Dungeons & Dragons Book Provides DMs With Invaluable Advice

A new Kickstarter is raising funds to publish a new guide to running a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. Michael Shea, the creator of the Sly Flourish blog, has launched a new Kickstarter campaign to fund publication of The Lazy DM’s Companion, a new 64-page book designed to help DMs streamline their campaign and session planning. The new book is the third in Shea’s Lazy DM’s series and focuses mostly on game prep. The book provides suggestions to make various kinds of scenes easier to run, generators designed to inspire unique adventures that can be put together quickly and easily. 

Shea is one of the more prolific D&D bloggers and has written both articles and adventures for a variety of different publications, including Wizards of the Coast, MCDM, Kobold Press, and Sasquatch Press. His guidance largely focuses on simplicity and efficiency to help DMs keep their planning for individual sessions from getting out of hand. Shea has used his advice as the basis for a series of “Fantastic” books that provide players with easy-to-use adventures and locations, as well as his popular series of Lazy DM tomes.

The Lazy DM’s Companion is jam-packed with different guidelines and tools for DMs. Some of the tools included in the book includes the book includes tools for improvisation, RPG safety tools, teaching new players how to play, creating a strong start for the game, guides for running exploration, templates for creating undead or elemental monsters, options for running a 1st level adventure, quick and easy combat encounters, and several different kinds of adventure generators. 

A $10 pledge gets backers the PDF version of The Lazy DM’s Companion, while a $20 pledge gets a full PDF set of all three Lazy DM books. Physical books are also available starting at the $25 pledge level. While the campaign has raised nearly $200,000 during its first week, Shea has opted not to go for any stretch goals in order to focus on the core Lazy DM’s Companion book. You can check out the full Kickstarter, which will remain open until October 28th, here.