gold. There are various systems for this. The Summervine Villa chapter of City of Arches has upgrades for a manor. Another option is offering three pieces of random magic items they can buy: 500 GP for uncommon, 5,000 for rare, 50,000 for very rare, and 500,000 for legendary. Adjust the prices to suit the power of the item.

Michael Shea

Theorycrafting new characters isn't fantastic. I'd ask them to try to stick to their current characters for a while and let them respec the character later if they really aren't enjoying the character they picked. I think it's fair to tell the players that them theory-crafting characters isn't the sort of game you really want to run.

Michael Shea

I think making a location of your own and sticking it somewhere on the map where the environment feels right but has some space to add your own thing is fine. WOTC has added new villages, towns, and cities continually over the past 50 years. There's no reason you can't do the same!

Michael Shea

Good question! I think our time is best spent thinking about things outside of the story or plot that might surround the characters. Instead we can focus on: - History – what came before? - Political machinations – what's happening in the world now? - Theology and pantheons – who are the gods and who are their followers? - Locations – what cool locations are in the area? - Villains – who are the major antagonists and what are they up to? Try to imagine a living breathing world with history and depth *regardless* of the characters. The richer it is, the more material you have to drive the sessions you're running in the future. Hope that helps!

Michael Shea

The Daggerheart core book includes ways to improvise monsters and reskinning is always an option. There are a ton of stat blocks in Daggerheart and they're relatively simple in construction so I think there's no reason you can't build just about any monster you need right from the book. I haven't run it or played it yet so I don't have any experiences to share but nothing I'm seeing tells me reskinning and improving monsters can't be done.

Michael Shea

I haven't actually heard of Scarlet Heroes! I'll have to check it out. This sort of damage threshold mechanic is something I'm seeing in more RPGs. I think Cairn has a similar mechanic as does Daggerheart. I don't know about converting it over to 5e. It's probably easy enough to do but I think the system tends to work best as it is, probably. One thing I've done that's similar is tracking damage by using \s and Xs. A \ is 5 damage, an X is 10 damage. Then I can round up or down as needed. Usually this evens out across a battle and it's very fast to implement.

Adam B

That makes sense! Just needed some ideas jogged loose. I had been holding fast to the idea that the Cassalanters would be “commanding” the devils I hadn’t considered that the devils might try to stop the players from breaking them out of that pact. Thanks!

Kreggar

Totally makes sense, and pretty much what I was thinking. Thanks, Mike, and others, for the feedback!

Lumby

Hi, Mike! How do you go about prepping for a session when the party is at a "fork in the road"? My next game is picking up in the center of a large dungeon. The players can choose to go anywhere. I prepped with the Eight Steps to flesh out some areas and encounters in the direction I'm guessing they'll go. But I can't help think they'll turn right when I prepped for them to turn left, leaving me to improv the session. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this type of situation.

Woody

I thought some time about this, maybe the character learned those skills without any training, and went the long way, trying and error. For example, an old guy that learns to fight like a monk after a decade of brawling in taverns... could be fun

Brydon Marks

Hi Mike, I came across a bit of a problem today: The party is exploring the ruined temple of a lost magocracy (as one does) and found some treasure... But they didn't want to take it because "it seems culturally significant to these people and it feels disrespectful to take it." From a real world perspective, they're probably not wrong, but it seems like "exploring temples and tombs and coming out with treasure" is a pretty big part of D&D. From an anti-colonialist perspective, are there appropriate ways to address this issue while still keeping the dungeons in our Dungeons & Dragons?

Jacques of Hearts

Hi Mike, here is my question: Do you know of other 5e "whole" systems with open licenses to use beyond just D&D, A5E and Tale of the Valiant, and If you found another good one would you include it in the 5EADB?

Gene Brode, Jr.

Thanks! The book just arrived today so I’m going to dive in.

zyzzyr

Thanks Mike! I follow this strategy of using multiple arcs to build a campaign, but in this particular case I'm a bit challenged as the players asked for a single, cohesive story from beginning to end. It's an interesting thought as to what I would do with new characters who arrived at this point in the story, where the plans of the BBEG are quite advanced and about to come to fruition. Something I will ponder before my next game!

Mark Johnson

I've been running a session for 3 1/2 years for my friends every Monday night and it's been a blast. However, I'm getting a little burnt out preparing each week. For various reasons, I've started thinking about alternating GM duties with another member of my table. On the plus side, we could both play, we could collaborate on the story as co-GMs, and we would have continuity of our story since we'd both attend every night. However, part of the fun playing is not knowing everything. So I'm looking for ways to share responsibility but perhaps find a way to keep it fresh when the GMs at the table are players. I'm also looking for an even lazier way to GM :)

Daniel Brough

I joined your patreon specifically and mostly to obtain the offline Artisanal Database, and it's wonderful. But I'm wondering if there's a way for us users to edit and add to the database (not the public facing one, but just our own private copy) to include more things (like I want to add monsters from Monstrous Menagerie 2, for example). I'm sure this is technically possible already, and maybe I just need to consult a good AI for coding instructions on how to do it.

Boštjan

Hey Mike! Could you share any wisdom you've gained from using Kickstarter? More specifically, for first-timers, that don't have a following yet. Cheers

Daniel Brough

Please ignore my ignorance, a simple reading of the readme within the Artisanal Database revealed you've already provided instructions how to add custom entries, and how to modify entries too. :)

Michael Shea

It's really valuable to ask your players at the end of a session where the might head next so you have some gauge of what to prep. In a dungeon it's a *little* easier because even a large dungeon is somewhat constrained. Trying to define scenes is harder to do when the characters have a lot of agency to explore. In that case, it helps to focus your prep on the components you need to improvise encounters. For a dungeon this includes: - A brief list of the locations in the dungeon. A word or two per room can do it. - A list of potential monsters. You get to decide which ones and how many appear by rolling randomly or choosing them based on the situation and pacing of the game. - Abstract secrets. Secrets and clues can appear almost anywhere so you can drop them in regardless of the direction the characters go. - NPCs. Friendly NPCs are important in a dungeon to break the pace of constant battles and threats. But they can show up in lots of places. - Treasure. Also abstract from where they discover it. You can break it up into several hoards or just one big hoard in a treasure vault. Those are really five of the eight steps built so you can drop them in different places. Hope that helps!

Michael Shea

Yeah! This is sort of a new way of thinking about looting dungeons that's come up in the past few years. In City of Arches I put in the Magistrate of Tombs – a group that determines whether it's ok or not to loot locations around the City. The intent was to show that the current government cared about maintaining previous cultures but still give the characters options to delve into dungeons. The Magistrate has the following conditions under which its ok to loot a tomb: Authorization. If you are legally an ancestry of the tomb, that stuff is ok to take as part of the preservation of the original culture (of which you are part). Preservation. Removing material from the tomb preserves it. Otherwise it would be lost or destroyed forever. Direct Threat. Something in the tomb is directly dangerous and needs to be dealt with. Permission. Spirits of the dead give permission to the characters. Of course, they can't just *say* they have permission from a ghost. The ghost must present itself. Interception. Evil-doers are going after the stuff themselves. If we don't take it, someone else will and with less scruples. That's how it works in the City of Arches but you can turn some of these into general concepts for any game. The spirits or gods giving the characters permission is an easy one. A ghost says "hell yes, take my sword. Go fight evil!" Destruction is another "you figure out that if you do not take this, it will be destroyed or looted by others." Permission. It's your ancestral tomb, it's ok. One separation we made in CIty of Arches is that the city and government has laws against the appropriation of loot but individuals are individuals. The characters aren't colonists themselves. They might have a need greater than just profit. Of course, some hate this idea and that's up to them. But it is worth a conversation with your players during a session zero I think.

Michael Shea

I don't know of any others that are in an open license. I don't really have plans to add others unless something significant shows up. I think we have enough to run awesome 5e games forever.

Michael Shea

It might be worth talking to the other co-GM about what parts of it you share and what parts you keep to yourselves so you're still surprised. You might know larger regional stuff but not the details of what's going on in every dungeon. As far as other tips for lazier GMing, that's what I think about every day and share here, on the newsletter (https://slyflourish.com/subscribe/), and on the podcast (https://slyflourish.podbean.com/)!

Michael Shea

I dislike absolutes like "paid GMing is a net negative for the hobby". First, its not really a provable hypothesis. Maybe its not for you. Maybe it's not great for one particular group. But I don't think any of us can speak to it overall. It also doesn't matter – it's going to happen anyway. But whether or not another GM offers to run games for pay somewhere else, it doesn't affect your own home game. It can't make the hobby *worse* because the hobby is made up of thousands of independent games with small groups. I'm happy doing what I'm doing (running games for my friends for free). Others are happy GMing for pay on Startplaying.games. There's obviously a drive there for both GMs and players. So yeah, I think its fine and however we each feel about it doesn't matter for our game or their game.

Michael Shea

Awesome! Glad you figured it out! Let me know if it works for you!

Michael Shea

Hi Boštjan! I wrote up all my best advice for "making it in the RPG industry" which includes Kickstarter here: https://mikeshea.net/how_to_make_it_in_the_rpg_industry.html This is a bit dated but has other advice. A lot has changed with Kickstarter since then though: https://mikeshea.net/kickstarter_experiences.html My number one piece of advice is to start a newsletter and work on getting subscribers. Starting with a Kickstarter is going to be hard for all but the smallest projects if you don't already have an audience of some sort.

SpoooonBK

That's what I said in the thread. But apparently I'm in the minority on reddit.

Richard Kairon

Well met, thou oracle of the lazy quest givers. Our LGBT community boardgaming group started a monthly D&D one-shot table a year ago, and I volunteer as a rotational DM. Given our two-hour evening includes arrival and clear-up, we only have 90 minutes of actual gameplay. I typically run 1st-to-3rd-level adventures for three to four players, using pre-generated characters to save time. I also drop players in medias res after a quick objective and character intro, and I buddy up new players with experienced ones. My challenge is structuring a 90-minute one-shot. I'm finding it difficult to fit a strong start, an adaptable middle that can be pruned as needed, and a climactic finale (often combat) while also allowing time for a satisfying conclusion. Do you have any advice on how to effectively design and pace a D&D one-shot to fit within a strict 90-minute timeframe, especially concerning the balance of introduction, a prunable middle, and an impactful climax? Running a session in 50% of the usual timeframe is difficult. Massive thanks Richard

Jay Holt

Hi Mike, quick question, how come you don't cover Warhammer at all, they have a new system out and nobody ever mentions it. I'd be interested to hear your take on it

Cédrick Lemay

Hey Mike! My question today is: have you ever run campaign with a certain role missing? I've had a campaign that sadly stop faster than i thought it possibly could, and am now starting another one, but one thing came up in both: no healer. My reflex was to always told them i could balance the game to let them heal themselves like helaing surge from dmg 2014 i think, action and bonus action potion with different healing depending on the action, and a companion i would control. I feel like im shooting myself in the foot. If this ever happened to you that a certain role was missing, how did you balance the game in regard to that?

Jason Kemp

Do you have a preferred template or stat block for locations, particularly settlements? I'm looking an easy format that inspires, but does not overwhelm me with the information it provides. I'm almost there with factions, but I could really use some help with locations.

Kyle Lambe

Hi Mike, I really love role playing and combat, but find it difficult to mix the two. While I try to inhabit my character's personality and love adopting an accent or speech patterns different from my own, I find myself unintentionally setting this aside when initiative is rolled, and shifting my focus fully into planning and making my moves. Do you have any 'easy wins' for players to keep their character traits in mind in combat, or any tools a DM may encourage this? I was wondering if a 'break in the action' at the top of initiative order for the PCs and monsters to mouth off to each other would be helpful, or perhaps too regimented?

