Tools of a DM – What to use to help bring your campaign to life

One of the harder things I had to figure out wasn’t necessarily how to be a DM (though that still presents a bunch of challenges), but what tools would I use? Generally speaking, if you wanted to, you don’t need a lot of fancy or expensive equipment. Grab the Dungeon Master’s guide, the player handbook, a notepad, and a pencil and you’re ready to rock and roll. However, for me, dear reader, you’ll learn I like technology, I like trying things out, I like to experiment. Below are the current tools I use to manage our current campaign.

Inkarnate – Inkarnate is a great tool for building world maps and encounters. Even if you’re not the creative type, it also gives you the ability to use maps made by other creators (as long as they enable that feature). A super helpful feature, especially when you might need to ad lib a stop at the local tavern to allow your group to get the skinny on the latest rumors. Not only that, you can import your own assets and use them on your map, and then export the map itself as an image file to use in whatever tabletop program you use (Roll20, Foundry, Arkenforge, etc…). It’s accessible and pretty cheap, costing $25 a year.

Four folders worth of maps. Everything from taverns, to caves, to cities, and an overview of the world.


Notion – Notion is a tool I’ve only started using a few months ago after talking to a friend about how to better organize all your campaign notes. Prior to this I shoved everything into my Google Drive. Notion allows you to essentially manage and organize everything in your campaign, from NPCs, to session notes giving you the ability to have easy to recognize thumbnails,galleries, and your latest prose. It’s a lot better than going from document to document inside Google and I’ve really started to appreciate having this opened when a player asks a question about a particle NPC or some history regarding a place they’ve stumbled across. There’s even some nifty D&D templates to help you get started.

Managing NPCs is a lot nicer in Notion than a Google Doc.


Midjourney – Before I start, let me just say that I appreciate anyone who can draw and more importantly am not looking to replace actual artists. That being said, I can only draw really awesome stick figures and unfortunately, that doesn’t do much to excite the senses. Midjourney is an AI art tool that produces some very cool results to help bring your characters to life. You can spit out some free prompts on their discord but for those who want to generate a bunch of art for characters, enemies, and locations, the $10 a month might be worth it. It’s not perfect (as you’ll see below), but for a campaign with loads of characters, it generally gets the job done.

Go home Midjourney, you’re drunk.


Arkenforge – Arkenforge is another program that allows you to create maps and display these maps in person on a TV. More specifically it also adds the ability to do fog of war, which is exactly what I was looking for when I made the decision to start tinkering with map making software. While I still start with Inkarnate for most of my maps, I’ll bring them into Arkenforge and add lighting, ambient sounds, animated magical effects, and enemy tokens. It’s a program that is constantly getting updated with a great Discord channel and offers additional map packs for more assets. I find it to be more than worth the one time price of $35.

DNDBeyond – DNDBeyond has come a long way, even from a few years ago. Managing your characters, your campaigns, your encounters, any homebrew stuff you might create and weaving in all the digital books from D&D really makes things much easier and accessible. This is especially true for my group who had no idea how to play when we first started. While I still prefer physical dice instead of their digital dice, my group is a mix of pen/paper, a phone, a tablet, and a MAC. Everyone has access to the content I’ve purchased because of my subscription status which keeps things organized and relatively cost effective. If my group has questions about their abilities I can look at their character sheet online and provide feedback. DNDBeyond is one of those tools I picked up in right from the start and have been using it ever since.

The Table – I don’t consider myself much of a craftsman but as they say, necessity is the mother of all inventions. I’ve gone through two iterations of displays for the two campaigns I’ve done. Since we display our maps digitally, I needed something that would lay down in a table (or on a table). At first I didn’t want to go too big, because the current house we lived in didn’t allow us to plop down a table specifically for D&D. So, I encased a spare TV that I had into a nice little box with a heavy duty handle so that it can be placed onto a table whenever we played and stored when we weren’t. Get some nice wood, add some fancy trim around it, smash nails, screw some screws, stain it, and call it a day. This was a fun little project and the TV was only 27″ so not too heavy to lug around. When it came time to play we’d put it in the middle of my dining table, plug it into my laptop and project whatever we wanted. When we first started playing I was using the DND tiles, but managing those was a pain and adjusting for fog of war never felt right to me. Going digital allowed me to bring in my diverse landscapes and obscure certain parts of the map.

It was like having a very weird painting I move around the house.

When COVID hit we moved (didn’t everyone, at least it seemed like it around my way). Moving gave me the opportunity to upgrade my woodworking skills – that and the fact that our new neighbor was moving out and getting rid of his dining table. Saving a lot of time and money I repurposed their table, adding more countertop space, cup holders, and a space for a larger, 42″ TV. I’m happy with how this turned out! It allows for bigger maps, room for at least six people, an area to roll dice, some beers/drinks, and room for each player’s necessities.


Bardify – You can’t play D&D without having some appropriate music to fit your situation. Well, you can, but that’s pretty boring. Whether it be encounters, something atmospheric, or a situation that calls for something more distinct, Bardify has you covered. I’ve been using their music for a couple of years now and have never been disappointed. There’s loads to choose from and they are always providing new content for your D&D situation.

Forgotten Adventures – If you’re in need of tokens, FA is a great resource for anything you might need. Map assets, NPCs, and a treasure trove of enemies, their tokens have a very colorful, detailed, and distinct look that I was instantly drawn towards. I was subscribed to their Patreon for over three years. At around $5-$10 a month, you’re given access to a huge backlog of tokens as well as anything new that comes out. They also have a Discord channel that allows you to find some tokens that the community has created (for those rare instances FA hasn’t made one yet). The only reason I’ve slowed down on the subscription is due to the next tool in my arsenal.

Bambu Lab A1 Mini – My newest toy, the A1 mini is a great and more importantly, cost effective 3d printer. If you’re looking into printing and painting your own models, I would give this model a look. Sure, it’s not a resin printer, which by most accounts, is the better printer when looking for detailed minatures, but with resin being smelly and toxic (not to mention each print needs to be cleaned and cured), I stopped looking in that direction. After a lot of researched I finally settled on the Mini and couldn’t be happier. It has a small bed than most (hence it being called Mini) but produces some very good prints with some minor tweaking in the settings. After purchasing a .2mm nozzle and researching some how to videos on Youtube (search A1 mini DnD mini printing) I was off printing some fabulous minis made possible by mz4250. This generous bloke has done 3d printing enthusiasts a favor by offering up all of the fair use D&D monsters as well as some of his own creative ideas. All you need to do is grab the files, load them up in the Bambu software, tweak the settings, and sit back and watch your creations come to life.

Once you have the right file you can tweak it using Bambu’s own software. Easy to learn and use, 3d printing is not as intimidating as I thought it would be.

Once you get good at it, don’t be surprised if you’re lining up minis in no time. They might not be perfect, but my group really enjoys them and it’s nice to have their 3d printed characters fight against other 3d printed minis and not digital tokens.

The gang is all here: Earth elementals, an Umber Hulk, and a few basilisks.

As I continue my campaign there might be new tools I use, depending on my needs. The important thing to remember is to never feel intimated by learning new software or acquiring a new skill. Thankfully a lot of my needs don’t require too much dedication to any particular skill, and I’m not obsessed with perfection. My goal is to make sure my group has fun and I’m happy with the effort I put forth. So far, I think I’ve succeeded. Hopefully this post helps unlock some ideas or points you in the right direction.