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Episodes
The Lazy RPG Talk Show and the Lazy GM Prep show. D&D news, commentary, spotlights, Q&A, and lazy GM prep with Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.
Episodes
Wednesday Apr 28, 2021
Wednesday Apr 28, 2021
Mike offers three quick tips for getting started running Rime of the Frostmaiden.
- Original Youtube Video
- Sam Dillon's Creed of Auril
- Subscribe to the Sly Flourish Newsletter
- Join Sly Flourish's Patreon
- Buy Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
Podcast Contents
- 00:00 Intro
- 00:27 Tip 1: Apply the Right Character Motivation
- 01:33 Tip 2: Start in Bryn Shander
- 02:42 Tip 3: Add the Cult of Auril
Sunday Apr 25, 2021
Sunday Apr 25, 2021
Mike prepares for his latest session of Icewind Dale, Rime of the Frostmaiden!
Thursday Apr 22, 2021
Thursday Apr 22, 2021
Mike talks with Celeste Conowitch of 2C Gaming about her upcoming Venture Maidens campaign sourcebook currently live on Kickstarter!
Sunday Apr 18, 2021
Sunday Apr 18, 2021
Mike prepares for his latest session of Icewind Dale, Rime of the Frostmaiden!
Thursday Apr 15, 2021
Thursday Apr 15, 2021
Mike offers guidelines for running huge hordes of monsters in D&D and looks at a number of alternative approaches.
- Show notes
- Original Youtube Video
- Subscribe to the Sly Flourish Newsletter
- Join Sly Flourish's Patreon
- Buy Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
Podcast Contents
- 00:00 Intro
- 00:41 Mike's recommended horde system
- 05:03 Why we care about horde guidelines
- 05:58 Mike's criteria for good horde guidelines
- 06:54 Horde guidelines from the Dungeon Master's Guide (Chap 8, Pg 250)
- 08:26 4e D&D style minions
- 09:38 Single-stat-block hordes
- 10:36 5e Hardcore Mode's horde guidelines
- 12:09 13th Age mook rules
- 13:25 Mike's recommended horde guidelines review
- 15:53 Problems with Mike's horde guidelines
- 18:14 The importance of horde guidelines for D&D
Tuesday Apr 13, 2021
Tuesday Apr 13, 2021
Mike chats with Teos Abadia about D&D skill challenges!
Sunday Apr 11, 2021
Sunday Apr 11, 2021
Mike prepares for his latest session of Icewind Dale, Rime of the Frostmaiden!
Wednesday Apr 07, 2021
Wednesday Apr 07, 2021
Mike gives a short talk about ability checks, failing forward, and succeeding with a cost.
- Show notes
- Original Youtube Video
- Subscribe to the Sly Flourish Newsletter
- Join Sly Flourish's Patreon
- Buy Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
Podcast Contents:
- 00:00 Intro
- 00:38 The core mechanic of D&D
- 01:35 You don't need an ability check for easy stuff
- 02:02 Easy steps to choose a DC
- 03:04 DCs don't change based on the character's abilities
- 03:52 The power of improvising ability checks
- 04:32 Ability checks in complicated situations
- 07:08 Understand the in-world situation instead of focusing on mechanics
- 09:09 Asking for a check without a DC to see if they succeed at a cost
- 10:45 The improvisational power of ability checks, succeeding at a cost, and failing forward
Sunday Apr 04, 2021
Sunday Apr 04, 2021
Mike prepares for his latest session of Icewind Dale, Rime of the Frostmaiden!
Sunday Mar 28, 2021
Sunday Mar 28, 2021
Mike prepares for his latest session of Icewind Dale, Rime of the Frostmaiden!
- Original Youtube Video
- Notion Frostmaiden Campaign Notebook
- Subscribe to the Sly Flourish Newsletter
- Join Sly Flourish's Patreon
- Buy Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
Wednesday Mar 24, 2021
Wednesday Mar 24, 2021
Mike describes a robust D&D adventure or campaign quest model that offers a lot of flexibility and prevents quests from being thwarted with the capture or removal of a single key.
Sunday Mar 21, 2021
Sunday Mar 21, 2021
Mike prepares for his latest session of Icewind Dale, Rime of the Frostmaiden!
Wednesday Mar 17, 2021
Wednesday Mar 17, 2021
Mike offers tips and tricks to maintain a good pace in your D&D game; one of the most important traits a DM can practice.
Books and Articles
Sunday Mar 14, 2021
Sunday Mar 14, 2021
Mike prepares for his latest session of Icewind Dale, Rime of the Frostmaiden!
Sunday Mar 07, 2021
Sunday Mar 07, 2021
Mike prepares for his latest session of Icewind Dale, Rime of the Frostmaiden!