Michael Shea

Hi Richard! You can really only plan for about two to three scenes in 90 minutes. You're doing a lot of stuff right, though – only three or four players and keeping it low level. Dungeons in this format are likely only two or three rooms. I'd probably ensure your strong start isn't a battle unless you're counting it as one of the scenes. I think doing that from time to time can work. For me, I'd aim for one roleplay scene, one exploration scene, and one battle. You might also focus on a single complicated situation the characters can navigate across the whole 90 minutes. Stealing a powerful artifact from a ruined wizards tower – that sort of thing. The compressed time isn't going to give you a lot of wiggle room so I'd make sure whatever your first scene or two are – you can keep them short. If you do have a battle before your final scene, keep it with few monsters and low hit points. But yeah, I'd try to think of it as three scenes, with the first two being somewhat compressed into 15 to 20 minutes and the rest for the final scene. Check out the original adventurers league intro advetures by Shawn Merwin as examples. I also talked to Shawn about this in an episode of the DM's Deep Dive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rWFXTpmZj8 Hope that helps!!

Michael Shea

I think Warhammer and 40k is pretty cool but its just not a home system I play. Too many systems, not enough time!

Richard Kairon

Fantastic. Thank you so much, Mike. I will go and check out the link as well as I still have your deep dives in my watch later list for quite some time now.

Michael Shea

Healers, and maybe some sort of up-front fighter type, are really the only roles that I think are highly advantageous but I have played groups that mix it up. On the player side, they can pick subclasses that can help fill in the gaps. On the GM side, you can award them extra healing potions and items that can help heal them. There are a lot of ways to get the characters to fill in the healing role – as you say, potions as bonus actions is a good way to do it. Lots of short rests, of course. I think we always have to balance around the composition and synergy of the characters anyway – this one is just a bit more stark in the lack they have. During your session zero, you might let them know that one of them might want to play one of the healing classes. There are plenty to choose from – cleric, druid, bard, maybe even a paladin. But yeah, there are things they can do on their side to help themselves out and some things you can do on your side without radically changing the underlying system. Magic items on your side, subclasses on their side. Hope that helps!

Michael Shea

Mine is really simple. For bigger locations its a name and three features (I've used the term Aspects in the past from FATE). That's usually enough to give me a good idea what's going on and I can improvise the rest. Here are some examples: ***The Burning Monolith***. Pool of molten rock, charred corpse-strewn trees, thick choking smoke. ***The Shattered Tower***. Lighting bolts, floating stones, titan's iron maul. ***The Secluded Pool***. Dancing faeries, giant flowers, strange starscape. ***The Dragon's Claw***. Massive bones, shrine to Mother Avanta, shattered weapons. ***The Burial Barge***. Jotun skeleton on throne, deep saltwater pool, ghost-touched urns of the dead.

Michael Shea

I'd love it if players described what the thing they do looks like in the world. What does the spell look like? What sort of flourishing attack do they make? Maybe some inter-character roleplaying. On the player side, you could keep an index card in front of you with some prompts to remind you to do so like: - Describe my attack - Describe my spell - Yell to another character in character Something like that. On the GM side, GMs can ask similar questions: "What does that attack look like?" "What does your version of this spell look like?" "Describe your killing blow!"

Thomas Connolly

August question - Also it's not fair. It's not an RPG-related question. It's clearly tech support. Feel free to disregard. I tried your technique of adding the Sage Advice Compendium into Obsidian. (Note: you have so much content, I cannot keep up. All I know about Obsidian is what I've heard you say.) When I import, linked words vanish. Example: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/sae/sage-advice-compendium#Adventuring See the Q&A beginning with, "If I’m hidden and a creature with Blindsight or..." The answer should contain the word "Invisible." But in my 2 tests that word (and all other words which are links) vanish inside Obsidian. I tried this twice (both on Mac) with Firefox and Safari. If you have solved this, would you tell us how, please?

Brandon Sampson

Hi Mike! I loved your article/discussion a while back about building D&D characters in 15 minutes and using a regular old character sheet. Since that came out I've been trying to use D&D Beyond as little as possible to play in my weekly games. As a new person to the hobby, I'd love to get your run down of all the ways to manage your 5e characters with as little digital management as possible. I've read stuff about laminating character sheets, using index card, etc.

Sam P.

Hi Mike! Short and sweet question this time - how do you use attunement in your game? What’s the criteria that you use to decide when to apply attunement to an item? Thanks! Appreciate your Insight (Wisdom) as always

JunderlandGames

What do you use to make the 5e artisanal database? I’ve always been interested in learning to program, but bounced off of it because I never had a reason or goal to work on that seemed reachable.

David Pōkiha

I was just thinking about asking this!

David Pōkiha

Hey Mike! I play fairly short sessions, and sometimes we just end up having to spend a session talking about what to do next; there just isn't time for anything else. Are there ways to keep this engaging and fun for everyone? I've tried keeping these offline, but rarely get enough input to be worthwhile. Some of players want something very casual and hangout-y while others are very story oriented, so for the characters to plot and plan (like in Fast & Furious or Oceans where everyone stands around a map on the table and talks about the heist). The montage afterwards is easy to figure out, but the talking part is often unstructured and risks players totally checking out. Are there maybe some good questions to ask them to structure it more (like campfire stories), or roles players can take on? I'm having trouble searching this online, because "planning session" yields DM advice... but I've already got the 8 Steps! Cheers mate

Woody

Ciao Mike, I'm starting a new 13th Age campaign. I plan to tell players their DCs and ACs before they roll (and maybe even their monster HP if low). Playing Dragonbane, I've noticed that players, when they can decide on success or failure themselves, are more inclined to describe their character's actions in a fun and creative way. Are there any major drawbacks to doing this?

Thomas Connolly

Comment & suggestion - I really love the time you are taking to demonstrate the tools (and features) in the 5E Artisanal Database. I am super impressed and would never have stumbled across the value of those tools on my own. Here's an idea. You don't need it. But I play a lot, so a point buy (point cost in 2024!) calculator would be great. I'd love to have that tool running locally on my machine. If it's super easy to build, it might be a nice thing to add. I imagine the programming is pretty easy. But that's a guess. Thanks for everything!

Steve

A question: I tried to search your comments on published adventures and you have lots to say about how they are not necessarily easier to run than homebrew, but I don't think this topic is covered. How to do you decide whether to run a homebrew campaign vs a published one? it seems that there are certain skills needed in homebrew design that do not necessarily apply to a published one. So I just want to explore what makes preparing a published adventure vs preparing a homebrew adventure fundamentally different and how can a person decide, factoring in their own skill set, which is the better path for them. Thanks for all your great work!

Michael Shea

Hi Thomas! Unfortunately the Obsidian Web Clipper isn't fantastic with all web pages. Sometimes you have to copy and paste the text yourself. It all depends on how the page you're capturing is structured and what the web clipper can figure out. You might ask the other folks in the Sly Flourish Discord server how they manage it. Sorry I can't be more helpful

Michael Shea

Hi Brandon! You've probably heard my best advice but I'll summarize it here: - Write down page numbers everywhere. Every feature you add, put down the page number to make it easy to reference from your book at the table. - Use separate pages for longer reference sheets or for flowcharts. I had a separate sheet that described how my aura and smites worked for my 9th level D&D 2024 paladin and that helped a lot. - Use sheet protectors or pieces of clear tape on your sheet for dry-erase portions you can easily erase and preserve. - Use 3x5 cards for things like hit point tracking, spell slot tracking or other things. - Don't worry too much about having a rough messy character sheet. That's part of the charm. I should dive deeper into this topic but these are the ones that come to mind. You've probably seen this but just in case: https://slyflourish.com/paper_based_character_sheets.html

Michael Shea

Hi Sam! I use it the normal way in the book. Any item that has things like spell use one time per day, I make attuned. I think the key design question for whether a magic item should require attunement is whether you'd want the characters to pass it back and forth in the middle of a battle. A wand of fireballs would be pretty OP if the party just handed it around. Same with powerful swords. So generally any item more powerful than a standard +1 weapon is attuned. Relics, however, are not attuned. Single use magic items I'm happy for them to pass around and use. Playing the video game Solasta up to 16th level taught me a lot about the limitation on attunement. It's a big limitation but an important one I think – one that keeps the balance of 5e working well, like concentration. I have friends who hate concentration but not having it is a worse game if you ask me.

Sam P.

Makes sense! Thanks for sharing

Michael Shea

Hi Justin! The 5e ADB is made from a bunch of stuff. It's almost all HTML and javascript with a few libraries for things like datatables and the search index called lunr.js. The data mostly comes from Open5e's API and Github repo. I used Claude Code for almost all of the javascript creation. I'm not a javascript coder but I am a software engineer and python programmer. I don't feel great about using LLMs for code like this but boy howdy, it made it much easier to build these small downloadable tools and keep the various Javascript libraries working. Frankly, these tools wouldn't exist if I didn't have a lever like Claude Code. Updates take minutes instead of hours. I don't know how well Claude Code would have worked on more complicated projects but since the 5eADB is mostly small independent locally-executible tools, it worked very well. Because the code was generated by an LLM, I released all the code under a CC0 license – I essentially take no ownership of the code itself. This is sort of my way of addressing the issue of LLMs being trained on a bunch of people's own material without their permission. And all the data – the actual creative material hosted by the 5eADB – is all human generated and rendered with traditional procedural scripts – not LLMs. The tools themselves don't use any LLMs either. This is sort of my way of addressing the massive power consumption of LLMs. Yes, LLMs generated the code but once generated, the code can execute extremely efficiently in the user's browser. These sort of small coding projects are the only real value I've personally gotten from LLMs (and the command-line-based LLMs really are impressive at this sort of thing). My personal stance is that I never want an LLM doing actual "Creative" work for me. That's for me and other humans to do. Of course, others have their own opinions and a lot of what I just said could be taken as hypocritical justification so I'm reallly not here to judge others on the topic of LLMs. I have lots of opinions about LLMs and we discuss it often in the AI channel on the Discord server. Anyway, so that's my long answer to your short question =)

Michael Shea

Hi David! This can be tough. Some players love the releaxed "shopping episode" and other planning type sessions. Others are bored to tears. Sometimes it can be useful to have an out-of-game conversation about it to make sure folks are on the same page. Yes, we can have an hour or so of planning but then we need to get into the execution so others aren't bored. There's a concept of "comfort RPG" where players just enjoy being in the world and enjoying nice things but that can be quite different than the going into dungeons and fighting things approach. See Delicious in Dungeon as an example. I don't have a super-easy tip for handling this because the variance in desires and expectations between players can vary so much. I'd say making sure to watch the clock, give those who love to plan some time, but also get on with the adventure is good and having open conversations about it may help. Good luck!

Michael Shea

Sure! I don't see any problem with this. I often tell people DCs and often ACs after they've had a few hits. I dont think projecting this is a problem. As you say, other RPGs work this way entirely. Dragonbane is one. Numenera and Cypher is another. I think it's a lot better for GMs to be to open than be too closed. I see few drawbacks and none leap right to mind.

Michael Shea

Hi Steve! I wrote an article but haven't published it yet on the value of published adventures even if they're not easier to run. The main thing is production value. Art, design, maps – all of those things can be useful and valuable even if its mostly GM-facing. It also helps to have a framework of a plot or story for the adventure. Sometimes its not as easy for us to come up with those and having some sort of framework gives us great ideas. There's value in a communal experience too. Other GMs run the same adventure we run. We can get advice, share experiences, and enjoy having played through the same material as others. Often these communities share their own resources like art and maps. As far as preparing, when prepping a homebrew adventure, you'll want to spend more time on things the published adventure might already have covered. I talked about that in this article which breaks down the eight steps depending on the situaton you're in: https://slyflourish.com/choosing_the_right_steps.html My personal preference is still using published campaign worlds with homebrew adventures. I find I get the most bang for the buck that way.

