Reflections on the 8 Steps of the Lazy GM

I've been using and pondering SlyFlourish's Eight Steps of Lazy RPG Prep since it's release. That includes nearly one hundred sessions and never missing an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show. I feel like I've got a great handle on the framework (and intent behind it). It's helped me streamline my preparation and focus on more important aspects of the game. But it's also helped me uncover my own style. This article is a reflection of my time spent with the Eight Steps of Lazy RPG Prep.

Review the Characters

Before we do anything else, it helps to spend a few minutes reviewing the player characters. What are their names? What do they want? What plays into their backgrounds? What do the players of these characters enjoy at the table?

You might not even write anything down during this step, but reviewing the characters helps wire them into your mind — and ensures that the rest of your preparation fits around them.

I didn't give this step it's due credit when I first adopted the framework. "I already know the characters," was my brash attempt at cutting corners. But it's not about knowing the characters—it's about priming your creative brain to think about the characters before anything else. All of the steps that follow will build off of this one. And I quickly realized that.

Yet I find myself forgetting to think about the players behind these character motivations and backgrounds. Priming yourself on the character details through the lens of player types and styles is more useful. Ilian the paladin might be motivated by revenge but his player Scott is more interested in problem-solving. These two sides of the coin prime you better than one or the other. I need to name this step Review the Players and Their Characters.

Create a Strong Start

How a game starts is likely the most important piece of preparation we can do. Setting the stage for the session determines a great deal about how the rest of the game will go. When you define where a game session starts, you figure out what's going on, what the initial focus of the session is, and how you can get close to the action. When in doubt, start with a fight. Example strong starts can be found later in this document.

This is the simplest, most useful step for me. The transition from social time to play is important and this helps define what that looks like. Starting with combat works so well because it gets to the real heart of what I think a strong start should include: dice rolling. So if a session isn't starting with combat, get the dice rolling another way.

Outline Potential Scenes

With a strong start in hand, we can then outline a short list of potential scenes that might unfold. This step exists mostly to make you feel as though you have a handle on the game before you start. However, as GMs, all of us must always be ready to throw our potential scenes away when the game goes in a different direction — as it often does. Usually, it's enough to come up with only a few words per scene, and to expect one or two scenes per hour of play. At other times, you might skip this step completely if you don't think you need it.

I've basically done this step ever since reading Chris Perkins's sample prep document ("DM's Lib" by Chris Perkins in the Dungeon Master Experience - 2011 July 11). Back then, I was most certainly putting a heavy hand on where the sessions went. Nowadays, this step mostly serves to get my brain thinking about the possible scenes and scenarios the player characters find themselves in. I find it really useful to look at a scene and then look at the rest of my prep. Do I feel prepared to run this scene if it happens? In that way, this step is almost an audit of everything else.

Define Secrets and Clues

The next step is second only in importance to the strong start, and is one of the most powerful tools available to GMs. Secrets and clues are single short sentences that describe a clue, a piece of the story, or a piece of the world that the characters can discover during the game. You don't know exactly how the characters will discover these clues. As such, you'll want to keep these secrets and clues abstract from their place of discovery so that you can drop them into the game wherever it makes sense. This lets the game flow freely, while still allowing you to reveal important pieces of the story at any point where the characters might discover them. During this step, you might write down ten such secrets or clues. Example secrets and clues are offered later in this document.

This step feels like both the core and confusion of the entire framework for most folks. The exercise of writing ten is valuable by itself, regardless of how you use them. It reminds you of the important bits in your mind that can (and probably should) be revealed to the players. However, I often feel a bit of a disconnect when revealing secrets and clues.

Keeping secrets and clues abstract from their place of discovery is useful but again only one side of a coin for me. I want some secrets and clues explicitly tied to their place of discovery. I want certain things revealed or hidden because of player choices and not because I happened to remember whether or not to reveal them. It's a personal preference for my desired game and style but slightly at odds with the framework as written. I need a handful of abstract secrets and clues and a handful that are "keyed" or placed intentionally.

Develop Fantastic Locations

Building evocative locations isn't easily improvised. As such, it's worth spending time writing out a handful of fantastic locations that the characters might discover and explore during the game. Each location can be thought of as a set, a room, or a backdrop for a single scene in your adventure.

