Dragonlance D&D Game Blog

Hidden away in the bowels of the WotC website are a great collection of tools and generators for DMs. It's a shame that they haven't been supporting these kinds of products for awhile now, long before the announcement of 4th edition. I think they really dropped the ball on the chance to build great loyalty among DMs with these time saving devices. Now one argument is that DMs only represent 1/6th of the game audience (the other 5/6ths being players), but the amount of financial investment a DM has (DM guide, campaign setting books, splat books, etc) is significantly greater than a player (PHB, PHB2, and maybe a few of the splat books) and therefore they represent a much larger financial share of the audience. Also a DM has the power to influence some players away from one game to another simply by running one game over another. OK... the rant is over... Anyway, here's the archive page of the tools WotC has on it's site, including name and background generators as well...

Here's another great link: http://www.emass-web.com/index.htm Here you can create dynamic character sheets choosing from a bunch of blocks to include in the sheet... and once you make your selection, it builds a PDF file for you to keep and reuse as needed. What I really like is the customizable spell lists. I can select what sources I want to include (just PHB, or do I include BoVD spells as well ?) and what type of caster I am and then... BAM! I got a PDF of spells by level. The spell descriptions are brief, "just the facts", but also include page refs for the full details. It's not meant to replace PHB, or SC, but I think it does make running spell casters a bit easier. See for yourself and let me know if you agree...

First in a series of posts on some of my favorite links for D&D. The Hypertext d20 SRD This is without a doubt one of the most useful links I have. I've just recently gotten back into the DM's chair (and my first time running a lengthly 3.5 game) and I find this site useful for so many reasons. The encounter calculator alone is worth this link being at the top of any DM's list, but the hyperlinked SRD content is also valuable when you need to look up a spell, feat, or almost anything else. Granted, not everything in the D&D Core Books is in the SRD, but there's enough to satisfy most of your needs, and if you keep up on what didn't make it to the SRD, you shoudn't get too frustrated when you can't find it there.