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We at /r/DnD are excited to host Mike Shea of SlyFlourish.com! He'll be discussing his upcoming Kickstarter, his vast history as a freelancer in the TTRPG space, and anything else! Save all your questions and join us on Tuesday, July 7!

From Mike:

Hello!

I'm Mike Shea, writer for SlyFlourish.com and author of Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master and other books. A few years back I also released the Lazy GM's Resource Document into the Creative Commons to share what I've learned and gathered from other GMs into the world.

I've been playing RPGs since the mid-80s and writing about RPGs since 2008. I've been freelancing for various RPG companies for the past 15 years or so including Wizards of the Coast, Kobold Press, MCDM, Arcane Library, Pelgrane Press, and many others.

The Kickstarter for my latest book, Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster, is going on now! This is the latest of the Lazy GM books, expanding each of the eight steps of Lazy GM prep and taking a new focus on campaign planning, adventure types, and an expansive lazy GM toolkit. I hope you'll check it out.

I'm excited to be here to talk to you all about RPGs!

Feel free to join this giveaway and celebrate the closing days of our Outer Gods Dice Pt.2 campaign on Kickstarter! The rules are simple:

1. Leave a comment under this post to participate
2. There will be three winners, the first place gets 3 dice sets, the second place gets 2 sets and the third place gets one set. You can choose from any three sets we've already made (Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth and King in Yellow), even duplicates. Each set comes with a matching bag!
3. Winners will be determined via Reddit Raffler at 15 July 16:00 CEST (UTC+2). We will edit our first comment to mention the winners and message them about delivery info.

If you want to participate in the current campaign and help us reach a streatch goal, feel free to check the link below: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/yanshulman/outer-gods-dice-collection-part-two/rewards

Hey everyone, thought I’d share this full-body party illustration I finished recently for a client. Hope you like it! Here’s some basic character info:

Half-Elf Ranger — Hunter, wields a beautiful longbow carved from antlers, has a loyal hawk that scouts from above.
Elf Bard — College of Lore musician whose enchanted flute supports allies with powerful magic that flows through her hair.
Tiefling Rogue — Swashbuckler duelist, quick with a curved blade and even quicker on his feet.
Human Monk — Way of Mercy master, fights barehanded, smokes to channel ki with calm precision.

2 years, 3 campaigns and a couple oneshots in with my dnd group and we realised TODAY that the Invisibility spell does not give you advantage on stealth... Our DMs have been ruling it as such, thinking that was what the spell does. And the worst part? We have read the spell description MULTIPLE TIMES while playing but somehow never realised that until today.

So anyways, we as a group collectively decided that it's weird that becoming invisible/hard to see does not make you better at stealth, so our lovely DM has kept our way of ruling it.

So, three sessions ago, my party was hot on the trail of a cult trying to summon an ancient, world-ending entity. They had the leads, they had the map, and they had the moral obligation to save the realm. Instead, they walked into a local merchant’s shop in the starting city, realized how vulnerable the local economy was to a few well-placed intimidation checks, and decided that fighting cosmic horror doesn't pay nearly as well as organized crime. They have completely derailed the campaign to become a full-blown fantasy mafia, and I haven't redirected them once because we are all having the absolute time of our lives.

It all started when the rogue and the bard realized they could offer "protection services" to the local alchemists against the very monsters they were supposed to be hunting. Within two sessions, they escalated from simple shakedowns to sophisticated white-collar fantasy crime. They’ve established a classic protection racket across the entire artisan district, forcing local blacksmiths and enchanters to pay a 15% "guild tax" to ensure their shops don't mysteriously catch fire via a carefully placed Firebolt. They even managed to blackmail a mid-level city magistrate by uncovering his secret gambling debts, effectively giving them a get-out-of-jail-free card with the local guards. The wizard has essentially stopped preparing combat spells and is now using Magic Mouth and Arcane Eye purely for counter-intelligence and wiretapping rival street gangs.