Describe each location with a short evocative title such as "The Sunspire." Then write down three fantastic aspects for it, along the lines of: "Blazing beam of light shining to the heavens," "Moat of molten rock," or "Huge elven glyphs carved into ancient stone." Ultimately, whole dungeons can be built from a series of connected fantastic locations, with each location representing a large area or chamber. A specific location might not come up during the game for which you prepare it, but it will be ready for a later session as the characters explore.

I do a lot of worldbuilding (both atomic and traditional). But detailed locations aren't particularly useful on the spot. This step helps me focus down to evocative names and useful aspects for the player characters to interact with. Most of the time, that's enough. But I often run into feeling unprepared for evocative descriptions when revealing a new fantastic location.

I think of aspects as the bits PCs want to interact with yet sometimes flavor can come from elsewhere: a lone candle flickering in the darkness, the smell of freshly baked bread, or the cold, ancient stonework around you. In addition to aspects, I need a reminder to prep a few adjectives or "atmospheric" aids for certain fantastic locations.

Outline Important NPCs

During our preparation, we'll outline those NPCs (nonplayer characters) most critical to the adventure, focusing on a name and a connection to the adventure, then wrapping the NPC in a character archetype from popular fiction. Many other NPCs — maybe even most of them — can be improvised right at the table.

I'm a big believer in NPCs being the heart and soul of a GM's toolbox. While I enjoy the character archetype approach for improvised NPCs, I don't like using it as much for key NPCs. For those, I spend a bit more time mixing inspiration and adding details. I want a connection to the world and some extra flavor. I need a few archetypes top of mind for improvising, a set of names, and any key NPCs ready to roll.

Choose Relevant Monsters

What monsters are the characters most likely to face? What monsters make sense for a specific location and situation? We're using the term "monster" loosely here, so as to include enemy NPCs as well as truly monstrous foes. Whatever type of enemy you need, reading through books of monsters can give you the fuel to choose the right creatures for the right situation.

Additionally, understanding the loose relationship between monster challenge rating and character level can help you understand how a battle might go. Most of the time, you can just list a number of monsters and improvise encounters based on what's happening in the adventure. For boss battles, you might have to do more work. See Lazy Combat Encounter Building for more information.

For me, this step boils down to two things. First, list a few monsters with statblocks (or links/bookmarks to statblocks) for quick lookup. Second, have some familiarity with said statblocks so I'm not reading abilities for the first time mid-combat. Those two steps go a long ways. But again I feel I'm lacking a few things with just that.

The first is monster flavor. Similar to locations, I need a few adjectives and maybe names to feel better prepared for introducing monsters. The second is tactics. Not necessarily tactical combat where sophisticated moves are planned out. But rather tools to guide behaviors and decisions during combat. A few descriptors is all I need: self-preservation, rage, attacks magic-users, etc.

Select Magic Item Rewards

Players love magic items, and it's worthwhile to spend time preparing items they'll find interesting. This step also helps to directly impact the characters — by dropping an interesting part of the story literally into their hands. You can use a mixture of techniques to reward magic items, from selecting items randomly to selecting specific items based on the themes of the characters and the desires of the players. Magic items are also a great mechanism for delivering secrets and clues.

I need to expand this step a bit. As written, it doesn't do enough for me and my games. I'd probably consider the step Develop Rewards. Focusing on magic items is great but I find that dropping items every session doesn't fit neatly into the sessions I run (most of which are only 90 mins).

I need a step to encompass magic items, non-magical treasure, and other rewards like renown, favors, etc. Without these explicitly laid out in my prep framework, I tend to forget them.

Overall, this method has been incredibly valuable. But on its own, it doesn't deliver what I need. Following the steps as written (and nothing else), I find myself underprepared for the flavor and world details that I desire in my games. But I think that's kind of the point, right? It's a framework to support game masters—not the answer to all of our problems. My perceived "gaps" are really just me realizing my own style and preferences. And I continue to evolve and adjust my prep to suit that.

As a framework, it's excellent and worth your time to explore. But I think there's a hidden value in the Eight Steps of Lazy RPG Prep. It's an excellent tool to help you realize what's important to you and your game.

Game on.

This work includes material taken from the Lazy GM's Resource Document by Michael E. Shea of SlyFlourish.com, available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. ↩