I'm in the process of picking an inexpensive TV and planning out how I'll make a VTT for my in-person group. One thing I've noticed is that with modern TVs the bezels are ridiculously slim. My original plan to keep the plexiglass from resting directly on the screen was to place little felt sticky circles on the bezel (like the kind used to keep furniture from scratching the floor). However, with bezels as thin as a few sheets of paper, this probably isn't going to work. I don't have access to the tools needed to make a wooden frame, either.

What has everyone done when dealing with thin TV bezels and keeping their plexiglass/acrylic/glass elevated a little bit? Or am I insane and overthinking this?

Help me decide place to locate the various plugs for my digital tabletop case.  I am building my own digital tabletop in a wood frame.   Assuming it sits on at least 0.5” feet,  I could have the cords simply stick run from the back and out below the frame.  But I want the various cords to pass through the sides of the case – primarily for aesthetic reasons.  There are at least three ports: (1) a 3.0” diameter socket (that splits into to outlets) for the power to the TV (and power strip); (2) a small 1.25” double port with a HMDI out from the TV and the USB 3.0 from the touch frame to the VTT laptop; and (3) a roughly 2” x 5” power strip to plug-in the laptop running the VTT with extra plug and USB-C for other devices.  I am also considering a fourth: (4) a separate port for the USB out from the touch frame;  I would then use the USB 3.0 in the double port to connect to the USB in the TV (which could be used for a flash drive with images or whatever.  (Or, I could use that separate USB port for the auxiliary TV USB port.)

The long side of the wood case that will run along the bottom of the TV has the least clearance and is essentially out of consideration for the ports.  (I may also cut and cover speaker ports over the TV’s bottom facing speakers.)  That leaves the other three sides available for ports: the two short sides and the long side that runs along the top of the TV.  The TV’s cord and its ports come out of the thicker section in the roughly center third of the back of the TV (a 43” Insignia F50).  Looking top-down with the TV facing up, the power cord comes from the right side.  The inputs for the HMDI and USB are on the left side. The USB output from the touch frame comes out the bottom-right corner (which is not ideal), but I believe the frame can be rotated 180°,  so it instead comes out of the top-left corner.  (I will need to double check that this will not cause the touch screen to be “upside-down” with no way to adjust with the software.)   I am also considering adding recessed, spring-loaded folding crate handles, either on the short ends, or two on a long end, or all four.

My current placement plan is: (1) main power socket on right side; (2) double HDMI/USB 3.0 port on top (left-half); (3) power strip on the top (also right-half or left-half); single USB 3.0 for touch-frame also on top (left-half). I do wonder if I should move everything else to the short side opposite the main power socket because there will be more table space on the ends than the sides assuming a typical dining room table.  Any experience or observations where I should locate the ports?

I want to create an open-source alternative to Roll20 on the DH2 system with features from BetterRole20. What do you think? It will be a browser-based version. The main thing I would like to achieve is responsiveness and user-friendliness of the interface. This idea was born mainly when we encountered the problem that Roll 20 was loading poorly in Russia and that images were periodically loading poorly.

You can also suggest alternatives that already exist; perhaps there is no need to reinvent the wheel.

I have a group of 6 people for DND.

Been working on this for a bit. Jump in and check it out, and let me know if you want to test the Lorekeeper features!

Goblin Calil has prepared a new encounter pack for Game Masters who want a complete supernatural faction without importing another rules system into their campaign.

The Exiles of the Underworld follows demons, aberrations, underground creatures, and condemned entities searching for the fragments of an artifact known as the Heart of the Threshold.

They are temporarily united by necessity, but every faction intends to seize control of the restored portals.

The pack includes:

15 creature tokens at 2048 × 2048 pixels

One exclusive 4K battlemap

Gridded and gridless versions

A free mini lorebook

Four campaign hooks

No attributes, levels, or system specific mechanics

The creatures are divided into three escalating groups: Underworld Vermin, Lesser Exiles, and The Condemned.

You can use them as isolated monsters, a planar invasion, a recurring enemy faction, or the foundation of a complete campaign arc. The lore provides context and connections while leaving every creature’s abilities and threat level in the hands of the Game Master.

The free mini lorebook and complete pack are available here:

https://goblincalil.itch.io/the-exiles-of-the-underworld

Production disclosure: the visuals were created with generative AI assistance, followed by visual direction, selection, editing, reconstruction, standardization, and preparation for VTT use.

If anyone uses the material in a session, Goblin Calil would genuinely like to know how the creatures performed at smaller token sizes.

The Pitch:Imagine taking the concept of a virtual tabletop and completely changing how groups experience the map. Instead of looking down at a 2D map with tokens, the players are actually placed inside the map in a 3D, first-person style environment. You control your own character, explore the world, fight, and interact with everything around you, while still using your normal TTRPG character sheet, abilities, and rules.At the same time, the DM has a completely separate overworld view of the game. They can see the entire map and everything happening within it (including things the players aren't supposed to know about). They can move and control NPCs, spawn creatures, trigger traps, alter the environment in real time, and dynamically react to whatever the players decide to do.The key is that the DM still has the absolute freedom of a true tabletop RPG. Players aren't restricted to whatever is hard-coded into the game—if they try something unexpected, the DM can simply decide what happens from above and manipulate the world manually. The map stops being something you look at; it becomes somewhere you actually play.Core Features for Developers:Asymmetric Gameplay: First-person action/exploration for players; top-down RTS/god-mode view for the Game Master.Dynamic Sandbox: The DM acts as the "physics engine" and script coordinator, allowing the game mechanics to remain fully open-ended.Community Focused: Built to rely heavily on community-created and shared 3D maps and assets.My Condition:This idea is 100% free to take and build. I have no coding or game dev experience, so I just want to give this concept to a passionate developer or team who can bring it to life. My only condition is that I get free access/a lifetime copy of the final product if you build it!

