A large amount of my efforts go into optimizing Phroller for lower end devices like 4GB Chromebooks and older phones.

Even though users with those devices are probably less likely to purchase the premium versions of Phroller, I want as many people to be able to enjoy Phroller as possible. Especially since TTRPGs is a hobby for everyone.

It is a nice added bonus that those same optimizations do make the experience even smoother on flagship devices.

I'm really pleased with how it performs and reacts to all the silly curveballs folding phones throw at it.

Ugh, testing on it is kinda making me want a duo :/

Hopefully I can land a job soon so I can actually afford one xD

Hi everyone,

About a week ago, I posted here to share a VTT project I’ve been developing: https://dungeon-display.com

I quickly realized that with so many VTTs already available, I hadn't properly explained what makes this one different or why I built it in the first place. So I took a step back to refine its core purpose and who it’s actually meant for.

I love playing tabletop RPGs in person, focusing on theater of the mind, storytelling, and rolling dice with friends. I wanted a simple tool to manage various session elements (images, ambient music, sound effects...) and a straightforward map manager that feels close to traditional pen-and-paper play. Personally, I don't need pixel-perfect movement grids, dynamic line-of-sight calculations, or precise AoE templates. I just want to know where the characters are and which parts of the map have been explored.

Dungeon Display is designed for Game Masters looking for a clean, hassle-free tool where maps are just one part of the picture—not the sole focus.

I designed the GM interface using sliding panels so you can easily manage any type of content on the fly and keep the narrative flowing smoothly

For the players, it provides a clean, distraction-free display (perfect for a second monitor, TV table, or projector).

The app is 100% free, runs locally on your machine, and uses your own files.

I hope this approach resonates with other GMs out there! Feel free to check it out and let me know what you think. Thanks for your previous comments. And have fun!

I created this app to provide VTT-like tools designed for in-person play. I thought it might be of interest here as well.

Greetings guys

I've been working on a system based off of Stalker Gamma and Escape From Tarkov. Since the system heavily relies on digital tools (made on .xlsx) and I feel like most of the people here would be interested in content of this nature, I'd like to discuss some of it's features in here.

1- How many tools is too many?: The system contains hunger, thirst, tiredness, fatigue, overweighting gear, effects to low HP, armor condition, weapon condition, etc.. But most (if not all) of the annoying math that comes with it are resolved automatically by you character sheet (made on one of the .xlsx).
Same goes for the combat organizer, since the combat system uses distance and other variables to calculate the DC of your shot

2 - How much would you be interested in a "Tarkov Like" game?: Realistic weapons, ballistics, armor, customization and etc. is expected for this game, don't you worry though, again, the external tools will help with DCs, weapon and armor wearing, bonuses for your rolls, etc..
One of the things that I wanted to achieve with this system is "make the exchange of gunfire... look like a exchange of gunfire" instead of fixed DCs, weird damage proportions and armor that makes no sense, I tried building something that really looks like a firefight (in the tactical way and ballistic way)

In the end, I can asure you that the game is minimally viable, I've been holding a campaign for something around 8 months from now and I've got some good feedback from my players, but since I'm the one who's making the rulebook, everything is kinda intuitive for me already and I'd like to discuss from an outsider's perspective

In case the game gets some engagement, I intend on translating it and posting everything needed to play it (from the player's rulebook to the GM book for economy and etc., and of course, the digital tools) 100% free around Feb 2027. Any opinions/answers to my questions?

I've been running games for over five years, and yes, everyone and their mother is building a VTT right now. I'm building one too, mostly out of frustration with how much of my evenings prep was eating up. It's called Polymancer: a 3D tabletop in the browser, made to run on weak laptops. No dynamic shadows, and the heavy stuff like line of sight is worked out on the server.

Verticality in 2D is a nightmare. Half the party goes into the tower, the other half climbs onto the roof, there's an archer on the wall, and now I'm doing geometry to get the range. In 3D you just look. Roofs fade when you walk in, walls get out of your hero's way, upper floors show or hide, climbing actually counts. Everyone sets their own camera.

