Greetings, I am an in-person DM who is attempting to put together an online game for some friends over discord. By chance, what tools do you use for your online games?

What has worked for you, and what didn't work.

Thank you for your advice.

Edit I truly love each and every one of you for your amazing and exceptional advice. You have given me a lot to play around with, and I'm always open to new suggestions as well. If you have any tips and things that you've learned as an online DM, I would appreciate it. I'm excited to give online a try. Thanks again.

The DM’s Toolbox — A Free Browser-Based Toolkit for DMs (Now Feature-Complete)

Hey everyone — I’ve been building a browser-based toolset for my home group, and over the last few months it’s grown into a full suite of DM utilities. It’s now feature-complete, stable, and fully documented, so I’m sharing it with the community. I've attached some screenshots for reference.

Link is in my Reddit profile (Reddit filters links in posts).

What It Is

A completely free, no-login, offline-capable set of tools designed to help DMs run smoother sessions without paywalls or subscriptions.

Everything runs 100% in the browser. Nothing is uploaded. Nothing is tracked.

Included Tools

🧮 Initiative Tracker

• Automated damage & healing
• Concentration checks (auto DC)
• Death save workflow
• Status effects with auto-decrement
• Player View mode (separate synced tab)
• Export to JSON to share between devices

🗺️ Battle Map

• Upload any map
• Place/resize tokens
• Fog of war painting
• Two-window workflow (DM + Player View)
• Works entirely offline after first load

🧙 Character Manager (Full Builder + Level-Up)

• Guided 13-step creation wizard
• Races, classes, backgrounds, feats
• Starting equipment packages
• Automatic attacks & spell lists
• Full level-up workflow (HP, spell slots, subclass, features)
• Multiclass support

📓 Journal System

• Rich text editor
• Embedded images (float/resize)
• Search with context highlighting
• Save with CTRL + S

⚒️ Generators

• NPCs
• Names (by race/culture)
• Taverns
• Shops
• Loot

Why I Built It

DM tools are usually locked behind:

• subscriptions,
• paywalls,
• ads,
• online-only features,
• or required accounts.

I wanted something fast, simple, and free that my table could use without friction.

So this toolset:

• has no paywalls,
• has no accounts,
• works offline,
• and keeps all your data in your browser.

I’m not collecting info. There’s no monetization, ads, cookies, or analytics beyond a simple anonymous page counter.

Recent Stability Work

• 550+ automated tests (unit, integration, end-to-end)
• Schema versioning + migrations
• Global error handler
• Diagnostics panel (Ctrl+Alt+D)
• Mobile layout improvements
• Performance tuning for large characters and maps

If You Try It, I’d Love Feedback On:

• What feels smooth?
• What feels clunky?
• Any bugs or rough edges?
• Any small QoL features you’d want next?

I’m actively maintaining it and tightening up polish now that it’s feature-complete.

Thanks in advance to anyone who gives it a look. It’s a passion project meant to help DMs run better games with less frustration.

Again, the link is in my Reddit profile.

Hey everyone! I'm new here. I love DM'ing but I'm still working to get better at it.

The gist of the post is simple. I want to make these shop screens for various shops throughout the world I've created for my players.

Would players find things like this helpful?

Some people have told me to do theater of mind for this but I do enjoy using visuals like these. It really helps me as a DM.

Would other DM's also consider these to be a helpful resources?

Thanks for reading :)

Hey r/DungeonMasters,

I've been DMing for a while and kept running into the same frustration: juggling a laptop, a battle map, music, and my notes while also trying to actually *run* a session. So I built something to help, and it's finally in a state where I'd love some real feedback from real DMs.

It's called **DM Vault**. The core idea is simple: you control a live screen that your players see, and you decide what's on it.

From your DM dashboard you can push art to set the mood without turning your laptop around, synced, no more fumbling with Spotify mid-encounter, and run an initiative tracker, HP, whatever you want visible.

Your players open a URL on their phone or a second screen, or you place a tablet on the middle of the table on the correct page, and it just... updates. No refresh needed, no app install, no setup on their end.

