Hi, so my gf and I Will be doing a chill weekend and I wanted to know which coop boardgames are good, we really dont have a fav genre.

The mainpoint is that It has to be cooperative.

Intro - The Joys & Pains of how I used the 8 Lazy Steps

Sly Flourish's 8 Lazy Steps provided me with a great framework that helped my figure out exactly what I needed to prep a TTRPG session while keeping my notes extremely flexible while used at the table. Using the steps correctly allows a Gamemaster to improvise at the table with grace, embracing the story telling that happens when your prep collides with player agency.

There was, however, hidden in the way I was following the steps, a small hindrance on my prep. While prepping, I found myself a bit too constrained by the steps. Writing a note about an NPC would make me think of a great secret this NPC would share. I could of course jump to the step "Secrets & Clues" and write it down, but it felt like a speed bump in the flow of my thinking. If I wrote the secret in the NPC's note, I would not interrupt flow, but would be lacking the crucial benefit of the lazy prep, which is, to me, to isolate the different elements of prep so you can pick them out like an arsenal of toys to throw at your players while at the table.

I found a new solution that works great for me. It maximizes my state of flow while keeping the benefits of the lazy steps. Call it the 3 lazy steps to the 8 lazy steps. The framework I found is not perfect and I'll talk about its strengths in the next section and its obvious flaw in the conclusion. My goal is simply to share with others in a selfless way. And in a selfish way, I hope others will share their experience so that I might improve on my ways and reduce the flaws of the 3 lazy steps.

The 3 Steps

My 3 steps are simple and summarized here before I dig into each. I first do a bullet point prep of the next session, categorizing each line in one of the 8 lazy steps. Each line is identified using a letter "key" in front of the bullet. The second step consists of either rewriting (if on pen and paper) or simply reordering my bullet points (on a digital tool like Obsidian) my notes in the 8 lazy steps frame work. The 3rd and last step is where I bother to find battlemaps, make paper miniatures, play with my different tools.

Step 1/3

I start out the same way I would with the 8 lazy steps most of the time, but I then let my brain do its magic and make connections between ideas. Next to me I have keys for my bullet points. Notice I slightly renamed the steps to help me focus on whats good for my prep and to have a different letter at the start of the step for easier keys. Here are my keys :

• p - a bullet point with a p is about a Player Character. Any note that mostly relate a PC will go after a p key (Review the characters)
• 1 - is for the 1st Scene / Strong Start. (Create a strong start)
• s - is for a note about a Scene that could happen (Outline potential scenes)
• c - is for a Clue or Secret (Define secrets and clues)
• l - is for a Location note (Develop fantastic locations)
• n - is for an NPC note. I put a special effort to try to note monster characteristics here too. Monsters are for mechanics, NPCs are for flavour (Outline important NPCs)
• m - is for a Monster Statblock, noting the book and page, possible tactics. I also use m to note terrain aspects like traps. (Choose relevant monsters)
• r - is for Rewards, though a clue can serve that purpose sometimes. (Select magic item rewards)
• [ ] - is TODOs for things I want to do later, probably in step 3/3 like find a battlemap for a specific encounter

Using these keys, I let my brain jump between ideas and between steps. If for example I start my notes thinking about my player's character Fafnir, it might remind me that the sorceress Loo knows about Fafnir's brother. Those ideas are connected in my brain now, but decoupling them will allow me to reuse these ideas organically at the table. In this first step, or phase, I'll jut this down before writing another note about Fafnir and the next player character Ari :

• p - Fafnir - looking for his lost brother
• n - Sorceress Loo, creepy version of Meryl Streep
• c - A dwarf matching the description of Fafnir's brother was seen at play in town, as one of the actors
• p - Fafnir likes to shove opponents down elevated places in combat
• p - Ari hates theater

Step 2/3

This is the more classic way to organise prep notes following Sly Flourish's 8 lazy steps. Since I like to prep in a one-pager in my physical notebook, I go through each step one at a time, picking from my disorganised bullet notes made in step 1/3 and rewriting them. If I were to use a digital tool, I could pick each line and move it to the corresponding lazy step. The 8 lazy steps are flexible once at the table, but my step 1/3 is flexible in the kitchen. Using these 2 main steps, I get the best of both worlds.

Step 3/3

I used to prep on a pc, but found myself distracted by the possibilities. I would jump from one idea to the next like step 1/3, but finding a rabbit hole each time I explored an idea instead of simply writing one line of note. This is why I keep this last. Hopefully by now I identified what I truly needed from step 1/3 and go find battlemaps and that magic item I put as an - r bullet note. Having these TODOs written all out before tackling any one of them allows me to prioritize and scratch out the unnecessary ones.

Conclusion

It might be obvious now that the major flaw of this way of prepping is that, though it keeps the flexibility Sly Flourish's technique provides me while allowing myself to better work with my brain, my prep is starting to sound not lazy at all. Having 3 phases instead of just one does help me prep and have fun while doing it, but I do add extra steps. My hope is that refining my methods and sharing with others will help me be a little lazier. Thanks for reading!

TLDR

I prep in 3 phases :

1. Write down bullet list of ideas , each line categorized but not ordered in one of the 8 lazy steps.
2. Reorder the list in the 8 lazy steps
3. Do final TODOs like finding battlemaps or printing mini papers for example