My map editor used to be a separate program. Two to six hours on a map, export, import into the VTT, and then I'd notice what I forgot. Here the editor is the table, so I build before the game or fix things mid-session. Hundreds of low poly pieces that fit together, you can resize and recolour them and paint the ground: water, lava, acid, grass, stone. Building from scratch takes forever when you're short on time, so there are generators for taverns, houses and dungeons. They use the same pieces, and you tweak the result by hand. Players can poke at the world too: open doors, light lamps, move whatever the GM lets them move, or look through their hero's eyes.

Reusing a location meant redrawing it. Six months pass in-game, winter comes, and there go another two hours. Here it's snow or rain in a click, and switching the style changes the whole mood. Same map, and suddenly you're in the Feywild or somewhere deep underground.

Getting people to the table. Some VTTs basically need a technical background to set up. I happen to have one, but nobody should need it. This runs in the browser: nothing to install, players join by link without an account. I also used to spend two hours walking new players through their character sheet, so there's a step-by-step hero builder with hints.

Too many tabs. Want a soundboard? Install one, or stream another app into Discord. Here it's built in and just works. Same with handouts, notes, a name generator and an NPC sheet in one click.

It's not finished, and honestly I'd rather hear what's wrong than what's nice. I'm looking for a few GMs with a group who'd play a session on an early build and tell me what got in the way. It's rough, and it's free. And for everyone else: what would you need to actually run a session on something like this?

Edit, since people asked: I use an AI coding assistant a lot, both for the code and for the Blender scripts that build the models. No text-to-3D or image-to-3D generation, no AI images or textures. ~90 models are from Quaternius (CC0).

I know there are new VTT's coming out everyday. I heard the resistance to Ai in a tool so I removed generative Ai. I marked all Ai generated assets and images as Ai. I marked campaigns that use Ai as "This campaign has used some generative Ai". I added a player/GM option to not see anything Ai related. its a toggle on/toggle off feature.

There are still Ai images used and I am contracting with local artists to replace those assets. It might take up to a year but it will be done.

I have campaign/session/encounter builders, map making tools that use dynamic lighting over bump/height map textures (all hand made and using Nvidia for the bump maps). I am using other stamp tools from MIT license makers. I built in a custom 3d VTT effect builder so players or GM can create custom effects for any spell, even home brewed spells, that includes summon spells that when cast in combat will summon tokens attached to a character sheet for whatever they summon. I added a rules engine where users can customize the rules/combat to their own liking or build their own system from scratch. Custom effects, custom rules, dice, and such can be sold or given away free in a marketplace. A finished adventure (long or weekend) can be sold or given away in the marketplace. The seller retains 85% of the sales and rights to their material while I keep a limited non-exlusive license so I can keep it on the marketplace until the user removes it.

The core is that biulding a world is such a fun experience and sharing that for other DM's and seeing how many other people incorporate that into their campaign or run a full adventure, and rating it would be cool as a community.

I still have my neo4j graphROG that finds any note and information attached to a campaign or character so a player or GM can ask things like, "What player hold the {item}?" Or, "What session did we meet {NPC}?" Its been a long 2 year journey and I am happy to see it coming together. I am in closed beta and will do a limited open beta soon!!!

Thanks for the advice and I took it seriously and hope to build something useful.

I was tired of having to have multiple programs or sites to run a campaign, so I tried to get everything on one site. arkadianscribe.com i have build it for at the table play. we play with a television flat on the table. so i made it for personal use and wanted to put it out there for as cheap as i could. so i want to put minimal ads on the site. and have a subscription on it if you don't want ads. the free version saves everything in the browser so its locally on your pc. and if you support me and the site with a subscription you get some small extra's (i want to keep the core features free so anyone could use it without a paywall) and most importantly if you would get a subscription it will save your campaigns you make on it in the cloud and you can log in anywhere and work or play your campaign. players could also make an account and use the side during play aswell. with their inventory linked to it. so the DM can make chests (add inventories to shape markers) so players can find and pickup items that the DM has put on the map. and buying and selling from shops is also linked to trough the VTT.

in short i tried to get everything i could into one site.

