Being a new DM means that you kinda have to figure stuff out all by yourself. The Dungeon Master’s Guide is a great tool that offers a lot of great tools, and you could play using only the core books.
I, however, am a nerd. And as a nerd I love research. So whether it’s creating encounters, or just planning your campaign, I have found a tool for the job and I thought I’d share them with you.
Donjon
This is one of the best tool for running D&D, or any other fantasy RPG. It includes random generators for dungeons, names, encounters, treasure etc. Its random dungeon generator is the best I’ve seen and it will help you whether you are a new DM or a veteran.
Kobold Fight Club
This one is essential if you are one of those DMs that cares about balanced encounters and can be helpful even if you’re not. It has every monster and calculates whether an encounter is Easy, Medium, Hard or Deadly according to the rules presented in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. It can also generate random encounters of any difficulty level.
After you are done creating an encounter, you can manage and run them right from your browser making it a useful tool for planning as well as for running the game.
Goblinist Random Encounter Generator
Rolling on tables to generate random encounters can be fun but some DMs prefer a digital format to do the same. Goblinist is not too different from Kobold Fight Club, but distinguishes itself through one additional feature. The ability to generate random encounters for any environment.
You can also choose to generate an encounter around a specific monster, adding flavor to the encounter.
Kassoon
This is a suite of tools as opposed to a single purpose tool. It is a great collection containing anything from NPC generators, to Plot Hook, House, Name and Town generators. Really, anything I say will not do this justice so just go and take a look yourself.
Some of my favorite tools included are the following:
D&D 5E Tools by Leugren
In a similar vain to Kassoon, this is a collection of tools. It contains many of the same ones Kassoon does, and many additional ones. It also has some tools for players, like a personality generator.
Adventure Lookup
Matt Colville is a great asset to the role-playing community and he initiated the making of this great tool. It’s a little rough around the edges, but it does the job of searching for D&D adventures to run so much easier. It includes filters for party level, D&D Edition, environments and even monsters.
And one paid tool
Wonderdraft – ($29.99)
It’s crazy how good this tool is. I would go as far as saying that it’s the best map making tool out there. The only thing that is more amazing than the results it produces, is how easy it is to produce them. No more Photoshop tutorials!
Give it a try, it’s the best money I’ve ever spent.