The Way of the Lazy Dungeon Master

From Sly Flourish's Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master by Michael E. Shea.

"Prepare what benefits your game, and omit what does not."

The Lazy Dungeon Master's Checklist

• Review the characters
• Create a strong start
• Outline potential scenes
• Define Secrets and clues
• Develop fantastic locations
• Outline important NPCs
• Choose relevant monsters
• Select magic items

Review the Characters

Before we do anything else, it helps to spend a few minutes reviewing the player characters. What are their names? What do they want? What plays into their backgrounds? What do the players of these characters enjoy at the table? You might not even write anything down during this step, but reviewing the characters helps wire them into your mind—and ensures that the rest of your preparation fits around them.

• Write down the names, backgrounds, and motivations of all the characters
• Review these character notes to prime your mind before the rest of your preparation.
• Use this character review to help you tie the characters to the rest of your game.
• Test yourself to see if you can remember the names of the characters.

Create a Strong Start

How a game starts is likely the most important piece of preparation we can do. Setting the stage for the session determines a great deal about how the rest of the game will go. When you define where a game session starts, you figure out what's going on, what the initial focus of the session is, and how you can get close to the action. When in doubt, start with a fight.

• What's happening? What event will frame the start of this section of the adventure?
• What's the point? What seed or hook will lead the characters further into the adventure?
• Where's the action? Start as close the the action as you can.
• When in doubt, start with combat.

Outline Potential Scenes

With a strong start in hand, we can then outline a short list of potential scenes that might unfold. This step exists mostly to make you feel as though you have a handle on the game before you start. However, as GMs, all of us must always be ready to throw our potential scenes away when the game goes in a different direction—as it often does. Usually, it's enough to come up with only a few words per scene, and to expect one or two scenes per hour of play. At other times, you might skip this step completely if you don't think you need it.

• Write down a short list of scenes that might occur in your game.
• Remember that the goal of writing down scenes is primarily to help you feel prepared.
• Scenes can occur in or out of sequence.
• Write only as much as you need to remind yourself of what might happen.
• Don't fall in love with your scenes. Be prepared to throw them away.

Define Secrets and Clues

The next step is second only in importance to the strong start, and is one of the most powerful tools available to the Lazy Dungeon Master. Secrets and clues are single short sentences that describe a clue, a piece of the story, or a piece of the world that the characters can discover during the game. You don't know exactly how the characters will discover these clues. As such, you'll want to keep these secrets and clues abstract from their place of discovery so that you can drop them into the game wherever it makes sense. This lets the game flow freely, while still allowing you to reveal important pieces of the story at any point where the characters might discover them. During this step, you might write down ten such secrets or clues.

• Write down ten secrets and clues that the characters might discover in the next game session.
• Secrets and clues are the connective tissue of a campaign. After the start of the adventure, they're the second most important thing to prepare.
• Each secret or clue reveals a piece of the story or the history of the world and its inhabitants.
• Keep secrets and clues abstract from how they might be revealed. Improvise the discovery of secrets during the game.
• Throw away secrets that aren't revealed during a session. Write a fresh list each time.

Develop Fantastic Locations

Building evocative locations isn't easily improvised. As such, it's worth spending time writing out a handful of fantastic locations that the characters might discover and explore during the game. Each location can be thought of as a set, a room, or a backdrop for a single scene in your adventure. Describe each location with a short evocative title such as "The Sunspire." Then write down three fantastic aspects for it, along the lines of: "Blazing beam of light shining to the heavens," "Moat of molten rock," or "Huge elven glyphs carved into ancient stone." Ultimately, whole dungeons can be built from a series of connected fantastic locations, with each location representing a large area or chamber. A specific location might not come up during the game for which you prepare it, but it will be ready for a later session as the characters explore.

• Write down an evocative name for the location.
• Write down three fantastic aspects of the location.
• Plan on using one or two locations per hour of play.
• Make locations fantastic using age and size.
• Tie some locations to the backgrounds of the characters.
• Draw stick-figure dungeon maps with names connected by lines.

