Scenario and setting design, with GM and players in mind

[Ruin Explorer]

DDI was very helpful. I did what you are talking about, just went through the monster stat blocks, found ones that did what I wanted, quickly reskinned them in the monster tool, and printed out the stat blocks to files, pulled them all into GIMP, filled pages with them, and then saved them to my wiki and printed out a copy to use at the table. lol.

Great minds think alike lol. I used a PDF tool but otherwise very similar. I still have reams and reams of PDF'd monsters and reskins and so on on my Google drive.

EDIT - Oh wow actually lie I see I did EXACTLY what you did at times, I've got image files where I must have chopped stuff in so I could cram more on a page for printing out.

But yeah point is that was easy DMing days, and 5E has never since got back there, sadly.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Great minds think alike lol. I used a PDF tool but otherwise very similar. I still have reams and reams of PDF'd monsters and reskins and so on on my Google drive.

EDIT - Oh wow actually lie I see I did EXACTLY what you did at times, I've got image files where I must have chopped stuff in so I could cram more on a page for printing out.

But yeah point is that was easy DMing days, and 5E has never since got back there, sadly.

Yeah, well, I just don't run 5e, lol. I mean, I have had fun playing it with people I really like to game with, but 5e was not actually the factor there in terms of why I wanted to play those games.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Yeah, well, I just don't run 5e, lol. I mean, I have had fun playing it with people I really like to game with, but 5e was not actually the factor there in terms of why I wanted to play those games.

I ran 5E for quite a long time and I'm on a break from running it now myself yeah. Like I just can't be doing with the level of prep combined with the intentional crumminess of the tools.

And I do say intentional - D&D Beyond specifically repeatedly refused to improve their monster-search tool (which is one of the most vital parts for prep), for example to allow you to limit it to sources you actually own, or to even retain constraints you set (like save a search setup), like if you manually limited it to sources you actually own. Either would have been absolutely trivial to implement - and that's not speaking from ignorance, that's speaking from knowing what kind of tool they have there, and what's hard and what's not. To be fair they never tried that as a defense. Really early on, they were unfortunately-for-them very honest, and said the reason they don't think it's a priority to have limit to your own stuff or to your settings, is they believe they will make a lot of money from people impulse-buying stuff to get access to a monster - as any search where you don't click literally 20+ times (not an overstatement) to select the right sources will always include stuff you don't have access to. Back then their decision-making was also very much predicated on trying to push a package where you bought every single D&D book (which they've gradually pushed less over time). Aaaanyway later changed their tune to "oh we'll do it, it's on the list!", but it's been what, 5 years? 6? since they said they said it was "on the list", and we've had far to implement far more niche stuff with tons of effort dumped into it (like containers for equipment being tracked, and even I think containers containing containers - I'm sorry but that is harder to do that limiting a search, especially you already have the capability to limit the search, you just make people do the clicking you could do automatically!).

It's possible things will change now, because I think WotC's long-term goals are less nickel-and-dime-y, and more about providing an indispensable service (which WotC's DDI did for 4E, if you used it), but right now? We're still stuck with that stuff.