If you have ever spent hours building a world only to watch your players walk in the opposite direction, Michael E. Shea has a new project that might change your approach to the table. The author and creator of the Sly Flourish website has launched a Kickstarter for his latest book, Rise of the Lazy Game Master, which aims to help Dungeons & Dragons players optimize their prep time and focus on what actually happens during a session.
Despite the title, the “Lazy” approach is not about cutting corners or laziness in the traditional sense. Instead, it is a method centered on the idea that the only game that truly matters is the next one you are about to play. Shea, who serves on the D&D Community Advisory Group, argues that GMs should prioritize efficiency to avoid the trap of over-preparing content that players may never encounter.
Refining the Eight Steps
The new book builds upon the foundation established in Shea's 2018 work, Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master. The core “eight steps” of preparation remain a central feature, but Rise of the Lazy Game Master offers expanded guidance on how to tailor these steps to different adventure types, such as dungeon crawls, mysteries, and exploration-heavy sessions.
For a typical four-hour session, the goal is to keep preparation time between 15 and 30 minutes. By focusing on specific, actionable steps—like creating a strong start and defining secrets and clues—GMs can create a flexible framework that supports improvisation rather than forcing players down a pre-written path.
Expanding the GM Toolkit
Rise of the Lazy Game Master also branches out from the standard D&D experience by incorporating mechanics and concepts from other tabletop systems. The book includes a dedicated toolkit section featuring ideas such as:
- Clocks from Powered by the Apocalypse
- The escalation die from Thirteenth Age
- Luck and doom points from Tales of the Valiant
By pulling these elements into a D&D-adjacent workflow, Shea encourages GMs to move away from the traditional image of the "TTRPG Batman"—the planner who arrives with binders full of potential outcomes—and instead embrace the role of a facilitator who allows the story to unfold at the table.
According to Shea, the most successful sessions are often those that evolve in unexpected directions. By letting go of the need to control every detail of a world's five-thousand-year history, GMs can instead focus on the immediate, character-driven moments that players actually care about. The Kickstarter for Rise of the Lazy Game Master is currently live, offering a new look at how to spend less time at the desk and more time running a memorable game.