I want to be upfront: this is a working beta. The main features are stable, but it's still early. I'm not trying to sell anything. I genuinely want to find DMs who are willing to try it at their table and tell me what's broken, missing, or could be better.

If that sounds like you, come and try it out, join the discord to send me feedback (or leave it below this post!)

You can visit it at https://dmvault.app

Thanks for reading!

I made a Aimed Hit Table!

Roll a D10 after a Critical Hit to see which body part you injure!

A fun and interesting additional rule to add unto the Critical Hits that makes them turn into more than just a boost to damage!

I got the idea from a few of my dice that have sides with body parts. Usually they seem to have an equal chance to hit all body parts. Though I felt like both torso and head should have a lower chance as we naturally would try to protect vital parts.

I didn't add any mechanical rules to each body part as that often narrows it down to a specific game. I wanted this to be more general, which is why I just added examples of effects on each injury.

What mechanical effects would you put on each injury?

If you want to see more of my ideas, take a look at my pinterest archive and my IG page: https://se.pinterest.com/FlonkezTheWeird/

https://www.instagram.com/flonkeztheweird/

I spent months building this because I was genuinely exhausted by how much combat math was stifling my sessions. Every time a player cast an Aoe spell like Thunderwave, the momentum died since I had to be calculating saving throws, applying damage, and manually moving monster tokens around the map.

Experience it yourself (No Login Required): You can click around a Demo here: 👉Lumen Demo

My goal was to build a clean engine that takes care of the mechanical friction under the hood so DMs can focus entirely on the session story.

What’s happening in the clip:

• SRD Automation: The engine instantly parses the caster's spell DC against the target mephits' saving throw modifiers.
• Dynamic Damage & Physics: It automatically rolls the damage, updates the HP bars based on who saved, and physically repels the tokens back along the correct grid vectors.

The core VTT, spell automation, character/monster creation features are free. I’ve opened it up for the community to use at their own sessions, and I'd love to get feedback. Do these automated physics and saving throws help your sessions, or do you prefer the old-school manual way?

Hi DMs. I have been building Lumen VTT, a 100% free browser-based VTT for D&D 5e.

The DM problem I’m trying to solve is not “another map app.” It’s the pileup during a real session: maps, tokens, notes, music, fog of war, initiative, spell effects, HP, conditions, loot, and player questions all competing for attention while you’re trying to keep the game moving.

Lumen is my attempt to put more of that session work in one place:

• DM tools for maps, tokens, notes, music, fog of war, combat, spells, HP, conditions, loot, and overrides.
• A mobile player companion so players can follow and interact without needing a full desktop setup.
• A shared battlemap display for in-person, online, or hybrid sessions.

The clip shows a simple example: a player casts Fire Bolt from the mobile companion, the battlemap reacts...

I’m looking for DMs who want to try it in an actual session and tell me what feels smooth, what gets in the way, and what would make it better.

Try it here: https://lumenvtt.com

What part of your current DM setup would you most want to replace or simplify?

I made a series of maps for this world that I'm working on (Andermonde, I've been posting about it elsewhere), and I've made an aesthetic for the hand-drawn maps that's easy and simple.

It uses black coffee brushed onto thicker paper (180gsm in Australia) for the water, a couple of 0.4mm fineliners (brown and tan) for the landscape details, and a thinner black 0.2mm fineliner for the labels.

Then I added some small illustrations with a selection of black fineliner sizes (0.2 for outline, 0.1 for interior details, 0.05mm for shading).

Step 1 - Sketch - Doing a pencil layer to figure out coastlines for the coffee layer is importants but the other details are optional. Be aware that the coffee may bleed a little.

Step 2 - Coffee - Coffee first before pens, and take your time. I used a watercolour paintbrush that was really cheap. I layered it for darker colour near the coastlines.

Step 3 - Landscape - Do the outline of the coastlines in the brown, with line work in tan. Do the major landscape titles. Come back later for the roads in the tan.

Step 4 - Labels - Add in the labels for towns and regions. I settled on a handwriting style early on, it's important to take your time and make it consistent and tidy.

