Resource Spotlight: 2-Minute Tabletop

"Snake Den" by Ross McConnell, © 2020 2-Minute Tabletop.
Used with permission.

2-Minute Tabletop is a website run by Ross and Troy McConnell, brothers from Western Australia who have spent four years creating some of the most clever encounters, useful articles, and beautiful maps that it has been my pleasure to peruse for TTRPGs. While their work is definitely geared toward D&D5e, quite a bit of it is system neutral, or easily adapted to other games.

I first ran into 2-Minute Tabletop while hunting for battle mats for a DCC game I am running on Roll20, and fell in love with Ross's maps. In fact, I spent hours hunting through his work for just the right dungeon map to use as the background for this blog. I started at 10pm, and suddenly looked up to see 2am on my computer screen. I got lost in them.

Troy's articles are just as engrossing. I have especially enjoyed his articles on specific environments like oceans, jungles, caves, and deserts: he breaks down not just what the real world concerns are, but also which ones make for good play, and which ones will just slow you down.., and how to make them feel important. Discussing how to make terrain engaging has also been a big part of the series,

For each of these environments, they have 10 or 20 interesting encounters that bring the environment front and centre, and a map or two by Ross that bring the environment to life,

Troy has done the same with classic D&D villains such as goblins, kobolds, mimics, and hags.

Just as their name suggests, their work allows any GM to get inspired, grab a map, and put some encounters together to put in front of their PCs in just a couple of minutes.

"Fire Temple" by Ross McConnell, © 2020 2-Minute Tabletop. Used with permission.

"Snake Den" by Ross McConnell, © 2020 2-Minute Tabletop. Used with permission.

"Fire Temple" by Ross McConnell, © 2020 2-Minute Tabletop. Used with permission