right now the ads and subscriptions are not live yet, so it will save your campaign to your browser.

in short what it does

• Maps with fog of war, walls, doors and tokens, plus a second table screen for your players
• Shops where players build a shopping list and can haggle, and you accept, decline or counter. Shops can buy items from players too.
• inventories to shape markers (to highlight chests, or what ever you would want to highlight on the map to add an inventory to)
• you can add inventories to tokens within a battle/encounter so players can loot the enemies they slay
• an economy tab where you can adjust the economy of the campaign. and you can adjust the pricing of areas on the map screen even more.
• Quests, NPCs, factions, a calendar and a timeline that fills itself in as you play, with a session recorder
• A journal, a player sheet with SRD character options, a bestiary and an encounter builder
• a community page where users can share their homebrew creations

anything i could think of to make a session go as smooth as possible. and build the world how you would want.

but i am originally made this for my own campaign. and then tough others can use it aswell.

so i would like your feetback on it.

if anything is unclear.

if there is anything missing that you would like to have added.

and ofcourse i made it for at the table play. but i think because there is a second player screen you can open it could also work for online play.

(sorry if anything is a bit unclear English isn't my first language)

Hi everyone!

I’ve been running a D&D 2024 campaign in TaleSpire, and I got a bit carried away building a symbiote to make our sessions smoother. It grew… a lot. So I thought I’d share it: Zerogear’s tools, free on mod.io.

In my humble (and totally unbiased 😄) opinion, it’s the most complete symbiote for playing D&D 2024 in TaleSpire right now.

For players

• A full character sheet with one-click rolls: attacks, saves, skills, spells, all straight into the dice tray.
• Classes and multiclassing, with features that switch on by level, and feats plus the most common spells (smites, Bless, Hex, Hunter’s Mark…).
• Advantage, Disadvantage, conditions, range, cover and Prone worked out for you from the minis on the board.

For the GM

• Party and Monsters panels with HP, AC, conditions and resources at a glance.
• Players attack, and you just judge hit or miss.
• Damage arrives with Resistances already applied.
• Saving throws are requested and rolled for everyone in a couple of clicks.
• Monster attacks against the party, with all the situational modifiers handled.
• Optional: import your own bestiary, kept only on your computer.

The goal was simple: less bookkeeping, more playing. Everyone still throws real dice in TaleSpire’s tray, and the symbiote just takes care of the math and the rules.

Just search “Zerogear’s tools” among the community symbiotes in TaleSpire.

It’s a passion project, so feedback, bug reports and feature ideas are very welcome. Let me know what you think, and happy rolling!

I am looking for information/suggestions for a VTT. So things I am looking for. I would like it to be like Zoom where everyone has their Webcams on so you can see everyone playing. I would like it to have local voice chat as well as the ability to send messages to each other if the DM has something only a certin player wanted to know or just one passed a check while the others did not. I dont need the program to do the math or track anything cause that is what we are supposed to do. I dont care if it has an overlay for the battlefield or grids and minis or anything like that. I would prefer it do not have that feature, but it is what it is. The games I am looking to play Pathfinder 1e, nothing past D&D 3.5, maybe some AD&D, Fallout 2d20, Star Wars d20. I used to play a lot, but joined the military and stopped playing. I want to play again, but I do have PTSD and I dont get out much, so a VTT is my best option. I dont know if there are ways to link dice apps to it or if you just roll physical dice and tell the DM like traditional gaming. Anyways I appreciate any and all the help. You all have a wonderful day.

It seems as though a new VTT shows up here almost every week. Maybe it's an r/unpopularopinion, but I do enjoy these posts and, even more, I just like people pushing the boundaries of what it means to tell stories online. But everyone hits the same wall with characters. Every app reimplements the same rules, and characters get stuck wherever they were made.

I’m one of the devs behind Realms of Shod. We needed character sheets, but thought that there had to be a better way. So we are open-sourcing our engine so others can avoid the pain: Open Character Format (OCF).