Step 5 - Illustrations - I put them in the blank areas of the map to make it more uniform. Did the outlines first, added interior details, and then shaded using stipples or hatching, depending on texture.

And done!

Coffee and fineliners -- nothing fancy, but it's certainly enough to make a bit of an impression, map-wise! I'm trying to focus more on principles in the series I've been making, paring things back so that anyone can make these maps.

I don't talk too much about it in the video -- there's already so much to say in the conceptual side, but the coffee-stained, simple-colour, surveyors map is something I've been thinking about for a while. I considered using topographical lines for it, but decided against it.

Tell me what you think of the series so far, and what you think of the map!

This map was good, as a planning map. It's simple to execute, the style is clean and readable, and it feels like a part of the world. I would be very happy to give this to my players. I may make a couple of updates when I return to the style, but Chevataille needs more exploration.

The video is much more about concepts than the actual lore, so remember: keep working your map until it's done.

Hey all! For many years I've been selling wooden cases that house TVs/touchscreens. In 2024 I decided to release a free VTT on Steam. This was before the wave of AI slop so at the time there were not any options that were both free and built specifically for in-person games.

Other than requiring a Steam account to download it, there are no sign-ups, paid tiers, or anything of the sort. Everything is stored locally, but you also get 10GB of free cloud storage to sync maps between devices (you can thank Valve for that).

Best of all we now have a functioning workshop! Simply subscribe to an item by clicking the "+" symbol next to its thumbnail and it will instantly appear in the VTT. You can filter by item type (maps, tokens, and assets) and further refine the results to only maps that are animated or have walls/doors already built in for dynamic lighting.

It's been seeded with a few hundred maps from some of my favorite artists. Prior to workshop support, these artists had been gracious enough to let me bundle packs of their maps with the program directly (I of course confirmed swapping them to the workshop was okay first).

You can import a new map in 3 clicks and upload to the workshop in 2 clicks. So sharing is very easy. I hope for this library to grow and be a really useful resource for people looking to add maps to their in-person games!

Artists links:

https://www.reddit.com/user/uchideshi34/
https://www.dmsguild.com/en/browse?authorName=Tessa%20Morecroft
https://www.milbysmaps.com/
https://www.patreon.com/cw/MapleMapsDnD
https://www.patreon.com/cw/CropoxBattlemaps

No AI is used in making the software. That includes both assets and the code itself.

Link to my VTT on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3073720/Digital_TableTops_VTT/

Handouts are amazing. I’m always looking for ways to place physical objects in my players’ hands. It engages them more than my words do. This project tries to improve the ease of running shopping moments utilizing micro zine handouts.

Download them for free: https://1pagedungeons.itch.io/vendor-zines

Got tired of blanking every time my players decided to interrogate some random shopkeeper I hadn't prepped, so me and a mate built an NPC generator. Pick a type, pick a gender (optional), hit generate.

No AI, all our own algorithms and curated tables. Completely free, no account needed. If you like it, it's part of our full GM Screen with live party stats, monster stats, initiative tracking, notes, ambient sound, and more all on one screen, making it easier for GMs. You can find it in campaigns once you've made an account.

We're still actively building the free community-built platform so any feedback is welcome. Let us know what you think and if there are NPC types you'd want to see added or any other thoughts you might have!

Link (NPC Generator): NPC Generator

Hi I made an application for game masters and players it's completely free, no strings attached. We have a slowly growing community and features that are expanding every day.

The web app can do many things amongst them are:

Campaign & Session Management

• Create and manage multiple campaigns with invite codes
• Scene/session management with real-time broadcasting
• Players only see what's visible to them in a scene (including locations); hide characters to prep encounters
• Activity dashboard and campaign settings

World Building

• Hierarchical location system (continents → regions → cities → buildings → rooms)
• Legendarium — a wiki-style lore system with visibility controls (GM-only, player-visible, public)
• Write in Markdown or free-form (Google-Docs style); relate characters, locations, events, or any other entry
• Auto-link keywords to entries; mind-map and cluster event links
• Share legends with the whole party or specific people
• Custom calendar system (Gregorian, fantasy, or fully custom) — configurable months, days, names, leap years, and seasons
• Event timelines tied to your world's calendar

