Beyond Lazy DMing

Like many people in the TTRPG space, I find Mike Shea's Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master to be a very valuable tool when planning my games. That being said, I think its fine (fun even!) to get lazier than is prescribed in that book. 

Recently, I read The Copy and Paste Manifesto from the blog Rise Up Comus (a favorite of mine), and it got me thinking about how streamlined I've gotten with my DMing, especially with my online group. The ethos of the blogpost is that, unless you are creating something to publish, it's totally fine to just grab other people's materials and drop them into your adventures, without any modifications. 

I like to blend the ideas from these two sources of DM advice, where when I am thinking of potential 'scenes' that I can use in an upcoming game, I'll often just grab a scene from a book or a movie I like and do that. For example, last winter I had Father Christmas ride by on his sleigh and give the heroes some magic items, exactly as I remember it happening in The Chronicles of Narnia. Similarly, I've dropped the encounter with the trolls Tom, Bert, and William (sans names) from The Hobbit into my games. 

Generally, I do not spend more than 30 minutes planning a session, so using an abbreviated form of the Lazy DM's 8 steps, and borrowing liberally from a myriad of sources is essential. I don't have much other reason to write about this, other than to say that when you're an adult and don't have a huge amount of time to plan games (and if you're like me, where the games you do get to play are never for much more than an our and a half), you are probably fine stealing and improvising as liberally as possible. You don't need a sprawling web of rumors and NPCs catalogued meticulously in an Obsidian file, unless that's what brings you joy with the hobby. Just play the game and make it up as you go. Your players are probably too busy doing a funny accent to notice. 

 

 Session Report: Wyrnach 2

At the Troll's Tower 

After recovering from his boar goring, Wyrnach tracked down the younger boar, but found that it had been caught in the tentacled trap of some strange treeworms. Taking this as a portent against is vengeful side mission, Wyrnach returned to his primary task: finding and killing the Everwep.

As he made his way south, Wyrnach spotted a ruined tower. After scouting it out, he saw a band of six lizardmen waiting in ambush outside. He decided to investigate the tower himself, so he sneaked passed the lizardmen into the base of the tower. Inside he found piles of bones and debris, as well as a tied up woman. He decided to save her from whatever she was being used to bait, but he arrived too late and found himself caught by the troll as it descended the stairs. Poor Wyrnach was knocked out instantly by the troll, but not before he cut free the woman. The commotion alerted the lizardmen outside, who jumped into action.

After a brief and bloody battle, four of the six lizardmen escaped with Wyrnach’s body and the now unconscious woman. But no one knew the secret of the troll’s regeneration, so its decimated body was left to put itself back together.

Back at the lizardmen’s village in the Pinnacle Falls, the woman found herself next to Wyrnach’s dead body, having been awoken by the lizardmen shaman. Aina, the woman, in being healed by the shaman is now cursed with unholy magics and to be haunted by Wyrnach’s wraith. Before she can return to her village, Aina must now complete his task.

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After 3 months I finally got back to Wyrnach’s story, only to have him killed instantly. I decided to make Aina the new hero. I think I’ll make her a sorcerer or warlock— I’m not sure if I’ll make her a gestalt character like Wyrnach yet.

Resources used:

• A loose basis in D&D 5e

  • Inpsiriation from BEOWULF: Age of Heroes by Handiwork Games for solo hero rules

• Xanathar's Guide to Everything, by Wizard of the Coast for random encounter tables

• MONSTROUS by Cloud Curio for monster inspiration/flavor

• AGNOSTIC: ttrpg prep method by Kyle Latino (Map Crow) and Kenny Webb for flavor

• Black March #1 and Tarvannion by Castle Grief for flavor (including Wyrnach’s name!)

• Cairn by Yochai Gal for scars

• The Perilous Wilds - Revised Edition by Lampblack & Brimstone for NPCs and names

Session Report: Wyrnach 1

Facing the Golden Boars (original Substack posted May 6)

Wyrnach’s task, given to him by his order, was to track down the Everwep. The acid tears of that crocodilian monstrosity were tainting the swampland and producing a toxic fog that drifting into the habitable lands to the east.

