Running a campaign in D&D can be demanding, but these online tools will help any DM stay on top of things.

Being a DM for Dungeons & Dragons takes a lot of work. Fortunately, there are plenty of tools to help you, especially if you are playing online rather than at a physical table. If you need something to help you generate ideas, there's a website for that. Design a map? There's another online tool for that too.

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With D&D becoming more and more popular, there is so much advice and assistance available to you online. You never have to feel overwhelmed by prep work or running the system. Whether you are running a fun one-shot for your friends or are about to embark on a multiple-session-long epic, here are some helpful tools that will streamline the process for you.

Updated September 30, 2022, by Luke Ackroyd: Being a dungeon master takes a lot of work and effort. So, when playing DND online, tools are vital for enhancing your campaign. There are, fortunately, so many D&D DM tools available for you to try. There is something for everything — from music and ambiance sources to worldbuilding DM tools. A lot of the time, these are entirely free, or at least have a free version you can try out. The more dungeon master tools you have at your disposal, the easier it can be to prep for your sessions. To help with that, even more DND online tools have been added to this article.

Playing music is a great way to improve your online sessions. Having a soundtrack playing in the background of a scene is one of the most important aspects of crafting an atmosphere for your session. The right tune or ambient sound can help everyone feel fully immersed in a fantasy world. There are plenty of places for you to source music, but an excellent tool for finding both ambiance and music is TabletopAudio.

On the website, there is quite a varied selection of tracks to choose from. It is even divided into genres if you want to take a break from fantasy and delve into a sci-fi setting, or perhaps a horror campaign. You can select the tracks you like and set up a playlist for your next session.

The Goblin's Notebook is a wonderful site for organizing your session notes all in one place. The site is available for free for access to one campaign. But, to support the creator and get all the features available, there are two subscription levels to select from. Whether you pay for the service or not, it is a helpful tool that can help you plot out the entire campaign, right down to specific acts.

It is also a valuable tool to have available in the middle of a session. You could jot down a quick summary of the town that the players are going to be visiting soon. Within this note, you can have links to details about specific NPCs they might interact with while they are there. Everything is just a click away, and is easy to navigate.

Discord is not only a fantastic way to play D&D online with your friends, but it can also help log everything that happens in the campaign. Everyone can then read these notes between sessions. Creating a Discord server for your campaign will help keep everything organized. You can even use Discord bots to create schedules and ensure everyone is clear on when the next session will be.

You can create channels for lots of different topics. There could be channels for session recaps, in-character discussions, images, quest logs, and more. You can even set up areas that are only visible to certain members. This is an excellent way to interact with your players one on one. Your players can detail their backstories without sharing all of their secrets with the rest of the group. You can also use these private channels to send them details that only their character would know during a session.

Have you found the perfect image somewhere for your new Elven NPC? You can quickly craft a token for it with RollAdvantage. This website is straightforward to use. You can upload an image of your choice, and it will create a helpful token for you to use in your next online session. You can customize the type of ring surrounding the character and set colors. The image always has transparency around the token.

The website also has a dice roller if you need one as well. It's a quick, reliable way to handle your ability checks mid-session.

If you are crafting your own homebrewed world, such as making your very own domain of dread, you'll want some epic maps to show the party. Inkarnate is a beautiful tool to make use of online. You will be able to create large maps of your entire world, including placing roads and points of interest. The final maps always look incredible and are easily altered.

A lot of its content is behind a subscription fee, such as the ability to use certain assets and tools. But the free version is still great to make use of, and your friends will be impressed.

D&D Beyond is your go-to place for all official content from the hobby. The latest books are readily available on the website for quick reference. It can be a lot easier to search for a specific rule or monster stat block online rather than flicking through the physical books.

D&D Beyond also has a character sheet creator, allowing your players to craft their characters easily and even roll directly from the sheet. As a DM, you can connect these players to a specific campaign party, so it is easy to track everyone's stats and HP in the middle of a session.

