Designed and written by Mike Shea, former game designer for Wizards of the Coast, The Return Lazy Dungeon Master provides a framework to help game masters to be more efficient with the time they have available for game preparation.

6,740 backers brought this book to life on Kickstarter and the book has both been the winner of the 2019 Gold ENnie for Best Electronic Book and is Adamantine Best Seller on DriveThruRPG which means that it has sold more than 5,001 copies there.

This 100 page book contains 26 chapters inclusive of 10 pages of useful appendices.

Terse but well written the Lazy Dungeon Master puts forward the idea that game masters should only prepare what they need and by doing so avoids both time wastage whilst ensuring that you focus on what will actually matter at your gaming table or virtual gaming place.

The book is broken into three main sections:

1. Preparing for your Game
2. Running your Game
3. Thinking about your Game

All three sections of the book contain a wealth of advice that will help you critically think about how you both plan and run your games.

The Preparing for your Game is the longest section of the book and suggests that before each session game masters think about preparing for games in the following manner

1. Review the characters
2. Create a strong start
3. Outline potential scenes
4. Define secrets and clues
5. Develop fantastic locations
6. Outline important NPCs
7. Choose relevant monsters
8. Select magic item rewards

The application of these 7 steps is not explicit and the game master is encouraged to use as many or a few components as needed.

You can learn more about The Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master and obtain a two chapter summary of the book from Mike Shea’s blog – Sly Flourish.

Waterdeep: Dragon Heist: is Wizards of the Coast feature adventure product of 2018 designed to run as a campaign from level 1 to level 5.

Low level adventures provide players with a level of tension and gameplay which is very different.

At low level characters have less powers available to them. This makes escaping difficult situations very challenging and the probability of death during combat is much higher. Consequently, the other pillars of play (social and exploration) comprise a greater portion of the adventure. This reflects the playstyle of Dungeon Master Matthew Mercer: Dungeon Master for Critical Role: the principal design consultant for this book. Mr Mercers playstyle is decidedly theatrical (and indeed so is the playstyle of entire Critical Role cast when it comes to story) and this shines through the book.

Dragon Heist is a mystery campaign based in the largest and most noble of cities on the Sword Coast of the Forgotten Realms campaign setting: Waterdeep.

Waterdeep is a refined cultured city of some 1 million souls ruled over by the open and masked lords who are by-enlarge benign rulers and have created a lawful and functioning metropolis for its citizens.

This is a good choice for a city adventure as the size of the city provides for a multitude of locations and opportunities for a world-building Dungeon Master to insert their own creations within the world. The cities goodness means players can’t draw swords and use magic indiscriminately without consequence. This reinforces the need for social interaction to advance, which is important to solving a mystery as at low level players don’t have access to the spell “Speak with Dead” to get answers from the recently vanquished.

The adventure is of short to medium length compared to other campaign books produced by Wizards of the Coast. This is a good thing as not all groups want to play the year or years long campaign or a really short dungeon such as the Sunless Citadel from the adventure book Tales of the Yawning Portal. For people wishing a longer campaign there is both enough material and scope within the adventure for a Dungeon Master who wishes a longer campaign to achieve it without too much effort.

During the marketing campaign much was said about the replay-ability of Dragon Heist due to it having four villains for the DM to choose one from. While there are four villains the interconnecting components are linear and a modest amount of work is required to replace these sections if you wish to run the adventure again.

With the book being 224 pages in length – less than the 256 pages adventure books printed at this time had, there was room to provide an alternate opening sequence and/or guidance / tools to help the Dungeon Master replace various components of the original adventure with less effort.

This is a minor fault as the adventure itself is a wonderfully enjoyable romp. The art is excellent but the maps suffer if you are a virtual tabletop player as they are line art without colour. That said they are very clear and a DM who needs quickly hand draw a location on a battle map will be able to do with ease.

Other nice features of this adventure are the move away from the typical dungeon and a storyline that is devoid of a “save the world” plot.

While there is one storyline with that contains potential for the players to dragged into a Batman-esq “My City adventure” the likelihood is that Players will stay the rag-tag bunch of fame and fortune hunters that many players crave as it a divergence from their real lives.

This adventure is suited to DMs with a little experience under their belt and DMs that wish to play up the social / theatrical side of Dungeons and Dragons. If social is not your style of play the book has plenty to offer including Volo’s Enchiridion which shows how a relatively detailed city guide can be presented without going over the top.

