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The Lazy DM's Companion

Created by Mike Shea

A book of 5e RPG guidelines and inspirational generators to help D&D DMs prepare and run awesome tabletop fantasy roleplaying games.

Latest Updates from Our Project:

Lazy DM's Companion January 2022 Update!
about 2 years ago – Wed, Jan 05, 2022 at 10:37:29 PM

Happy New Years from Sly Flourish!

Things are going very well with the Lazy DM's Companion. We have one map left before we have everything we need to put together the final PDF. We expect to release the final Lazy DM's Companion PDF at the end of January!

95% of backers have completed their BackerKit survey! If you haven't done so, please fill out your BackerKit survey! You can recover your survey by going to:

https://slyflourish.backerkit.com

If you need to update your email address, please send me a message through Kickstarter with the email address to which you want to receive your BackerKit survey and rewards and I'll update your email address and resend the survey. It's important that you can receive emails from BackerKit so we can let you know when the final PDF is ready and send you other info on the Kickstarter.

We'll be charging cards this week in BackerKit to collect the funds for shipping, handling, and BackerKit add-ons. Even though the actually printing and shipping is happening in the middle of the year, its important that we lock down the funds to pay for shipping when it comes due.

We're still planning to print and ship the physical books from this campaign in the middle of the year. Expect more on this as things progress.

Thank you very much for your support!

And now some new art and maps coming soon to the Lazy DM's Companion PDF!

From Dungeon Baker

From Saga Mackenzie

From Chloe Bollard

And from Matt Morrow

Fill Out Your Lazy DM Companion BackerKit Surveys!
over 2 years ago – Tue, Dec 07, 2021 at 01:09:56 AM

We've sent out all of our BackerKit surveys and 85% of backers have filled it out! 

If you didn't receive one, click here to recover and fill out your survey. 

https://slyflourish.backerkit.com

If you have a problem with your email address, you should be able to fix from there as well.

Please fill out and submit your survey! Everyone must submit a survey to get their rewards, digital or physical.

A handful of people used email relay addresses that only receive email from Kickstarter. If you're one of them you should still be able to complete your survey with the link above using your Kickstarter email address and change your email address in the form to one from which you can receive BackerKit updates. If you're still having trouble, send us a message and we'll get it squared away.

We'll be locking down completed orders and charging any additional charges on Monday, 3 January 2022. We'll continue to lock down and charge newly completed surveys and pre-orders every Monday thereafter.

In about two weeks we'll send out DriveThruRPG links so you can add your digital products to your DriveThruRPG account. You'll get one email for each digital product. There's no good way for us to combine them all into one email. Sorry!

Hopefully you downloaded the first public draft of the Lazy DM's Companion from your BackerKit downloads! I really hope you enjoy it. This draft has all of the text, editing, and layout that'll be in the final version. All it's missing is art and maps which are still underway.

We expect to release the final PDF of the Lazy DM's Companion by the end of January. Everyone will get an email letting them know its added to their downloads.

We're continuing work with multiple printers and will have a better idea how and where we're printing the print-versions of the books once we've locked in BackerKit orders. Our goal is to print them as close to where we ship them as possible to avoid lengthy overseas shipping. More info on this as we go but we're shooting for the middle of 2022 for delivery.

Thank you all again for your support!

Lazy DM's Companion BackerKit Survey Smoke Test Sent!
over 2 years ago – Tue, Nov 30, 2021 at 11:00:32 PM

Update Summary!

  • Lazy DM's Companion BackerKit smoke test launched Monday 29 Nov.
  • All BackerKit surveys should be sent Tuesday 30 Nov or Wednesday 1 Dec. Fill them out to get your rewards!
  • If you see crazy-high shipping rates, check that your correct address is entered.
  • The draft PDF of the Lazy DM's Companion is available for download on completion of the survey!
  • If you were an early BackerKit survey recipient and didn't see links for digital downloads, check again. They should be there now.
  • Post any comments or feedback on the Lazy DM's Companion draft to this post.

Full Description

We've sent the Lazy DM's Companion BackerKit survey out to a random selection of about 500 backers and we're watching the results to make sure everything is smooth. Assuming no major errors, you'll receive your BackerKit survey this week, probably Tuesday or Wednesday

Please keep an eye out for the survey and remember you must fill out the survey to get your rewards, digital or physical.

If you're filling out the survey and see a crazy-high shipping cost (like $50), make sure you've entered your address and its calculating correctly. We've noted instances where a digital product backer wanted to add a physical book as an add-on and saw a very high shipping rate. This likely means BackerKit didn't know where you're located and calculated the highest shipping rate. Enter your address and it should recalculate shipping based on our actual location.

