Happy GM’s Day!
For over twenty years, March 4th has been a day dedicated to appreciating our Game Masters, Dungeon Masters, Storytellers, Keepers, MCs, and so on. They put remarkable effort into making sure their players have an engaging and entertaining playground to chase adventure and do delightful nonsense they’ll be thinking fondly about years later.
GMing can be hard, depending on the game and person, but it is worth it!
While it might seem weird to see TTRPG content here, we deal in all kinds of digital goodies, and there is no shortage of extremely handy software all about preparing for and running tabletop RPG adventures and campaigns.
So, in honor of GM’s Day, let’s talk about four arbitrarily chosen programs which might elevate your GMing into the digital era.
TL;DR — Tools for Game Masters
- Fantasy Grounds – a long-running virtual tabletop for online campaigns.
- TaleSpire – a 3D environment builder for immersive tabletop maps.
- Obsidian – a powerful note-taking tool for campaign organization.
- Dungeon Alchemist – a fast procedural map generator for instant encounters.
Table of Contents
Fantasy Grounds
In some ways, a grandparent of the modern batch of Virtual Tabletops. Fantasy Grounds dates back to 2004, and for the past twenty-something years has reigned almost unchallenged as a comprehensive, powerful, richly featured software you can use to run online campaigns in a multitude of supported systems.
In the past, FG was a premium product, now it’s Free to Play, but its various premium packages, rule implementations etc. remain paid, and the Steam version has nearly 4000 DLC with rulebooks, assets, and other fun stuff.
TaleSpire
TaleSpire lets you build fully 3D maps out of premade assets and then invite players to control their minis inside immersive locations. It’s like a digital equivalent of building a table-sized battle map out all the hand-made or purchased bits and bobs.
TaleSpire
Release Date: April 15, 2021
Genres: Role-playing (RPG), Simulator, Indie
While it doesn’t have particularly versatile system support, aesthetically it can handle science fiction as easily as fantasy, and offers the kind of verticality and special effects other VTTs, and even in-person games can struggle to offer.
It takes a chunk of work if you want to make a fully custom map, since it’s, to an extent, like video game level design, but the return on investment is incredible.
TaleSpire has even been featured in multiple seasons of Dimension 20, one of the most popular TTRPG Actual Play shows!
Obsidian
This one’s an app every GM should at least give a chance to, because it might dramatically improve game management.
Obsidian is, at its core, a tremendously powerful and flexible note-taking app with markdown formatting, relationship graphs, canvas for your Pepe Silvia conspiracy theory maps, and a ton of various plugins expanding the functionality with things like dice rollers, labelling, or dedicated formatting options for various systems.
It’s lightweight, easy to learn, and clearly structured. Good stuff.
Obsidian is free and works offline, but there are also paid plans for those who want to synchronise notes across devices easily and safely, or publish their vaults to a website.
Dungeon Alchemist
While TaleSpire is a high-prep solution, Dungeon Alchemist is extremely handy as a “holy crap, I need a map right now!” solution you whip out when you call a biobreak between scenes of an ongoing session.
Dungeon Alchemist
Release Date: March 31, 2022
Genres: Role-playing (RPG), Simulator, Indie
Through what feels like magic (or, indeed, alchemy), this nifty piece of map-making software only needs you to draw the dimensions of a room and pick a theme, and it will handle populating it with convincing detail in seconds.
It creates 3D environments smoothly, allows you to add and tweak detail yourself, and then helps you export it all to work with your virtual tabletop of choice.
If you’re worried it’s using generative AI, the creators assure that it’s just procedural generation algorithms and artist-created assets.
Nothing Compares to Your Brain
This list is just a tiny handful of tools available thanks to the modern surge of TTRPG popularity.
There is a multitude of virtual tabletops to make it easier to play regardless of distance, tons of amazing map-making software for campaigns, adventures, and your personal writing projects, and lots of information-management tools.
It’s never been easier to be (and become!) a Game Master, but ultimately it’s always been the GMs’ (and the players!) creative minds that made a home game feel like Baldur’s Gate 3 or VtM Bloodlines.
And we should never forget that, least of all on GM’s Day!
Now go and stop procrastinating the prep.
I know you are.
We are.