Wednesday Mar 03, 2021
Wednesday Mar 03, 2021
Mike talks about the importance of being on the players' side when we run our D&D games.
- Subscribe to the Sly Flourish Newsletter
- Support Sly Flourish on Patreon
- Buy Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
Core principles
- Working *with* the players, not against them.
- You're not a competitor.
- The DM is an antenna to another world. We're the vehicle for storytelling.
- We're not the baddies. We're not our villains. We're not on the opposite side of the chess board.
- We're *fans* of the characters (Thanks Dungeon World!)
- The players understand about half of what's going on.
- The characters understand far more than the players do.
- The characters are smart and skilled in their roles. They have knowledge the characters do not.
- Fun doesn't mean just upward beats, it means risk and reward, upward and downward beats. Hard situations and hard meaningful decisions.
The DM's Job
- Build the situation around the story, not around the characters.
- Clarify that situation to the players. We're their eyes and ears.
- Help them meet their intent.
- Let the dice complicate things. They are the cold-hearted arbiter of the results of the situation.
- Balance acting true to the situation with the fun of the game; leaning towards fun and away from things that are *not* fun.
- The world and the story puts the characters in hard situations. The DM helps the characters make informed choices to navigate those situations.
Examples
- Warn them when they're walking into a potentially deadly situation.
- Assume characters that aren't involved in investigating a trap aren't putting themselves at risk.
- Let characters move that extra five feet if they can't quite get up to a monster.
- Ask the characters to make a group stealth check even if they don't ask for it if it makes sense that they'd be sneaking.
- Use characters passive scores to locate secret doors.
- Ask "are you sure" when they're doing something that clearly won't work or is clearly dangerous.
- Let players roll back spells cast if their character would know that it clearly wouldn't have worked. "A 1st level sleep spell won't be powerful enough to put them to sleep."
- Ask for the players intent and help them reach it.
- Offer deals: "You can make a DC 16 Intelligence (Arcana) check to channel energy from the unstable arcane node. On a success, enemies will have disadvantage on their saving throws against your spell. Fail and you'll take 2d10 force damage."
- Remind the players about advantageous terrain.
- Give players hints and clues about puzzles their characters would clearly understand.
- Remind players of things their characters would likely remember.
- Use skill checks and the characters' backgrounds go offer clues and tips.
- In complicated situations, offer strategic recommendations the players may not recognize.
- Remind players of impending dangers: "You have two rounds left before the orcish hoard falls upon you".
- Remind the players about items their characters possess that they may have forgotten.
- Offer suggestions for spell uses players might not remember or consider.
- Give characters inspiration or advantage when they take risky moves that move the story forward.
- Offer alternatives: "You can charge the first one and attack or you can ready your attack for the first one to charge up to you and stay close to your protecting paladin."
- Clarify impossibilities: "Hard as you might try, this door is beyond your capability to break down.
Work With Your Players
- D&D is a cooperative game and we're part of that cooperative.
- We have to know when to let bad things happen.
- Build trust with the players. Don't violate it. Be on their side. Avoid "gotcha"s.
- The world is cruel, you are not.
Sunday Feb 28, 2021
Sunday Feb 28, 2021
Mike prepares for his latest session of Icewind Dale, Rime of the Frostmaiden!
Wednesday Feb 24, 2021
Wednesday Feb 24, 2021
Mike discusses tips for running awesome D&D combat.
Support Sly Flourish on Patreon
Podcast Contents
- 00:00 Intro
- 00:18 Run with four players.
- 00:57 Run lower level games. Level 3 is the sweet spot.
- 01:38 Use static monster damage.
- 02:15 Run theater of the mind combat for small battles.
- 03:02 Inject the story and fiction into large battles.
- 04:49 Draw characters in off-turn with skill checks and info.
- 05:36 Use abstract maps – break out of the grid.
- 08:04 Ask for intent.
- 09:13 Have alternative goals - Add a Combat Out.
- 11:04 Don't say "Let's Call it Right Here".
- 11:53 Adjusting the dials (HP, Damage, Number of Monsters, Number of Attacks).
- 13:11 Offer Cinematic Advantage
- 15:10 Randomly select targets
- 16:06 Make boss fights interesting
Relevant articles
- Guide to Theater of the Mind Combat
- The Abstract Battlemap
- Replacing Flanking with Cinematic Advantage
- Collected Experiences Running Boss Fights
Tuesday Feb 23, 2021
Tuesday Feb 23, 2021
Mike talks with Ryan Servis of 2C Gaming about the role of the DM and debating objectivity versus a bias towards the characters in our D&D games.
Sunday Feb 21, 2021
Sunday Feb 21, 2021
Mike prepares for his latest session of Icewind Dale, Rime of the Frostmaiden!
