D&D Resources

Running RPGs online is getting to be like running a workshop. You have fundamental tools, you have the luxury bits, you have the ones you can’t do without, and sometimes you think you have the one true way until you see how someone else runs theirs. I like reading about what tools people use, in workshops and in games, so here’s mine.

The main thing I’m using is D&D Beyond. It requires some degree of investment to use it properly - as well as having a subscription, you also need to buy access to the PHB, DMG, and whatever supplemental sourcebooks you want to use, which in my case is invariably all of them. I now buy my rulebooks on this rather than in print (I have the three core books in dead tree, plus the Tome of Adventure Design, which is a work of sublime genius), because the virtual ones can be shared with people playing in my campaigns, and don’t take up the limited shelf space in the house. It provides character generation, character sheets, and rules reference in one package, as well as dice rolling which everyone playing can see. It has some issues - there are rules from supplements nearly a year old that have not yet been implemented in it, and the user interface is not always the most intuitive - but by and large it’s superb. I have generated more than 50 characters in it, and the number is that low only because I have other things to do as well.

The second major tool is Zoom. Zoom, as everyone in the world knows by now, is a videoconferencing tool. It is - so far - the best I’ve used in terms of reliable connections, being able to hear everyone else, and not being weird for no reason in the middle of a game (or at least not very often). I have 9 players in one of my campaigns, and playing at a table is somewhat difficult; Zoom makes it pretty easy. I contribute to a shared paid account, which hosts the sessions - one of the players usually sets up and hosts them, which takes a bit of the organisational pressure off me.

Third in the main trifecta is Owlbear Rodeo. You upload maps, you upload tokens, and you’re pretty much good to go for tactical battles. It has measurement tools for distance, it has drawing tools for area-of-effect, and short of the full 3D setups Matt Mercer uses, it’s the best way I’ve seen to handle combat in D&D. In some ways it’s better than the 3D stuff; everyone can see it on their own screen, measure things, and plot their own movements in peace without knocking things over. It has converted players who disliked combat to actually quite liking it. (And see below for commentary on graphics)

I should also mention the Doodle poll, run every month or two by one of the players, which allows me to settle on game dates without complicated and protracted negotiations.

After that, there are my physical tools. I write my game notes longhand, on refill pads. I am moderately particular, by now - I want decent paper, narrow-lined, and I want my preferred Uni-Ball EYE Micro pens to write with. I write on one side of the page and I keep them in order in binders. I put in-game dates at the top of the first page of each set of notes (which might cover one session or as many as ten), and in Heliomar, that’s occasionally in as many as four different calendars. The first page for each set of notes then has its own number, a decimal, and a sequential number. So the fourth set of notes starts on 4.1, and the second page for that set will be 4.2. By the time all the notes are written, the sequence might go 4.1, 4.1A, 4.1B, 4.2, 4.3, 4.3A, 4.4, or the like. The A-onward pages are usually the detailed statblocks for monsters or NPCs which are outlined on the relevant just-numbered pages. I’ve run this up to H in one set of notes, but that was the detail for a random encounter table. I use bullet pointed paragraphs, sometimes with bulleted lists below them. Names and most proper nouns go in block capitals, and are underlined on the first occurrence (usually, anyway; I sometimes forget). Experience points for combat encounters go in the left margin, and each set of notes gets a list (invariably incomplete) for things that might be achieved in them and the experience points for each.

The binder itself is usually a fairly cheap 2-ring binder, with dividers. The dividers read “Current Session”, “Past Sessions”, “NPCs”, “Maps”, “Odds” and “Plot”. If I have major dungeons or other distinct adventuring locations in the setting, they usually get their own divider. “Odds” contains bits of notes that don’t fit anywhere else - lists of elemental concordances, elven historical periods, names of that one god that has more than I can remember, and so on. “Plot” is where I write down things that have happened in the setting which might or might not come up in the actual game, but which I want to track for reasons of, well, plot.

I use a mixture of physical dice and rolls in D&D Beyond, as suits me. I keep about four sets of dice in a bag on my desk (“about” because, as always happens, they’re never all in the bag), and need to acquire a dice tray and clear the necessary space for it. The desk also has my laptop and one extra monitor. Ideally, I would have two extra monitors, but that’s going to have to wait. I have Zoom on the laptop screen, and D&D Beyond pages and Owlbear Rodeo on the bigger monitor.

In terms of graphics tools, I either make my own maps (one above, for example) and tokens in Photoshop, using map elements I’ve bought or acquired from various sources, or I use maps provided by the very many fine mapmakers out there, largely on Patreon. I particularly like Two Minute Maps and Party of Two. Tokens are more awkward; I’d really like to buy a big collection and have them all there, but I’m a little finicky about the style of them, and many of the available collections are either too cartoon-y, or are top-down images. I have a cordial if intense dislike of top-down images for tokens; they’re difficult to tell one from the next, and are a rather silly conceit on a vertical screen. So I mostly grab images of the monsters from game sources or Pinterest, and make my own.

And I regularly buy supplemental rules and ebooks from DM’s Guild, drivethrurpg, Humble Bundle, and similar sources, as well as various Kickstarters.

So what does this all cost? The D&D Beyond books are one-off costs; I’ve probably spent about €400 on them by now, and some of the players have bought others for me. Likewise, the maps and tokens are largely buy-once items; I’ve spent maybe €50 on bits and pieces in the last two years - a lot less than I’d spend on minis, it has to be said. The DM’s Guild and other third-party ebooks are also one-offs, but I have a lot of them; probably more than €750 worth which are D&D specific at this stage. I’ve been buying game stuff in general online for well more than a decade now; I don’t really want to calculate how much. Physical stationery costs are negligible, really.

Photoshop costs me about €12 a month, but it’s a business cost, and my use of it for gaming is kind of incidental, so I won’t count it here. D&D Beyond sets me back about €5 ($6) a month. My contribution to the shared Zoom account is very small; probably on the order of €1.50 a month. Owlbear Rodeo is free, but I put €5 a month into their Patreon, and $1 per item into Party of Two’s. I pay $3 per item into DnD EN5ider’s Patreon, and $5 per month into MCDM’s, mostly for the excellent Arcadia magazine. The total there is about €30-€35 a month, I think.

Obviously, you don’t need all of this to run games. In terms of paid material, you could probably get away with $6 a month on D&D Beyond and a shared Zoom account. But as hobbies go, it’s not even the most expensive one I have - that’s a competition between “the SCA” and “keeping myself in reading material” - and it’s definitely the best return on investment in terms of day to day enjoyment.

Not calculated: Coke Zero and coffee.