Crispy's Academy: RPG Tips

RoboDad1 is a YouTube channel dedicated to helping Dungeon Masters run better, more exciting Dungeons & Dragons games. The channel focuses on breaking down published adventures and transforming them into easier-to-run, more cinematic experiences at the table. Through detailed DM guides, encounter ideas, and practical storytelling advice, RoboDad1 explores popular adventures and settings, offering Dungeon Masters tools to improve pacing, build tension, and bring memorable moments to their players. The channel also covers topics such as common DM mistakes, campaign preparation, adventure design, and creative ways to enhance published modules without increasing prep time. RoboDad1’s guides aim to make running D&D more accessible for new Dungeon Masters while still providing inspiration and clever ideas for experienced Game Masters. Whether you’re preparing your first campaign or looking to improve an existing one, RoboDad1 focuses on one simple goal: helping DMs run unforgettable adventures. Links youtube.com - Youtube channel

RPG advice and discussion. Let's talk gaming! Actual play channel with multiple campaigns on Bandit's Keep Actual Play. Links youtube.com - Youtube channel discord.gg - Discord server patreon.com - Patreon page

Dungeon Master's Block is a premier resource podcast dedicated to the most important person at the table: the Dungeon Master. Recognized as a "gym for the mind," the show is designed to inspire, challenge, and equip GMs. From those prepping their very first session to veterans of twenty years to "Keep On Dungeon Mastering."  The podcast moves beyond simple rule explanations, diving deep into the creative philosophy of world-building, monster design, and player management. Through recurring segments like "DM-Nastics" (mental exercises for GMs) and the "Mailbag of Holding," hosts Neal Powell (DM Neal) and Derrick (DM Derrick) provide actionable advice, narrative inspiration, and a supportive community for the "only person at the table capable of playing god." Links spotify.com  - Spotify feed podcasts.apple.com  - Apple Podcasts feed youtube.com  - Youtube channel

Sound Forge is a free local session board for TTRPGs. The main focus is ease of use and simplicity. You can load your music, ambience and sound effects into it and create multiple scenes for your session. Your music and ambience will loop and transition in and out and with various effects you can improve the immersion of your session. It features hotkeys, session links to trigger it in external applications, backups of your library and the possibility to share your predefined scenes as sound clips with other GMs.

DC20 is a fantasy tabletop RPG designed by Alan Bjorkgren, a former high school math teacher and track coach better known online as The Dungeon Coach, where he spent years producing D&D 5e homebrew content before deciding to build his own system outright - a decision accelerated by Wizards of the Coast's 2023 OGL controversy.  Rather than reinventing fantasy TTRPGs from scratch, DC20 keeps 5e's basic silhouette - classes, levels, a d20 core - while substantially rebuilding the parts Bjorkgren felt were holding the format back: action economy, damage resolution, spellcasting, and character customization. Its June 2024 Kickstarter broke $1 million within its first week, and the game has been in active public beta ever since, currently on Core Rules Beta 0.10.5, with the full Core Rulebook still pending release.

Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition (D&D 5E) is a heroic fantasy tabletop roleplaying game published by Wizards of the Coast. Released in 2014, it is the edition that brought D&D from a niche hobby into mainstream pop culture - showing up in TV shows, podcasts, and actual-play streams, and introducing millions of new players to the hobby for the first time. 5E was designed after a massive public playtest ("D&D Next") with the explicit goal of being approachable to newcomers while still satisfying veteran players. The Basic Rules are free, and a game can start with nothing more than those rules, some friends, and a set of dice (or a digital dice roller app). In 2024 the core rules received a significant revision, now commonly referred to as Dungeons & Dragons 5.5E (2024). Both versions are fully compatible and most groups mix material freely. The system it directly evolved from is Dungeons & Dragons 4E (2008) Description In D&D 5E, players create fantasy adventurers (a half-orc barbarian, an elven wizard, a tiefling rogue) and one player takes on the role of the Dungeon Master (DM). The DM builds and describes the world, voices the non-player characters (NPCs), controls the monsters, and acts as both the lead storyteller and the rules referee. There is no board. The game is a conversation: the DM describes a scene, the players say what their characters do, and the dice decide what happens when the outcome is uncertain. A typical session runs three to four hours with a group of three to six players plus the DM. The game describes itself as resting on "Three Pillars": Combat, Exploration, and Social Interaction. A single session might include all three, from tracking a monster through the wilderness and negotiating with a shady merchant to fighting a troll at the entrance to a cave. Combat is the most mechanically detailed of the three and tends to take up the largest share of table time, though groups are free to lean as hard into roleplaying or exploration as they like. The default assumption is a high-fantasy world filled with magic, monsters, and ancient ruins. The flagship published setting is the Forgotten Realms, but Wizards of the Coast has released adventures across a range of worlds, and many DMs create their own. The game does not ship a single canon story. Every table's story is different, shaped by what the players do. 5E is designed to be approachable. The core philosophy is "rulings over rules," meaning that when something comes up that the rules do not explicitly cover, the DM is encouraged to make a quick call and keep the game moving rather than stopping to look things up. The rules reward creativity and improvisation, and the system explicitly expects that no one at the table has memorized the entire rulebook. That said, the DM carries most of the preparation work between sessions: building encounters, preparing maps, and keeping the story moving. Players can show up with nothing but their character sheet and a set of dice.