Steve

Thanks very much! I'm looking forward to reading your article. After I asked this, I put together this very non-scientific, likely biased, ranking system to help me analyze my own relationships with homebrew vs published adventures. Basically, each category I rank from 1-5 as to how much it impacts me, then i just contrasted the two (if you want to use/share this framework, you have my permission) But I found it helped to identify that I don't really like the worldbuilding part of DMing, nor the plot architecting, but I do enjoy the running, the playing the NPCs and reacting to the players actions. What the below tells me is that I'm far less stressed about running published adventures vs homebrew, and the benefits of published vs homebrew are only slightly ahead. I think this framework is useful, and can probably be refined to help others determine what might work best for them, their skills, and their interests. Published adventure stressors (12/30) - Railroading vs Player Agency (3) - Information Overload (4) - Keeping It Fresh (if PCs know the adventure) (1) - Navigating Sandbox vs Linear Design (2) - NPC Depth & Roleplay Pressure (1) - Encounter Balance (1) Homebrew adventure stressors (24/30) - Creative Overload (5) - Time Commitment (3) - Encounter Balance (4) - Plot Coherence (4) - NPC & World Depth (3) - Burnout Risk (3) Published adventure benefits (20/30) - Clear Structure & Pacing (4) - Time Efficiency (3) - Rich NPCs & Lore (3) - Built-In Worldbuilding (4) - Tools & Resources (3) - Community Support (3) Homebrew adventure benefits (17/30) - Creative Freedom (3) - Player-Centric Design (4) - Flexible Storytelling (4) - Unique Worldbuilding (3) - Custom Mechanics & Themes (2) - Stronger Emotional Investment (1)

Kevin S

What do you do with a campaign that won't finish? I ran a campaign for over a year but due to attrition and other factors, only 2 players are left who have shown any interest. We've talked, and it is probably best to recruit someone new and begin a new campaign (excited about trying the city of arches in daggerheart), but what do we do with the old campaign? I've thought about sitting down with the two interested players and talking through what would happen in future sessions, kind of running the campaign on fast forward without rolling any dice. Maybe that would give us a sense that we finished. Do you have any tips for things that have worked for your groups in the past?

Cryptic Killjoy

I watched your August 5th Lazy RPG Talk Show today, a little late, but I found a lot of the news interesting. More to the point though, I was left feeling like the copium in this video was strong!!! You know that the new Forgotten Realms books are stuff you have already paid for (TWICE over), you know that these products are likely to be of low quality and not useful to you has a DM, but somehow you justify still wanting to check them out. You know that the "DLC" for said Forgotten Realms' books is a terrible deal because you don't own what you purchase, and it could go away at any moment, and yet you still justify wanting to check it out due to the Netheril stuff. Furthermore, you know that DDB and those that run it, don't care about being consumer friendly in their approach to business given the terms and conditions written in the DDB EULA etc, and yet you keep using and advertising DDB (directly or otherwise). And the kicker is, at least in terms of the Forgotten Realms source books, is that it doesn't need to be this way considering that they own 50 years worth of Forgotten Realms lore that they can mine from to create many AMAZING books. So the question is this; what is it going to take to make you walk away from Hasbro/WotC branded D&D? To make you simply stop giving them the attention that you do. Often you speak of the "RPG Punditry" side of this hobby, it would seem that you are metaphorically, gasoline to a certain WotC dumpster fire. You are not blind to the issues inherent in dealing with a Hasbro owned WotC which seems hellbent on milking their customers for every cent they have while giving nothing back. After all, you complain about all these anti-competitive and anti-consumer practices on every Lazy RPG Talk Show. You know the boat is sinking, so at what point do you stop shouting at the sky demanding to know why the boat is sinking and instead flee for greener pastures??? Because there are better spaces to be in. At what point do you stop claiming that playing 2024 5e is about your enjoyment and that WotC and Hasbro have no control over that, when it seems incredibly evident that the complaints you share of WotC are just as prominent? I don't mean this as a personal attack on you, but honestly, at some point in every toxic relationship you have to realise that you are in a toxic relationship (check, you do this all the time), then permanently remove yourself from said relationship!

Sir Make-My-Day

What are your current house rules. Spell and ability alterations or vetos. Rules nuggets brought in from other systems. Etc

Simon Collins

Hi Mike, when designing adventures for publication (e.g., DMs Guild), how do you feel the Lazy DMs structure (which seems focused more for home games) should inform the design, structure, and actual information provided by the author? I noticed the difference with the streamlined bullet-pointed information delivery in Shadowdark adventures, for example. What would the ideal Lazy-DM-structured published adventure look like?

Brandon Sampson

Awesome thank you! I'll say that, as expected, the first game played with my bard was a little rough. Needing to flip around the handbook for spells etc. But now that I've done it a few times. It really makes the game more engaging. As always great stuff!

Rangdo

I'm going to use this to ask for clarification on a question you answered in last Sunday's stream about whether 2024 combat is slower than 2014 combat. Are you using Beyond? I ask because small differences might get exaggerated for players using paper.

Vinicius Oliveira

Hey Mike! How would you run a campaign using The Book Of Ebon Tides? (Specifically in the Court of one million stars)

Enzo

Hello Mike! I've always looked to your content to help me on my journey to becoming a thoughtful GM over the years. As time goes on I've gone from being a D&D 5e-only GM to trying out loads of different TTRPGs, several on your recommendation. I've always wanted to try to switch my tables away from 5e in favour of a different system that was more geared towards the style of play that my players brought to the table. As it happens two of my tables got as excited as I did about Daggerheart over the last couple months and they've agreed to switch system while maintaining the same campaigns we were previously playing. We're thrilled and the new style of game prep has been exciting while many fundamental lessons from Lazy DM apply still. All this to say, is there a future where you'd consider giving more GM advice through the lens of Daggerheart? Your dive into Shadowdark has me try it for several sessions and while the players didn't bite for a full campaign it was fantastic. Curious if you'll make Daggerheart-specific content in future. Cheers and thanks, Enzo

Kreggar

Hi Mike, happy Friday! My actual question: (edited) Is it generally accepted, or a best practice, to set our games, and the towns and communities within them, in places so dangerous that it defies belief that any common people can survive there? I want to drop a town and community into the Savage Frontier of northern Faerun, because the geography and history fit the tone and setting I want to create. It feels like every blog or piece of advice I see assumes that our fantasy setting functions like a “points of light” setting. Our starting town or city is safe, but just a few miles away lies an ancient ruin overrun with monsters, which is right next to the haunted forest, which is right next to the goblin camp in the mountains. Fun and exciting for a game, but I’m having a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea that all this danger doesn’t overrun the town, plus the farms and supply networks required to keep a town alive. I see so many examples that suppose “the townsfolk haven’t gone that way in two generations so no one really knows what lies in the ruins/forest/mountains.” If that’s the case, where do the hunters go hunting? Why don’t the orcs overpower the town guard? Is it always the case that things have recently gone very bad for the region, or our story takes place after the collapse of true safety and civilization?

astray darkblood

hello Mike How would you build the character secrets around players that have been iskeai’d to the world?

Michael Shea

First, a lot of campaigns end this way and that's ok. Things in the real world change. There's a couple of things you can do. You can skip forward to the end of the campaign or at least the end of the current arc and run it for the two remaining players and then jump to a "one year later" montage so the players can get some closure for their characters. You could run it as sort of a one-shot game. If you get other players, you can bring them in too, explaining that it's the end of a big campaign but they're bringing characters in right at the end and then starting fresh. I wouldn't stay on it too long with new players, though. It sounds like it might work best to start a new campaign with them – ideally a shorter campaign so this doesn't happen again. You can also just move on. Not every campaign needs a perfect ending. I think talking to your existing players to see what they're interested in is a good way to go.

Michael Shea

I'm still generally happy with D&D products being published by WOTC. I'd say about half the books they put out are books I like and enjoy. For every Vecna Eve of Ruin there's a Wild Beyond the Withclight. Dragon Delves looks cool from what I've read. I'm actually pretty positive about D&D 2024 – more positive than a lot of other folks I talk to. I think the upcoming D&D Starter Set looks really good. I definitely want to try that out. I'm hoping there's enough in the upcoming Forgotten Realms book to offset my vexation that they're regurgitating two areas out of five we've already had twice in the past ten years – Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. We'll see. When I say I'll check something out on D&D Beyond, keep in mind that I have a D&D Beyond insider account which means I can check it out without paying. That's a benefit for folks who watch the show because I can hopefully give them an unvarnished view of what this stuff is. I don't know if I'll bother to review the three DDB supplements or not because whether they're good or bad, I don't like them *because* they're online supplements. I don't think I advertise D&D Beyond – no one watching my show and hearing me say "You should buy third party products on their own website instead of D&D Beyond" then says "wow, I should check out this D&D Beyond thing". But a lot of people get into this hobby through D&D. Their products get a lot more general attention. So I still talk about them. I review and spotlight a lot of other games on the show too. I promote the whole hobby, not just D&D. But I'm also good with whatever game people want to play. So, in short, I think you feel stronger about it than I do. I'm very skeptical of D&D Beyond but overall, I think WOTC is doing interesting things with D&D. I think they're worthy of criticism in a way other companies are not – given their relative size. So I don't have any intention of *not* talking about D&D in the future. But good news! All the videos and podcasts have bookmarks so you can skip any part you don't dig!

Michael Shea

Not very many right now. I don't have any house rules for my TOV game. My 3x5e game is a huge messy mix of 5e rulesets so I don't have any hardened rules for it – even at 16th level. My other D&D 2014 game is pretty straight forward as well. I don't think I have any real house rules for that either. I do have one – Luck. I use the TOV luck system and the TOV Doom Points (which I call Dreadful Blessings) and I use both of those in all of my 5e games. They're so much better than inspiration and give me a way to keep the story going when the mechanics fight against it. But that's really it!

Michael Shea

I think if you take a look at some of the adventures I've written here on the Patreon, the Ruins of the Grendleroot adventures, and the adventures and adventure locations in City of Arches – that gives you a good idea what I think needs to be in an adventure. Published adventures are hard. I don't think there's one ideal style. Even WOTC has changed their format often over the past 50 years and they should, theoretically, have the best data to tell them what works and what doesn't. But people want different things. Some want all the mechanics spelled out everywhere. Others want a brief description they can run with on their own. I lean towards leaner adventure styles myself but I'm always experimenting. I think some of the better OSR adventures are good to examine moreso than the heavier 5e adventures I see these days. I tend to get more out of less as a GM myself. It's why Shadowed Keep on the Borderlands is one of my favorite adventures. It has enough material to help me build the kind of adventure I want to run with my friends. So yeah, take a look at some of the adventures and adventure scenarios here on the Patreon to see what format I dig.

Michael Shea

I don't use D&D Beyond but I'm pretty sure the three players playing D&D 2024 characters are using D&D Beyond. But Beyond really doesn't do anything to speed up weapon masteries that I've seen – other than remind you that they're there. We have a big mix of paper-based characters and digital tools like Excel or Beyond at my Wednesday 3x5e game and I can't tell a difference in player speed between them even at 16th level.