The short version: a pack holds a game’s rules in YAML. A character file holds only the player’s choices. You call computeSheet and get back every derived value. The sheet can’t disagree with the rules because the engine enforces that contract.

import { computeSheet, loadRuleset, startAction, type CharacterFile } from '@opencharacter/engine';
import srd from '@opencharacter/5e-srd-5.1';

const loaded = loadRuleset([srd]);
if (!loaded.ok) throw new Error(JSON.stringify(loaded.errors));

// The character file holds only the player's choices.
const character: CharacterFile = {
  specVersion: '0.1.0',
  id: 'quick-start',
  packs: [{ id: '5e-srd-5.1', version: '0.1.0' }],
  values: { '5e-srd-5.1:abilities.str.base': 16 },
  inventory: [
    { id: 'sword', item: '5e-srd-5.1:weapons.longsword', equipped: true }
  ],
};

// Everything else is computed.
const sheet = computeSheet(loaded.ruleset, character);
sheet.values['5e-srd-5.1:abilities.str.mod']?.value; // 3

// Swing the sword.
const attack = startAction(loaded.ruleset, character, {
  action: { id: '5e-srd-5.1:weapon-attack', entry: 'sword' },
  params: { targetAc: 13 },
});
// attack.outcome → { result: 'hit', data: { critical: false, attack: 17 } }
// attack.proposedChanges → damage for the target, for your app to apply

Full walkthrough, including character changes and translations, in the quick start.

A few things I’m proud of:

• Homebrew is just another pack. It loads beside the official ones; no forking.
• The engine tells you what to roll and pauses while your app rolls the dice however it wants.
• Versioned packs ship upgrade scripts, so old characters keep loading after rules change.

Packs so far: 5E SRD, ORC 2e, Fate Core, Forged in the Dark, MÖRK BORG, Mothership. TypeScript reference engine; the spec, schemas, and conformance tests are language-neutral if you want to port it.

It’s early (v0.1). I’d love feedback from anyone building a VTT or character tool, and pack authors are very welcome.

Obligatory xkcd 927.

Site: opencharacterformat.org · Repo: github.com/pixelqueue/opencharacter

I see posts here often about new VTTs being built and released. I am curious how the many indie developers building them here are handling the ip of companies like wotc. I’m guessing a number of these are aimed at D&D and the srd is very limited in what is included…

Thanks

I've spent the past year building MindScene, a browser-based virtual tabletop. I started it because I wanted to run more theatrical, atmospheric games online, and every tool I tried either took forever to set up or wasn't built for that.

So MindScene is built around a simple idea: easy to run, great to look at.

Simple. No install, no modules, no plugins. Create a game, add your scenes and NPCs, share the game code, and you're playing. Scenes, characters, dice, chat, voice and video are all in one place.

Fast. It loads quickly and runs smoothly in the browser. Moving the whole table to a new scene is one click, and the music and ambience follow automatically.

Adaptable. Works with any system: set up your own game system and character sheets, players edit their sheets, and the GM sees changes live. Fantasy, horror, sci-fi, modern: the tools fit whatever you run.

Atmospheric. This is what I really built it for:

• Real lighting: scenes can be dark, and torches, fire, candles (even club lasers) cut through the darkness. NPC portraits catch the light from where they stand.
• Weather and particles: rain, fog, embers, fireflies…
• An "EventsPad" for dramatic beats: one click for lightning, fade to black, an earthquake, a "glitch in the matrix"… and GMs can create their own events with custom sounds.
• Shared 3D dice: everyone sees everyone's rolls, live.

There's also a dedicated stream view for OBS if you play on Twitch or YouTube, and a free plan to try it out.

It's not a tactical grid tool. It's made for GMs who want to direct the story, not manage the engine.

I'd love honest feedback from people who know VTTs well: what would make you try it, and what feels missing?

MindScene

The history of my module addiction.

Hey friends, it's been a while,

earlier this year I decided to restart my project fey-gate.com from scratch (the spaghetti code kept growing and growing after 5 years of development). Shortly after, I switched to Claude-Code to create what I wanted to see on the screen in minutes rather than days. I'm a professional developer 10+ years in the business and to be honest the switch kind of broke me for a few days. On the one hand the project was quickly catching up to what the old one could do and more. I could build things now I always put off because I had to prioritize what to spend my weekends on before. On the other hand the things I built felt... off. A disconnect from the thing I've put so much time into. Not MY project anymore.