If you were one of the early receivers of the BackerKit survey and didn't see download links for digital books, you can go back to your filled out survey and see all of the digital books you backed ready to download.

On completion of this survey you'll have access to the first public draft of the Lazy DM's Companion PDF! This is a very polished "draft" with everything fully laid out and fully edited. The final text of the book is all here and ready to use. It's only missing the remaining art and maps. We expect to have all the maps and art in the final product and distributed to you by the end of January 2022.

If you find any errors or have any questions about the draft of the Lazy DM's Companion, please add a comment to this post with your findings! We want to have as many eyes on this book as possible before we send it to print in the first or second quarter of 2022.

If you have other questions about the BackerKit survey, please see this post for details and see if that answers your question. Otherwise leave a comment here and we'll answer it.

Thank you all so much for your support! I hope you enjoy the book!

Lazy DM's Companion BackerKit Survey Coming Next Week! (29 Nov)
over 2 years ago – Thu, Nov 25, 2021 at 12:18:38 AM

Hello supporter of the Lazy DM's Companion!

Our BackerKit Survey is ready for its "smoke test" in which we send the BackerKit survey to a percentage of random backers to ensure everything runs smooth and all of the rewards, add-ons, shipping costs, and payments are working as intended.

We're going to launch the smoke test BackerKit surveys Monday, 29 November, to avoid sending it at the beginning of a US holiday weekend in which many backers (and the support staff who handle any problems that come up) are away from their computers and with their families.

Assuming the smoke test works well (and we expect it will), we'll send the rest of the BackerKit surveys on Wednesday, 1 December.

Here are some important things to note.

1. Everyone must fill out the survey to receive their rewards, digital or physical. We won't be fulfilling Kickstarter rewards any other way so please look for and fill in your survey.

2. All of the rewards and add-ons you selected in Kickstarter will already be added to your cart along with your funding amount. You do not need to add anything else unless you want something else you hadn't selected in Kickstarter.

3. Digital rewards for existing products will be available as soon as you lock in your order in the BackerKit survey. I know you've waited a long time to get PDFs of existing books so we're making it as easy as we can for you to grab them.

4. For those of you who ordered physical books, you can change your address in BackerKit up until we ship the books in mid 2022. If you happen to be moving right when the books are going to ship, file a forwarding address with your local post office.

5. A week or two after the BackerKit surveys go out, we'll send DriveThruRPG links for existing products in your order so you can add them to your DriveThruRPG library if you wish. It takes us some work to send these out so it won't happen as quickly as you being able to download the products from BackerKit.

Thank you again so much for your support!

Mike

We Did It! Thank you and Next Steps on the Lazy DM's Companion
over 2 years ago – Fri, Oct 29, 2021 at 11:58:23 PM

​​We did it!

Thanks to you, the Lazy DM's Companion goes from dream to reality! I cannot thank you enough for your outstanding support and I can't wait to get these books into your hands.

Next Steps

It takes Kickstarter about two to three weeks to transfer the funding over and to transfer all the backer information over to BackerKit. Soon after you'll receive a BackerKit survey to select and lock-in your order. It's very important that you fill out your BackerKit survey! You won't get your products if you don't.

The BackerKit survey lets you select any add-ons you may want, including PDF copies of other Sly Flourish books outside of the Lazy DM books (sorry, no physical copies of those books).

As soon as that survey is locked you'll get access to the existing PDFs for the Lazy Dungeon Master, Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, and the Lazy DM's Workbook if they were included in your pledge and the other Sly Flourish books if you chose to add those onto your order. Again, it's very important that you fill out your BackerKit survey so you can get these rewards.

I plan on sending out a draft layout PDF of the Lazy DM's Companion before the end of the year. This won't have all of the art and maps yet but the text and layout will be there so you can use it, try it out, and offer feedback. We won't be able to make big changes since it's already in layout at that point but small problems can be fixed.

Once the art and maps come in for the Lazy DM's Companion we'll send out the PDF, likely early next year. You'll get an email alert through BackerKit that it's ready for your download and can grab that either directly or add it to your DriveThruRPG library.

We plan to have the PDF of the Lazy DM's Companion in your hands a few weeks before we send it to the printer in case you find any other errors. During this time we'll also have sent the Lazy DM's Workbook and Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master to the printer so those should already be underway by this point.

With the printing done, the books get shipped to Nord's warehouses in North America and Europe where they're packaged up and sent your way. I'll have more specific timelines as we get closer to completion. There's a lot of moving parts. In the meantime, the digital versions of all of this will come to you soon!

Thank you all again for such an outstanding show of support. I'm incredibly humbled and can't wait to get these books into your hands.

Mike Shea