D&D General My experience with paid D&D tools after 3+ years as a DM/Player

I've been DMing for a while now, currently running 3 campaigns and playing in another. Figured I'd share my thoughts on the paid tools I've actually used and see what others' experiences have been. Full disclosure - I really love boardgames/TTRPGs and like supporting people in the community, so I probably spend more on this stuff than most people. You can use most of these for free but I'm reviewing it as a paying user so keep that in mind.

Obsidian (Note taking/Worldbuilding) - 9/10​

I pay for Obsidian Sync so I can access my notes across devices and sync to the cloud. The ability to link notes together is really useful for tracking NPCs, locations and plot threads. Since I prep on the train to work, having everything synced between my PC and laptop helps a lot.

The sharing features work well - I can give my players access to certain notes about world lore, session recaps, and their character backstories. Way better than trying to remember what I've told them vs what they shouldn't know yet.

Overall way better than other doc tools I've tried like Google docs/notion.

I also received some suggestions for programs that also help with syncing (free, without the subscription) that might be worth checking out

Kanka (Campaign Manager/Worldbuilding) - 6/10​

Kanka has a free tier and paid plans. It's designed specifically for RPG campaign management, which sounds perfect, right?

Not really. While it has dedicated sections for NPCs, locations, timelines, etc I found the interface clunky compared to Obsidian. The organization feels a bit rigid, you're stuck with their structure instead of being able to organize things how your brain works. The search isn't as good and linking between elements doesn't feel as natural.

Kanka wins with campaign/fantasy world specific features like family trees, organization charts and the calendar system. But for actual frequent use I kept going back to Obsidion. If you like very structured style organization, Kanka might work better for you if its style is suited to yours.

Roll20 (VTT) - 8.5/10​

Been using Roll20 Pro for about a year now. The dynamic lighting and line of sight features are fantastic - nothing beats the moment when my players turn a corner and suddenly see an enemy on the map. The fog of war reveals feel so much more dramatic than theater of the mind IMHO.

The interface can be a bit clunky at times but overall it's great and I use this all the time. It handles many of the things I need for running my sessions - maps, tokens, dice rolling, character sheets so I'd say its worth it for sure.

Saga20 (Session Summaries) - 8.5/10​

This tool automatically transcribes and summarizes my D&D sessions, which has pretty much replaced our need for note taking. We still need to refine and update but it gives us a head start which saves time.

It does a good job of picking out the important bits - NPCs mentioned, places visited, items found, etc. It's not perfect but it's accurate enough that it saves us a lot of time. Plus I love that I no longer need to pause and wait for players to finish jotting notes.

The main downside is that I can't share these summaries with my players since they're locked to the platform and theres no feature there, so I end up having to copy it over to Obsidian. Still worth it though.

PrintableHeroes Patreon (Minis) - 7/10​

Miniature models with a nice art style and consistent good quality. They also have a bunch of free models which is nice. That said, I don't use this as much anymore since I printed a bunch of stuff in my first few months and just keep reusing them.

Most of the basic NPCs and monsters I printed back then cover most of what I need. I'll occasionally grab something specific for a boss fight or unique encounter, but the subscription isn't as valuable once you build up a collection.

Syrinscape (Music) - 8.5/10​

This is one of those tools that solves a problem you didn't know you had. Having atmospheric music and sound effects running in the background adds a lot to my games. The tavern sounds, dungeon ambience, combat music - it all makes everything feel more immersive.

The monthly cost stings a bit but it's convenient not having to hunt down music or manage playlists mid-session. I can just pull it up on my phone and adjust things without messing with my laptop.

Overall thoughts​

I spend maybe 30-something bucks a month on all this stuff. Is it worth it? For me, yeah. The time savings alone make it worthwhile, and my players seem to enjoy the sessions more with the music and better organization.

That said, you can definitely run great games without any of this. Did it for a while at the start with just paper and pen and it works too.

I posted this in another sub and got great suggestions for new tools to try or ways to improve my existing usage so thought I'd try here as well

Anyone else have thoughts on these tools? Also has anyone tried any other tools that are worth using?

What degree of tech and-or bandwidth does all this require?

The fog-of-war on Roll20, for example, chokes on either my machine or my bandwidth (probably machine, but my bandwidth isn't great either).

We use (free) Discord for audio and it has ranged from vaguely passable some nights to outright awful on others, depending on what seems like random chance. And that's across all of us, no matter what tech and bandwidth we have.

