How to Use Scene Prep: D&D Beyond's New Prep Tool

Scene Prep is a new tool where you write, organize, and reference everything you need to run a scene, and it's live right now in D&D Beyond's Maps VTT. 

Now, your prep lives right where you're already playing. You can drop scene pins on the map, jump straight to the notes for that moment, and stop hunting through tabs and scrolling through documents mid-session.

Okay, let's dig in!

• Why Scene Prep Exists
• How to Use Scene Prep
• Prep Without a Map
• Five Free Encounters, Plus Weekly Subscriber Drops

Why Scene Prep Exists

Scene Prep is built on four ideas:

• All in one place. Prep that lives where you play. It's in Maps, and attached to the spot on the map where the scene actually happens.
• Crafted by Experts. A framework built with our game designers, veteran DMs, and first-time DMs to start from, or craft your own template instead.
• Play your way. Works with or without a map, including in-person play.
• An expanding library. Pre-prepped, runnable encounters fromD&D Beyond Drops, with more every week.

How to Use Scene Prep

The fastest way to learn Scene Prep is on a map where the prep is already written. Open one of the five free Drop-in Encounters from the Map Browser and follow along.

Open the Panel

From D&D Beyond's Maps VTT, click the new Scene Prep icon (P) to open the panel on the right.

The panel starts by showing the prep for the Location you have loaded, whether that's a map or our Theater of the Mind organizer, and you'll see every note written for what might go down there. On the map itself, you'll see the scene pins. They're visible only to the DM, and each one represents a different scene that could happen in that area. Click a pin to jump to its prep.

Create a Scene

Open the triple-dot menu in the panel and choose Add a Scene.

When you create a new scene (or open a location you haven't written any prep for yet), Scene Prep gives you a starting framework, built with input from our game designers, veteran DMs, and novice DMs. It's there to help you think through the kind of information you want ready to hand. It's also entirely optional, and easy to replace with your own format.

Write Your Prep

Click Edit and start writing. You can apply different headers and experiment with whatever formatting works for you, and everything saves as you type, so there's nothing to lose if you close the tab.

One piece of advice from the designers who helped shape the framework: less is more. Bullet points, not paragraphs. A few sections, not pages and pages. You want just enough in front of you to feel comfortable and confident, without getting lost scrolling and hunting for an answer. Trust your improv skills!

Place and Hide Scene Pins

Once you've created a scene, place its pin on the map and drag it wherever it belongs.

If you have a lot of scenes, a map can start to get busy fast. Click the pin visibility icon (L) to hide most of them. They stay slightly visible on purpose, so you still get the reminder that your players are about to walk into a new scene. But in transparency mode, you can see and interact with the rest of the map much more easily.

Rename Maps and Sort the Dropdown

Two smaller additions: while you're in Edit mode for the top-level Location prep, editing the name of that location also edits the map name in the Map Selector dropdown, which now sorts alphabetically. Together they make a long list of maps much easier to organize and navigate.

Use It Your Way

Scenes are the obvious use, but they won't be the only one. Use pins as reminders. Build a store with inventory and prices. Mark treasure, or a trap, or the weird thing in the room that your players are definitely going to investigate and trigger an exposition drop over. 

Prep Without a Map

DMing Theater of the Mind or in-person tables needs the same prep, so we wanted to make sure Scene Prep worked with or without a battle map.

That's what the Theater of the Mind Organizer map is for. It's in the "Basic Maps" section of the Map Browser on every D&D Beyond account, and it gives you somewhere to hang your scenes when there's no battlemap involved — useful for Theater of the Mind, and useful if you play in person and just want digital support to stay organized.

Five Free Encounters, Plus Weekly Subscriber Drops

Five free ready-to-run encounters. No prep, no extra tabs.

If DMing has ever looked like more work than you wanted to sign up for, this is the place to start. Five Drop-in Encounters are now available on every D&D Beyond account, free or paid, with the Scene Prep already written. They're ready to run with story, plot hooks, read-aloud text, and tokens placed.

D&D Beyond Drops Storied Encounters

A new Drop-in Encounter releases to all subscribers every week as part of Drops, and the library keeps growing. They're maps with tokens already placed: a bandit ambush, a demonic cult summoning, accidentally wandering into a mummy's lair. The kind of one-off encounter you can drop into your campaign when your players do something unexpected, or when the session needs a jolt.

One of the biggest pieces of feedback we heard was that the maps were cool, but they needed narrative to be genuinely useful. Now, with Scene Prep, they have it! We've upgraded five of the existing Drop-in Encounters, and the rest should be upgraded shortly.

Tell Us What to Build Next

Scene Prep is the next stage in the DM Tools project, and it's built around one goal: helping you keep the game moving.

If you've ever found yourself hunting through tabs and notes while your players wait for an answer, give it a try. The hope is that it lets you close another tab, and keeps more of what you need at your fingertips without burying you in pages of prep or making you search for exactly the right thing at exactly the wrong moment.

Have feedback, or an idea for what should come next? Jump into the official D&D Discord or the r/dndbeyond subreddit, where you can find us as WOTC_Zac.