Cryptic Killjoy

Please let me clarify, when I said "advertise" D&D Beyond, I meant only in so far as you, like many others you use it as a reference tool. And do so with great frequency on your show. You have never told people to buy things on DDB, quite the opposite to be fair, but what are people who are getting into the hobby meant to think except, "DDB seems to be the only place to get answers". Which in turn leads to said people buying into that platform. Product placement, whether intentionally called out or not does have an impact on people. Given the fact that it costs you nothing to check out things on DDB I can understand your openess, but I can't help but feel of late that podcasters tend to be "accepting" of the current array of WotC products, and yet everyone else I speak to (you know, ordinary people who don't do business with or near WotC like in your role as an author in the D&D hobby space) aren't. Just trying to get a sense of just how far your vexations actually go, and I think you have answered that.

Michael Shea

You can definitely run a campaign from the Book of Ebon Tides. I think it serves well as inspiration and ideas moreso than directly applicable material. There's an adventure by Kobold Press called Court of the Shadow Fey that you might enjoy if you want an adventure based on court politics. For me, my campaigns took place in midgard but dove over to the shadow roads a couple of times and I used the book to fill in those details. That was fun. Book of Ebon Tides is a harder book to figure out but I've found myself going back to it several times.

Michael Shea

Absolutely. I really want to play Daggerheart. I haven't had a chance yet but so far I've really liked what I've seen. I think it's very exciting.

Michael Shea

I think the ideas that the lands are dangerous places outside of the local communities work well enough. It doesn't have to be too realistic for me. I do think it can make sense that small bands of monsters in the deeper woods fear the people of the village as much as the villagers fear the monsters in the woods. The monsters aren't organized. They're not really interested in destroying the whole town. Same with the skeletons in the ruins beneath the old watchtower. It's also possible that now is the time when villagers really have to worry about being invaded and that's why the campaign starts here and now. That can become the catylist. That's my thought anyways.

Michael Shea

I think their past knowledge might give them new insights into the world they're in now. I think its possible element of the world they've left behind bleed over into this world. Their skills, classes, and species might give them ways to look at things in their current world that others might not see and *those* can become the secrets they would recognize even if they don't *know* them.

Michael Shea

I don't know that I'll give you a satisfactory answer but I will push back on the idea that I load D&D Beyond on my show with great frequency. I'm pretty sure I've pulled it up less than five times in the past six months across all of my videos. I know I haven't loaded it in the 50 or so previous prep videos because I haven't been running D&D for those. On the Talk Show I only ever bring it up when it's the only place to actually look at something – like comparing the D&D 2024 beholder to the 2014 one. Overall I use D&D Beyond very little and I'd be surprised if there were ten times I've loaded it in the past six months across more than 100 videos. Are you sure you're not confusing it with the 5e Artisanal Database? They can look similar but the 5eADB is a tool for you patrons that's fully downloadable and built on open 5e materials. It's completely independent from D&D Beyond.

Kreggar

Those are good points, thank you. I may have been ascribing more intelligence and intent to the monsters than makes sense in most cases. And I really hadn’t considered the idea that the band of orcs in the forest would be just as afraid of the villagers. And the skeletons in the dungeon don’t have the need or thought to go expanding their realm. My original concerns might make more sense in a setting where the monsters over the horizon, or two horizons out, would be organized and threatening a war of conquest. Which sets up its own campaign, rather than just needing to fill out some adventure locations to support a campaign of a different sort.

coots

Hey Sly, looking for some table advice! My table is a group of four friends, two of which alternate DMing (usually with a different system each time), of which I am one. We've been TTRPGing for almost 10 years, but it seems like every campaign we've done has been fun+satisfying for some, unfun+unsatisfying for others. I started a discussion in our discord about what we want from TTRPGs and discovered why — we all want something different from our TTRPG. To spare you unnecessary details, the biggest gulf is between the other DM and the rest of the table: the DM wants a super gritty, grimdark, punishing game where their character is all but guaranteed to die alone in the dark (their words). The rest of the table have some differences in style (more tactical vs more narrative) but are generally more interested in your standard "heroic" style game. This gulf cuts both ways — Grimdark DM's campaigns tend to grind down to a halt when the PCs are no longer motivated to push forward or are TPKed, and Grimdark DM as a player will check out of any situation where they are not in mortal danger Have we hit the "irreconcilable differences" stage of our table relationship, or do you have some tips on bridging gaps between tastes in order to create a fun and satisfying experience for everyone?

Kevin Tones

Greetings Mike. Reviewing the races in DD24 I wondered, what are the reasons to play a human? Every other race has something cool that they can do inherently. Humans were given an origin feat and Heroic Inspiration each day. However, by replacing Inspiration w/ Luck Points, and house ruling all characters get a feat at first, then why would a player bother selecting to play human?

Rien Van Dingenen

I've purchased several TTRPGs over the years other than D&D 5e (Blades in the Dark, Tales From the Loop, Draw Steel, The One Ring, etc.). And although all of those systems seem great in their own way, I'm reluctant to actually change from D&D 5e to any of these other systems. The main reason being that I'm convinced the fun and enjoyment of my players is impacted more by the story/adventure and the character engagement than the actual system we're using. I'd rather invest time in building the story and developing the character arcs than having to learn a new system and forcing my players to learn it too. But maybe I'm wrong? How much does the system you choose actually impact the fun at the table?

Aljovin

I was listening to your Lazy GM Show on the week of 2025-08-18, where you mention the Tales of the Valiant Starter Set, and it got me thinking; As a 5E player/GM, how do you use those Starter Sets with an experienced group? I love the ideas, but since my players are already playing a 5E variant, how would you use it? Would you make the players create new characters or always uses the pregen? Do you incorporate the adventure to a larger campaign or uses it only as a stand-alone story-line?

Michael Shea

I don't know if you've hit irreconcilable differences but maybe. It might be worth discussing it directly with the other DM one on one. Sometimes things just aren't a great fit for everyone at the table. Maybe suggesting that you run the grimdark style games occasionally but focus more on the heroic and tactical games for the most part since that's what people prefer. Like a lot of things, I'd think a conversation is the best place to start and see where that goes. Eventually saying "would you be ok if we stuck to the heroic / tactical games? The rest of us seem to prefer that." might be the approach to take. Tough problem!

Michael Shea

The human actually gets *two* starter feats which is sort of bonkers. When replacing Inspiration with Luck, you can have the human start with three luck points (or max out their current luck if they already have more) to make up for the inspiration part of it. The other big reason to play a human is because you want to be a human. Not everything needs to be about the mechanics =)

Michael Shea

I suggest asking to run two to four sessions of one of the games you like just to see how it goes. Many of those systems, Draw Steel and the One Ring, are pretty D&D-ish and your players might dig trying them out. I think sliding them in between your larger 5e campaigns can be one way to go. I asked my players if we could try out Cairn when we're done with our mega-5e game. They're all on board. So we'll try two to four sessions of that and then probably jump to Shadow of the Weird Wizard which looks like a lot of fun and also isn't a huge campaign. Shorter campaigns in general is a good idea. I'm bad at that. All of my current campaigns are multi-year and I'm ready to try some other stuff.

Michael Shea

With experienced groups you don't have to worry about the pregen characters as much but the adventures are still fun. Starter adventures can be just as entertaining as advanced adventures – it's all about what the players bring to the table. I think either of your approaches can work. You can slide one of the starter adventures into your campaign, use them to start off a new campaign, or just enjoy a few sessions of a mini-campaign. Like other adventures, you can use ideas and seeds and maps fro them in your own homebrew world as well.

Kyle

Hi Mike. Looking for some advice. Recently I used ChatGPT for the first time (ever) to get some campaign inspiration. I'm rather busy with kids/wife/work/other hobbies. I find creating campaigns/adventures difficult with my limited time and somewhat limited creative powers. So, I turned to ChatGPT, and the results it spewed forth were amazing! I was pumped. A short while later I was telling one of my players about it and he immediately made it clear in no uncertain terms that he wanted nothing to do with ChatGPT and he wouldn’t be playing anything touched by it. I told him he already had, that often I google a rules dispute or spell clarification midgame, I use the search result provided by Gemini. He didn’t have much to say, other than he doesn’t use google… Our conversation was interrupted by dinner being served and neither of us really picked it up again. Our summer gaming hiatus will be up soon, and I’m somewhat unsure of how to proceed. Do I concede to his firm stance on the subject, or, do what I feel I’m comfortable with for the table experience and let him decide if he wishes to continue? For what it’s worth, I live in rural Canada where players are tough to come by. Thanks.

Alex W.

How do you handle players looting weapons from monsters? For example, the kuo-toa archpriest’s strange specter has a crazy extra charge of lightning damage; it’s not technically a magic item, but it’s way too powerful for a low level player (they have way too many magic items by now)

Alex W.

What do you do when your players keep barking up the wrong tree in an investigation without removing their agency? For example, refusing to trust NPCs or aggressively pursuing a false lead. I rarely have NPCs lie unless it’s super obvious, and I don’t tend us plant false rumors.

Joel B

Hi Mike, thank you for you consistently interesting and useful show! I was wondering if you had advice for running NPC Allies in combat? In our campaign I've avoided it and had NPCs retreat or just hand waved it. I've held off due to concern about bloating combat rounds and boosting the "good guys" power level more. However, it feels like there should be some impact from some characters that is missing when they just step "off stage" in every fight. I have 3 to 5 PCs who are currently level 6 if that helps! Thanks again

Andreas Van den Abeele

The 5e artisanal database keeps getting better and better and I love and use it so much! I was wondering if these two features could be added to the combat tracker: 1. A CR total ( to easily match up against the lazy encounter benchmark) 2. Fields for adding and subtracting custom damage (so you don't have to calculate the increments of 5 and 1 or the new total) Any chance these would be added? Thank you so much already for the amazing resource!

Leonardo Frasca

Hi Mike! Long time watcher but first time supporter. Thank you for the amazing work that you have done during the years, I find your videos and articles extremely useful and the eight steps have helped me tremendously with my game prep. The question that I would like to ask is as it follows: Sometimes during your recap of the last session in your show you talk about things that were not actually "Prepared" but that were very important for your game, for instance an NPC that the characters found in a dungeon, or a random event that shakes the session, or even an unexpected help or complications that have a strong impact on the game you are playing. I especially noticed that to happen during your eberron campaign (Fantastic series). The question is: How do you come up with such events? Are they already in your mind that something like that might happen but you don't write it in the eight steps, do you roll randomly or you just improv and go with the flow? Thank you so much.

Michael Shea

Hi Andreas! I'll look into it but I'm wary about adding any more fields to the combat tracker. The encounter calculator includes CR benchmarking but adding that to the combat tracker would require adding the CR field just for this calculation even if you wanted it or not. The same is true with the custom damage value – it would require a whole field for each monster and that takes up too much space for a mobile view. I'm trying to keep the combat tracker usable on mobile devices which limits how much I can add. Sorry!

Sir Make-My-Day

I am perplexed by part of this answer. After registering to an older show (House Rules for the 2014 D&D Players Handbook from June 2023) I thought you might have an updated list of tweaks, which is what brought about my question. Reading your lack of response regarding spell or ability alterations or vetos, I made the assumption that the newer rules from ToV and/or D&D 2024 had made these previous changes unnecessary (counterspell, heros feast, etc). Then today I listened to your segment about Counterspell on your Critical Roll Chooses D&D episode and I am left wondering if maybe part of my initial question was simply glossed over?

Michael Shea

Aha! Well, i literally came up with this counterspell house rule within the last week and only discussed it with my players last Wednesday, so my response was accurate for the time. As far as I recall, I don't really have any others. Even in my 3x5e game where were running that huge mess, this is the first time I considered that I had to do something to normalize it.

Sir Make-My-Day

Wow! Heckuva coincidence! Much appreciated, kind sir!

Sam P.

Hey Mike! How do you handle when your players want to clean up every enemy in a combat that has effectively been resolved and you’re trying to conclude? My players always want to kill the remaining enemies that try to flee and it ends up extending combat in a way that can feel like a drag. Appreciate your advice as always!

