As we're all aware, DMing is a big job. You're in charge of a lot, but thankfully there are tons of assets, books and websites out there that can help you out on your quest to provide the best adventure. This list seeks to consolidate some of those easily accessible websites that aim to make your life easy.
1. Dungeon Scrawl
This easy to use system makes mapping out dungeons a breeze. It works right in your browser, is incredibly easy to pick up, and includes lists of image assets to include along with the grids you can custom make for yourself. So far it is the fastest and most comprehensive system we've found to build maps, rivaling even pen and paper. You can download a save file so you don't lose your work, and export the final product in a variety of ways. This is the website we use to map the dungeons you see in our Only Crits adventures.
2. Kobold Training Club
Built to replace the sorely missed Kobold Fight Club, this website is the best and fastest way to balance an encounter for your specific party. You can set the number of characters in your party and what level they are so that you can customize for your group. You can search based on minimum and maximum CR you want, sizes, environments, alignments, as well as picking whether you want an easy, medium, hard or deadly encounter. It is incredibly invaluable as a tool, and super handy to figure out some enemies to throw at your party on the fly.
3. Fantasy Name Generator
There is a wide variety of ways to come up with names for your NPCs, but if you're looking to stay in a specific universe there is no way more comprehensive than this website. You can search based on a wide variety of sources and universes, or simply generate a random list of names from any of those sources. The site is easy to use and extensive, absolutely a life saver when you haven't named someone that you were supposed to.
4. Dungeon Glitch
Theatre of the mind is a lot to handle, especially when you're trying to coordinate fights and plot, so dealing with actually describing the world can sometimes take a back seat. But it doesn't have to, thanks to Dungeon Glitch, which generates descriptions based off of the situation your players find themselves in. It's quick and easy to use, and still in its beta which means they're going to continue adding features to make it even more useful.
5. 5th SRD
This particular website organizes all the Monsters in the officially released materials based on CR, rather than alphabetically. It's a simple distinction, but when you're creating encounters, and you don't want them to be randomized, it helps a lot to see them laid out based purely on difficulty.
6. The Homebrewery
We would be remiss if we did not mention the website that allows us to do all the formatting for our adventures. They make anything you write look as if it was hot off the presses from WotC. It's easily customizable, fast to learn and works like a dream. If you plan on sending something you write to those other than yourself, run it through the Homebrewery first to give it that extra sparkle.
7. Inkarnate
The free version of this world mapping software is once again super easy to use and incredibly helpful if you're trying to whip up a map for the overworld. They offer various images for towns, mountains, trees, fields, and provide a nice large blank canvas to work with.
With these tools you should easily be able to craft everything from dungeon maps to world maps, well balanced encounters to deadly fights, descriptions and formatting. Any issue you might run across probably has some solution or way to approach using one of these websites. And if you're not sure if there's anything else you're missing, check out the rest of our blog posts!