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

[Algorithmancer]

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?

 

[Lanefan]

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.

 

[Distracted DM]

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


Obsidian'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.
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.

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.

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.