Adam B

Hey Mike! The players are going into a vault soon and I want a more unique sort of challenge but share your disdain of puzzles at the table. I’m interested and eager to make a “complex trap” from Xanathar’s Guide as they seem to capture the core D&D gameplay much better. Have you used one before and was it fun at the table if so?

Alex W.

Last question for the quarter, thank you! I saw a comment on Reddit (sue me!) that I thought might resonate with you, so I was wondering if you’d agree or had any thoughts (edited for clarity): “I believe 5e is the ‘english language’ of the ttrpg world. Not perfect, not the best. But easy to understand, create a character and run a game. And it works even if you leave out some finer rules or details.” (user was scarysycamore) And another commenter added that like many if not most English speakers, they don’t speak another language and just stick with English. Just thought you’d find that interesting as a fan of 5e!

Pivo

Hey Mike, long time fan, fist time asking questions. How would you recommend I go about creating a table like "Monster Statistics by Challenge Rating" (Forge of Foes pg.6) for other games like ShadowDark, D&D 3.5, or Draw Steel? Should I look at existing stat blocks for monsters and average it out? Should I look at typical characters and estimate some "damage per round" that would take some percentage of hit points after n-number of rounds? I had such an amazing experience using those guidelines to create some custom monsters when adapting an AD&D module to 5e that I would love to be able to do it using other systems.

Unferth

Mike, I'm wondering how you do it? TL;DR: How do you keep all the different rule sets straight in your head, and as a corollary, how do you learn a new rule set? Both sides of the question so that you aren't constantly fumbling through your rule books at the table? Since I've been a follower you've run all 4 versions of 5e, (no matter how well they mesh, they seem different enough to me). You've run Shadowdark. And you've referred to several other systems you've run campaigns in. And you've done them at the same time (or at least in the same week). How do you keep them straight? In my youth I played AD&D and DM'd Rolemaster. Recently I finished running a Rolemaster campaign, and I'm looking for my next. OSR? Traveller? Downcrawl? Shadowdark? As I'm looking at them all the rules and mechanics are running together in to a confused mass that looks more like a Black Pudding that a rule set. I can imagine with dedicated study running one of them, but not two or more. How do you do it? Thank you for your great podcasts!

Michael Shea

It really depends on the specific situation. Having lightweight prep means having a lot of freedom to run with the story as things unfold. Sometimes its coming up with an NPC on the fly, or filing out a location, or changing the behaviors of the inhabitants of a location. The players and their characters bring a lot to the table in this regard. I think this sort of improv comes from practice and we also have to put ourselves in the position to almost force ourselves to do it. I can't get away with no prep and feel comfortable about a game, but following the eight steps helps me get my head around what's going on and the freedom to fill it out as it goes. For me, it helps a lot to just put myself there in my imagination – the locations and the NPCs – and think about what they might do given what's going on.

Michael Shea

Hi Sam! I usually drop the HP of remaining opponents to 1 and let the next hit or damage done kill them. Players almost always want to stop fleeing enemies. Surrendering enemies or enemies that drop on the next hit help with this. Otherwise, yeah, you're going to get into a chase.

Michael Shea

I haven't really done so. I like to think about these complex traps by how they operate in the world itself instead of the out-of-world mechanics. How does this massive vault work? Does it have a whole series of complex interwoven traps? Think first from the fiction and then figure out the mechanics from there. For me, when running 5e games, I apply DCs to the specific elements of the trap and let them work on each DC which might disable one part of the trap. So yeah, my recommendation is to think about how it works in the world first and then apply more complex mechanics to deal with it.

Michael Shea

I don't know how I feel about it. We try to wrap metaphors around things to better understand them and maybe this one works. I don't think it matters too much and we have to remember that 5e has only existed for 10 years out of the 50 year hobby so there was stuff before that. I think its generally a safe assumption that people understand the basics of 5e – if they understand RPGs at all – and work from there. I guess it really matters what the intention is. Is it teaching new players? Having informative conversations with people? Where does the metaphor help us?

Michael Shea

I honestly just fumble through it. 5e variants are pretty easy because we understand the core fundamentals but yeah, it's easy to forget or miss new rules. A5e has a *lot* of new rules that are easy to miss – weapon breakage rules, masterwork weapons, skill masteries, safe havens, supply, and the like. My players and I just sort of figure it out. I think its ok to fumble with the rules when you and your group are learning a new system. Ask your players to help you out looking up the rules instead of building an expectation that you are the only one who knows the rules. Count on them to help you out and that way you're all playing one big collaborative game instead of being a judge and arbiter for them. It helps that a lot of game systems these days build off of previous ones so when I look at Daggerheart, I can sort of get what they're doing and where it comes from. That helps me piece things together in my head.

Unferth

Wait, what? You're not perfect? Dang, now who am I supposed to look up to? Seriously, thank you it really is nice to know that it is ok to fumble. My recent DM experiences have been with players completely new to TTRPGs and I had to know the rules because they didn't and had no experience at all, nor were they certain they wanted to shell out for the rules (or commit to reading them when they were free.) I sense now the issue might not be my understanding of the rules, it is the players lack of understanding. That will be a key expectation of my next games. Thanks for the help!

Hippo37

Hi! I'm a beginner DM with about 30 sessions under my belt. My table is getting close to finishing the Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign. For GoS and for Waterdeep Dragon Heist, I was relying alot on the campaign-specific prep advice on your website. The ideas there have been awesome and have enriched our game. Next I want to homebrew an Eberron campaign, however I can't help but feel that the bar is now set high. I feel like it's difficult to reach the same level of creative and cool ideas given by premade adventures or your ideas etc. and am a bit worried that a campaign i homebrew is not going to be as good. Is this all mostly in my head, worrying about trying to run fun and engaging games for my players?

Michael Shea

Hi Thomas! I think the best thing an AL DM can do is ensure you're prepared to pull out of the middle to make sure to get to the end. I can't count the number of times I've played an AL game where we had to skip the conclusion because we stomped through every step of the "boring middle". That's not really an eight-step thing, though. I think an AL GM can look at the adventure and probably outline things into an 8-step process (probably skipping the first step unless you know who the characters are going to be). How do you get the game started quickly? What scenes are likely to occur? What are the secrets and clues in the module? NPCs? Monsters? Treasure? You don't need to write them out if the module itself has them but you might make a reference sheet if some of these items are harder to find. That's what I'd do anyway!

Michael Shea

Homebrew adventures have a lot of advantages over pre-published adventures but you can actually use ideas, maps, locations, and the like and pick out the parts you want to use in your own adventures. There are tons of great Eberron adventures available to pilfer from and the setting lends itself to some truely fantastic adventures. I'd suggest going through your lazy campaign prep: what's the main theme of the campaign, who are the main villains, where will the characters start (Sharn is a great place!), and what local adventure can they get caught up in – that's a good place to start. Focus on the next adventure you're going to run and then see where it takes you. If you find yourself having trouble coming up with good ideas for adventures, take a look at the published Eberron adventures and see what ideas grab you. Then take the parts that work but make them your own. Hope that helps!

Michael Shea

Hi Joel! If I have NPCs in combat, I'll have them maybe aid one of the characters to give them advantage on their next attack. It's not game-breaking, doesn't take any extra time, and makes players feel good about having the NPC around. I also tend to keep NPCs out of harms way.

Michael Shea

I was just writing about this today! One advantage of Secrets and Clues being abstract from the method of their discovery is that we can move them and change them based on the direction the characters take. For the most part, that works but if you need something stronger, you can simply tell the players that their characters are aware they're probably chasing the wrong direction. You can also try to "reset" the situation by having an event bring in new information that might get the characters on track. They get jumped by hired toughs who have a note from a villain on them!

Michael Shea

Hi Alex! That's two questions but you're forgiven since I missed answering this last week! Most of the time the items the characters loot no longer have the power of the NPC. In the same way characters have spell foci that don't contain any direct magic, the same is true for the weapons monsters carry. The extra lightning damage is a creation of the archpriest, not the scepter. But you can always turn it into a magic item like a staff of lightning or even a staff with a single charge of lightning bolt or chain lightning that doesn't recharge. That can make looting such things a bit more fun.

Michael Shea

I think you're going to have to decide what to do. I know a lot of GMs use LLMs these days to help them brainstorm and I'm certainly not one to tell them they're wrong. You could, instead, switch to using random tables and material direct from sourcebooks instead of having the LLM piece it all together for you. I find random tables to be really useful for shaking up ideas in my brain and they won't melt a glacier in the process. I wrote more about this here: https://slyflourish.com/best_llm.html Some people have very firm stances on AI use – wanting nothing at all to do with it – but its up to each of us to decide where that line is and I think you're in a spot to decide whether it's worth losing a player to use an LLM to aid you in your game.

Alex W.

Thank you! This helps a ton. I do play by post so it’s tricky when my players want everything automated in Avrae because it limits my options a lot when it comes to custom magic items. And my bad about the questions, I thought it was three per quarter but I probably misunderstood!

Michael Shea

It’s one question a month 😀 but no problem!

Richard Fraser

Not a question, just dropping in to say thanks for thinking about generic RPG support. Was thinking about dropping this as I haven't played 5e for years. I do like your advice, and with a some generic articles I'll be sticking around.

Chris Blanchard

I love the idea of the 3, 2, 1 campaign, I've been using it for most of my Forbidden Lands campaign, and it's worked great. But I'm getting ready to run a new game soon. It's set in the modern day, and in it, the party are members of a global organization that assigns them missions. I was wondering if there's a way to incorporate the 3, 2, 1 model in this style of campaign? I suppose I could meta-game it, and just let the party know what the next three missions are, have them choose, and that's the one the organization assigns them. But I'd love an in-world option. Like maybe there's a mission computer, and they pick the from three options there? I'm wondering if that will still work with the setting. I'm hoping you or the community has some ideas. Thanks!

Jasper Flapper

How do you run duels? I'm running Dragon of Icespire Peak (loved your 1on1 adventure) and in the coming sessions a friendly duel might come up confronting one of the PCs with an NPC from their past. I'm considering: 1. first to get bloodied (half HP) loses (keeping it short so the other players don't get bored) 2. Rolling for initiative each round in stead of only at the start and 3. rewarding creativity (example: advantage on your attack if you make an athletics skill check to bounce of a tree and attack from above). How do you run duels? Any tips?

ManMa

I really enjoyed your article on Lazy Map Annotation. One question I had: If I have a loose list of evocative room ideas (not tied to the map), how do you recommend coming up with the “three interesting things” in each room? like interactable objects, environmental dressings, clues, or even NPCs? Do you improvise those details on the fly as the players enter the room, or do you tend to pre-write a few bullets for each idea in advance? Thanks so much for all your great work—your writing has really helped me level up my GMing!

Andy

Just wondering how you handle prep for city adventures. It seems a bit daunting getting ready for a party’s first visit to a new city. On the one hand I want to keep things manageable by constraining paths and options using lazy DM steps, but on the other hand I don’t want to suppress the excitement and vibrancy and, more importantly, the feeling of choice. Do you have any tips for city play?

Ethan Otto

Hi! Love your work! I would just like to know how the Lazy GM uses the three evocative aspects in a whole dungeon. Do we have three aspects per room, or do we use those three aspects for the entire dungeon to flavour specific rooms? Thank you for your great work! It saved me from campaign burnout after year 4 of a homebrew campaign

Slim Chance

Hey Mike, I did find a similar question in your database (Players Drawing Other Players Into the Spotlight) but wanted to come at it from a slightly different angle. Feel free to not answer the question if you don't have anything new to add. As a player IN GAME how can I reach out to another player through our characters to involve them more in the story being created? e.g. can my character ask their character to assist with something or ask them about their background. Any ideas would be appreciated - thank you!

