The First Sly Flourish Newsletter

It's been about a day since I turned on the Patreon for Sly Flourish and your response has been breathtaking. I can't thank you enough for your support.

This Patreon page isn't a new Sly Flourish product line. I'll be continuing to write articles for the website, tweet on Twitter, and produce videos for Twitch and Youtube. I'll still be writing books, funding them on Kickstarter, and publishing them as I did before. You'll be getting sneak previews of the next of these books before everyone else including a little something at the end of this post!

I've been thinking a lot about what I can do for you folks in particular, though. You're not just readers of Sly Flourish or viewers of my Youtube videos or folks who happen upon a tweet of mine on Twitter. You're a mixture of friends of mine and Sly Flourish superfans. You like my nonsense enough to pay for it every month when you don't have to and that is something special.

This Patreon is a way for you to support Sly Flourish and, while it isn't a new subscription to a whole new product, I want to give you something more than everyone else gets.

So here's an initial idea. I want to give you an exclusive Sly Flourish newsletter.

This newsletter will be a short regular post that gives you a summary of what Sly Flourish material was produced thanks to your patronage and also offer a view of the D&D topics that have my attention at the moment. It will be a way to see through a unique lens of the community and give you a way to keep a thumb on what's going on if you can't keep up yourself.

Let me give you an example right now.

This Week on Sly Flourish

This week on Sly Flourish I published the article Building for the Three Pillars. This article focused on how we can build scenes and situations in our D&D games that let the players interact with them using any of the three pillars; whether it's combat, roleplaying, or exploration. 

Next week we'll be shining a light on the various Sly Flourish Youtube videos including introductory videos on Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master and my weekly Lazy DM Prep videos. Here's a sneak preview of the article.

This week's DM Prep video focused on my Waterdeep Dragon Heist game including dinner with JB Nevercott and the beginning of the characters journey into Blue Alley.

The top Sly Flourish #dnd tip on Twitter this week was the following:

"#dnd tip: Never forget that the characters are the heroes of your story. Your universe revolves around them."

but people really engaged with my Tweet on Halaster Blackcloak:

"Halaster Blackcloak’s AC is too low. Don’t at me."

People didn't follow the instructions. I got "atted" a lot. It's funny how the throw-away tweets always get the most attention.

What Has My Attention?

I am diving deep into the work of Rob Schwalb's Shadow of the Demon Lord. I'm running this excellent fantasy horror RPG for my Wednesday group and we're really enjoying it. I have a future Sly Flourish article in the works on this topic. My wife and I are enjoying reading Terrible Beauty, Schwalb's take on the faerie realms, while I've also been digging into Hunger in the Void and Black Sun Dawn. Rob's twisted mind evokes quite the vivid imagery but it's not all gore. There's a lot of high fantasy to fire up our imaginations in his work, even if we're not running Shadow of the Demon Lord.

I'm running the DM Guild Adept adventure Blue Alley by MT Black and Alan Patrick for my Sunday Waterdeep Dragon Heist game. It's a wonderful tricky little deathtrap dungeon to throw into the middle of Dragon Heist. More on this in next week's DM prep video.

I've also really enjoyed the Down with D&D Podcast by Shawn Merwin and Chris Sniezak. They've been talking a lot about both encounter design and adventure design  (something I've been researching a lot this spring...) and the tips in this podcast are really great.

The excellent D&D blogger and friend, David Hartlage, wrote a wonderful article on building memorable NPCs called, get this, How to Create Loveable Non-Player Characters While You Supercharge Your Sex Appeal. Clickbait title aside, it's a great read.

Like everyone else, I'll be watching the Descent D&D stream on 17 May (my birthday!) when the Wizards of the Coast crew will be announcing their new storyline. I have my fingers crossed for some sort of Planescape thing but we'll have to see.

A View of Things to Come

As I mentioned, I've been working on a big project recently. I finished the first draft of a new book in March and started commissioning the art and maps for it. Here's a preview of one of the NPCs in this product, the Elder of the Deepdelver's Enclave, Bailon the Beardless! This art is by Bryan Syme.

Thank you all again for your wonderful support and let's go run some great D&D games!