So, after almost 2 decades I decided to 0lay DND again. Since I have been and always will be forever DM, I’ve been reading up.
I am very charmed about the idea of foundry (that I have a liscence to (what can I say, I’m impulsive)), but have no experience with.
So: DM’s and players that play locally: how do you play?
Do you do oldstyle pen and paper? Printed maps? 3d printed? Foundry for battle and the rest theatre of the mind? Weird combos?
Tell me and inspire me to navigate my fresh crew and myself through this new and perilous world.
Edit: did NOT expect so many reactions so fast here, loving it.
I've been running a Star Wars DnD campaign since mid 2020. The 5e rules module incorporating SW5E.com content is top notch. It allows me to easily create battles with tons of low level minions that my players absolutely love mowing down.
How do I plan sessions? My campaign is less of an open world and more of a story. I always try to set up any puzzle/combat/scenario so that there are three ways to solve it. 1) way of the warrior (players just want to kick in doors), 2) way of the scholar/mage (players find a secret that allows them to mitigate or more easily defeat the boss), and 3) way of the scoundrel/investigator (a hidden exploit that allows them to completely bypass or nullify the problem).
I try to follow this strategy in fights, social intrigue, investigations, and so on. It can be as simple or complex as you want, although the more complex it is, the more likely your players will miss it. Many times it comes down to if-then analysis. I'll describe a scene, my players will describe how they want to interact with it, and then I'm forced to think about how things would be in relation to what they want to try. Sometimes I will roll percentage dice to see how close the scene is to what players described (usually reserved for theater of the mind).
As far as setting up battlemaps, I'm really lucky. I'm a subscriber to
, and he has a knack for creating map offerings of exactly what I need a few weeks to a month before I need it. I will try to set up each map prior to the session, and populate it with bad guys and so forth. Ctrl+C and Ctrl-V copy/paste.selected light objects and is a huge time saver. I do use multi-level maps, but sometimes stairwell and elevator tiles can be finicky when it's game time, so I have to rest those maps thoroughly before using them (and even then half the time they are broken anyway). I also use ChatGPT for creating random NPCs, shop owners, minor party characters, etc.
Bottom line, FoundryVTT and ChatGPT have allowed me to save HUGE amounts of time with scene creation and NPC stat blocks so that I can focus on the story plot, and then allows a LOT of automating battles. This allows my players to feel epic and like the world is their oyster.
How, how do you use chatgpt for scene creation …
Asking for my players.
I don't use ChatGPT for scene creation, but for creating stat blocks for minor NPCs. My scenes are all handwritten in a notebook unfortunately. I keep telling myself someday I will digitize them into PDFs/modules, but I'm at about 3 years of content right now 😬
There are a few good creators on r/battlemaps that have patreon subs available (with many freebies too on that subreddit). I also have purchased dungeondraft, but as of yet have not delved into creating my own maps. I generally find something "close enough" and then tell my players what specifically is different in the scene should it come up.