Adam B

Hey Mike! How do you handle long periods of downtime at your table, like a few days or a week? Some of my players are fine with it, but some are uncomfortable with the idea despite me insisting there’s no ticking doomsday clock between one adventure and the next. At the worst we can get into bogged down roleplay talking to the same NPCs over and over while wanting to roleplay every day in some detail. Abstractions like “researching X for a week” turn into wanting to roleplay every day of research. I admire, for instance, Brennan Lee Mulligan telling his players “Three months pass” but some of my players would really not like that. Do I just insist it happens?

Michael Shea

Glad to do it! I'll still be talking about individual systems – including 5e (lots of people play 5e in addition to other RPGs) but I'm going to try to keep the advice more system agnostic. We'll see how it goes!

Michael Shea

Imagine if Ethan Hunt didn't get "this mission, if you choose to accept it" but "one of these three missions, if you choose to accept it". I think the 3-2-1 model can work well. It's possible there are other teams working on missions too and its possible the characters are in the best position to determine which of two or three missions has the biggest impact on their other goal. A mission computer that says "these are the three current hot spots" and then "these are the two remaining hot spots" and then "that third got taken care of, now there are three more" works just fine I think!

Michael Shea

Honestly, I don't run duels. If you have to, the idea of first to bloodied can work but the main thing is not spending too much time on a battle that only affects a single character instead of the group. Maybe it's a group duel where the whole party is involved against the duelist and their friends. Other than that, I don't have any real advice. Terrain effects they can use during the duel could be fun. I like the idea of rerolling initiative each round. That adds a fun variable. Good luck!

Michael Shea

Yeah, I've turned to improvising notable features when it comes time to run the room. If the theme of the room is evocative enough, the details spring forth from me at the moment the same way they would if I was doing my prep. Here's a trick that's coming together in my mind. The faster you are at prepping something, the easier it may be to improvise it at the game itself. If you can come up with things quickly *before* a game, it seems logical that you could come up with those things quickly *during* a game. But back to location descriptions – when I have a better idea where the characters are going, I'll add some resolution to the locations they're going to visit because I know that time won't be wasted. I think its a waste to come up with a location description and three aspects for every room of a 20 room dungeon when the characters only see six of them. But returning to your question, prep what you need! If you think you need a couple of bullets for a location, add the bullets. You can change your apprach per room if you want.

Michael Shea

Hi Andy! I have a couple of answers to this question in the Q&A database: https://slyflourish.com/sf_patreon_files_898123050001223/qa/?id=558 https://slyflourish.com/sf_patreon_files_898123050001223/qa/?id=2443 and some Sly Flourish articles! https://slyflourish.com/build_cities_around_the_characters.html https://slyflourish.com/pointcrawls.html And some youtube video segments! https://youtu.be/NLj-svT7bmQ?t=1430s https://youtube.com/watch?v=b_KTdoDX08c&t=2473s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3VHlc65c1s&list=PLb39x-29puaoZke5BVk7fjyyyjWXcxCu1&index=23&t=3289s

Michael Shea

Hi Ethan! I answered a similar question below (Manma's question). In short, for larger dungeons, you don't have to use the three aspects on every room because that can take a lot of time. Instead, a single evocative name might work better (see my article on lazy map annotation https://slyflourish.com/lazy_map_annotation.html ) I wouldn't bother with aspects of the whole dungeon unless it helps you get your hands around the them of the dungeon (oozy, hellish, ancient). That's not a bad idea, actually. You can use those themes to help you fill in details of rooms as you run them. If you have certain larger chambers you know the characters are likely to see, you can add the three aspects to them to help you out during play.

Michael Shea

Yeah! I think this is a great idea and something to bring up explicitly with your GM and your group. If you, as a player, keep track of the backgrounds, themes, motivations, and drives of the other characters you can tie into those hooks to bring them in. One thing you likely want to do is warn the player that you're going to do this or ask them if they're interested. I've seen it where a player just isn't interested in the connection to another character. They just want to play without a lot of deep interconnected stuff going on. So it's definitely worth having the out-of-game conversation before trying it in-game.

Michael Shea

Hi Adam! I don't have any new advice for downtime beyond what I've talked about before (in the links further in this reply). I think the big thing is customizing downtime options for the characters and their goals and warning the players that they'll have the opportunity for downtime and might want to come up with some ideas. Here are some links on this that might help! https://youtu.be/i4YZArzluk0?t=2028s https://youtube.com/watch?v=b-uk2LB5zCo&t=3380s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooJQ8SmxYXc&list=PLb39x-29puaoZke5BVk7fjyyyjWXcxCu1&index=36&t=2206s https://slyflourish.com/sf_patreon_files_898123050001223/qa/?id=363 https://slyflourish.com/running_downtime_sessions.html https://slyflourish.com/sf_patreon_files_898123050001223/qa/?id=2253

Knights of Roleplay Podcast

I've run adventures for my local game store in the past and had good experiences. I recently ran an adventure for the first time at a convention. It was a one hour adventure that I ran three times with a one hour break between sessions. Going into the third session I found that I was feeling very overstimulated. Playing three times in a convention space was a little too much for me. I know you've run adventures at conventions. Do you have any advice on how to run adventures at a convention and not feel overstimulated?

Chris Blanchard

I love the Ethan Hunt example. Thanks, that really helps solidify things in my mind.

paul brandson

Hi Mike! I've been running games for my kids, they're having fun and it's going well, but I have a concern: They're very creative, but they don't have the same years of immersion in fantasy or fiction that adults typically have. I try to help them out by giving them some options to handle situations, but I don't want to step on their agency by telling the what to do. Do you have any advice for balancing advice with agency?

Brydon Marks

Hi Mike! I am loving the Forge of Foes Monster Stats page (and the Artisinal Database in general), and was hoping for some help in making Forge of Foes spellcasters... for when you need something in between Mage Apprentice and Mage (for example). "Arcane Burst" is easy to match up to FoF stats, but what's a good metric for deciding what kind of spell slots to give them for a more wizardly feel? Would you give the wizard boss doom points, legendary actions, legendary resistances, or all three?

Kyle Donovan

I've been running a open world campaign using multiple sources (Dragon of Icespire Keep and Phandelver and Below) as well as homebrew. We are at the end of the campaign and there is only 1 faction left and now it feels like we are on 'railroad' tracks as we run through the end chapters of Phandelver and Below. Prep is boring, and I feel checked out. Any suggestions to reinvigorate my imagination?

Destino ROL

Hi, Mike! As always, great long videos to start the week with! I'm a developer and a lifelong GM. While I don't use AI for my creative endeavors—like creating RPG content or sessions—I use it extensively in my day job. I remember you're also a software developer by trade, and you still do development work like your Artisanal DB. I know how much of a taboo it is to use AI for roleplaying content, but I'm curious about your opinion on using AI to create software for roleplaying games, like the Artisanal DB, for example. Again, thanks for the answers and the great content!

Divergent Dryad

Hi Mike! So, I’ve got a pacing question specific to GMing limited time-slots/one-shots for new/inexperienced players—particularly the overly cautious ones. When GMing a 3-4 hour one-shot for inexperienced players, I find myself constantly seeking and trying new ways to balance 1) avoiding rushing my players while simultaneously 2) moving the game forward to ensure we have enough time to reach a satisfying conclusion. All my tips & tricks *kind of* work, but I still feel like I’m struggling to hit that 3-4 hour time marker in these situations. Any advice? I GM a lot of different games but primarily TOV right now, so this question is primarily focused on 5e systems. I’m a huge fan of GMing for new players—bringing someone new into the hobby is truly a joy for me! And I think I generally have a super strong handle on pacing, but there’s always room for improvement. I’d love to hone my skills where these 2 things intersect.

Luke Baumstark

Hello sir! You noted in one of your recent videos that Tales of the Valiant's Machinist class may be over-powered. (I am paraphrasing.) Never having GM'ed or played one, can you elaborate on this? What makes it over-powered? Is it a subclass problem, or the class itself? What (if anything) can be done to bring it back into line with other classes? Many thanks!

Laura

Hi Mike, could you please expand on how you're reviewing the characters these days during your game prep, when you tie the secrets to the PCs? What's your thought process as you do it, why do you do it, how do you choose what you give each character, and is this an evolution of this game prep step? I love how it ties the characters into the world and the upcoming session, and would love to hear more about what you're thinking as you do this part of your prep. Thanks!

Ben Cook

Hi Mike, was wondering your thoughts / suggestions for starting a 1:1 game (one DM, one player). In particular, how would you run a session 0? You’ve mentioned the “Holmes and Watson” style, but do you have recommendations on whether the player rolls up both characters? Maybe the DM rolls the supporting character? In my context the player (my wife) has very little RPG experience so I’m wondering if it’d help to introduce a support character later on, once the personality and backstory of the primary is more developed. Appreciate any experience you have on the topic!

Chance Lancaster

Is there a good way to convince a large TTRPG group (7+ PC’s) that splitting into two smaller groups for future campaigns would create a better experience at the table? I floated the idea of running two separate campaigns after the current one concludes, but the overwhelming response was that they wanted to keep the large group together. However, the feedback about the best parts of the current campaign have all been moments when the party has been split.

Tay

Hi Mike. So any thoughts on course correction when you realize after a session you made a potentially big mistake that might leave your players in an unfair situation. Say, hypothetically, you'd accidentally managed to persuade a player to visit a cult where one of the Big Bads (who knows them) has taken control and you completely failed to give any warnings. I plan to give them some clues, and I like the potential drama, but there's still a high chance of losing characters and I don't feel it would be fair if they lose characters. Any other ideas how I can feed information so they have agency if it all goes wrong?

Michael Shea

I think we're all different in how we react to running games like this. For me, I definitely expend a lot of energy running a game for people I don't know at a convention. I limit myself to no more than one game a day and I prefer a day break betwen them so one game every other day is even better. Recently I did find that my voice gave out more than anything else. I've talked to GMs who *gain* energy for every game they run, which is pretty awesome. I don't know what's more common though. But yeah, I'd say knowing your own limit and limiting your sign-ups to the amount of games you're comfortable with is the best advice. Other than that, when you're in the moment. Take breaks. Conventions sometimes have quiet areas where you can just go and chill out. They're quiet and dimly lit usually. See if your convention has a space like that when you first get there and see how it goes.

Michael Shea

I think its fine to help kids along and ideal if you know of some form of fantasy fiction they've enjoyed that they can fall back on. Of course, that means *you* need to know that fiction too so that might be some homework for you. Offering reasonable options their characters would know isn't removing agency, especially if you include any ideas they come up with based on what you describe. Players only grab about half of what you're throwing out there and I bet that's even rougher when players don't have the same baseline of fiction that you do. Offering options is fine, I think.

Michael Shea

I love doom points / dreadful blessings instead of legendary resistances. I typically don't worry about adding legendary actions to creatures unless its really needed. If they're more apt to die before their turn, legendary actions are a good way to spread their threat out across a round. As far as making spellcasters feel special, I wouldn't worry about spell slots. Instead, pick out some specific spells you think fit their style and theme, maybe customizing them further for the specific monster. Spellcaster monsters aren't going to survive more than three or four rounds so you don't need a lot of spells. Pick some interesting ones that fit the level of the boss. Use the damage per round value as a guage of how powerful a spell it should be. And don't worry about customizing the spell to make it something unique and fun. Avoid fun-suckers like charm and banish. Reskin them into more interesting spells like a one-turn banish that inflicts some damage or a charm that forces a character to use its reaction to attack an ally and is then done.

