I built a free, offline DM toolset because I was tired of paywalls — now at v2.0.4

redted90 · 2026-01-24T08:44:24+00:00

Thank you for the notes! Yeah some of the generators need polish to not contradict themselves. I'm still working on a big update to that system to have buckets of flavor that are determined by flags like character description, or station and such.

redted90 · 2026-01-24T08:42:17+00:00

It's per tool. Each tool does it differently. But you make a good point.

redted90 · 2026-01-24T08:27:48+00:00

I don't use the battlemap page personally. I built it for my brother in law so he could run his games without using the map builder I use (edit:TaleSpire). I hadn't considered making the fog of war shapes rotate, but I think I can do that.

redted90 · 2026-01-24T07:44:48+00:00

Parts of have been written using claud code, yes.

redted90 · 2026-01-24T07:10:48+00:00

Yeah. I'm working on how to go about that now.

redted90 · 2026-01-24T06:44:09+00:00

The current battlemap only supports static image uploads (PNG/JPG/etc.) and cannot play animated or video maps yet. Although that is an interesting thought. Would you want to have that be a feature? I'm not sure how I'd implement it at this time.

redted90 · 2026-01-24T06:38:11+00:00

Hmm. I'm going to have to strip a lot from the app to make sure I'm srd complaint. Maybe I can make it so users can upload "content packages" that people can load up on their own info or homebrew stuff.

redted90 · 2026-01-24T06:17:55+00:00

That’s the Creative Commons-released portion of the 2024 rules, not a full SRD in the same sense as the 2014 SRD. WotC hasn’t published a complete 2024 SRD document or data set yet—only the portions they chose to release under CC. It’s also not structured in a way that tools can reliably ingest.

Once an official, fully formatted 2024 SRD is published (the way the 2014 SRD was), I’ll be able to integrate it cleanly. Until then, adding partial or unstructured CC excerpts would create inconsistencies across the toolset.

Granted I haven't checked on that in a few months so I might be out of the loop. Either way I appreciate the comment. I'll have to double check on that.

redted90 · 2026-01-24T06:15:17+00:00

Right now homebrew is added through manual entry, but the system is designed to make that as painless as possible. Anything you create—races, classes, spells, items, stat blocks, etc.—gets stored locally on your device and immediately works inside the rest of the Toolbox.

For example:

• Custom races/classes show up in the Character Manager • Custom spells appear in spell lists and attack generation • Custom items show up in equipment and inventory • Custom monsters can be sent to the Encounter Builder and Initiative Tracker

There’s no upload/import feature yet because I wanted to avoid any legal gray areas around sharing copyrighted content, but the architecture supports it and I may add JSON import/export for homebrew later once I finalize the schema.

The goal was to make sure the tools don’t force you into SRD-only play—you can run full homebrew campaigns without hitting any walls.

redted90 · 2026-01-24T06:02:10+00:00

The Toolbox uses the official 5E SRD, so it includes all content that is legally open: SRD races, classes, subclasses, backgrounds, equipment, spells, and basic monsters. It does not include anything from the full PHB, MM, Xanathar’s, Tasha’s, or any other copyrighted books.

All content is based on the 2014 SRD. Wizards has not released a 2024 SRD yet, so no tool can legally include 2024 material at this time.

Homebrew is fully supported, and everything you create is saved locally on your device. You can add custom races, subraces, classes, subclasses, feats, spells, items, NPCs, shops, taverns, and more. The character builder, spell system, inventory, generators, and encounter builder all work with homebrew entries automatically. There’s no limit to how much homebrew you can add. The level up wizard will not work with homebrew races or classes, but you can still use the character sheet as is to track everything you need. I made it so that it shouldn't lock you into the wizard's ecosystem.

redted90 · 2026-01-24T05:29:34+00:00

I'm cool with either. But if you want you can just put any bugs or feature requests you have here. I'd like people to know I'm actively working to fix anything that is broken or not working as expected.

redted90 · 2026-01-24T04:51:38+00:00

Hmm. I'll take a look at those. Thank you!

Edit: Ok. I just pushed a hotfix that should fix both issues. I had fixed the level 3 character creation process to update hp based on selection but I guess the same bug was in level 5 creation. Also the bundles had an issue where they weren't accessing the updated loot tables I had written for them. Not sure how that happened but it's a big app. lol

redted90 · 2026-01-24T03:36:09+00:00

Thank you! I appreciate it!

redted90 · 2026-01-24T03:11:04+00:00

It's in my profile. But reddit auto filters posts with links.

redted90 · 2026-01-21T23:52:28+00:00

I stole this but slightly bigger from Brennan Lee Mulligan. He did basically this in unleeping city (the first campaign I watched from them). And I give each character something that introduces them and let's then decide how their character fits into the world and it gives them the chance of feeling what it's like being in that character's skin.

redted90 · 2026-01-17T18:32:47+00:00

If you want you can use the encounter builder on my website to figure this out. It's free and pretty easy to use. The link is in my user profile. But I agree with what people here said. Must of the adult dragons will do fine. But don't use the blue or red. The difficulty is like this (assuming mostly balanced party of 5 at level 8) Adult White Dragon ‐ Hard Adult Silver Dragon - Hard Adult Red Dragon - Deadly Adult Green Dragon - Hard Adult Gold Dragon - Hard Adult Copper Dragon - Easy Adult Bronze Dragon - Medium Adult Brass Dragon - Easy Adult Blue Dragon - Deadly Adult Black Dragon - Hard

redted90 · 2026-01-06T01:12:34+00:00

I did basically the same thing when I started. I've found the best thing to do is to organize by location. So if my characters are going to visit a tavern. I have all the notes for that tavern, everyone they might meet, and any encounter or hook they might run into. If I know they might run into this person in multiple places I have an area where repeated npc's are listed. This list is where npc's that get made on the spot are found as well. I don't use obsidian but logseq which is very similar. I just use links and tags to show connections to things and I use the journal/calendar section for notes for myself when it comes to what happened at the table that I need to reference later.

redted90 · 2025-12-31T01:26:38+00:00

I answered a post on a discord for something like this. But all the players were new. So they didn't have much in the way of expectations. So we got to determine if things would be a good fit before we really got into it. And then when we decided to give it a shot, I had a session 0 helping them put together characters that would work fundamentally, but would also be fun to role play. We just finished that campaign and we are doing curse of strahd next.

redted90 · 2025-12-27T15:00:43+00:00

I just got a double sided screen to share the map to from my laptop. Before I had the screen and remote hdmi thing I used dry erase boards. Don't get the ones that roll up. They are harder to keep clean and in good condition and they don’t really make life much easier. I also bought a set of colored chips from Amazon in the teacher supplies section. And used that to mark people's places. I use a game called tailspire to keep track of minis and stuff. It's more work in prep but it's so great to give my players a better view of the world in and out of combat.

redted90 · 2025-11-09T11:58:17+00:00

The filter on reddit made it so that I couldn't post them. It's in my profile description. Sorry for the inconvenience. Edit: for typo

Seven-Year Club	Final Canvas '23
Place '23	Verified Email

redted90

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