Outline Important NPCs

During your preparation, we'll outline those NPCs (nonplayer characters) most critical to the adventure, focusing on a name and a connection to the adventure, then wrapping the NPC in a character archetype from popular fiction. Many other NPCs—maybe even most of them—can be improvised right at the table.

• You're likely to prepare some NPCs ahead of time and improvise others during the game.
• NPCs you prepare will primarily be those that drive the game session and the adventure.
• Keep your NPC outline brief: a name, a connection to the adventure, and a character archetype from popular fiction is often enough.
• As with all the other parts of your preparation, you need to be ready to throw your NPCs away if the story moves in an unexpected direction.
• Switch genders and avoid stereotypes to make your NPCs unique and interesting.
• You might be able to skip this step if NPCs have already been covered in your strong start, the outline of potential scenes, or your secrets and clues.

Choose Relevant Monsters

What monsters are the characters most likely to face? What monsters make sense for a specific location and situation? We're using the term "monster" loosely here, so as to include enemy NPCs as well as truly monstrous foes. Whatever type of enemy you need, reading through books of monsters can give you the fuel to choose the right creatures for the right situation. Additionally, understanding the loose relationship between monster challenge rating and character level can help you understand how a battle might go. Most of the time, you can just list a number of monsters and improvise encounters based on what's happening in the adventure. For boss battles, you might have to do more work.

• Choose monsters that make sense for the story, situation, and location.
• Read monster books to prime your brain with new ideas and information for improvisation.
• Keep a loose gauge of monster difficulty and character levels i mind.
• Improvise encounters based on the story and situation during the game.
• Spend time building boss fights that account for character capabilities without negating those capabilities—or instead, let boss fights play out like other encounters.

Select Magic Item Rewards

Players love magic items, and it's worthwhile to spend time preparing items they'll find interesting. This step also helps to directly impact the characters—by dropping an interesting part of the story literally into their hands. You can use a mixture of techniques to reward magic items, from selecting items randomly to selecting specific items based on the themes of the characters and the desires of the players. Magic items are also a great mechanism for delivering secrets and clues.

• Players love magic items. It's worth your time to consider magic items during prep.
• At the beginning of a campaign and every six sessions thereafter, ask the players what sorts of items they'd like for their characters.
• Write down their answers, the review those answers when you're reviewing the characters during step one of the Lazy Dungeon Master's checklist.
• When it fits the story, select an interesting time for one of the characters and plan to drop it in to the game.
• You might also randomly select magic items to drop into the game.
• Tie magic itmes to the story, eithe by using them as the focus of a quest, or as a connection to a secret or clue.

A Loose Outline To Get Comfortable

Your actual use of this checklist might change from game to game. But reviewing the checklist each time you begin to prepare for your game can help you feel comfortable that you're focusing your energy on the activities that provide the most value. The more comfortable you become improvising your games, the more you might start skipping certain steps on the list. All that's important is that you don't want your confidence to lead you away from important steps that your players enjoy.

The Lazy Dungeon Master's Published Adventures Checklist

Our Lazy Dungeon Master's checklist works whether we're running a published adventure or our own home-brewed adventures. But published adventures offer tremendous value to the Lazy |Dungeon Master, whether you play them mostly as written or use them to inspire your own ideas—giving you published and playtested material you can drop into your own adventures.
To get the most out of a published adventure, it's important to first read the adventure, absorbing it and letting it inspire you. You then need to make the adventure your own by customizing it for your group. Adventure writers both expect and hope that GMs will run their adventures in whatever way best suits our games.
When running a published adventure and going over the Lazy Dungeon Master's checklist, you might find that some of the steps are done for you. You might not need to put as much energy into steps like building fantastic locations, identifying NPCs, choosing monsters, or selecting magic items. Still, because you always want to customize the adventure, it's worth reviewing the checklist when running a published adventure, to help you sort through and focus all the material that the adventure is providing.