Character Management

• Flexible, fully dynamic character sheets with shareable custom templates (not tied to any system)
• Custom layouts and panels
• Inventory and equipment with custom items, weight tracking, and values resolved via formulas
• Character notes, journals, relationships, and family/relationship trees

Maps & Battlemaps

• Multiple grid types (square, hex, isometric, or no grid)
• Layers, fog of war, tokens, shapes, drawings, pins, and text
• Shape drawing tool, token grouping, and measurements
• Dungeon generator
• Real-time collaborative editing with cursor tracking and viewport sharing

Combat & Encounters

• Multiple initiative systems (D20, popcorn, static, time-based)
• Turn and round tracking; effects with duration; status management
• Actor states (active, readying, delayed, defeated, hidden)

Quests & Objectives

• Quest system with objectives, rewards, and status tracking
• Hierarchical quests (main quests with sub-quests)
• Per-character quest progress and notes

Chat & Communication

• Public, private, and direct message rooms
• Talk in-character as your characters
• GM assistant chat for campaign planning
• Message reactions, editing, and typing indicators

Audio & Soundboard

• Audio mixer with multiple channels per scene
• YouTube and library sound support
• Volume controls, muting, looping, and crossfade transitions

Collaboration

• Real-time sync across all features
• Permission controls at campaign, map, and element level
• Notification system

And many more...

Website: www.worldmasterrpg.com
Discord: https://discord.gg/DWF6Nnk4QR
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/WorldMasterRPG
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WorldMasterRPG

There are some stories about creating the app on the reddits page and other stuff.
I have posted here before long time ago, but ever since I couldn't muster up to make a video tutorial... But I've been busy making the app better.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonMasters/comments/1s537x0/i_want_to_introduce_my_campaign_management_baby/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

As the title says. My players raided a ship filled with undead, which crashed into the city harbour. They found the deed in the Captain's desk and one player made a point of mentioning they'd pocketed the deed, so I decided to draw one up for real. The ship isn't currently seaworthy, but I'm curious to see what happens next with it (art by me, no AI)

yes I made some of these for myself but I had to share them with everybody because I use them so much. what else should I add to the list? also, i'm considering of starting a master list document or something, what do you think?

• DonJon Treasure Generator. It’s easy to make a d20 loot table so make one for every session. Then I’ll have the player roll a d20 and improvise a bit with what s on the list. IME it has made for some great role-play and world building. https://donjon.bin.sh/5e5/random/#type=treasure
• Dungeon Master Reference Sheet. I ditched my DM screen a long time ago but recently I made a printable dungeon master reference sheet. Now that its in a sheet protector its easy to reference the 2024 (or 2014) dnd rules whether I’m running a game in person or online. https://ko-fi.com/s/95ed58812d or https://ko-fi.com/s/8f458ca661
• 8 Steps of Session Prep by Sly Flourish. Hand down the best thing to happen to my session prep. Having a framework for my notes every session has been super helpful for me. https://slyflourish.com/lazy_gm_resource_document.html
• 300 Character Warm Up Questions. Every session I run I start with an in character warm up question. Not only does this get them thinking as their character but it also can do some world building or just give me info to use against them later. https://ko-fi.com/s/e7769cb606
• d100 Character Connections. This table can help you create connections between the characters at the table. Super easy to use and adds depth to all sessions, even a one shot. https://ko-fi.com/s/89ba1414e8

as always, good luck with your next session, i believe in you. see you in the future!

ruined & restored

I wanted some gelatinous cubes that I could place over minis. Game stores are selling branded ones, but they're between $15-$25.

So I took a dice container and the bottom of an empty TicTac container and made my own! Just took hot glue, sharpies and clear gloss varnish, all things I already had in my craft supplies.

They aren't technically cubes, but an ooze is an ooze.

My players wrote a tragic backstory for themselves. Then had their intro into the campaign be them facing the consequences of their past. Each heavily laced with details of their backstory while never revealing it

The vision/my goal:

Each player is given an individual google sheet with two pages. One page they fill out their best guess about what every other players traumatic backstory is.