Kanka is an online tool that allows you to create a vast database of information for your players to check out. You can put in entries for locations, NPCs, maps, and so much more. It is like making a lore book for your players to refer to whenever needed. Did they forget a key detail about a questline? They can look it up on Kanka to double-check things.

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Did the party meet a particularly memorable NPC and have a lovely chat with them? You can craft an entry just for them. You can give your players as much or as little access to each entry as you like. This is great for getting your players more engaged in the world-building side of DND. They can add their backstories and link to specific events in the extensive timeline of your epic campaign.

Donjon is a website full of helpful tools for prepping for your next session. It is a website full of generator tools to help you develop new scenarios for your players to encounter. One of its most exciting features is the dungeon generator. You can create dungeons for various player levels and complexity and get a new dungeon each time. There are also generators for shops and random encounter ideas.

It can be helpful right in the middle of a session as well. If you need to come up with a name for the dwarf the party just met randomly in the tavern, you can quickly use the many name generators on the website. It even has name generators for towns and villages. This website is excellent for improvising on the spot when your players go in an unexpected direction.

Kobold Fight Club is handy when attempting to balance combat within your campaign. You can put in the size of your party and what levels they are, and it will give you a rough idea of how dangerous your suggested combat might be. This could be an easy challenge or a potentially deadly one. You can then adapt your battle based on these results to fine-tune an encounter to be balanced but still provide a challenge for your group.

The website has a wide range of creatures for you to select and compare against your party. You can narrow the search down to specific environments, and even if a monster is in its lair or not, allowing it access to the formidable lair actions that can sometimes tip the odds of a battle in their favor.

No matter what adventure you're running for your friends, it's incredibly likely that some form of combat is going to break out. Improved Initiative is a great website to help you track combat smoothly. Add everyone involved in the fight, roll their initiative, and then you can easily track the order from here. The site even allows you to alter hit points as turns go on.

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You can add in your players' characters, including their stats and other details, and save them for future combat sessions. This, combined with the fact that the website has the stats for many monsters from D&D, makes it a quick and easy tool for online and in-person games.

5e.tools is a beneficial database that allows you to look up rule clarifications easily. Perhaps you need to quickly check how the consequences of a failed puzzle should play out. This website allows you to grab the information you need to make a decision quickly.

An additional feature that is invaluable is the customizable DM screen. This page on the website will have several slots that you can set up before your game. You could decide to put the rules for conditions that might come up in a game or a specific monster's stat sheet. Having all of this displayed clearly during your game takes the stress away from running the adventure.

Whether you're setting up a quick one-shot or starting an epic campaign, Roll20 is a great tool to run your adventure on. You can set up battle maps and have character sheets that you can roll directly from. There is also a combat tracker and a way to measure distance. You can have multiple maps and even hide certain sections from your players. Roll20 is a wonderful and straightforward way to play D&D online.

The website is free to use for both DMs and players, although a subscription service is available to gain access to some additional tools and storage solutions. But honestly, the free version works very well and gives you everything you need to run your adventure.

No matter where you are setting your next campaign, you can't go wrong with Foundry VTT. This software is an excellent choice for running everything you need all in one place. You can self-host and allow your friends to join the server online, or you can also use websites such as The Forge to host the game online for you.

Unlike Roll20, Foundry isn't free. It does require a one-off payment and has a far steeper learning curve to run. But, once you have the basics down, you will see that this online tool is an incredibly valuable investment. You can keep track of so many details you might otherwise forget in an ordinary game. A lot of care has been put into Foundry to craft a truly immersive experience for your players. Everything you need to run D&D is contained within this wonderful software.

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Luke is a list writer for TheGamer, based in the UK. He's a postgraduate from Bournemouth University, having studied Scriptwriting. This probably explains why he loves story-driven games so much. Luke also has a board game obsession, plays a bunch of D&D, and makes silly videos on YouTube.