Quick roundup of my current tooling state-of-use:
Notetaking/Knowledge Base (KB)
Obsidian - cross-platform, free-to-use app. I’ve elected to “roll my own” for syncing my notes across devices, but there is a paid option for it. The text editor uses Markdown (just like this forum) to make formatting fast and easy, and you can use its built-in linking operations to construct and view a “mind map” graph of related notes. Under the hood, it’s just a bunch of text files, but the interface is really nice and easy to use.
Mapping and Visuals
Paper. The kind from trees. Those huge sheets of easel-board grid paper are nice, especially the ones that are basically giant sticky notes. Oh! I recently got introduced to engineer’s computation paper: it’s graph paper, but with bolder lines at each 1" mark and it usually comes three-hole punched.
Pdfposter - I primarily use Ubuntu Linux, so most of my software picks will be supported in that OS. Pdfposter lets me take a large image or pdf (e.g. the Phandelver Mine or the Sunless Citadel), split it up into 8.5"x11" tiles, and print those. Takes some to trim and assemble, but it works a treat.
Paper cutter. Get one of the small ones from a craft store, with the slide. Preferably with blades you can change after you’ve worn a groove in yours.
Encounter Planning/Balance
D&D Beyond’s encounter-builder is up to the task, but I don’t know whether the available monsters are limited to only what you’ve purchased there (which would suck), and it doesn’t have any tools for scaling monster variants to target CRs (and DMG guidance is… cumbersome). I have a (super clunky, not ready for prime-time) app I built to help with some of this, Need to get back to work on that…
Minis
Always support your friendly local gaming store!
Then again, these can get really expensive, really fast.
If you have access to a 3D printer, MZ4250 has modeled an incredible library - including every monster in the 5e WotC books, with new ones added weekly
Elegoo Mars 3D printer - it’s a resin-based SLA printer (so really nasty fumes: ventilate!) with a small build volume. Great for smaller minis, but I’ve gotten ambitious and printed larger models in pieces and glued them together. Pair this with the Elegoo Mercury wash and cure station for better results.
I’m no Blender pro, so I usually get custom minis as STLs from HeroForge, but I’ve also had good luck with the options at Eldritch Foundry.
Legos are always a great idea (h/t to my man Ray and his DM for that one)!
Air Dry Clay. Minis break, prints fail, and sometimes the old ways are best. This stuff molds and cuts easily, smooths out with water, and hardens at room temperature in a few hours. I mostly use it to patch surfaces and cover seams in printed models, but a decent sculptor can do anything.
Rustoleum makes a great rattle-can primer that works with metals and plastics. Goes on fast and, if you’re decent with spray paints, even.
Vellejo Acrylic-Polyurethane surface primer. Technically it’s for airbrushes, but it brushes on super-smooth, covers perfectly, and dries quickly with minimal obscuring of details. Get a bottle each of grey, black, and white, you’ll like it.
Paint. I usually use LiquiTex because it’s cheap and readily available. I mix my own colors and, yeah, have a lot of variability. Maybe if I were painting whole armies of identical ding-dongs I’d buy the expensive pre-mixed colors of “minis paints” but, uh, probably not.
This is long enough, and there’s a load of stuff I’m not even touching on.
What’s in your toolkit? I’m genuinely curious what other folks use