Reddit reviews The Lazy Dungeon Master

Just an FYI to everyone downvoting, The Lazy Dungeon Master is actually a real book outlining a novel approach to planning a D&D campaign based on preparing a platform for improv rather than planning out every encounter and the whole story in advance, rather than just being a sarky comment.

I recommend this book. It makes life a lot easier and focuses your time to what really matters
https://www.amazon.com/Lazy-Dungeon-Master-Michael-Shea-ebook/dp/B00ADV2H8O

I used to spend hours upon hours making maps, fleshing out everything, etc. Two things happened:

1. I noticed that I kept guiding my PCs toward what I built because I spent so much time on it. My PCs never said anything, but I noticed, and I consider railroading a cardinal sin.
   
2. I was getting burnt out. What about this? How do I best balance that? What monster is best here? What 5000 ways will my PCs approach a situation, and how can I anticipate them all? It was to the point that my creativity froze and I couldn't decide on any path. When I let go and let the story tell itself, then it became fun again and my creativity came back.
   
   Here's the main points of being a great DM:
   
   

• The most important thing to flesh out in your game is the NPCs. Encounters come, go, and can be morphed. Your NPCs are the lifeblood of the game. But you don't need to spend too much time...what's their connection to the story? How would they react to the PCs? What are their goals?
  
• Keep your PCs the focus of your stories (they went and killed Lord BadGuy instead of helping an NPC. How does that affect their world? How will that NPC react to them next time? Did killing Lord BadGuy put a bounty on their heads?)
  
• Be flexible with your story/plot and the encounters (you wanted them to fight a group of thugs in a barracks but they went into the forest? Okay, now they're fighting wolves in an abandoned castle).
  
• Don't flesh out the story. You should know where they start and places they may go. Let the players fill in the rest.
  
• To that point, only prepare for the upcoming session. You never know when the story will spin in a totally different direction
  
• Leave plot hooks like they're walking through a meat factory
  
• Only spend significant time designing an encounter if it's inevitable. To stop the terrorizing of the town they are determined to kill the dragon. Okay, spend time fleshing out your encounter
  
• D&D needs to be fun for you AND the PCs! It should be a rewarding hobby. Make sure it stays that way!

Have you read The Lazy Dungeon Master?

You should. It's a godsend for over-preppers like yourself.

I've been doing this for a LONG time, and I can have a 6-hour session down to 3 pages of bullets and a bunch of open tabs in D&D Beyond. I manage larger arcs with a mind map tool that I take about a half hour on in between sessions in the worst case.

I highly recommend The Lazy Dungeon Master

As a DM you have a view of all of the elements of your game and how they tie together. Your players only ever experience the part that they touch in the course of play. What that means is you can have a relatively general idea of things, and then flesh them out when your players actually interact with them.

It’s about curating their perceptions. It’s illusion. It takes practice to do well, but you can do just ok and your players will still probably feel like you had it all planned out from the beginning.

You know what your players want to do. Let them drive the interactions and flesh out the details as they touch them. If they ask your NPC’s name, name her, otherwise don’t worry about it. If they’re going to see this NPC again, write down all of the details you give her.

https://www.amazon.com/Lazy-Dungeon-Master-Michael-Shea-ebook/dp/B00ADV2H8O/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=lazy+dm&qid=1549847978&s=gateway&sr=8-3

You may try a technique called "The Lazy DM" . or the "Minimalist DM"

Basically, only plan the first 15 minutes of a session, do broad stoke planning on areas of interest (that can be interchangeable) and just improvise the rest.

Since you can't reliably plan for what the players are going to do past 15 minutes of play.... accept it and instead learn to adapt quickly and confidently to what and where the players are moving the story. keep a list of pre planned battle encounters \ interesting hooks and NPCs you can drop in anywhere in the story.. and you are good to go.

here is a great book with many authors, stories, and ideas you can read https://www.amazon.com/Lazy-Dungeon-Master-Michael-Shea-ebook/dp/B00ADV2H8O

All the creative energy you can spend building the world, npcs, factions and relations are great. And i enjoy Dms who can pull it off. but, 75% of your world building won't get explored. instead focus your creative energies in creating scenarios \ and fun encounters that can be switched in and out at will.

Plan broad strokes... and fill in the detail when the players arrive to a new location.

IE you know there is a BIG BAD ENEMY to the east... well the players went west.

Either invent a new evil organization on the fly... (all you need is a name.... then stall for time) or move your BBE to the west.

NOTE: this is an example of an improv heavy DM style.. but, it works great for true sandbox exploring.

