I was hoping some of you more seasoned DMs might have some best practices to share for use of the DndBeyond tools. I know what the tools do, so I’m more interested the best practices on how they are actually employed when running a campaign at a table. 

Some thoughts to drive the discussion:

- Do you keep your source material open in separate browser tabs?

 - Do you have encounters pre-filtered and ready to go in their own browser tab? 

- What’s you computer setup look like? Tablet?

- What hard copy items to you keep handy?

- Other thoughts?

Thank you in advance for the help. I’m getting ready to runa campaign for my family and I’d like to use DndBeyond solely to facilitate the campaign.  

Trial and error define what works best for you.

Any better advice out there lol

Having multiple screens is a huge help, so I keep my adventure, the characters, any monsters and npcs I need to reference and the combat tracker as well as encounters open in multiple tabs on my right monitor. On my left, I have Discord.

As far as physical items, a pen and a notepad on my desk.

Quote from The_Glimpse >>

Having multiple screens is a huge help, so I keep my adventure, the characters, any monsters and npcs I need to reference and the combat tracker as well as encounters open in multiple tabs on my right monitor. On my left, I have Discord.

As far as physical items, a pen and a notepad on my desk.

 
Thanks for the insights. This is definitely what I was looking for. Why do you have discord up and running? Also do you have physical dice or do you reply on the dice mechanics in the toolset? (At least I believe I read someplace that there are dice mechanics)

Quote from Pheows >>

Quote from The_Glimpse >>

Having multiple screens is a huge help, so I keep my adventure, the characters, any monsters and npcs I need to reference and the combat tracker as well as encounters open in multiple tabs on my right monitor. On my left, I have Discord.

As far as physical items, a pen and a notepad on my desk.

 
Thanks for the insights. This is definitely what I was looking for. Why do you have discord up and running? Also do you have physical dice or do you reply on the dice mechanics in the toolset? (At least I believe I read someplace that there are dice mechanics)

 
Because we play over Discord. One group is my local group from the flgs I run games at (since we're all on lockdown) , the other is me as DM, my fiancee, two friends of hers from Oregon and one of ours from Michigan. We use RpBot for dice rolls in my Discord server (or Thirst for Vampire 5e when we're not playing D&D).

I don't know that I've sorted out "Best Practices" yet, but here are some things I've done, not always consistently.

-printed out the map for quicker reference

-had tabs on my browser open for

• spells
• monsters
• campaign
• adventure

-Used the app on my browser for some items. (last night it was for the adventure text)

-Had the hard copy available too.  When I do this, I usually use it to flip back and forth between room descriptions.

Also, I'm trying to get into the habit of setting up encounters in the encounter builder.  Although last night I had to laugh:  I set up all the encounters from the floor of the dungeon they were on in the builder, only to have them take a staircase down to another level before encountering any monsters on the level I'd prepped.  Not a big deal, but amusing to me none the less.  

I still use physical dice even when playing remotely.  The only game I'm running at the moment is the one with my (teen/young adult) children, their cousins, and (occasionally) my parents.  I trust everyone to be honest with their rolls, and those not in my immediate household don't do any online gaming outside of this.

I use Discord for voice chat and Roll20 for a virtual table top, I also require everyone to use Beyond20 Chrome extension.  On my web browser I have each DnD beyond character sheet open on a tab along with several more tabs that have the information on the adventure (maps, NPCs, area descriptions etc.).  I also use Kobold Fight Club on another tab with most of the encounters pre-made and ready to go.  Finally I have a word document that I use to take notes on of relevant things that happen I want to keep track of. 

I failed to point out, and ArwensDaughter's post reminded me of this, in our local FLGS game via discord, we use regular dice, because I trust everyone and they trust me. We use RP bot in the other campaign, because this is two of the player's first game and they don't own dice. 

Online I use Discord for voice chat and Roll20 for maps and dice rolls. I also use the Beyond20 extension. I don't have 2 monitors, but my monitor is 4k so I can just open two browsers side by side, one with Roll20, and the other with 3-5 DDB tabs open. I use real dice for DM rolls, and the characters use virtual dice. 

Offline, I use a DM screen, a pencil and paper, dice and a Chromebook for DDB.

Generally for DDB (online or off) I try and build at least some encounters ahead of time, both specific and a few random encounters just in case (e.g., an owlbear wanders into the camp during the long rest). In addition to the encounter builder/tracker, I usually have the adventure book on DDB if I'm running a module (at the moment I'm running Avernus in one group) or a Google Drive Doc with campaign and notes for homebrew. I also create a campaign and keep a tab for that open so I can quickly open a players character sheet if they get stuck (we have a couple of newer players). I often keep the DMG open in a tab too, although I don't use it all that often. 

At a table: hard copies and dm screen, a notebook to write down things that happens. Paper to draw on when the players leave your premade map.

Laptop with dndbeyond and possibly kobold fight club and improved initiative.

I am old school, but after being forced online, I think I'm going to bring improved initiative back to the table. Keep one tab on your computer, and use a phone or something to open player view for the players. That way they easily can follow initiative.

If you are at a table, use real dice. However the character sheets on dndbeyond works great. It's best if the players have tablets, since a lot of computers kind of disrupts the table in my opinion. 

And when it comes to the DM-screen: the official one isn't very goog (at least for me). Make it a habit of improving it by printing and adding items after session if you missed them. 

I have one browser tab each for:

• The Campaign (DnD Beyond). From there I can click on any character. I also use the D&D Beyond DM screen extension for Chrome which shows more info here.
• The Encounter List (DnD Beyond).
• The Combat Tracker (DnD Beyond).
• The Sourcebooks section (DnD Beyond). To look stuff up if needed, like spells or monsters.
• Astral Tabletop. This is our current Tabletop.

Then I also have open:

• My Campaign Documents folder on my PC. 
• My "World" Excel file that has lists of everything about the campaign world.
• My "Adventure" excel file that has stuff about the current adventure.
• OneNote, which has notes and text about various things and also has dungeon map keys.
• Google Hangouts, which we use for video/audio chatting.

Wow, that's a lot of crap I have to keep open to run a session. ;)