Dungeons and Dragons

I do dry-erase markers on a battlemap, I use a laptop with vimwiki on it, I also hit tabletopaudio.com and play through a little bluetooth speaker. I don't think I really have any other tools.

Roll20 as my VTT, but we do all audio and video over discord. My players all use dndbeyond for the character sheets, so we use the Beyond20 extension to bridge the two.

Maps mainly just for battles and bases, but I will sometimes use a roll20 map screen just to show an image to set the stage for theater of the mind. Lately I've been using Easy Diffusion to make some of those images.

I get my maps all over and make some (occasionally) with DungeonDraft. I've got a bunch of map and tile packs from DMs Guild, but I forget about them and search around for what what I need instead. I also always keep an eye on !battlemaps@lemmy.world, subscribe to Cze and Peku, and will search the the battlemap subreddits when all else fails.

For notes I started using Obsidian with my most recent campaign. Being able to link and query is handy.

In person, paper sheets, wet-erase map. Sometimes we use figures. Most of it we just use our imaginations. If I wanted to play a video game, I'd just play a video game.

For dungeons, I do pre-drawn maps on grid paper, glued to cardboard, cut into tiles, per room, that I can place down as my players explore. I think having something like that makes the game more exciting and dramatic. It also lets me build more complex puzzles. My last map had minecart tracks all throughout that the players needed to use to move a piece of mining equipment to a certain spot to unlock a secret area. If I hadn't had it prepared in advance, describing it specifically, or drawing it on a whiteboard, would have made it too obvious, I think.

For more open stuff though, like exploring a large aboveground region, or minor standalone encounters, I think theatre of the mind works well, and saves prep time, which is important. For games that rely more on the battle map, like PTU, which is what I actually GM, something like a dry erase board with a grid works well in these cases.

I tend to do theater of the mind for probably two thirds of my play sessions.

In combat I use a folding dry erase grid, some coins and markers to whip a board. If I have time to do a bigger fight I might prep some verticality by hot gluing some cardboard together. Having the terrain being low cost and effort gives me the option of breaking it down mid combat.

Playing in person, I made a lot of papercraft maps and items to get a very 3D feeling on the cheap. It was a lot of work, but my players loved it.

My current game is fully remote, and I'm finding I like creating digital stuff for Foundry even more than I liked papercraft. For non-combat stuff I set up splash screens with a piece of art showing the location, and then pop-up insert images with portraits of NPCs they meet. When it comes to combat, there are lots of really quality battlemap creators out there, with a lot of free options.

My friends are lazy AF and we just have easy mode. The players just have stats and health and the dm does the same for his people.

Honestly we just like acting out silly situations and see what the dice say.

I use foundry and love it. I've switched to PF2E but ran 5e on there for about 2 years. It works great for doing a lot of automation for you and you can still throw up a background image for TotM scenes. Definitely my favorite method I've tried for our virtual group. Though when we have In-person sessions we still use foundry with eneryone on laptops because it's so much easier.

When I was a player, my DM would print out whatever battle maps he needed and laminate them for the dry erase marker. An even more adaptable version of that would be a clear plastic sleeve or cover placed over the paper, so you could have a variety of maps handy and swap them out as needed.

Now as a DM myself I use my iPad and the procreate app, which works fairly well. I can have a ton of maps ready to go for both battle and exploration, and a bonus is that I also have an easy way to hide and reveal parts of the map using layers. There’s an iPad app called encounter+ that’s specifically for running combats off of an iPad, but it has some features locked behind a paywall and a bit of a learning curve, so I haven’t used it myself.

For the game I run, we're just remote, even though we're all in the same town and could be in person. For the group I'm a player in, we sometimes do remote, sometimes in person. When we play in person, then DM keeps Foundry on the TV. We bring laptops so we can interact with it.

As a side note one of the things I love about Foundry is how well it pairs with Dungeondraft, which is also purchase-once rather than subscription based. Makes it really easy to have custom maps

I made a few wooden grid boards with plexiglass tops so I can use a dry erase marker on them. I also ordered a ton of blank cards that I can use as items and status effects. Other than that players and I use pen and paper.

I love making combat difficult for myself, so I use theater of the mind... for everything. I don't use any physical or digital tools either in-person or online.

I've run and played in games that use virtual tabletops (roll20, tabletop sim, foundry), and they all seem to work very well. However, I tend to focus mostly on the narrative and roleplay, so it feels good to do everything via imagination. It works out nicely, because I get to pay more attention to my player's faces and react accordingly. We also made our recent campaign into a podcast, so doing everything verbally helps us create a more cohesive narrative for listeners.

BUT I think theater of the mind works to my strengths as a DM, and it certainly isn't for everyone. I know I'm in a very minuscule minority, but you're welcome to join me at the theater table.

Here’s some data on the topic!

https://slyflourish.com/facebook_surveys.html#onlinevsoffline2023

Question: This is a poll for D&D DMs and RPG GMs. Do you primarily play online or in person?

YouTube poll posted 18 April 2023 on YouTube, 2,900 respondents.

Response % of total Primarily online 41% Primarily in person 46% Both roughly equally 13%

Also some advice for in person maps:

https://slyflourish.com/drawing_maps.html

Roll20

I use foundry and love it.

I have it highly configured - content is imported from DNDBeyond. Combat is mostly automated. The players choose a target and click their attack or spell, and Foundry automatically rolls the attack, compares against AC and auto-rolls and applies damage on a hit. AOE effects let the player place a template.

Handouts are neatly organized in the Journal tab and I also make playlists that auto play when I move us to a new scene (e.g. activating a random encounter scene starts my combat playlist on shuffle).

My players love it. With that said, I'm a software developer by profession, and all these things take a ton of work to get going and can be buggy at times.

Other non 5E games sometimes have great official support on Foundry, but for 5E you're on your own.

I use paper sheets, some of the others at my table go digital. Dry erase map for combat if it's got a lot of enemies or terrain considerations. Between the 6 of us we have at least one copy of all books.

My group has been using owlbear rodeo. The current DM makes a lot of maps and uses owlbear's fog of war tool to reveal as we explore. It's fine.

I used it once just sketching the map as we went using it's drawing tools. Also fine. Like a dry erase board, but more awkward because of using a mouse instead of a marker.

In person I had a dry erase board with a grid printed on it, a bunch of tokens from board games, and coins to use as stuff.

I also used Google sheets for a while during the pandemic. It gives you a grid you can color and mark and everyone can see and edit. Worked surprisingly well. Also good for note taking

Playing in my 4e group, it’s all pen and paper and minis on a battle map that is drawn on.

I DM 5th and I use a battle map and minis, some printed mats, and a large books of battle mats (made by Loke). I also use dndbeyond to look up monster stats or quickly search rules and I play music via a Bluetooth lightbulb above our gaming table using Spotify. Finally, I use a laptop with google sheets for tracking initiative (and I kind of keep track of player HPs, AC, and spell saves) and google docs for outlining campaigns and taking notes.

My players for 5th use dndbeyond and can create characters using my resources I share and they are added to my campaign there so I can quickly review their stats/spells, etc as needed. Other players do it all pen and paper.

If we play in person, we mostly go with simple dry-erase marker on a battlemap. It is easy and flexible, although not very visually impressive