All very good advice!

As I DM more and become more comfortable in the role with an ongoing campaign, I find that I use my "detailed" notes less and less. In the beginning, I did kind of a brain dump to build up the framework of the story but I found that I haven't open up my Google Docs link in a couple of sessions. I have been predominantly sticking with 1-2 pages of handwritten maps, plot points, and names and using those to guide the session. It's a whole lot less stressful than trying to refer back to my notes over and over again.

I highly recommend the book The Lazy Dungeon Master by Mike Shea (written for 4e but very little is edition specific...I know there is a new version out but I haven't gotten around to reading it yet). Following the advice in that book greatly helped me mellow out and cut down on my overprep.

I feel the same way when I DM and of all the vids / posts / tips etc out there these have probably been the most helpful resources:

https://www.amazon.com/Lazy-Dungeon-Master-Michael-Shea-ebook/dp/B00ADV2H8O/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1539288037&sr=1-3&keywords=lazy+dungeon+master

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https://www.amazon.com/Return-Lazy-Dungeon-Master-Michael-ebook/dp/B07H51KHWB/ref=sr_1_4?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1539288037&sr=1-4&keywords=lazy+dungeon+master

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At least for me. For instance I was getting lost in NPCs and various other info in the DnD Starter Kit module but those books helped me cut a lot of unneeded things out of the module and create a better experience / NPC's etc.

I use [The Lazy Dungeon Master] (https://www.amazon.com/Lazy-Dungeon-Master-Michael-Shea-ebook/dp/B00ADV2H8O/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1486915304&sr=1-1&keywords=lazy+dungeon+master) to help with the campaign I'm currently running.

For my current campaign, I had a start, several plot points they need to hit, and an ending. The plot points I can drop into the story as needed or when they feel right, but other than that, the players make the games. I just make sure I have creatures and encounters ready to go that match up with the area they are exploring.

edit: typos

Good advice here in this thread. Earlier this year I combined two separate campaigns / groups into one. I'll skip my experiences / philosophy and jump straight into what's working.

What's Working

• Low expectations. The only thing I expect from players is participating in scheduling polls if they want to play.
  
• Clear, direct communication. I use email subjects that start with [D&D To-Do] or [D&D Session Recap] to help separate what a player needs to respond to, and what can safely be ignored. I also use the Respondable plugin for Gmail to help me write these communications.
  
• Using Doodle for scheduling. I set up a poll with days I'm available to DM in a given month. I send it out on the 15th of the month prior, and typically text players individually that it's coming.
  
• Limit the number of players in a session. My ideal session size is four players, but I'll take five no questions asked. I'll go to 6 or 7 once in a while if necessary.
  
• Focus on the PCs and prep using Mike Shea's The Lazy Dungeon Master
  
• At the end of a session, ask the players what they're thinking. What questions do they have about what just happened? Who they just met? What do they want to do next? It helps them clarify their version of events in their heads, and gives me a head start on things to include in the future.
  
• Use Downtime Activities between each session to set up hooks for the future. PCs meet NPCs before the rest of the party and have their own interactions/opinions, or learn information that becomes important in the not-too-distant future.

Yes and Sly Flourish spends a great deal of time talking about this in his excellent book, The Lazy Dungeon Master.

The problem is if I spend 5 hours designing something that I love dearly and want to spring on my players, by the gods, they are going to go through it and ... that is railroading. Sly talks about how to spend those 5 hours smartly and prep for adventures that are flexible for you and the players and comfortable and enjoyable for you.

If you are interested, check out the preview pages, for example on amazon

The main advice I got from it is spending preparation time on the most important/immediate parts of your adventure while staying flexible (consider 3 possible paths the adventure could continue on). There's some more advice on how to improve your game or make your life as a DM easier, often giving simple tools for it (at least simple steps you could follow to achieve it). The table of contents (shown in the preview on amazon) should give you a good idea on what's included.

The best help I've had are from Matthew Colville's Running the Game playlist, which has been incredibly helpful, and also Sly Flourish's Lazy Dungeon Master

But don't feel like you have to listen to all the videos or read/listen to the whole book. Just make sure you prepare enough for the first session which is usually 3 encounters or so and some RP scenes like introducing the player characters. Also, remember the phrase "What do you do?", it's a good prompt to show that you want player input. I like to print all of the monster stat blocks that I could need for that session into one or two convenient pages and have the notes or pages of the adventure I'm running in a binder. Once you have one session you'll have experience to build and reflect on. As long as you keep trying to get better, it's hard to be terrible.