I've been a fan of Mike "Sly Flourish" Shea for years, and particularly enjoyed The Lazy Dungeon Master, his book of GM advice and tips from a few years ago. He's now Kickstarting a sequel, The Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, and has sent me along a quick preview of the first few pages.
What Sly Flourish does well, in my opening, is codify and organise the collected wisdom of experiences GMs over the years in an easily digestible format. For the beginner it can be an eye-opener (I remember when I first ran D&D and how terrible I was; I could have used this book then!) For the veteran GM it, though, I think this book is more useful, as the tips in here can help enhance an already running game. It's no so much "this is how to DM" as "here's some tips which might make your DMing even better".
The book comes from a D&D 5th Edition viewpoint, but the advice is pretty generic: you can use it with most any tabletop RPG, and it will be fully relevant.
What Sly Flourish advocates is focusing on what's important to make your game better, and less on the stuff which doesn't (thus the "lazy" part of the title). It means effectively managing your prep time; indeed, he advocates a prep time of understanding half an hour for a 4-hour game session. Of course, if you play online, you may have to do more prep, as you need to worry about graphics and sounds and other stuff.
The man does his research. He does surveys and polls on social media; he interviews game designers; he asks questions and listens to the answers. This isn't just his thoughts, it's based on extensive information gathering.
Anyhow, enough of my talk. The Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master is on Kickstarter now, and has already funded with over 2,000 backers. Based on the previous book, I really thing this is worth checking out. You don't need the previous book to use this - it's not that type of sequel.
What Sly Flourish does well, in my opening, is codify and organise the collected wisdom of experiences GMs over the years in an easily digestible format. For the beginner it can be an eye-opener (I remember when I first ran D&D and how terrible I was; I could have used this book then!) For the veteran GM it, though, I think this book is more useful, as the tips in here can help enhance an already running game. It's no so much "this is how to DM" as "here's some tips which might make your DMing even better".
The book comes from a D&D 5th Edition viewpoint, but the advice is pretty generic: you can use it with most any tabletop RPG, and it will be fully relevant.
What Sly Flourish advocates is focusing on what's important to make your game better, and less on the stuff which doesn't (thus the "lazy" part of the title). It means effectively managing your prep time; indeed, he advocates a prep time of understanding half an hour for a 4-hour game session. Of course, if you play online, you may have to do more prep, as you need to worry about graphics and sounds and other stuff.
The man does his research. He does surveys and polls on social media; he interviews game designers; he asks questions and listens to the answers. This isn't just his thoughts, it's based on extensive information gathering.
Anyhow, enough of my talk. The Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master is on Kickstarter now, and has already funded with over 2,000 backers. Based on the previous book, I really thing this is worth checking out. You don't need the previous book to use this - it's not that type of sequel.
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