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I first discovered Dungeons & Dragons just after high school, about 1983. Back then, it was Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, or AD&D. This is now apparently called D&D 1st Edition.

I played a few games with friends, but as a creative person with writing skills, I soon discovered I wanted to run my own game. So I bought the Player's Handbook, The Dungeon Master's Guide and the Monster Manual. 

That was my introduction to being a Dungeon Master.

One of the first things I realized as a DM, was that there was a whole lot of information that you had to know, and keep in your head, about how to play the game! Fortunately, at that time, pretty much everyone who played D&D, also had the three main books I did. That meant someone at the table probably knew the answer to any questions about rules.

The other thing I realized very quickly, was that using the roll tables in the DM's Guide, could take longer than just making things up, simply because I had to find the right table before I could make any rolls. Finding the right roll table, getting the correct die, then writing down what the result was, took forever!

So I did what any Gamer at the time, with programming skills would have done. I wrote a computer program to automatically make the rolls for me. It was written in Applesoft BASIC, and since Windows hadn't been invented yet, it was all menu driven. Each option on the first menu, took you to a secondary menu, where, depending on the option, you could choose a menu option to roll, or go to third menu for more options. It was clunky as hell, but it worked. It actually did drop my session prep time amazingly.

I didn't even have to hand copy the results. I simply created a variable to hold each result, and then, again, with the right menu option, it would print everything out on the printer. In those days, the printers were all dot matrix, and used fanfold paper. Fortunately, the right and left edges where the tractor holes were at, were perforated so they could be easily removed. 

At some point, I got busy. I had a regular day job (actually nights for many years) in I.T. and between work, paying bills, and other life commitments, I completely forgot about D&D for nearly four decades. Every now and then, I would hear something about new editions, TSR Games was no more, somebody named Wizards of The Coast eventually took over. I was completely out of the loop.

Eventually, a young friend of mine asked me if I had heard of D&D. I smiled, and began regaling her with stories from the "Olden Days". She was actually trying to create her own TTRPG, and had created something like 30 different roll tables, just to create a single NPC. Each NPC was taking her an hour or more to create.

She mentioned this to me, and I remembered the old program I once wrote. I asked her to email me her roll tables so I could take a look at them. She did. Three days later, I had completely written a java program she could use to roll her NPCs. She was ecstatic! It took her a total of ten minutes to roll all the rest of her NPCs.

I remembered playing AD&D, and joined her 5e game she was starting. I got a set of books for D&D Fifth Edition (Gods I feel old) from another friend (her mother) for Christmas and started looking through the DM's Guide. Just as before, it was full of roll tables, and while D&D Beyond had a searchable version online, you still had to find the correct table, and roll the dice.

I knew there was a better way, and this time, I didn't have to keep it to myself. I understood immediately, that with a website, I could make the tools instantly available to anyone who needed them. I started talking to friends, and asking them if they played, if so, were they a player or DM? Once I found DMs, I started asking them if the tools I had in mind to create, would be useful to them. 

The replies I got were, to say the least, astounding. Not only was everyone I talked to interested in the tools, but they were willing to pay far more than I had planned to charge, to use them. I knew I had a winner.

As I talked to various DMs, I found that not only did they want the Dungeon Master Tools,  but they also told me that they were always looking for sources of music for their sessions, and maps they could use for both travel cross country, and encounters.

So I broadened my scope, and looked at adding those things to my website that was still only in my head. As someone who had done video editing for various projects in the past, I had sources for royalty-free music. In my re-entry to D&D, I had discovered VTTs as well, and several potential sources for map assets.

Fortunately, I found Quinny, who is making the World Map, along with all the Continental, Country and Regional travel maps for me. I also found Baileywiki, who has allowed my to purchase his map assets for commercial use. Between these two sources, I have what I need to offer several travel maps, as well as Dungeon, building and outdoor encounter maps each month.

As I said, I knew sources for audio, so gathering enough music, environmental sounds, animal sounds and sound effects to offer 30 plus audio files a month, was  fairly straight forward.

The last thing I thought of, came about as I was using the online DMs Guide to build the programs that automate the roll tables. I had already created the Automated Encounter creator, using the exact rules from the DMs Guide and I discovered that there are specific rules for creating monsters.

This happened about the same time that ChatGPT came out. It very quickly occurred to me that AI could be used to help the DM create any kind of monster they wanted, using the exact D&D rules, and even possibly give them a picture of their monster, to show their players.

What you see here, is the result of a combined 40 years of work. I use it on a regular basis, as do many of my friends. I hope that it does for you, what it has done for so many DMs...make your session prep quick and easy.