NOTE: As a Patron of Mike Shea have access to a complimentary digital copy of the preview of Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster, but no other monetary compensation was provided in exchange for this preview.
Mike Shea is the author of noted TTRPG books such as Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, The Lazy DM’s Workbook, The Lazy DM’s Companion, and Forge of Foes. His next book, Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster will be live on Kickstarter on July 6, 2026. Today we look at the free preview available soon.
Introduction
Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster will be a roughly 160 page book, available in hardcover, PDF, EPUB, and Markdown. Mike is a big proponent of Markdown, which is a cool idea that many of us should get behind. All of Mike Shea’s books are intended to help Gamemasters run TTRPGs. The “lazy” part is shorthand for doing as much work in game preparation as helps you, without wasting effort. It’s system agnostic, although popular with GMs running D&D, Pathfinder, Shadowdark, Daggerheart and many more.
Read Through of the Preview
The preview is a 36 page full color PDF with art and text in the layout. It opens with the full Table of Contents from the upcoming book, so you can see what topics will be included. The book is built around the “8 steps” of the Lazy Dungeon Master series, but topics which will expand the earlier books include scene based adventures, downtime and campaign building. The book opens with instructions on how to read the book, to get what you need from it, even if you don’t read every word, and a bit of “what’s new” for those familiar with the previous work. Each chapter ends with a summary of the contents of the chapter, which can be helpful for retention.
The first section is Top Tips for Gamemasters. This is several brief, simple suggestions and ideas of things for GMs to remember while they’re running games.
The next session describes and details the now famous 8 Steps of Lazy Gamemaster Prep.
Officially the steps are not in order, however I’ve found it’s wise to begin with step one: Review the Characters and step two: Create a Strong Start, since they focus on the characters and players who are the core of any game.
The next section outlines some tips for finding and maintaining a gaming group. Although this isn’t exclusively part of GM prep, it’s an important thing for all players and one which is rarely talked about. There’s some useful tools here such as a list of questions to ask new prospective players.
The next section, Build and Run a Lazy Campaign, has some great advice about where to start preparing for a long form campaign. Tips such as define a campaign hook and outline truths of the campaign can keep a GM focused on the core things that will make a campaign engaging enough to succeed in the first sessions.
There are chapters detailing various types of adventures, and advice on running dungeon crawl style adventures.
One of the most valuable sections describes quest models, which will help GMs homebrew around a framework that will draw in players.
Appendix B provides many random tables to help build adventures, and I’m sure that many more random tables will be included in the finished book.
What About the Other Lazy DM Books?
That’s a good question. I’ve been a supporter of the Sly Flourish products for many years and have all of the cooks in that series. Is it important to get this next one if you have the previous ones? Let’s hear it from Mike (via his web site)
Your copy of Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master isn’t obsolete! We’re focusing on the same eight steps that made Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master a best-selling and award-winning book on the art and craft of RPG game prep.
Instead, Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster takes eight years of experiences and feedback since the publication of Return and expands the eight steps, providing concrete examples of its use, sample (and playable) eight-step-based scenario outlines, and tons of random tables to help you generate ideas.
Of course without seeing the entire book I can’t comment specifically. If you aren’t familiar with Mike’s work and can only buy one book, you should support this one, as all of Mike’s work has only gotten better with each release. But although his series are related, I find them all useful, so my recommendation would be to save your pennies (oh wait – we don’t use those anymore!) and get this one and some of the back catalog.
Conclusion
This book looks to be a great addition to the Lazy GM series. The artwork includes a blue skinned skeletal figure making several appearances and maps from Dyson Logos. Mike Shea always works with the best in the industry and I don’t expect anything to be different with this project.
What did you think about the other Sly Flourish books? Let us know!
About the Author