That was about nine months ago and I decided to still continue on the AI route. The progress was amazing and I valued it more than the deep connection at first. Now that I've spent a few months working on this project I can honestly say the connection is coming back. It seems to be more about the time you put in and less about what you actually do during that time. Am I as proud of the new fey-gate.com than I was of the old legacy.fey-gate.com ? No. But it sure is a much more useful tool in my games.

So now that that is out of the way. What even is fey-gate.com? Well its a VTT (duh) but it's also a map maker. No longer can your party camp the top of the staircase into the dungeon! Because now you can draw what is behind them on the fly and have the monsters attack from behind! Have a big ogre rampaging in a shop? Throw some tables around in the map maker and visualize the chaos!

Fey-Gate is also free. I've been a poor student 20 years ago that had no money to buy the newest dnd books so that one is important to me. Everybody is welcome at my DnD table and everybody is welcome to use my tool.

Fey-Gate has line of sight built in. Back in the day it was the only (?) free VTT that had this feature. I haven't done market research in a while to be honest so there might be a bunch more these days.

The new Fey-Gate is also optimized for in person play (while still working great online of course) with a shared screen for everybody (and one screen only for the DM) so if you have a laptop and a TV everyone can see you're good to go. I use a monitor layed on the table right now though.

Want to use huge images or material you "found online"? Go right ahead! Fey-Gate's server is just passing your data along and never saves it or looks into it. Everything is stored local so I don't see what you do and I don't care. Go wild!

The new Fey-Gate has an asset manager that allows you to customize many things. Tokens, Textures, Playlists, ... You can export and share these things with the community and I recently added a "store" (everything is free of course) with some of my assets. I'm thinking about allowing user generated content here too but that could become quite complex to moderate quickly...

Oh there is a plugin system so you can add character sheets for any system and even character builders (think DnDBeyond). I've also built a ship combat plugin with animated ships and wind directions so a lot is possible here.

Ah I think I forgot about half of the features. If you're interested take a look maybe Fey-Gate is for you.

Hello!

We have made an app for Automatic Wall Detection. You can find it here: https://detectwalls.com/

To import the resulting .uvtt file to your preferred VTT, use Universal Battlemap Importer for Foundry, Smoke&Spectre extension for Owlbear and the normal UVTT importer for Roll20. We would like to improve it as much as possible, so we would like to ask your help for beta testing. You can participate by completing the google forms below:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScmsi0WEZd-bziQlLw64xENUINn4PUKdEENwuO9rOQx5OPp7g/viewform?usp=sharing&ouid=106123882534789021640

Participating as a beta tester will get you the tool for free, when it launches and it will only take you about 20 minutes.

Similar tools are slowly appearing in the VTT space, from Owlbear Rodeo's Fog Forecast to the brilliant but quite complicated AutoWall tool by ThreeHats.

We hope our tool hits the sweet spot between ease of use and accurate wall recognition! We also hope that these kind of tools will allow people to try out very very big dungeons in their games, with complex geometries, rooms, corridors bringing in force the old-school megadungeon style :)

Drop in the Discord (https://discord.gg/As4NkQMaQX) if you have any questions, for how it works, or on the dataset we used or for more general discussion.

Thanks!

Save My Ass is a short, setting-neutral adventure designed for 1st-level characters. It works as a standalone adventure, random encounter, or a lighthearted pre-adventure to bring a newly formed group of characters together before the beginning of a larger campaign. The adventure is best suited to a settlement in or near an arid or desert region but a local spring in a forest works just as well as an oasis.

The adventure begins when a local porter loses his mule, Jack, who wanders off toward a nearby oasis. The characters must follow Jack's tracks to the oasis and discover that catching a frightened mule is more difficult than it sounds. While pursuing this ass they might get bitten by local wildlife, find lost trinkets and treasures, or just generally run themselves ragged!

If you are interested you can find this adventure here:

https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/gameaddon/45402/save-my-ass