Michael Shea

Yeah, the ending of campaigns can feel like this, where there really isn't a lot of choices. Big campaigns funnel down to the final confrontation (something my wife and I refer to as yam-shaped adventures). I think that's ok but by the time it gets to this stage, it's probably best to focus on the big important stuff and get it done quickly so you aren't railroading them for very long. As far as prep goes, try to find the things that really excite you about what remains. It's ok to bring some new stuff in, new bits of history, new NPCs, and stuff like that but don't pull any big switcharoos at this point. Try to focus on the big stuff that you and your players enjoy and cut the cruft you might feel obligated to run just to fill in the blanks. Jump to the good stuff both in your prep and play.

Michael Shea

Hi John! I answered a similar question about a month ago in this same thread, which I'll include below so you don't have to dig for it. I have three new takes on LLMs: 1. LLMs are a twenty billion dollar industry in a trillion-dollar suit. The whole tech industry is in a huge LLM bubble that's very likely to burst. If I knew when, I'd be rich, but there's just no way these things are making the money back for their cost to operate. 2. LLMs generate custom average answers with a 20% error rate. That's what they do. Their results are average by design and they're wrong about one in five times. There are times where that's ok – where figuring out what's wrong doesn't take longer than doing the real work. 3. Show me what people generate with LLMs and I'll show you something they don't care about. We use LLMs to generate average stuff we don't really want to do ourselves. There's definitely valuable applications for this. I don't care about writing perfect super-clean javascript for the 5eADB. I want the tool to work and average code can do so (more on this below). None of its applications aleviates the main problems with generative AI: - It uses a ton of power and resources. - It's built on the intellectual property of people without their consent. - It's super-inflating the tech industry which will likely crash down. - It's flooding the internet with generated crap. - It's being used by corporations as an excuse to fire people or take money away from already hurting contract work. Here's more from my previous post: >>> The 5e ADB is made from a bunch of stuff. It's almost all HTML and javascript with a few libraries for things like datatables and the search index called lunr.js. The data mostly comes from Open5e's API and Github repo. I used Claude Code for almost all of the javascript creation. I'm not a javascript coder but I am a software engineer and python programmer. I don't feel great about using LLMs for code like this but boy howdy, it made it much easier to build these small downloadable tools and keep the various Javascript libraries working. Frankly, these tools wouldn't exist if I didn't have a lever like Claude Code. Updates take minutes instead of hours. I don't know how well Claude Code would have worked on more complicated projects but since the 5eADB is mostly small independent locally-executible tools, it worked very well. Because the code was generated by an LLM, I released all the code under a CC0 license – I essentially take no ownership of the code itself. This is sort of my way of addressing the issue of LLMs being trained on a bunch of people's own material without their permission. And all the data – the actual creative material hosted by the 5eADB – is all human generated and rendered with traditional procedural scripts – not LLMs. The tools themselves don't use any LLMs either. This is sort of my way of addressing the massive power consumption of LLMs. Yes, LLMs generated the code but once generated, the code can execute extremely efficiently in the user's browser. These sort of small coding projects are the only real value I've personally gotten from LLMs (and the command-line-based LLMs really are impressive at this sort of thing). My personal stance is that I never want an LLM doing actual "Creative" work for me. That's for me and other humans to do. Of course, others have their own opinions and a lot of what I just said could be taken as hypocritical justification so I'm reallly not here to judge others on the topic of LLMs. I have lots of opinions about LLMs and we discuss it often in the AI channel on the Discord server. Anyway, so that's my long answer to your short question =)

Michael Shea

My two biggest tips to help the pacing of games with time constraints are: 1. Run with fewer people. 2. Run lower level games. That's not always possible but those two things have the biggest effect on the timing and pacing of your game. Otherwise, I'd say always run a shorter adventure than you think you'll need. Cut down the number of scenes, making some of the scenes cuttable during the game for timing. Don't cut out the conclusion – make sure to give yourself enough time to run a good conclusion. I think its ok to rush players a little bit. You might even tell them at the beginning of the game that time is tight so you might be moving things forward faster than they're used to. Time waits for no one as they say. Also, use a timer to keep yourself on track. It's easy for us to get into the flow of the game and lose track of time so use a device to help you mark each hour so you know where things stand next to your outline of what's to come.

Michael Shea

A few things are coming into play. This is specific to the Metallurgist subclass. First, the fist attacks of the Metallurgist count as light weapons which means they can dip into fighter and get the quick strike talent that lets them hit with four attacks a turn. At 7th level, the Metallurgist gets an extra d6 damage which means they can now get four attacks at 2d6 base damage (the equivalant of a greatsword). And they get to crit on 19 and 20 which means they have four chance to crit per turn. Limiting multi-classing would have helped a lot for me, I think. But I don't know what else I could do that isn't a direct nerf.

Michael Shea

Hi Laura! These days when I sit down to do my prep, I think about what secret might tie the character into the current situation in the game. This looks a lot like a secret and clue but one tailored for the character. During the game it helps me tie lore of the game to specific characters. Here are some examples from my Wednesday game: - Andrew Armageddon – The magic of the primordials is ancient and powerful. - Kendal Olamaer KO – Old warriors worshipped Lord Halax, known to some as the Bloodspear. - Lana – The poison of the worms of the deep desert is said to be some of the worst in the world. - Ozara – While most members of the Golden Knights followed Agon the Protector, some used to ward off a god or demigod known as the Black Gauntlet. - Zillian – Lord Halax the Bloodspear is a favored god of berserkers. - Lloris – The primordial Voor is said to be the anthesis of the goddess Elvenia of the stars. Sometimes they come up and sometimes not. About half of these did. I don't really think of it as an evolution of the eight steps. It's just one of the many things we can do when reviewing the characters and there are other things we can do as well: - Review a character's current magic items. - Review their stars and wishes or campfire tales. - Think about what character abilities they might want to show off. Great question!

Michael Shea

Hi Ben! It sounds like you've already seen this but just in case, here are some one-on-one articles: https://slyflourish.com/running_one-on-one_dnd_games.html https://slyflourish.com/balancing_combat_for_one_on_one.html https://slyflourish.com/framework_for_one_on_one_dnd.html I think you can do a session zero like normal, getting the baseline for the game and the character. I would work with the player to generate a second character but let them build out the mechanics and explain that you'll be roleplaying them. In a recent Daggerheart one-on-one game I ran with Michelle, I ran both the mechanics and roleplay of the secondary character since Michelle had her hands full running her own character and that worked fine too. You can run the support character on your own but make it clear that your wife's character is in charge and has the spotlight. Your character is there to support her.

Michael Shea

I think you might just have to tell them that for your own peace of mind you'd like to try breaking things up into separate groups. Ask them to try it out and see how it goes. Or ask them for other ideas you might not have thought of. How often is everyone there? If you run games even if a handful are missing, than many times you might have fewer players and a more manageable game. It's though though, but your vote matters. So I'd say have a conversation with them again, explaining how hard it is on you to manage and ask if you can try it out for a short bit and see how it feels.

Michael Shea

There are really two ways to handle it. First, you can roll back. Tell them that there's new info you forgot to tell them. This can be jarring though. Second, you change the reality of the future. They can learn that the big bad is there but the big bad doesn't know that *they* are there. Give them chances to stay out of sight or recognize that they may be recognized *before* they're recognized. Villains aren't always masterminds. They make mistake and have bad luck themselves. I'd try to find a way for the characters to realize that the cult they've infiltrated is being run by the big boss but give them chances to stay out of sight. Maybe the big boss has to go on a retreat and won't be around for a while. Good luck!

Laura

Thanks very much!

Midas

Hey Mike, been running my first campaign for about a year now (DoIP, nearing level 6). After running several exciting (but tough) fights in Axeholm, I wanted to cut my players some slack for the Dragon Barrow - a change of pace, if you will. So instead of combat I've started designing a puzzle/exploration encounter. Any tips? Tricks? Do's, don'ts? Online, I find a lot of good advice on combat design, but am struggling to find actionable advice on exploration/puzzle design. Particularly puzzles that feel context appropriate (e.g. no random NY times crossword puzzle inside a dragon tomb 😂 - though, I'm sure that can be done, with enough elbow grease). Thank you :)

dave b

Hey Mike, I was building some random encounters the other day and came across a map of a ziggurat that i thought might be cool to run as a small little mini-dungeon and liked the idea of using oozes for the theme of the temple. I stumbled upon the Elder Oblex which seemed like a great boss for the dungeon, but here's the hitch. Its main shtick is that it can create pseudo-clones of the people whose memories it has consumed. It seems to be tailor designed to break the no NPC betrayal rule by using that ability to lure in other victims. There are some clues (a oozey tether, mostly) but i just thought I'd ask how you'd run such a creature, or if you'd just find something else?

Victor Navone

Hi Mike, your article on Lazy Map Annotation got me wondering about how you fill in room details based on your short descriptions. Are you improvising all that in the session? For example, if you have a chamber listed as "pain amplifier", do you have an idea of what that looks like, how it works, and how the PCs might interact with it?

Zero Gamer

Hi Mike, I’m currently working on a homebrew campaign for our 5e group. I’m contemplating running a Shadowdark funnel to kick things off for the first few sessions, then let the players transition their favorite character into 5e for the main adventure. Any tips, tricks, thoughts or general advice?

Travis Lawson

Hi Mike, you have talked about the different methods to run a campaign using hex crawl or point crawl. But I dont know if you have shared any tools you use to create the hex map. When you create your own do you use a map generator like hexfriend, hexroll, mythic.bastionland.tools/map or donjon? I feel like I need to make a map for my own benefit even if I do not show the players the map itself. Maybe i should do a point map instead since I am not showing the players. What are your thoughts on creating a map that players will never see for your own organization? FYI, I am doing Shadowdark homebrewed while trying to make it sandboxy

Michael Shea

Hi Midas! I don't really use puzzles and I wrote more about it in a couple of other Q&A posts over the years. Here's a summary with some links to other things I've written or discussed about puzzles: https://slyflourish.com/sf_patreon_files_898123050001223/qa/?query=puzzle I know Tasha's Guide to Everything includes a bunch of puzzles you can drop into a game but I haven't used them. As you say, the toughest part is wondering why there would be a puzzle in the middle of a dungeon anyway. Who is it for? Why would you protect your most valuable protections with a Sudoku puzzle? Exploration, for me, is a different sort of thing – it's about discovery and that's often tied to secrets and clues. I'm fond of my recent article on types of decorations in old places: https://slyflourish.com/ten_stonework_decorations.html

Michael Shea

I think that sounds cool and I don't think it violates the NPC betrayal, particularly if the characters are able to figure out early that these things they're seeing aren't really their friends. A lot of it depends on how you introduce those NPCs but I think, as long as you're good with them figuring out that these slime things aren't really their friends and they're still willing to go through with the exploration, that can work. It sounds like a fun False Hydra sort of creature. https://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2014/09/false-hydra.html

Michael Shea

I do improvise them. One important thing about examples like the "pain amplifier" is that it's a note for me, not for any other DM. So *I* have an idea what a pain amplifier is even if anyone else reading the example does not. This is something I think we miss when we're looking at notes like the adventure examples in the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide. Our notes can be very brief for us because we might already have an idea what that is. For me, I did have *some* idea what a pain amplifier is but not much. Turns out, the characters never went there so I'm glad I didn't work up some huge set of mechanics and backstory for it. So yes, when they get into a room with a brief description like that, I improvise the other features of what that thing might be like. I know that there are necromancers who ran that place so I have some ideas kicking around in my head for what that whole thing might be like (probably some sort of electrical / necrotic iron maiden). I think practicing getting good at improvising off of just a couple of words can help us go far with prepping less and improvising more in our games.

