Somewhat early in the pandemic, I got a promotion at my old job and became an “essential worker.”  So, I was hopping a bus to a train at like 6AM every morning, walking through empty DC streets to arrive at work at 7AM.  Then I’d spend the next eight hours mostly by myself.  I’d occasionally see a security guard or maintenance tech, but otherwise, I was alone.  And I was doing mostly busy work.  So, I got into watching YouTube videos, including a lot of tabletop RPG channels.  That’s where I first came across Mike Shea’s Sly Flourish channel.  I was initially put off, as things seemed so distinctly D&D focused, I didn’t really see much for me.  For whatever reason, at some point I watched his series where he went over the elements of this book, and I slowly started to come around.  Now, I end up watching a lot of his videos, especially his weekly “news” videos.  He’s still very D&D focused (or more generally 5e focused, as he’s moved away from talking about Wizards of the Coast as much).  But he’s got enough general gaming stuff for me to tune in.  All these years later, I finally got around to actually buying a copy of Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, which has been on my “wishlist” for several years.

The general premise of this book seems to be that simply running a game is more important than running the perfect game.  Perfection is the enemy of doneness.  And there are, or can be, diminishing returns for session prep.  As he discusses, and as several other popular tabletop RPG advice givers often say, your players don’t really care that much about your clever worldbuilding or plotting.  They want to relax, have fun, and see their characters do cool stuff.  To this end, the book suggests that you prepare only what you need.  That may sound obvious, but a lot of us GMs like to overindulge in worldbuilding and plotting that may never even get to the table.  We worry about the trade routes with distant kingdoms and the price of corn in the provinces, when the player just wants to find a new spell or to actually use their undead slaying weapon on some danged undead.  

The book lays out eight steps for a DM/GM to follow, meant to take maybe a half hour, before running a session.  Important to the idea is that you never prep too far ahead, and you try to keep things loose enough to “go with the flow” once the session begins.  Review the characters, create a strong start, outline potential scenes, define secrets and clues, develop fantastic locations, outline important NPCs, choose relevant monsters, and select magic item rewards.  Each of these steps is explored, with recommendations and examples.  Even here, Shea recommends you keep a loose hand on things.  If a step doesn’t make sense, drop it.  If something works differently for your group or your game, great.  

The rest of the book is filled with extrapolations, variations, and applications of the eight steps, as well as some general GMing advice.  It’s all good stuff, and I especially think it could be useful for someone new to running games.  And yes, the sort of assumed default is D&D or D&D-adjacent games.  But most of it translates to other styles of game.  

I saw somewhere that this would make a better Dungeon Master Guide than the official one from WotC.  I can’t really speak to that, as I don’t run D&D, but I certainly think it’ll be a useful guide to have and to read.  I know I’ll be using it in the future, especially if I end up running the ShadowDark game I’m putting together.  

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