 has unveiled "Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster," a new book coming to Kickstarter in July.){kind=link}
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Award-winning TTRPG designer and influencer Mike Shea (also known as Sly Flourish) has announced a follow-up to his best-selling Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master series. Entitled Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster, the new book is meant to expand on Shea’s previous works, offering new GM tools, tips and tricks for running tabletop RPGs across a wide range of game systems. The book will first launch as a crowdfunder in early July, but you can learn more and sign up for notifications now via Kickstarter.
So just what can lazy GMs expect in this latest project from Sly Flourish? Below, we roll up all the details.
What is Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster about?
Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster will be a roughly 160-page book available in hardcover, PDF, EPUB and Markdown formats. In a blog post on the official Sly Flourish website, Mike Shea notes that the book isn’t a revised version of his ENNIE-winning Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, but rather is a complementary resource that offers a range of new and updated advice on how to speed up prep time and make play more interactive and fun.
That being said, the book will revisit Shea’s popular “Eight Steps of Lazy GM Prep” (which has been detailed in previous books and in a variety of online content), but will offer new innovations based on eight years of feedback for this system.
The new book will also include advice on:
- Building and Running Lazy Campaigns: Offering guidelines for one-shots, short-term campaigns and long-term campaigns.
- Adventure Types and Quest Models: Covering what works well and how to customize the eight steps for different scenarios.
- The Lazy GM’s Toolbox: Providing a collection of 50 tools, tips and tricks to help GMs more compelling games.
- Adventure Outlines: Featuring ten playable scenario outlines showing examples of integrating the Eight Steps.
- Appendices: Including random tables, maps and inspiration to generate ideas on the fly.
While Shea’s previous Lazy DM products were primarily focused on D&D 5E (although the advice is broad enough to cover almost any TTRPG), Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster will be completely system-agnostic and designed to support a variety of rulesets including D&D 5E and 5.5E, as well as popular systems like Shadowdark, Daggerheart, Dragonbane, Dolmenwood and Nimble.
Who is Mike Shea (aka Sly Flourish)?
Mike Shea is a prolific, award-winning tabletop RPG writer, designer and content creator who operates under the moniker “Sly Flourish.” He is best known for the popular Return of the Lazy DM (which won the 2019 Gold ENNIE for Best Electronic Book) and the follow-up supplements The Lazy DM’s Companion, The Lazy DM’s Workbook and the Lazy DM’s Forge of Foes (the latter of which he co-authored with designers Teos AbadÃa and Scott Fitzgerald Gray).
Shea has also written or co-written a variety of adventure material for 5E, including Ruins of the Grendleroot, Fantastic Adventures, Fantastic Locations, Fantastic Lairs and the City of Arches (the latter of which is detailed city sourcebook that was launched after a highly successful $200K Kickstarter in late 2024).
In addition, Shea also hosts the weekly Lazy RPG Talk Show (which is available on both podcast platforms and YouTube) and has run a long-term and widely supported Patreon. More recently, he was also selected by Wizards of the Coast to be a member of the inaugural D&D Community Advisory Group.
Why we’re excited for Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster
- A Proven Track Record: Sly Flourish’s previous books have fundamentally changed how GMs (including yours truly) prep our games. The promise of more helpful content to streamline prep and play sounds amazing.
- System Agnosticism: With the TTRPG space becoming more diverse than ever, having a prep tool that works for everything from D&D and Shadowdark to Dragonbane and Daggerheart is a massive plus.
- Practical Tools: The inclusion of 50 new tools, ten playable adventure outlines and ton of random tables means you can get immediate use at the table rather than just being an inspirational product.
- Accessible Formats: Offering the book in hardcover, PDF, EPUB and Markdown means GMs can prep exactly how they want to, including integrating the text into digital tools like Notion and Obsidian (something we don’t really see from other TTRPG products).
Final thoughts
Sly Flourish has consistently delivered some of the most practical and impactful GM advice in the industry, so it’ll be interesting to see what new content Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster contains.
We’ll be keeping a close eye on this project in the weeks ahead and will update this page with new information when crowdfunding starts in July. In the meantime, you can learn more and sign up for notifications now via Kickstarter.