D&D Item Generator Postmortem

## Introduction My interest in Dungeons & Dragons began in high school. Towards the end of senior year, my friend group was swept up by the mysticism and fun potential of roleplaying some fantasy storylines together. For that reason, come graduation and our free summer, we met up and held our first sessions. At that time I was still vacillating between going to college or not, and whether to pursue history or computer science. After some time I decided to pursue a degree in computer science, and used my experience playing D&D with friends that summer to really drill it home. ## What is D&D? Dungeons & Dragons is a long-form tabletop roleplaying game invented by two nerds, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. D&D games are fantasy-styled, featuring such races as orcs, elves, and dwarves, as well as enemies like dragons, goblins, and evil gods. Players meet in groups with many being characters in a campaign and one being the Dungeon Master (DM). The DM is in charge of writing the campaign's story, voicing its characters, and orchestrating its battles. Common elements of D&D campaigns are exploration, solving quests, and collecting loot. Alright, that's enough lists of triplets. ## Identifying a Need Speaking of collecting loot, I'd be remiss not to harp on just how important loot is to a good D&D campaign. Loot is simply another carrot on a stick for the DM to dangle. Most of the time it's used to reward players for a job well done. It's a good motivator for players to do all the quests they can and explore every possible crevice. Or visit every shop. You get the idea. The big idea, to reiterate, is that loot is a big deal. And often the story takes a turn the DM hadn't prepared for, and thus doesn't have any loot ready to hand out. That's where my item generator comes in. ## The Item Generator D&D campaigns must maintain a certain momentum to keep the players from drifting away. That means the DM stopping to look up potential items can be a real snooze fest. Therefore, with the click of a button, I've created a solution for DMs to generate as many pieces of loot as they like, and in many categories. The secret sauce of my item generator is its database. Generally, there are two kinds of data: items and quirks. Items are the baseline noun like a sword or potion or gauntlet. Then the quirks are the abilities, conferring abilities like enhanced swimming or advantage against humanoids. The possibilities are (figuratively) endless! Now, DMs can confidently wax lyrical about their favorite foe's end without a care for what rewards shall follow — in an instant, dozens and dozens of high quality, satisfying loot. No more sifting through the player guides or Googling item tables. Just click and continue! ## Conclusion I hope this DM tool livens up or inspires whatever campaign falls upon it. The items may not always be balanced, but they are guaranteed to always be fun.