Cool Utilities

I own a fair amount of “standard” dungeon terrain, the kind with 1″ squares and walls appropriately sized for standard D&D minis. I break it out most days, and players “ooh” and “ahh,” and then after a little while, something happens: They start to forget where things are. I deploy terrain precisely so that players won’t forget where things … Continue reading »

Let’s say the PCs are headed towards a small town, out in the middle of nowhere, that’s surrounded by dangerous monsters and ruins. Let’s further say you haven’t fleshed anything out beyond that basic concept. (Astute players will recognize this as the setup for a West Marches campaign.) What if you could build these dangers … Continue reading »

In a previous post, I described the utility of having a Unified GM Bag: all your materials in one place. Here’s everything in my bag, with explanations: A bag of dice. My players haven’t yet figured out that they can buy their own dice, and besides, folks sometimes lose dice and it’s handy to have spares. … Continue reading »

I have one big travel bag in which I store all my RPG materials (except for books and physical handouts like keys, rings, and pendants, since I have different handouts for different groups). It contains, among other things: Dice Pencils Index cards Counters Blank paper Folded paper minis Why would you want to do this? … Continue reading »

Oh no! Your players are coming over and you haven’t prepared! Or they’ve gone way off the map! No problem. Here’s how to build a simple, effective dungeon in under 5 minutes. Setup Grab a piece of paper, and draw a small box at the top of the page, just large enough to fit about … Continue reading »

I’ve put everything I need to run a Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition encounter on one page, with enough space for 40 monsters (4 different monster types, and 10 individual monsters for each type). This doesn’t include every stat for every monster; just the stats that I need for 90% of my encounters: Hit Points, Armor Class, … Continue reading »

The Polygon Map Generation demo (requires Flash) will generate a random, colored map of an island. You can even save the random seed for re-generation later. It offers several generation methods and a number of different views, including biomes, elevation, moisture, and even a rotating 3D view. It’ll export a 2,048 x 2,048 PNG file, which is … Continue reading »