Sunday Feb 14, 2021
Sunday Feb 14, 2021
This week Mike prepares for his session zero of Icewind Dale, Rime of the Frostmaiden!
- Original Youtube Video
- Notion Frostmaiden Campaign Notebook
- Rime of the Frostmaiden One-Page Campaign Guide
- Support Sly Flourish on Patreon
Sunday Feb 07, 2021
Sunday Feb 07, 2021
Mike's final thoughts on his homebrew Eberron campaign. This is a rebroadcast of Mike’s Lazy DM Prep show broadcast live on Twitch and reposted to YouTube and here in podcast form.
This episode is brought to you ad-free by the patrons of Sly Flourish.
Thursday Feb 04, 2021
Thursday Feb 04, 2021
Mike talks about safety tools in D&D including the X-card, lines and veils, script change, and others.
Youtube version of this discussion
Resources
- Safety tool reference by Tomer Gurantz
- Campaign Safety & Consent Checklist
- Consent in Gaming
- Digital RPG Consent Checklist
- Optional Rule Safety Consent RPG Checklist
- Script Change
- Script Change Printable
- Spelltheory on Safety Tools
- The X card
- TTRPG Safety Toolkit Resources
- TTRPG Safety Toolkit
Video Contents
00:00 What are safety tools?
01:05 Why use safety tools?
03:01 The X-Card
03:39 Lines and Veils
08:11 Script Change
09:13 The Door is Open
10:20 Why do I suddenly care?
13:48 A Safety Tool Stack (rating, lines & veils, "pause")
16:27 Recognizing full-consent decisions versus majority rule
17:49 DMs using "Pause for a Second"
19:18 More on why we want safety tools
23:08 The Awesome Value of free tools
Tuesday Feb 02, 2021
Tuesday Feb 02, 2021
Mike talks with Dave Chalker about the various combat styles we can bring to D&D including gridded combat, abstract maps, and theater of the mind.
This is a rebroadcast of the show broadcast live on Twitch and reposted to YouTube and here in podcast form.
This episode is brought to you ad-free by the patrons of Sly Flourish.
- Support Sly Flourish on Patreon
- Buy Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
- Subscribe to the Sly Flourish Newsletter
Sunday Jan 31, 2021
Sunday Jan 31, 2021
Mike's latest episode of Sly Flourish's Lazy DM Prep for his homebrew Eberron game. This is a rebroadcast of Mike’s Lazy DM Prep show broadcast live on Twitch and reposted to YouTube and here in podcast form.
This episode is brought to you ad-free by the patrons of Sly Flourish.
Wednesday Jan 27, 2021
Wednesday Jan 27, 2021
In this somewhat-raw discussion with Mike Shea (@slyflourish) and Enrique Bertran (@NewbieDM) we talk about our experiences with the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons!
This episode is brought to you ad-free by the patrons of Sly Flourish.
Sunday Jan 24, 2021
Sunday Jan 24, 2021
Mike's latest episode of Sly Flourish's Lazy DM Prep for his homebrew Eberron game. This is a rebroadcast of Mike’s Lazy DM Prep show broadcast live on Twitch and reposted to YouTube and here in podcast form.
This episode is brought to you ad-free by the patrons of Sly Flourish.
Saturday Jan 23, 2021
Saturday Jan 23, 2021
Mike covers tips and tricks for running chapter 3 from Descent into Avernus.
This episode is brought to you ad-free by the patrons of Sly Flourish.
- Support Sly Flourish on Patreon
- Buy Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
- Subscribe to the Sly Flourish Newsletter
Video Contents
- 00:00 Intro
- 00:25 Mike's Top Tips for Descent into Avernus
- 08:14 Chapter 4 Discussion
- 18:50 Chapter 5 Discussion
- 27:52 Overall Thoughts on Descent into Avernus
- 33:18 Do I recommend it? Maybe?
- 36:08 Useful Descent into Avernus Supplements
Sunday Jan 17, 2021
Sunday Jan 17, 2021
Mike's latest episode of Sly Flourish's Lazy DM Prep for his homebrew Eberron game. This is a rebroadcast of Mike’s Lazy DM Prep show broadcast live on Twitch and reposted to YouTube and here in podcast form.
This episode is brought to you ad-free by the patrons of Sly Flourish.
Sunday Jan 10, 2021
Sunday Jan 10, 2021
Mike's latest episode of Sly Flourish's Lazy DM Prep for his homebrew Eberron game. This is a rebroadcast of Mike’s Lazy DM Prep show broadcast live on Twitch and reposted to YouTube and here in podcast form.
This episode is brought to you ad-free by the patrons of Sly Flourish.