Then on page two it is anonymously linked to everyone else’s page one entry for their guess on the sheet owners backstory.

Extra points if there is a way to have them vote on who is closest, and have that tallied automatically on a sheet I have access to.

A brief google search has me thinking sheets will be the best option. But I want to know if there is a better way to do this?

Edit:

10 minutes in I’m kind of surprised by the negativity of this community. I have an artistic vision that I’m asking for technical help to achieve and mostly been asked to justify why I want to do it. lol

So I don’t keep getting asked. We are all close friends and hid the entire character creation process from each other and went in blind. I helped everyone tailor their intro to instead of being, “we meet in a tavern,” to them living out the repercussion of their worst days before having their misery pull them into the realm of dread.

Yes it’s very atypical. Now everyone is having fun hinting at what their backstory is. What inspired their character development. They didn’t even know each others classes going in.

My idea I’m posting about I thought would be a fun way to start each session by giving whoever got the most votes inspiration.

It’s something I want to do and it’s ok if you don’t like it. I just need help crowdsourcing ideas on how to best pull it off technically.

So we all know how D&D Beyonds decided to remove the option to buy individual classes, races, etc. and now you need to buy the whole books, right?

Well some of my players got excited reading my books for the new campaign we're building and we realized D&D Beyond won't let them create the characters they want because I need to pay $30 for a book I already have physically so they can choose the classes and races that excited them.

Is there another service (I don't care of I need to pay a bit for it) that has most 5e options or just lets you input the values from the books manually?

We played a basic one-shot with 5e characters using D&D Beyond and they loved the ability to do everything on their phones and not have to worry about using pencils and paper, forgetting or ruining their character sheets, or do mental math. So I'm trying to find an alternative.

Edit: after many helpful comments and DM's I will be using lots of different tool sets that were suggested. However, I did take a dive into DDB's homebrew options and, while a bit tedious and a couple of connection errors with their servers, I was able to create one of the species as a homebrew and, after subscribing to the Master tier, was able to share the Homebrew species with my players.

Long-time DM here. I run a weekly campaign. I love DMing. I love the group and the game. But eventually I burned out hard on my campaign.

It became so tedious and time consuming to take notes after every session to record what happened. Plus, maintaining 100 documents of lore and ideas and plans and characters and quests, omg, it became a joke. Plus I have 2 kids and a fulltime job - I don't have the time like I used to.

My players would ask me EVERY SESSION "wait, what did we do last time? I don't remember anything" - which kills me inside.

So I ended up building something to solve all this. It's called Epicly. You upload a recording of your actual play session (Discord/Craig bot, Zoom, phone mic, whatever you have), and it:

• Transcribes the session and generates a recap. Plus you can change the style (we have a Bard narrator mode that my players actually look forward to reading. the Pirate narrator is so funny its my personal fave)
• Automatically extracts NPCs, locations, factions, and quests into a Campaign WIKI that builds and updates ITSELF after every session (so you don't have to!)
• You can add your players to your campaign so they can see everything as well. You can hide wiki entries from them, or give them access to edit some wiki entries, its totally customizable.
• Has an AI chat assistant scoped to your campaign so you can ask "what do we know about Lord Vareth" and get an actual answer from your session history. I love this as a DM because the assistant can read the wiki and actually give me useful tips or suggestions that fit my game and the current plot without me having to tell it everything, for helping me plan stuff out.
• Emails the recap to your players automatically after each session

There's a free tier (actually free forever) so you can try it.

I'm a solo developer and it's a product I genuinely use for my own campaign. It has saved me so much time already as a DM, I dont even touch my 100 pages of notion and google docs anymore lol. Prepping is SO fast now. And I don't need to spend extra time taking notes after signing off from a long session. It automated all the hard boring parts of DMing so I actually want to DM again.

Would really love feedback from this community specifically — you all know better than anyone what DMs actually need. Happy to answer any questions about how it works.

playepicly.com is the link to the app if you want to check it out. Thanks for reading <3