My Favorite (Free) DND Resources

Gather round to learn this pro GM’s top recommendations for free online D&D resources!

Ah, the relative simplicity of Dungeons and Dragons. Unlike complex consoles and/or miniature-riddled games like Warhammer or Monopoly, all you need is some friends, a set of dice, and your imagination.

...in theory.

D&D (owned by Wizards of the Coast, owned by Hasbro) is more than just a game—it’s also a brand and a business. There are endless tools, accessories, and add-ons available for purchase, and you can spend quite a pretty penny when it comes to buying books, constructing intricately scaled landscapes in the middle of your living room, and/or developing a crippling dice addiction.

However, one of the best things about Dungeons and Dragons (in my humble bardic opinion) is that you can absolutely play for free. Whether you’re a first-time player or the forever DM, there are countless official and fan-made resources that won’t put you out a single copper piece.

This list could very well be endless, but here are a few of my personal favorites.

Best Free Resource for Character Building: RPG Bot

Interested in playing a robot-like character? They’re called Warforged, and a resource like RPG Bot can help you build one.

One thing that surprised me about my first D&D game was ALL THE CHOICES that went into creating my character. I wanted to craft my own OC and cared a lot about flavor, but understanding every teensy detail—background, spell list, cantrips, etc.—was overwhelming.

Was this choice good? Bad? Did it really even matter if I chose a set of playing cards over dragon chess? What even is a yklwa? And if I made my decisions willy-nilly, would I immediately regret not knowing what I didn’t know?

Enter, RPG Bot: veritable hero of the realm.

This site is absolutely MASSIVE and has tools and resources for multiple TTRPGs, but what I find most helpful are the 5e Handbooks. These nifty guides break down builds to the finest details, including feats, subclasses, and even spell lists. They rank each mechanic on a color scale, blue to red (blue being optimal, helpful, and effective while red is ineffective, useless, and/or extremely situational) so you can better understand the effects of your choices without the hard-earned wisdom of regret. What are the limitations of an Oath of Vengeance paladin, for instance? What benefits or limitations would you run into playing a bugbear monk?

Whether you’re a power gamer or just plain overwhelmed by all the decisions of character creation, RPG Bot is the electronic pocket sage you never knew you needed.

Free World Building Help for DMs: The Thieves Guild

DMs, has this ever happened to you?

Player: Are there shops in this town?

DM: Well, I guess. It *is* a town.

Player: And the shops have stuff?

DM: I *suppose* shops do tend to have stuff…

Player: What stuff?

DM: *Okay, didn’t really plan for this…* Go ahead and roll investi—

Player: Nat 20.

Then they sit there, wide-eyed and eager, waiting for the Sears Catalogue (ye olde Etsy, for you younger folks) of EVERY SINGLE ITEM complete with price, description, and abilities.

Before you open an Excel spreadsheet and start painstakingly creating your list, head on over to The Thieves Guild. This website has dozens of nifty tools and generators (riddles, monster loot, and even tavern menus), but my absolute favorite is the shop generator. You can adjust for the type of shop you’re looking for (alchemist, fletcher, etc.), the rarity and price of the items, and even how hard or easy it could be to haggle with the shopkeep.

Best Tool for Playing D&D Online: D&D Beyond

Love it or hate it, Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast have put some amazingly useful tools into their flagship Dungeons and Dragons site, D&D Beyond. While I do pay for a Hero Tier subscription (around $26 for the calendar year), there are plenty of tools that make a free account well worth its weight in GP. 

The compendium is massive, and while not everything is available for free, most players should have just about all the basics they need between the Player’s Handbook, the Dungeon Master’s Guide, and the Monster Manual—all uploaded and easily searchable so you’re not rifling through books and subjecting yourself to papercuts. This makes searching for situational mechanics like spells and magical items ridiculously convenient. I’m also a huge fan of their character builder, which takes you through character creation step by step and lets you keep six characters in their database for free.

The other great thing is that if you don’t need the bells and whistles, there’s no reason to pay for them. DMs with a Master Tier subscription can share their content and manage the campaign’s characters regardless of the players’ subscription levels.

Best Free Video Platform for Online D&D: Discord

Discord is free, and it can help you organize your game discussions both during and between sessions.

Katie Lear has already written a fantastic article on Discord, so I won’t rehash everything here. (Seriously. Go read it. She covers a metric ton of GREAT stuff.)

What I like about Discord is that there’s no time limit to the video call function—unlike GoogleMeet or Zoom, whose free versions kick you out at around the sixty-minute mark. And while you could schedule multiple meetings with multiple links, I find it much simpler to keep the party in one place.

As a DM, I also like to set up separate threads for things like notes, player chat, organizational and scheduling discussions, and even individual PC channels to pop in special, player-specific information.

Best Free Resource for Combat: Owlbear Rodeo

Owlbear Rodeo is our favorite free map builder for combat scenarios…shh, don’t tell Roll20!

As much as I love theater of the mind, it can get a bit tricky when it comes to combat. When orchestrating a fight between fourteen goblins and three players, it suddenly becomes very important to know precisely where everyone is, especially when it comes to ranged weapons and area affects. How far does that fifteen-foot cone reach? And which of the goblins, 1-14, are going to have to make saving throws?

Thank Tyr for Owlbear Rodeo—an easy-to-use combat map builder that gives you pretty much everything you need at the free Nestling level. You can either draw or import your map, fix your grid scale, then use the avatar tokens to illustrate what’s going on. As a DM, I love the measuring tool and area affect features, and the condition rings are very handy when it comes to tracking who’s affected by what (poisoned, Hunter’s Mark, grappled, etc.).

I have friends who swear by Roll20, but I’ve found Owlbear to be much more intuitive and user-friendly. It also has built-in dice and an initiative tracker.

Hoot-growl, indeed!

In Conclusion…

There are LOTS of great resources to spend your hard-earned treasure on when it comes to D&D, but there are also plenty of tools accessible for free. Whether you invest in a nice set of dice for the love of the clickity-clack or opt to roll online using a dice app, it’s all up to your personal preference as a player.

The bottom line? If you want to play D&D and not break your piggybank, you really don’t have to.

My advice is to wait to pull out your credit card until after you’ve taken the time to test and explore the library of free resources the game has to offer. There are countless intrepid heroes out there making these tools accessible to everyone purely for the love of the game.

And that, in my humble bardic opinion, is an effort worth supporting.

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