Michael Shea

Shadowdark and 5e are really very different systems so transitioning from one to the other might be a bit jarring. It's a fun idea and maybe it works fine, but for me, I'd probably just start with 5e. You can go with much simplified 5e characters to begin with. There are several supplements for 0 level characters you might look at and treat that as a sort of funnel. Again, it might work fine to do shadowdark characters as sort of zero level 5e characters and then grow from there but I'd probably just stick to 5e.

Michael Shea

I've actually never made a hex map. I almost always have some sort of map for the games I'm running published by someone else. Even if I'm homebrewing adventures, I'm usually running them in a published campaign setting (even my own – City of Arches) so I just use those maps. I haven't used any hex mapping tools enough to recommend them but my friend Joe at Inkwell Ideas makes Hexographer which many people really like. When I ran my Shadowdark campaign, I ran it using Kelsey's settings and they had hex maps already.

Jason Kemp

When creating a new homebrew setting, how do you personally handle factions? I can imagine having a list of assumed generic factions (various guilds, knightly orders, etc., that are in most campaign settings, or even just the Icons from 13th Age), plus those necessary for the three fronts, but I realize I don't know if you have an even easier way to handle that.

Jasper Flapper

I'm running Dragon of Icespirepeak and the party is about to encounter the Stone Cold Reavers. These mercenaries have pretty boring statblocks: veteran. How do you, in general, create interesting enemy NPC's not being monsters?

Kaique de Oliveira

Hey Mike! Any particular reason why the Lazy DM steps are in that specific order? Even though they can be followed in any order. Thanks!

NiteHood

I think my biggest issue as a GM might be a lack of cohesion. I ran a 50+ session campaign, that was all over the place. No consistent theme, arc, or story; it was kinda just a hodge podge of whatever I was able to prep that week. That's not a problem in and of itself, but we never hit a satisfying conclusion. I just sort of burnt myself out on the campaign, lost inspiration, and went on a hiatus. I'm finally feeling motivated and inspired again, but I really want to run a more cohesive campaign this time. What should I do before launching this campaign to try to keep it on theme and moving towards a satisfying conclusion?

Joshua Brown-Clay

Hey Mike! Quick question. I'll be visiting the DC area with my family next week. What's your favorite FLGS in the area? I'm excited to see the big city version of one!

Michael Shea

I don't have any special way to handle factions. I think thinking of them along the alignment graph isn't a bad way to go and then flavoring them for the setting you have. I think three good-guy factions and three bad-guy factions is a start and you can add more as you go or as desired. Building factions around the deities of a setting can work too. I've been working on a list of domains that can help fire up ideas for factions too I think: ## Major Domains 1. Light 2. Dark 3. Life 4. Death 5. Nature 6. War 7. Trickery 8. Knowledge 9. Tempest 10. Harvest 11. The Hells 12. The Abyss 13. Fire 14. Water 15. Earth 16. Air 17. The Sea 18. Undeath 19. Magic 20. Creation ## Minor Domains 1. Murder 2. Love 3. Serpents 4. Insects 5. The Void 6. Blood 7. The Hearth 8. Stars 9. The Hunt 10. Beauty 11. Music 12. Prophecy 13. The Wilds 14. Seelie Fey 15. Unseelie Fey 16. Shadow 17. Wine 18. Metalwork 19. Revelry 20. Beasts

Michael Shea

I love to flavor them in the world and not worry about the stat block so much. Different weapons, appearances, distinctions in their armor, species, and so on. There's a lot we can do with just how we describe things to make them different. I really don't think players care that much about the mechanical differences of monsters.

Michael Shea

The order is actually there for a reason but yeah, I tend to jump around as ideas come to me and I think that's fine. The first step – review the characters – is first to help you get your head around the characters first and to help the rest of the prep of your game. Strong start makes sense being next, then scenes, secrets, and so on. The order isn't critical but they're in that order for a reason. But yeah, if you watch me go through my prep, you'll see I jump around a lot.

Michael Shea

I think we can centralize a campaign around a main theme, one to three villains, the quests they're going on, and the adventures in front of the characters that focus on that theme. See chapter 16 of Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master and check out the campaign frameworks in Ruins of the Grendleroot or City of Arches for examples of building around a particular theme. It's a careful balance of having a clear direction in a campaign but also giving everyone the freedom to make choices about the types of adventures they go on.

Michael Shea

I wouldn't say any of my local game shops are anything special but in DC there's Labyrinth. I haven't been there in a long time – only once – because its on the other side of DC for me but it's well respected by a lot of folks.

Jasper Flapper

I realise my question wasn't clear enough. I ment interesting in a tactical way. How different foe's work together to defeat the party. Opposed to hitting a PC with a sword every turn.

Michael Shea

Ahh! Personally, I'm not into monster tactics that much but adding a different monster type into the equation can help. A priest, cult fanatic, or, if they're high level enough, a mage, can work. You can also reskin other monsters like flameskulls to add some ranged artillary. Books like Flee Mortals offer 5e stat blocks with a lot more tactical stuff going on. You can also look at common humanoid stat blocks from different versions of the game in the 5eADB to see if they're different enough to give you some of that tactical crunch.

Luke Baumstark

Greetings and salutations! How do you deal with players who want to place a fireball or other area of effect spell hyper precisely? For example, a wizard who wants to drop a fireball 15 feet behind opponents who are fighting him or his teammates, such that the enemies are hit, but the PCs with whom they are engaged are not? I have been the player attempting this plenty of times, so no judgment, but it seems like the kind of thing that would be hard to do in the heat of battle. Do you have players make a check of some sort to see if they can place it precisely where they want to? What happens if they fail? Please advise. Many thanks!

Kreggar

September Question: Hi Mike, do you ever include adventures in your campaigns that would be akin to side quests in a video game? A quest or adventure that doesn’t necessarily move “the story” of your campaign forward or tie directly to the driving force/North Star of the campaign premise. I think because all of my background for RPGs comes from video games, I’m getting stuck on the idea of a Main Quest vs Side Quests. I know where the PCs should go, and who they should speak with, to find the reason things are getting worse in the region, but I also wanted to provide other adventure locations and give the players options on how they want to engage with the world. So I’m not sure if I mistakenly mashed up two styles of campaign that don’t necessarily fit (a sort of sandbox/hexploration combined with a more linear narrative), or if this is the intended model for giving the players a situation and then adapting things based on their choices. The spiral model, as I understand it.

Jun Miyazaki

I loved your video on D&D Starter Set – Heroes of the Borderlands! Totally agree that great starter sets are the best way for WotC to grow the hobby. My question: do you think Stranger Things: Welcome to the Hellfire Club can work as an equally good entry point — but for Stranger Things fans rather than board gamers? Two years ago at a summer camp, I offered to run a D&D game for beginners — and the only reason some of them joined was because they were Stranger Things fans. They’ve been playing and loving D&D ever since! From my own experience, Stranger Things can be an incredible motivation for new people to try D&D. Do you think the Hellfire Club box set can really capture that magic and bring those fans into the hobby? I’d love to see you make a similar review video about the Hellfire Club box — but from the angle of how well it introduces Stranger Things fans to roleplaying and whether it can truly draw them in.

Michael Shea

I have a few rules of thumb for fireball placement (or things like that). First, if they want to hit one target and no one else, they almost always can. Because they can position a fireball in a 3d space, they can form it to just hit one person somehow. Otherwise, I try to keep in mind roughly how many creatures should typically get hit by a fireball (about four or so) and then move it up or down based on the circumstances. If you're trying to fireball a handful of guys who are already fully engaged with the characters, it might be harder. If there's a horde of orcs running in a 20 foot radius circle, you can hit them all. I have no problem with precise positioning to hit the maximum number of bad guys. I always have more bad guys.

Michael Shea

I don't typically add side quests but I've certainly done so from time to time. I think it's fine to have quests and adventures that aren't lock-step in line with any sort of main quest. I think we also have the freedom to offer multiple paths of main quests depending on the situation going on. This gives our quests some freedom outside of what you'd find in a video game. Imagine if all the quests and adventures in a video game changed depending on what you had done previously. That's the freedom we have in our tabletop games and its one of the reasons I suggest not planning out whole campaigns and instead focusing on the next one you're going to run. Let the quests and adventures flow from what happened in previous ones instead of planning them all out. This means there are no real side quests and main quests – everything flows from the decisions and actions of the characters.

Michael Shea

I think the Stranger Things boxed set is a great idea! I don't have a copy yet so I don't know what it's exactly like but it looks really good. I did a show segment about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb2T0jhLqYA&feature=youtu.be I'll probably have more when I get my hands on it but I think its a great idea to bring new people into the hobby. Next to Critical Role, I think Stranger Things brought more people to RPGs than anything else. I hope they have some sort of focus on it in the show!

Kreggar

I think these last couple points you make are what I’m striving toward with how I’ve structured the very beginning of this campaign (we’re doing the third session tomorrow), but I haven’t fully adapted to it. Im still figuring out if it feels uncomfortable, or if I just need to build a better campaign premise to suit that style. I think I’m close with this campaign, and I will be able to move in that direction as the PCs take actions in the world. I feel like my “side quests” are themed and flavored to fit the narrative of the campaign, but maybe don’t have a real strong tie back to the primary issues facing the world. And that’s probably okay!

Guy Runkle

Mike, Since you have run a full campaign in Shadowdark, do you think that Dreadful Blessings are useful for that system? Or should they only be used with more traditional 5E settings like ToTV, Level Up Advanced 5E, 2015 5E or 2024 5E?

Cabbit Crossing Presents

Hi! I'm trying out the 4 different versions of 5E combined in one campaign. You got me curious, so I had to try it. So far it has been a blast (and my first time even touching 2024 5E and Level Up A5E). I'm curious from your experience doing that, what is the top thing you feel each system brings to the table?

Garry Hale

Mike, I have been a d&d grognard since 1982. I'm currently playing 5th edition. I have been asked to run a demonstration game for some young adults who are interested in learning the game. It will be a one shot. I plan to use pre-generated characters and a five room dungeon. I'm not sure what level to play so I can best showcase what d&d feels like to play. 1st level is easiest because the PC's have fewer abilities but playing at first level is a different experience to most gaming sessions. Do you have thoughts on this?

Michael Shea

Hi there! I don't think I'd use them for Shadowdark but I've never really tried it. Shadowdark isn't really a system intending for you to have your hands on the dials too much. I mean, we can always use whatever tools we want if they make the game more fun but dreadful blessings in shadowdark might be going too far. You can always see if you need them and talk to your players about the idea and see!

Michael Shea

I have an upcoming Sly Flourish article on this very topic. Here are some quick ones: - A5e: supply and safe havens. - D&D 2024: better exhaustion. - D&D 2014: More free-flowing ability checks and action types for skills. - TOV: Luck and Doom.

Michael Shea

I would do it at level 1 and keep things simple. Also, be careful because 1st level characters are really delicate. You might have a patron cast "aid" on them so they each have an extra 5 hit points. That'd help a lot.

Michael Shea

Hey friends! We have moved on to the most recent Q&A thread. Please seek out the latest thread to post your questions!

Cabbit Crossing Presents

Thanks! Wow, I totally fumbled my Perception check on the exhaustion rule change for D&D 2024. I agree, that version is sooooo much better. Thanks for pointing that out.

Melanie

Hi Mike, as a GM I would love to be a player sometimes. One of my players would probably be willing to GM for me but they never really did before. I would like to recommend an adventure to them, but I also don't want to spoiler myself. Could you name me some Dnd 5 2014 Adventures that would make it easy for a first time GM? Maybe a one shot they could grab from drivethroughrpg or dmsguild and give to them?