He knew that his success in this trial would determine his readiness for full initiation into the Order and his ascension from Apprentice to Journeyman. In preparation, he had determined that the Everwep could smell the approach of man and that he would have to find something native to the swamp to disguise his scent.

As Wyrnach bagan his journey towards the heart of the swamp he saw through the shrubbery what seemed to him to be a perfect oppurtunity: two golden boars, locked in some sort of battle. As he watched, unseen, he observed that one boars was much older, and that the elder’s hide showed the scars of many hard-won battles, including the remnants of hunting spears and arrows still stuck in its thick hide. Their battle was not unlike some human ritual, and Wyrnach ascertained that the older boar might have beeen trying to impose its will on the younger, possibly to assume its body and renew its youth.

Wyrnach identified that the younger’s hide would make a grade disquise for his scent as he continued his journey, so we decided to lay a trap: using rope from his pack, he created a large noose-like snare, which, after demanding the boars’ attention, he managed to catch the younger with. Overly headstronge, Wyrnach attempts to fight off the older boar but he is quickly gored. While Wyrnach played dead, the younger board got loose from the snare and killed the elder boar. Wyrnach quickly took his chance and jumped into a tree, out of reach from the younger boar. He fired several arrows at the enraged boar to no avail, and the younger board rammed the tree’s roots right out of the ground. Now face-to-face, Wyrnach drew his dagger, but he was no match for the boar.

Wyrnach wakes up some time later, weak from his gore wound. He has the corpes of the elder boar and a new found mission: kill the younger boar to regain his honor.

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This is a report of a solo session I did a while back that I have been thinking of writing about for a while. For some reason I have had a block from continuing Wyrnach’s story until I wrote this report (which is dumb— I should just play my game). This campaign is centered around monster hunting, with our titular hero being a Strider-like ranger working for a Dunedain-like order that once worked for the king’s of a long dead kingdom but is now focused on dealing with the gruesome monsters which terrorize the commonfolk of this fantasy, sub-Roman Britian inspired, land.

For this game I’m using a modified version of D&D 5E because it’s what I know (I know it well enough to run it without having to reference the book and how much I can houserule things without breaking the game). Wyrnach is a gestalt ranger/paladin with buffed HP in the style of the Hero class from BEOWULF: Age of Heroes, and plenty of plot armor. I’m not really interested in having to create new characters everytime I throw a silly-hard challenge at him, and I’m also not interest in running more than one character, so it’s a general rule that unless it’s significantly dramatic or I want to explore a different character in this world, when Wyrnach would otherwise die I am given him setbacks and scars and continuing on.

Resources used:

• A loose basis in D&D 5e

  • Inpsiriation from BEOWULF: Age of Heroes by Handiwork Games for solo hero rules

• Xanathar's Guide to Everything, by Wizard of the Coast for random encounter tables

• MONSTROUS by Cloud Curio for monster inspiration/flavor

• AGNOSTIC: ttrpg prep method by Kyle Latino (Map Crow) and Kenny Webb for flavor

• Black March #1 and Tarvannion by Castle Grief for flavor (including Wyrnach’s name!)

• Cairn by Yochai Gal for scars

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This is the first of possible many reports on my solo games. I think in the future I might also publish essays or just my thoughts on fantasy and roleplaying games and whatever else interests me.

 

Actually Blogging and Collecting my Thoughts

I've tried in the past to start a Substack, and I plan to keep that up, but I figure it might be good to have a non-substack space to post my thoughts. If Twitter and Bluesky are for micro-blogging, I think this space will be for mini-blogging and play reports from my RPG sessions (both solo and with my groups), because I cannot imagine myself actually writing any long form with how scrambled I am generally. Maybe, once I've fixed my brain (if that's possible), I might end up writing proper blog posts or essays on my non-RPG/fantasy related thoughts (education, history philosophy, etc.). 

 

I've also just started using sublime.app to collect quotes, images, links, and my own thoughts in short form. I want to use that as a thinking space before I actually write my words here or on substack.

 

Anyways, here's my inaugural post on this blog I created years ago and never used. I'm not quite sure what the name meant. I'm sure it was something to do with the produce I was stacking in my life at that time.