If you are in the market for a 5e adventure book – this one should be near the top of your purchase list.

Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus is Wizards of the Coast feature adventure product of 2019 designed to run as a long campaign from level 1 to level 13.

The adventure was much hyped and promoted as Dungeons and Dragons version of Mad Max where characters rode abreast soul powered war machines from which they would fight to survive in the midst of the eternal war between devils and demons. 

The adventure title also indicates that adventure is set in the Forgotten Realms city Baldur’s Gate. 

Baldur’s Gate holds a special place in the Dungeons and Dragons community as the backdrop for two very popular computer games of the same name. Baldur’s Gate is a dangerous city perfect for adventurers to seek fortune and glory but a terrible place to be an ordinary person – you would not want to live here if you were just trying to lead an ordinary life.

First up – the adventure art is fantastic. It portrays hell as a place that offers hope – only to be taken away and also a a place where the eternal Blood War rages.

The maps are clear and easy to understand in uncoloured line art format.  If your group plays only using hand drawn battle maps, or theatre of the mind – then this map style is perfect.

If you play using a virtual tabletop (and in 2020 just about everybody on the planet is thanks to COVID-19) – then the maps are a disappointment.

Without colour the maps lack the sparkle that is very important when your visual reference is staring at the map on your computer screen.

It is surprising that Wizards of the Coast hadn’t taken this on board after receiving substantial negative feedback from Virtual Table Top players that the maps in both Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage were not suitable for their preferred (and growing) way of play.

Wizards of the Coast should not develop maps only suited to one type of gaming customer or gaming style and certainly not when they licence their products to Virtual Tabletop companies, and miniature makers who make products for people who want to visually see the worlds in which they play. Perhaps this reflects that most of the D&D team have stated themselves as having moved away from miniatures towards theatre of the mind. The D&D Live and Acquisitions Incorporated series reflects this style of play.

To address this Fantasy Grounds added basic colours to some of the maps to improve the situation for their customers. Meanwhile a quick dig around the internet and you will find community made replacement maps (some free – some for sale). This should not be considered absolution.

Enough about the maps – talk more about the adventure!

Unfortunately, the book doesn’t live up to the marketing promise. It feels very much like Wizards of the Coast crashed into the production deadline and had to run with what they had.

The title suffers from an extraordinarily weak start and there is little in the way of a compelling driving force for the players to want to participate in the events of the world throughout the adventure. It really feels like the people behind the characters participating in the adventure should accept they have turned up to play Dungeons and Dragons and just go along with it.

The Dungeon Master who decides to run this adventure must sit down with players beforehand to ensure they have backgrounds stories and connections to enable the Dungeon Master to weave them into the story.

The book contains special Baldur’s Gate character backgrounds but the story requires the characters to have a deep connection to the city of Elturel not Baldur’s Gate. The dark secret for the party is interesting but most don’t contribute to the main storyline.

I suspect that Wizards of the Coast recognised this fault but rather than improving the story and creating the hooks and connections needed for player engagement and motivation – fell back upon the creation of a small flying angelic elephant.

The sole function of the flying elephant is to fulfill the Hollywood stereotype of a person with amnesia. The flying elephant’s adventure role is to spurt out information and encouragement to ensure players go in a direction that should have been obvious, exciting and inspiring in the first place.

The time spent in Baldur’s Gate is very limited (blink and you will miss it). This means the back third of the book – which is a well written and comprehensive guide on the city – isn’t very useful for the adventure. It is useful to a Dungeon Master who wants to build a home brew session or campaign in that city.

On reflection the back third of the book may have been included to be the vanguard hype element for the Baldur’s Gate 3 video game being developed by Larian Studios. This thought disappoints me as what Dungeons Masters usually want is to purchase a great adventure to run and not a marketing brochure to stimulate interest in a future Dungeons and Dragons product that should be good enough to stand on its own.

To make a better adventure the team of writers needed to focus on a story that creates a desire in the players to commit to the world and tale being told. There are numerous third-party products available to do this for the Dungeon Master but a top billed adventure shouldn’t need that.

The book does contain many interesting potential allies, adversaries, locations, and events. A Dungeon Master willing to put in the time, or just likes reading published adventures without running them will enjoy the material within.

If you’re looking for a book that you can just pick up and run with confidence from one end of the other and have certainty that your players will be engaged – this isn’t it. If you want a book which gives you a lot to work with and you are comfortable addressing the problems it has to redeem it – then it’s worth a look as you can easily create one hell of an adventure.