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.
I’ve been running a Star Wars DnD campaign since mid 2020. The 5e rules module incorporating SW5E.com content is top notch. It allows me to easily create battles with tons of low level minions that my players absolutely love mowing down.
How do I plan sessions? My campaign is less of an open world and more of a story. I always try to set up any puzzle/combat/scenario so that there are three ways to solve it. 1) way of the warrior (players just want to kick in doors), 2) way of the scholar/mage (players find a secret that allows them to mitigate or more easily defeat the boss), and 3) way of the scoundrel/investigator (a hidden exploit that allows them to completely bypass or nullify the problem).
I try to follow this strategy in fights, social intrigue, investigations, and so on. It can be as simple or complex as you want, although the more complex it is, the more likely your players will miss it. Many times it comes down to if-then analysis. I’ll describe a scene, my players will describe how they want to interact with it, and then I’m forced to think about how things would be in relation to what they want to try. Sometimes I will roll percentage dice to see how close the scene is to what players described (usually reserved for theater of the mind).
As far as setting up battlemaps, I’m really lucky. I’m a subscriber to Droid Cartographer, and he has a knack for creating map offerings of exactly what I need a few weeks to a month before I need it. I will try to set up each map prior to the session, and populate it with bad guys and so forth. Ctrl+C and Ctrl-V copy/paste.selected light objects and is a huge time saver. I do use multi-level maps, but sometimes stairwell and elevator tiles can be finicky when it’s game time, so I have to rest those maps thoroughly before using them (and even then half the time they are broken anyway). I also use ChatGPT for creating random NPCs, shop owners, minor party characters, etc.
Bottom line, FoundryVTT and ChatGPT have allowed me to save HUGE amounts of time with scene creation and NPC stat blocks so that I can focus on the story plot, and then allows a LOT of automating battles. This allows my players to feel epic and like the world is their oyster.
I don’t use ChatGPT for scene creation, but for creating stat blocks for minor NPCs. My scenes are all handwritten in a notebook unfortunately. I keep telling myself someday I will digitize them into PDFs/modules, but I’m at about 3 years of content right now 😬
There are a few good creators on r/battlemaps that have patreon subs available (with many freebies too on that subreddit). I also have purchased dungeondraft, but as of yet have not delved into creating my own maps. I generally find something “close enough” and then tell my players what specifically is different in the scene should it come up.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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, 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.
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 haven’t played in person in a while. I have a wet-erase map and some markers, and a small starter set of minis from an old 4th edition box set. If I were to run in person again though, I would probably just find a way of integrating Foundry, like maybe hooking up a TV for the players to look at, and separately using a laptop for the DM view. Foundry just makes things so much easier. Although if I was in person, I’d probably let people roll their actual dice instead of using the virtual dice.
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
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.
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.
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.
Sometimes it do be like that. For me, the number game feels like a video game. When I am DM’ing giving the players freedom and being a bit lose makes a more interesting interaction.
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