Michael Shea

Sly Flourish May Newsletter

Added 2019-05-03 13:04:20 +0000 UTC

Welcome to the first full Sly Flourish newsletter! This has been the first month of this Patreon and I cannot thank you enough for your suupport. Your support has funded the following articles, videos, and tweets over April 2019:

Articles

And your special preview article, due to be posted Monday, 6 May: Handling Missing Players.

Videos

Top #dnd Tip Tweets in April 2019

#dnd tip: Go easy on first level characters. Watch the damage the monsters do carefully. Ignore instant death if you want to be nice to new players.

#dnd tip: In early levels, pay particular attention to the damage monsters inflict. It can surprise you how quickly a low level character can go from full hit points to zero.

#dnd tip: Don't negate a character's big special ability. Let them enjoy their broken power in monumental scenes.

#dnd DMs, what is your most effective way of getting feedback from your players on how well your game is going? What questions do you ask them?

#dnd tip: Understand and reinforce the themes in your campaign. Describe them in your session zero to ensure your players are on board. Is it dark fantasy? Urban intrigue? Jungle exploration? What defines the theme?

The survey on whether D&D DMs like read-aloud text was my number one tweet of the month. It ended up getting more than 5,100 responses. All survey qualifiers for selection bias still stand but that's a lot of responses. Here were the results:

D&D News That Got My Attention

The Id DM had an excellent interview with James Haeck about Critical Role and what their gangbuster Kickstarter means for D&D. It's definitely worth a listen. Check out Michael Mallen's Patreon as well.

Are you looking to run D&D with just two of you? Maybe with your significant other? Check out D&D Duet, a couple who discuss what it's like running D&D just for two.

Teos Abadia, Alphastream on Twitter, put a hard look on what it takes to make a living if you were selling off of the DM's Guild. In short, not so good. My opinion? The DM's Guild is a platform for fans to write content and get a little bit of money for their work but, except for just a few, it is no way to make a living in this industry.

The Dragon Talk podcast had an excellent segment at the 15 minute mark with Jeremy Crawford talking about Monster customization. I could listen to Jeremy talk about this all day. He was on the DM's Deep Dive talking about monster design as well. Definitely worth a listen if you want to know how monsters work and how you can reskin them. Going along with this, read the section on building monsters in the Dungeon Master's Guide if you haven't. If you have? Read it again.

Fantastic Adventures: The Ruins of the Grendleroot

Earlier last month I released the first private playtest of a new thing I'm working on. Today I'll give you the current working title: Fantastic Adventures: The Ruins of the Grendleroot! This is a book of ten short adventures for level 1 to 5 set in a mysterious mountain filled with caverns, lairs, and an ancient entity known as the Grendleroot. I'm planning to launch the Kickstarter in June and things are coming together. I will end this letter with the current draft cover from Jack Kaiser. Enjoy and thank you all again for your support for Sly Flourish!