Their plans for the future are somehow even more unhinged. Right now, they are actively drawing up blueprints to hostilely take over the city’s legal thieves' guild, aiming to restructure it into a corporate syndicate. The party druid is currently working on a scheme to monopolize the local potion ingredient supply chain by using Plant Growth to artificially create a shortage everywhere else, driving up prices for their own front businesses. They’re also talking about "disposing" of a rival crime boss by using Flesh to Stone and turning him into a decorative pillar for their new underground casino.

I know some DMs would be sweating bullets watching months of world-building and main-quest prep get tossed out the window for medieval Sopranos, but I’m just rolling with it. Watching them meticulously plan a financial heist and argue about money laundering schemes in character is ten times more entertaining than running another dungeon crawl. The cult is still out there, and the world might technically be ending in the background, but for now, the syndicates' profit margins are up, the players are incredibly engaged, and I’m just happy to facilitate their descent into fantasy kingpins.

Ranger: Is that big rock an alter to sacrifice people to the flesh god?

DM: Nah, it's just a big rock I added to make the island less flat looking.

Artificer: Can I make a Nature check to examine the rock?

DM: I mean... Sure? You're just gonna find out it's a big rock.

Artificer: I make a Nature check. I'm an archeologist and it's a rock.

DM: Yeah, you know what? Make it with advantage.

Artificer rolls a 19 and a 20

DM: Okay, you deduce, due to your archeological genius, that it is, in fact... A big fkin' rock.

Artificer: Oh, I roll a 20 and all I see is a big rock?

DM: Yeah, yeah... A great... Big... Rrrrock.

Hey everyone,

I've been working on designing interactive puzzles for my modular dungeon, and I wanted to share the final look with you all! I'd love to hear your thoughts.

The Kickstarter campaign is currently live for anyone interested in checking out the full dungeon.
Kickstarter campaign link

Last night in our year long running campaign I had a first permanent death of a player character. There had been a death before but I allowed the player to make a pact with Tharizdun in which he came back to life with 1 level in warlock.

The current player however did not even want people to use revivify so he was okay with the character dying. The situation around it however, I heard after the session annoyed him.

To give a clear picture. I have a party of LVL7 players who are in the heart of Chult. They went into a temple that was plagued with Dinosaurs. I told them with my NPC guide character as such, that there was a great treasure to be found but the place was overrun.

They went into anyway. They fought in total 2 T-Rex, 4 velociraptors, 2 pterafolk. I’ll spare you the details but one of the Monk Tabaxi characters rolled a Nat1 when trying to jump over a ledge, fell face first in front of a T-Rex, did fall damage, the T-Rex did his multiattack and stomped the character in 2 rounds when he could not run away and other characters weren’t close to help. I then allowed a final epic action (I allow this for PC deaths) and while swallowing the Tabaxi used his claws to rip open the T-Rex.

So straight after the whole table just basically started making different kind of jokes about the character dying. Everyone was laughing and having fun, but it did took away from the severity of the situation. I noticed the player becoming a bit more silent while contemplating what happened.

Eventually they managed to get the treasure out of the temple, took the dead character with them and gave him a warriors funeral, putting his body on a canoe, setting it on fire and letting it drift along the river while each said nice things about the character and honestly it was a very heartfelt and nice moment.

After the session I asked my player if he was okay, he already had a backup character that we introduced at the end of the session and he was excited about playing the new one. But he did say that in the moment he didn’t felt taken serious with all the jokes and that what would have been a very sad and heavy moment got ruined basically up until the funeral which made things right a bit.

So basically, I am curious what could I have done better in the moment. Was I too loose with allowing all the joking, is this just to be expected of DnD, do I need to set more clear boundaries. Thanks for all your insights.

TLDR: Player character died, jokes by other players ruined the moment for him, got remedied later at the funeral, do I as DM set more clear boundaries in such moments?