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GM Intrusions and Complications in D&D

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here! The excellent science fantasy RPG Numenera and its underlying system, the Cypher System, includes a mechanic known as the GM Intrusion. The Numenera supplement, Taking...

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13 Tips to Speed Up D&D Combat

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here! Though not nearly as big a problem as it was in previous editions, some DMs still find combat in the fifth edition of D&D takes too long for their or their...

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The Dials of Monster Difficulty

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here! When running Dungeons & Dragons we DMs have a number of dials we can turn to change the difficulty and challenge of any monster. Some dials work best when we turn...

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Three of Five Keys: A Quest Design Pattern

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here! Consider a quest where the door to the infamous Black Vault requires five gemstone keys and an evil wizard seeks these five keys to open it. In this scenario, the...

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Demogorgon Must Die: A Twenty Level D&D Campaign Outline

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here! This article outlines a twenty level campaign centering around the sinister plots of the demon prince Demorgorgon. Like The Hunger and Harvester of Worlds, this...

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Stay in the Fiction

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here! I had a wonderful chat with Johnn Four of Roleplaying Tips recently and he said something that crystalized a thought swimming around my head for a while. The world is...

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Video Collaboration with Johnn Four

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here! Johnn Four from Roleplaying Tips and I partnered up to do a series of four YouTube videos to help GMs run awesome RPGs! You can get the first video on "Situations and...

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Choose Monsters Based on the Story

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here! Here's a one-line encounter building rule for you: Choose the number and type of monsters that make sense for the story, the situation, and the world. Many DMs build...

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Talking To Your Players

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here! In the Edition Wars podcast covering the 5th edition Dungeon Master's Guide, the hosts and guests of the show discussed the importance of talking to your players, and...

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Types of Secrets

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here! Secrets and clues are the powerhouse step in Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master. They're the glue that ties our games together. They're the reward for exploration and...

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Run Simple Adventures

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here! As DMs, our drive and creativity often lead us to build big, complex adventures. Yet often the best stories come from simple adventures bursting with unique results as...

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Run Meaningful Random Encounters

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here! In previous articles on Sly Flourish we've discussed the value of randomness and creativity in D&D and breaking conventional thought with random tables. Randomness...

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Spread Boss Damage to the Minions

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here! Players love to focus fire on bosses. It's a strong instinct that, unfortunately, tends to break the drama, excitement, and sense of danger of the fight. What fun is...

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Running Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden Chapter 1

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here! With an open-ended style, piles of potential quests, and little guidance to help DMs; chapter 1 of Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden can be challenging to run....

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Troublesome Quest Models

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here! Quest models are frameworks you can use to build interesting quests and adventures in your D&D games. There are a number of common and self-evident quest models we...

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Lazy Magic Items

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here! Here's a simple and lazy way to create unique magic items that fit well into the story, act as great vehicles for secrets and clues, excite players, and matter to...

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Easy Tricks from DMs on Twitter

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here! In July 2021 I tweeted the following: "What simple and easy tip or trick made a dramatic improvement in your #dnd game?" Many of the answers were outstanding and I...

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Good Books of Random Tables

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here! I love random tables. There are few more powerful D&D tools than a set of random tables feeding a creative brain. I've talked about this before in Random...

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Prepare a D&D Game in 15 Minutes

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here! The original Lazy Dungeon Master offered recommendations for "five minute game prep". Looking back, I oversold this idea. I don't think it's realistic to fully a prep...

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Improvising Colville-style Action Oriented Monsters in D&D

New to Sly Flourish? Start Here! Back in 2019 Matt Colville posted a YouTube video describing Action Oriented Monsters. The basic concept is that boss monsters typically don't have the tools or action...

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