Sec 01

SLY FLOURISH’S THE LAZY DUNGEON MASTER

by Michael E. Shea

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THE LAZY DUNGEON MASTER Copyright 2012 by Michael E. Shea mikeshea.net/about

Cover art copyright 2012 Jimi Bonogofsky jimidoodle.blogspot.com

Layout by Erik Nowak eriknowakdesign.blogspot.com

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First printing November 2012

“I don’t have to do much prep at all, I just kind of wing it. But they think I spend hours and hours and hours actually planning all this shit out.” — Chris Perkins, Senior Producer of Dungeons and Dragons and Dungeon Master for Acquisitions Incorporated

Dungeons and Dragons is a registered trademark of Wizards of the Coast LLC.

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CONTENTS

Chapter	Title	Page
I	About This Book	3
II	The Mantra of the Lazy Dungeon Master	4
III	Being Lazy is Hard	5
IV	The Dangers of Over-Preparation	6
V	Five-Minute Adventure Preparation	7
VI	Beginning Your Adventure	8
VII	The Three Paths	9
VIII	Character-Driven Stories	10
IX	Tying PCs to the Story	12
X	Keeping the End in Sight	13
XI	World Building Through Relationships	14
XII	Building From Frameworks	16
XIII	Colliding Worlds	18
XIV	Six Traits About Your Game World	20
XV	Tools of the Lazy Dungeon Master	21
XVI	Reskinning	23
XVII	Lazy Encounter Design	24
XVIII	Lazy Treasure and Experience	26
XIX	Using Published Material	27
XX	Delegation	28
XXI	Improving Improvisation	30
XXII	Immerse Yourself in Fiction	32
XXIII	Take What Works	32
App A	Lazy Dungeon Master Toolkit	33
App B	The Dungeon Master Survey	36
App C	Dungeon Master Preparation Questionnaire	37

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I. ABOUT THIS BOOK

This book builds upon two ideas. First, many dungeon masters spend a great deal of time planning and preparing their Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) games without necessarily bringing more enjoyment to their players or themselves. Second, and potentially more profound, less preparation may result in a more enjoyable D&D game.

With these ideas in mind, this book aims to:

• Save you time preparing for your D&D game
• Help you focus on the elements of your game that bring the most enjoyment to you and your group
• Show you how preparing less results in a more dynamic and exciting game

You probably love preparing your D&D game and these ideas come as a bit of a shock. We all love building great D&D games, that’s why we’re running them instead of just playing in them. You don’t have to lose the joy of preparing your game. Instead, you’ll see what and how to prepare so that you can focus on the things that bring the greatest joy to you and your group.

Who is this book for?

This book is intended for experienced dungeon masters who have run dozens, if not hundreds, of Dungeons and Dragons games. This is not a book for a novice. Books such as the various Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guides and my own Sly Flourish’s Dungeon Master Tips are aimed at newer dungeon masters who need to get a better handle on the basics.

Although this book doesn’t require true expertise in dungeon mastering, it assumes that you know the basics and have significant experience running games at the table. The more games you have under your belt, the more useful the contents of this book will be.

Like Sly Flourish’s Dungeon Master Tips and Running Epic Tier D&D Games, this short book focuses on tips, tricks, discussions, and resources to help you spend less time building a better D&D game. Like the very goal it undertakes, reading this book will take little of your time and offer you practical solutions to build open and exciting D&D games.

Every idea in this book may not resonate with you or your preparation style. There is no one true way to prepare a great D&D game for every group. This book should, however, give you something to consider as you prepare for your games. Use what works for you. Discard the rest.

Now let’s make our games great.

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II. THE MANTRA OF THE LAZY DUNGEON MASTER

“Of all the prep you do, maybe 10% will actually come into play.” — Mike Mearls, Head of Dungeons and Dragons Research and Design

We begin with a simple core concept, a simple statement to keep in mind while preparing our games. It is the concept around which the rest of this book revolves:

Prepare only what most benefits your game.

A simple statement yet difficult to follow. We all know the maxims “keep it simple” and “less is more”. Regardless, many of us live lives that are far from simple. Figuring out what truly benefits your game takes considerable thought. Every time you pull back the reins on your overactive imagination, your mind will buck and kick and spit as it tries to push forward, to fill in all the blanks, define every variable, and build out every detail before your game has even started.

The success or failure of a game does not depend on the amount of time you spend preparing it. The story exists among a group of people at the table and is as good or bad as what those people bring to it.

Prepare only what most benefits your game.

What will you STOP doing?

Good creative works come from what gets eliminated, not what gets added in. What will you remove from your game and your preparation to refine it? What will you eliminate to keep your time and energy focused in the right area?

Appendix B presents the results of a survey with 817 dungeon masters on their game preparation techniques. Looking at the list, which activities do you find most beneficial to your game? Which ones are least beneficial? Why do you still do them?

”But I LIKE preparing my game!”

This will likely be the single biggest criticism of this book’s ideas. We like building our games. We like setting up detailed encounter areas and figuring out all the nuances of our story. We love building worlds and histories and political webs. We enjoy all of that work, and it makes our games better, right?

Maybe not.

What feels productive might not be. You might spend a good deal of time designing a monster or a scene or an encounter area only to have it fall apart when your players come to the table. Sometimes all the preparation in the world won’t result in a better game for your group. As an example, according to Michael Mallen, writer of the Id DM blog, the worst session he ever ran was the one for which he felt most prepared.

All the time you spend preparing your game might feel useful, but instead it might be steering you away from the most important activities you may be subconsciously avoiding.

Creativity and the Resistance

In his popular self-help book, The War of Art, Stephen Pressfield writes about a concept called “the Resistance”. In the book, Pressfield describes the Resistance as an insidious force that prevents people from making and finishing creative works. The Resistance is anything that gets in the way of true creation, whether justified or not.

In fact, this is one of the most interesting and challenging things about the Resistance; the Resistance might be something perfectly reasonable and rational. How can you write a novel when you’re fighting cancer? How can you quit your job and learn to paint when you have four kids to support and two mortgages? No one would expect you to dive into these creative enterprises when you are faced with such reasonable limitations. But they’re still the Resistance.

The Resistance is anything, rational or not, that gets in the way of true creativity — whether it’s writing a novel or preparing for your weekly D&D game.