D&D | Whitebeard's Realm

Avrae is a very capable D&D discord bot made by DnDBeyond. It’s complicated. In the spirit of ‘complex tools, used simply’ I want to share how I use it when I’m GMing a game.

I have a go-to set of 10 or so commands that I can remember and that I use. I’ve tried to use more of it in the past but my brain has been full for a long time and I can’t pick up these tools like I used to. As always, you may conclude differently. This is what I do, not what I think you should do.

Setting up Avrae

Most of the time, if you’re playing with me, you won’t know that I’m using Avrae. I have a separate channel in discord that I use to talk to the bot. This has a couple of useful side-effects – I can use it to look up stuff and make rolls without the players seeing and I get a convenient history in that channel of all the avrae commands I’ve used in the game.

I’ve tried introducing avrae to players by having it available out in our #gameplay channel but I’ve found that even if you’re playing with someone who can make it sing like a stradivarius, you’ll still get a lot of autogenerated noise, especially when mistakes are made. And I’ve found that at least one player will be sat there wondering what the hell is going on.

I have avrae connected to my DnDBeyond account – I’m guessing I did this by following the invite process on their site but it’s so long ago I don’t really remember.

Importing characters

Before every game, I update avrae:

!update

And then I import any new characters using the URL of their character id:

!import  https://www.dndbeyond.com/characters/[character_id]

Creating character tokens

!char list

will give you a list of available characters

!char [name]

will let you switch the current character that commands in avrae run against. I usually just use a the first few letters of a character’s name to run this command. If it’s ambiguous, avrae’ll give you a list of characters to choose from.

!token -border none

will give you a nice round token for the character with no branding. I use owlbear rodeo and can usually just drag that token into the game.

!portrait

this will give you a square portrait if you want to stamp the token in a different way.

Creating monster tokens

I have two ways that I use to make monster tokens. You can create a nice round token – but unfortunately you can’t remove the DnDBeyond branding . I guarantee one of your players will ask what that big ‘B’ is for.

!token [monster name]

Or you can get the image for a monster:

!monimage [monster name]

I tend to use the round tokens if I’m on a navigation map – say a map of a village or of an area. The full images I use on combat maps.

Making rolls

The dice syntax is really powerful. I don’t use it – I just use it for simple rolls. Again, my brain is full and I worry that if I learned the whole dice syntax I’d have to forsake some other knowledge that might be more useful. For simple rolls like this, it avoids having to do maths:

!roll 2d20+4

Making random names

This is really useful when you’ve invented an NPC and someone asks for their name. Do not hesitate when asked, run this and then say the name as if you had it all along.

!randname [optional race]

Getting rules and stats information

There are plenty of lookup commands that bring back 5e rules and other information. These are the ones I tend to use. Especially the condition rules for some reason.

!monster goblin
!condition grappled
!spell mage hand

Er… that’s it

And those are all the commands I use. I know it’s a much richer tool – there are more commands and the commands I’ve shown here have more options. But this is what I do. I find them very powerful on their own and also empowering. You might find the same.

One last thing, Avrae encourages you to type !help. Do not be scared if you do this – so much stuff appears and it’s really difficult to know where to start. When you’re comfortable running a few commands and using the basics in-game, then you can ~~look into the abyss~~ run the help command safely.

I’ve been running online D&D 5e campaigns using a few simple tools. Or maybe I mean I’ve been using a few online tools in a simple manner. I recently shared my process for setting up a campaign with another GM and having to spell it out encouraged me to write it down and share it here.

I use Discord for voice chat during the game and as text chat in- and out-of-game, Owlbear Rodeo for maps and initiative tracking, and D&D Beyond for character sheets and in-game rolls. I pay for all three, but I think they all have free tiers that you can use. There are many other options out there, but these tools work for me.

First I create an identifier for the campaign – I mainly play published adventures so usually this is an abbreviation of the adventure name followed by the date it started. For example, ROTF-20230201 would be the identifier for a Rime of the Frostmaiden campaing started on the first of Feb last year. I create a folder on my machine named this where I can put anything I find that might be useful.
Now I create a D&D Beyond campaign and make sure I put the identifier somewhere in the title. I create a dummy GM character that I add to the campaign. This lets me make dice rolls as that character and have them show up in the game log.
Next up is making an Owlbear room for the campaign, Again I include the identifier somewhere in the title. I spend way too long choosing a background image that I know my players will rarely see… Finally I make sure that I’ve locked off most of the Owlbear tools for players – they should be able to move their own tokens, measure and use the pointer.
Now to Discord. I have a single Discord server for all my campaigns. First I create a role for that server named after the identifier. I can assign users this role to give them access to the campaign specific category and channels I’m going to create.
I create one private category for the campaign with a name that’s meaningful for the players and again including the campaign identifier in the title. I set it so that it’s private and grant access to the campaign-tagged role I made earlier. I create four text channels under that category #game-log, #admin, #game-play and one #voice channel.
In the admin channel I post this and pin it:
“Welcome – feel free to introduce yourselves here. When you’ve made a character on D&D Beyond, please add it to the campaign here: [link to campaign set up above]
Owlbear Rodeo room – please don’t join until 10mins before session to avoid spoilers as I do last minute set-up! [link to owlbear rodeo set up above]”
My Discord server has one public channel – naturally it’s called #the-tavern – I send players an invite link to this channel and when they turn up, I assign them the campaign role and say something like:
“Hi Chris! Thanks for joining. You should have permissions to see the Rime of the Frostmaiden channels. Links for campaign in the #admin channel there. Great to see you here!”

And there we go. Another campaign ready to go. It takes me ten minutes or so to get a new campaign set up. As a checklist:

Create campaign identifier
Make folder for campaign on file system
Create D&D Beyond campaign and add dummy GM
Create new room for campaign in Owlbear
Set default player permissions in Owlbear
Create Discord role for campaign
Create private category for campaign
Add standard channels to that category
Post and pin #admin welcome message with links to campaign and Owlbear
Invite players to #the-tavern

I’m sure there are a few steps I have forgotten, but I’ll add them in next time I make a new campaign. Hope this is helpful, let me know your process. Next post I’ll share how I get these tools set up before a session.

Whitebeard's Realm

GameMaster diary

Category D&D

How I use Avrae