Mike Shea/Sly Flourish has a new book on Kickstarter titled Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster. Famous for his GMing advice, Mike offers another tome suggesting the easiest ways to handle worldbuilding, manage the gaming table, and get your gamers excited to play. I sat down with Mike to discuss the book and dig into some of its contents.
EGG EMBRY (EGG): Thank you for taking the time to talk about your latest book of TTRPG advice. What new worldbuilding, table etiquette, and gameplay options does Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster suggest? How does it compare to your prior Lazy DM books like the Adamantine best selling The Lazy DM’s Workbook or Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master?
SLY FLOURISH/MIKE SHEA (SLY): Thank you for having me! On worldbuilding, the book has a big focus on campaign prep and play, all the way to your initial thoughts about what system to consider and how to talk to your group about it, through your initial campaign handout and session zero, how your games play out session by session and all the way to your final session to conclude your campaign. The book includes a chapter specific to building out the larger world of your campaign once you’ve gotten into it with tips to ensure the work you’re doing matters for your game, your players, and their characters.
For table etiquette, we have a chapter on our session zero and how to ensure your players build characters around the theme of the game you’re all preparing to run, how to manage safety tools, and how to help the characters have a strong hook and bond to work together towards their goals. We also have a chapter on running games online which have their own particular challenges. The first chapter in the campaign section helps GMs find and maintain good groups for both in-person and online games.
Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster is written to be both a stand-alone book and a book that works well alongside your other Lazy GM books. This isn’t just a rewrite of Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master. Instead, it takes concepts, like the eight steps for lazy GM prep, and expands each of them based on eight years of new experiences and new feedback. Like the Lazy DM’s Workbook, it’s packed with random tables that show off examples of the principles in the book, offer inspiration to GMs, and can even help GMs build adventures right out of the book.
EGG: This project is the result of years of feedback. Did you get any specific feedback that was a worldbuilding revelation to you?
SLY: I think the best news for me was that the eight steps for lazy GM prep really work for a lot of GMs. They’ve worked for me for preparing hundreds of sessions and lots of people have taken the eight steps and customized them around their style. One big revelation for me was the consideration of “adventure types” — common adventure styles we find in lots of RPGs that have their own unique requirements for how we prepare and run them and have their own potential pitfalls to overcome them. Robin Laws wrote a wonderful book called Adventure Crucible that opened my eyes to this concept which I expanded upon in Rise. Another revelation was how flexible the eight steps are for so many different kinds of games. The steps are solid on their own but the sorts of ways you can shift and change them depending on your own style, the needs of your group, the system you’re running, and the type of session you’re running — that’s a big deal that I felt warranted a new book.
EGG: You mention the 10 common adventure types. Within that group of 10, which adventure can be the most challenging to run? What advice to you offer to smooth the edges for the GM?
SLY: They all have their own unique challenges, which is why it’s worth looking at them I think but I’ll go with Investigations and Mysteries. They can be challenging because, typically, you have particular clues to the outcome of the mystery placed about and the characters have to go to the right place at the right time to get what they need. They can easily fall apart if the characters discover the mystery right away or if they never find the vital clue they need. Secrets and Clues (step 4 of the Lazy GM steps) helps us keep a handful of clues the characters can discover wherever they go and we can pace them out so the characters find the clues they need when they need them. We don’t want to lead them by the nose too much, but because we have a better handle on what they might discover without regards to the place or method of discovery, we have more control to improvise the situation when it comes up.
EGG: World ending events are huge, campaign-closing calamities; the entire MÖRK BORG family of games is based around a final world ending event. As a campaign closer, what advice would you give a GM to ensure the event is equal to the player’s expectations?
SLY: I have a whole chapter in Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster just for this question! I think the answer is a couple of things. First, don’t try to pull a big fast one on the characters right at the end of a campaign. Make sure you focus on the expectations the players have going into the final session of the game — even if it’s a world-ending calamity. Players don’t want to feel ripped off from the ending they spent so much time coming to. Second, a good boss fight is always welcome. Maybe in a game like Mork Borg it’s not going to go particularly well for them but still, people love a big bad evil guy. Third, ask the players to describe what happened to their characters one year after the event of the final session. Let them write their own conclusions, even if they’re dark and dreary. It gives control over the story over to the players and lets you sit back and enjoy what they come up with.
EGG: There’s thoughts in Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster about maintaining a happy, healthy gaming group. What’s your best piece of advice for holding a group together?
SLY: Always keep the game going. It’s very tempting to cancel a game if someone can’t make it but in our busy lives there’s almost always someone who can’t make it. Be willing to run a game with as few players as you can and ensure you keep that same day and time going so players start to work it into their regular schedules. The game must always go on.
EGG: What’s coming up after Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster?
SLY: I’m working on a new campaign setting called Blood of the Primordials which is sort of loosely connected to my previous campaign book The City of Arches. It’s also completely independent but can be connected up if you want. It’s a campaign setting built around the remains of eight titanic primordials and the desert above them with a gladiatorial city called the City of Blades in the center, lots of ancient ruins about, and campaigns built around hunting for powerful relics before bands of evil cultists can get them first. Patreon supporters of Sly Flourish get access to it as I’m writing it and I expect it’ll become something more polished in 2028 or so.
- Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster from Sly Flourish (which you can find here)
- END DATE: Thu, August 6 2026 10:00 PM EDT.
- ADDITIONAL REPORTING: Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk conducted an interview with Mike Shea aka Sly Flourish
- “Run great tabletop RPGs by preparing less.”
Egg Embry does not use AI in any of his writing. He participates in the OneBookShelf Affiliate Program, Noble Knight Games’ Affiliate Program, Kobold Press Affiliate Program, and is an Amazon Associate. These programs provide advertising fees by linking to DriveThruRPG, Noble Knight Games, Kobold Press, and Amazon. If you like the articles at Geek Native, please consider supporting the Patreon.
