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List of Digital GM Tools

JohnnFour

Game Master
Staff member
Adamantium WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Gamer Lifestyle
Demonplague Author
Borderland Explorer
This list will start small and grow over time. Please share below what apps and sites you use to help your GMing. The goal here is to list only good tools — ones you'd give at least a 3 star rating to.

Campaign Organization

Maps

Mapping Apps — Standalone

Mapping Apps — Online

Free Maps

Online Gaming / Virtual Gaming

Virtual Tabletops (VTTs)

Online Gaming Aids

Online Dice Rollers

Generators

Suggest a category in the comments below. And please share your links to good tools.
 
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Colubris

New member
Silver WoA
Wizard of Combat
Generators:

donjon.bin.sh
Markov name generator, generators for general fantasy & sci-fi and specific games: Pathfinder, 4e, 5e, Microlite, Traveller

ChaoticShiny.com
You need to see for yourself. Just all the generators. Some wacky, almost all useful.
 

JohnnFour

Game Master
Staff member
Adamantium WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Gamer Lifestyle
Demonplague Author
Borderland Explorer
Fantastic suggestions. Thanks. I've added them to the list.
 

ELF

Generator Sage
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
I'd be wary about recommending Realm Works at this point. Lone Wolf has stopped development, so when they eventually turn off the servers, you will not be able to create new campaigns or automatically synch the databases.
 

JohnnFour

Game Master
Staff member
Adamantium WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Gamer Lifestyle
Demonplague Author
Borderland Explorer
I'd be wary about recommending Realm Works at this point. Lone Wolf has stopped development, so when they eventually turn off the servers, you will not be able to create new campaigns or automatically synch the databases.
I read the announcement too. It's a bummer. Do you think it's permanent @ELF?
 

ELF

Generator Sage
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Do you think it's permanent @ELF?
According to the publisher, it is. According to them, Realm Works did not succeed commercially and Lone Wolf is now working on another tool that is planned to duplicate some of the Realm Works functionality.
 

Zedwimer

Member
Wizard of Story
Holy moley, I missed that announcement! Thanks for pointing that out @ELF. That is really disappointing. I love Realm Works, but it's not exactly easy to use... so I can see how it might have been difficult to really get it out there and make money on it.

Edit: I also own Scrivener (https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener) (which I use for story writing). Scrivener has some of the same functionality as Realm Works (primarily the flexible document hierarchy and linking), so I may run an experiment and port one of my campaigns from Realm Works to Scrivener and see whether it would be practical as a campaign organizer.

Note: I'm not recommending Scrivener as a campaign organizer just yet. Not only have I not tested it for this purpose (see above), it appears Literature & Latte's website is down at the moment (though the forums are up) and for some reason Scrivener is unavailable for purchase on Amazon. It's a bit hard to recommend software under such circumstances...
 
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JohnnFour

Game Master
Staff member
Adamantium WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Gamer Lifestyle
Demonplague Author
Borderland Explorer
I use Scrivener too! Based on mindset, it could be great for campaign management. I actually used it in 2019 as an experiment for two campaigns but I was really using it for tree-based/hierarchical note organization.

I hope they get version 3 out for Windows soon. I'm on a Mac with V3 and my files are incompatible for others on PCs who help me with publishing and layout.
 

Monsen

Member
Platinum WoA
Wizard of Story
Well, I wouldn't have been able to any of my mapping without Campaign Cartographer (www.profantasy.com). It can be on the expensive side if you want to pick up all the add-ons, and not everyone finds it intuitive to learn (it depends a bit where you come from), but once you have mastered it, it is one of the more powerful packages out there. And the license agreement is much more user-friendly than a lot of the cheaper alternatives. For the developers out there, it is also possible to extend the program (using C++), I've written some tutorials about that.

And since you have a separate section for free maps, I guess I should mention atlas.monsen.cc. Over 400 maps there now.

And since you have VTT's there as well, my favourite is MapTool. I actually use it for an at-table digital battle map (I never could get around to paint all those physical miniatures).

Of course, since I am recommending Campaign Cartographer, I'll also point out that I do some paid work for them, but I used to be an owner of all their software long before they started paying me, so this isn't me trying to make a quick buck of you people.
 

ELF

Generator Sage
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Well, I wouldn't have been able to any of my mapping without Campaign Cartographer (www.profantasy.com). It can be on the expensive side if you want to pick up all the add-ons, and not everyone finds it intuitive to learn (it depends a bit where you come from), but once you have mastered it, it is one of the more powerful packages out there. And the license agreement is much more user-friendly than a lot of the cheaper alternatives.

Also, the Campaign Cartographer license is available for half price until further notice.
 

BahneGorkDK

Active member
Wizard of Story
Gamer Lifestyle
I purchased Wonderdraft and Dungeonsdraft they are pretty awesome, youtuber Icarus games has some great tutorials for them
 
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Hannu

Mythras Guru
Gold WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
I find the Campaign Cartographer tools powerful but learning curve is a bit much. They only work on PC and I can't be bothered anymore to have the Fusion to run only that.
 

Hannu

Mythras Guru
Gold WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Here are some tools:
https://tabletopaudio.com

For Mythras
https://tools.notesfrompavis.com (built on top of campaign logger generators
http://skoll.xyz/mythras_eg/ Mythras Encounter Generator

One page dungeon maps https://watabou.itch.io/one-page-dungeon
Dungeon map generator https://dungen.app/dungen/
Medieval city generators https://watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generator
Die roller https://rolz.org
Language generator https://www.vulgarlang.com
Story Engine Card Creator https://cardcreator.storyenginedeck.com
 

Monsen

Member
Platinum WoA
Wizard of Story
I find the Campaign Cartographer tools powerful but learning curve is a bit much. They only work on PC and I can't be bothered anymore to have the Fusion to run only that.
It is unsupported, but it does run fine under Wine/Crossover. I know many users who rely on that. Still an extra piece of software required, but it is quite a bit less overhead when compared to running a virtual machine for it.
 

BahneGorkDK

Active member
Wizard of Story
Gamer Lifestyle
Also for random stuff the book "ultimate toolbox" and it's predecessor "toolbox" are amazing, it also has names by culture in it's appendix. It has worldbuilding tables, map tables, on the fly adventure plots, villains, etc.. very cool stuff. I have always wanted an electronic version of it
 

ELF

Generator Sage
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Artbreeder can be really useful, and works for landscapes as well!

If the end results are a bit too photo-like to your liking, Portrait AI comes to the rescue. Unfortunately it currently works only for passport-like photos, i.e. you cannot have much extra content or non-standard direction or framing. Profile images don't work either.
 
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