Sly Flourish's The Lazy Dungeon Master

By: Michael E. Shea

Narrated by: Colby Elliott

Length: 2 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's summary

You love Dungeons and Dragons. As an experienced dungeon master, you've run dozens, if not hundreds of games. You put a lot of work into making your games great. What if there's another way to look at how you prepare your game? What if it turned out you could spend less time and less energy and have a better game as a result? It's time to unleash The Lazy Dungeon Master.

Written in the style of Sly Flourish's Dungeon Master Tips and Running Epic Tier D&D Games, The Lazy Dungeon Master shows a new approach to game preparation, one that takes less time and gives your game the freedom to grow at the table. This book will help a dungeon master prepare awesome games for any version of D&D.

Based on the real-world experiences of hundreds of dungeon masters and dozens of professional game designers, The Lazy Dungeon Master includes interviews with veteran D&D DMs and a complete toolkit to help you improvise an entire game. Whether you play 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, Pathfinder, or the D&D Next playtest, The Lazy Dungeon Master has tips, techniques, and advice to make preparation easier and help you run a flexible and entertaining game.

Download the accompanying reference guide.

©2012 Michael E. Shea (P)2016 Last Word Audio, LLC

Outdated for 5e, but concepts hold up

I really enjoy this audiobook. Just finished my second listen through after taking about a year, and I got a ton more out of it. The book is from the 4e era, but it all still fits.

For a DM who prepares too much!

If you are like me and you don't really prepare much at all this book was an interesting exploration of a way to look at running a table top RPG, especially D&D. If you are a DM who spends much time preparing for your game this is a MUST READ. It will help you learn how to prepare a better game in less time.

good advice

I did like some of the advice from the author. I really like the advice from the dungeon masters he interviewed the most though. i liked he explai ed thoroughly went thru his process of allied Npcs and antagonist npcs. I enjoyed this book and would recommend even for novice dm's.

Good for DMs interested in perfecting their craft

Author focuses on a survey of dungeon masters opinions of running the game and elaborates on the need for prep work, or lack there of. This is perfect for the improvisational dungeon master trying to imitate success based on the only empirical evidence available. The authors method of breaking down survey results of 4E DMs is logical and insightful. This does not read from cover to cover at all times and operates more like a text book. This delivery method worked well for me. A DM who dislikes prep work and runs a weekly game while managing a stressful job and personal life. For what it's worth, I run a 5th Edition DND games and found that some of the tools referenced did not apply. Though the caveat need be this explores DMing in 4E, which is in most ways similar. Thanks!

This book was fun to listen to and full great help

for any Dungeon Master! I've listened to it several times. I would have like to have pdfs he spoke of to look at while listening.

Great Advice

Even if we all have our own style this book gives loght to new & interesting ideas!

SUCH A GOOD RESOURCE

This is a great guide for any DM who feels like they're putting too much work in to the game with too little reward. It gives great bulleted guidelines for keeping it simple and relying on the NPCs and PCs to flesh out the setting on the fly.

Helpful tips for Dungeon Masters

As a DM who is often overwhelmed by the amount of prep work associated with bringing a module to to table in a competent manner, I found this book has a lot of helpful information about how to reduce some of the things that eat up a lot of time and don't provide a lot of in-game payoff. Also, the book gets to the point and doesn't waste a lot of time. At under 3 hours, it's not a huge time investment to get the knowledge it offers.

-1 star as it refers to a pdf a number of times that is supposed to be supplied with this audiobook that you never receive with Audible. It doesn't hamper things too much, but it really would have been nice to have.

lot of stuff to take away

quick read that gives you a lot to reflect on. you get to see the concepts played out deferantly from 10 other gms points of view.

this is just what I needed

I've been doing since the 1970s and tend to over prepare. the methods within this book seem promising, and look like they will bring back spontaneity and make my life easier. plus this book is very enjoyable