Appreciate reviews like these, I'm sure they're very helpful to a lot of folk here


Obsidian.md's been a hurdle I couldn't get over... I couldn't grok it, and I didn't have an "Example DnD Campaign" to load up and reverse-engineer tounderstand what made it tick I'm jealous of folk that get it working. (Obsidian - Sharpen your thinking)

As far as campaign management/notes/worldbuilding.. the only platform that was perfect for me (I could learn it, and it did what I wanted) was Obsidian Portal, but they were bought out many years ago, enshittified. I hear they got better at some point afterwards, but I felt burned. (https://www.obsidianportal.com/)

There are a number of LLM transcription-to-summary services budding up now... I'm (not?) surprised that some of them are charging as they're all in active development, but there are some good ones out there that are free as they're developed. One that I've tried is Archivist AI, it's currently no-cost (if someone's trying to dip their toes without paying) and AFAIK you can share the summaries. (Automatic Notes for Your TTRPG Campaign | Archivist AI)

As far as VTTs go, FoundryVTT is superior to Roll20 is most respects, but Roll20 is definitely the more plug-n-play platform... unless you go with a FVTT hosting service like Forge, in which case FVTT is pretty plug-n-play. I was frustrated with Roll20's limitations, poor performance, etc. and it almost burned me out on VTTs.. luckily I found FoundryVTT months later (in 2021) and have been very, very happy ever since. I will say that I have considered self-hosting, rather than paying for a host service.. not because of the cost, but because I do see the occasional outage with Forge, maybe 1-2/month.. which can be darned inconvenient if you're running 4-6 sessions/week.

I've looked at the printable heroes patreon before, but haven't pulled the trigger on it... actually, there's another one that does a huge variety of npc+monster portraits that lets you vary them (color and details, of say, a bugbear to make it look different from the last bugbear)... what's that one called? Dang. Tip of my tongue.

As far as music goes, I use Kenku to broadcast my youtube/spotify into my Discord voice channels.

Algorithmancer said:

Obsidian (Note taking/Worldbuilding) - 9/10

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Thank you for your post!

One question: Is this Obsidian - Sharpen your thinking

Doc_Klueless said:

Thank you for your post!

One question: Is this Obsidian - Sharpen your thinking

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more likely: https://www.obsidianportal.com/

Doc_Klueless said:

Thank you for your post!

One question: Is this Obsidian - Sharpen your thinking

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Yes, I am very sure that's the one. Awesome piece of software, very easy to use, if you don't overcomplicate it from the start.

In my experience, most people use Roll20 for video and Discord for audio. I know your post was about paid tools, but I'm curious if you use Discord or some other audio tool.

And thank you for the write-up.

Algorithmancer said:

Anyone else have thoughts on these tools? Also has anyone tried any other tools that are worth using?

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Thanks for posting, I've tried some of the tools and features mentioned, so throwing in my 2c...

From the player side, dynamic lighting has always felt like an anti-feature to me . Often it means I can't see what anyone else is doing during a combat, which throws me out of the game faster than a hasted monk. Worse case is you're a human and there's no light around so you're staring at a blank screen for most of the combat. From the DM side, I found setting up walls/visibility areas was too tedious/time consuming for the benefit. I also want the map to show me where I've been, even if it's greyed out because I can't see it at the moment due to lighting/line of sight. No dynamic lighting engine really does this as far as I have experienced.

On the VTTs: Roll20 has always felt clunky to me, and Foundry feels both complicated and too automated (as in, it blurs into feeling like a computer RPG, not a TTRPG, if too many of the add-ons are in play) and it seems heavy on the maintenance side (plugins are constantly breaking due to updates, if the grumbles of the DM's I've played with are any indication!). I use ShardTabletop now in my games, having found it's a great middle ground between those extremes.

On notes/worlds: At the free tier, I used Kanka over Obsidian in one campaign simply because it was hosted and could be shared easily with the players. I guess it's not an issue if you've subbed, but for convenience it won out at the time.

Nice post. Got me re-thinking about a few things you mentioned.

Sound... I've tried this before and my players found that after a few minutes it was repetitive and they just turned it off. How do folks keep the music fresh and not spend hours per session prepping just for sound? Fantasy Grounds has a Syrinscpae integration, but I haven't tried it yet, I don't mind paying, but I don't like subscriptions.

I've been dabbling with sessioneer.cc for Discord transcriptions, but it's one of those things that I wonder, do we need session summaries? Would anyone bother reading them or even refering to them? Maybe if I loaded them into my Google LM Notebook... I'll probably worry about this sooner than most of the other ideas.

As for Roll20, why'd you pick it over the other options?
Like others, I've found it to have significant issues and it's much more experience than the other top tier VTTs. Fantasy Grounds is $25 right now for a one-time license. And Foundry is only $50 for a one-time license. Both have everything you say you are using plus a lot more. And their are free ones that have FoW etc if you are looking for something simple.

Campaign management... why not just do this in the VTT? Is Roll20 not capable of it? I use FG and just build what I need in there. It's good but not great at it, but then I never have to transfer between a campaign tool and the play tool.

What about map making? I've used Campaign Cartographer for a long time. It's excellent for capabilities, but it's not simple to use. It can be quick, depending upon how familiar one is with it and how much you want to find a unique style for the map. What do others do for maps?

LordEntrails said:

Nice post. Got me re-thinking about a few things you mentioned.

Sound... I've tried this before and my players found that after a few minutes it was repetitive and they just turned it off. How do folks keep the music fresh and not spend hours per session prepping just for sound? Fantasy Grounds has a Syrinscpae integration, but I haven't tried it yet, I don't mind paying, but I don't like subscriptions.

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Like you, I find that music only really works in-person. I spent a while trying to set it up online and it was more distracting or repetitive than helpful in setting up the mood.

I still love to make playlists for in-person play though!