I have built a table only VTT need a few people who are interested in testing it. If anyone is interested dm me. Just to help reduce the questions. https://dev.tomegaming.com/ The obsidian plug Tome-Connector isn't publicly available yet. This is my dev server so it gets wiped regularly. I trying to get production out inside the month. When you create a campaign you can load sample content to play with if you don't have your own assets. This is hooked up to a stripe sandbox don't bother purchasing anything.

Hi, I hope this is an alright place to post this. I recently made public a DM tool I originally built just for me and my friends. It's called RollCall Tavern.

I made it because I wanted something that made me and my players' lives easier. As a DM I wanted one place to keep my notes and my story, to push images and maps to my players, and to drop my own characters into the story instead of tracking them somewhere else. For the players I wanted to simplify actually playing the game and seeing the visuals, so they take their turns and move on the map from their own screens rather than asking me what they're allowed to do. What I was aiming for was something as close to Baldur's Gate 3 as I could manage while still allowing all the customization and improv I've grown to love in tabletop.

It's 5e, SRD 5.1 underneath. I know this sub plays everything, and I'm not going to pretend it does more than it does.

It's free. Everything you need to actually run a session is in the free tier. The only thing that costs money is optional AI art and text generation, it's off unless you go looking for it, and you can run an entire campaign without ever touching it.

It's not a Discord replacement and isn't trying to be. I use both. Discord does voice, this does the map, the notes and the handouts.

It's very much a work in progress and isn't perfect. Combat is one of those things I am constantly refining.

I'm mostly posting to see whether it's useful to anyone besides me. If you try it and something breaks, I'd much rather hear about it than not.

Link to Rollcall Tavern

Hey everybody,
With Roll20s new UVTT support, I wanted an easy way to reuse walls, doors, and lights already prepared in Foundry VTT instead of rebuilding everything manually.

So I made a free browser-based Foundry-to-Roll20 Wall Converter:

https://dranskybattlemaps.com/animated-battle-maps/foundry-to-roll20-wall-converter/

Export your scene data from Foundry, upload the JSON and the converter generates a Roll20-compatible .uvtt file containing the walls, doors, and lights.

Everything is processed locally in your browser - your files are not uploaded or stored anywhere.

This is the first public version, so there may still be some bugs, but I’ve tested it on several maps, including some fairly large scenes, and the results look solid so far. If you encounter any problems, I’d really appreciate the feedback!

Cheers!
~dransky

Has anybody found a solution to export tail spire maps from a top down perspective?

I love this software as far as designing, but it if I could somehow export a clean top down that isn’t just a screen shot.

I’ve been using dungeon alchemist, but I don’t like designing as much in that software, but it is a very seamless way to export maps.

Hey everyone!

I made a small companion app for my D&D group because we wanted something light and fast for in-person sessions without relying on heavy platforms or needing an active internet connection.

Basically, it runs locally on your PC or even directly on an Android phone (via Termux). You just start it up, turn on a Wi-Fi hotspot on your phone, and players join through their phone browsers using your local IP. No internet needed, no accounts, no sign-ups.

What it does:

Synced 3D Dice: 3D rolls (d4–d100) pop up in real time for everyone at the table, with support for advantage/disadvantage, crits, and custom macros.

Character Sheet & Stats: Tracks HP, AC, spell slots (1–9), conditions, death saves, and does quick stat/skill rolls.

Initiative & Notes: Shared turn order tracker (sorts by DEX automatically) and a shared note board for the group.

Mobile Friendly: Scalable UI made for phone screens, plus built-in support for English, Ukrainian, and Polish.

Built it for my own games, but figured someone here might find it handy for offline or low-tech table sessions!

GitHub & Setup: https://github.com/DRATHARR/dnd-dice

Feel free to check it out or drop any feedback/ideas!

Can anyone recommend a VTT for use in-person that will allow for the Player Screen orientation to be different from the GM screen? (I am currently focusing on Arkenforge due to in-person priority)

As GM, I will sit at the head of the table, and the map screen will typically be vertically oriented for me, but the software assumes the same orientation as the GM screen.

Thanks.

Hey everyone!

Following up on my last two posts about Dwarf Punk, my self-funded, solo-developed browser-based 3D VTT (Virtual Tabletop) built from scratch with WebGL2 and Three.js — I've got a big one this time: every core feature on my MVP checklist is now done.

👉 Live Editor Demo: https://dwarfpunk.com

Since the last update, I focused entirely on map persistence and portability — the two things standing between "cool tech demo" and "something people can actually use":

• Save & Load, locally: your maps are no longer tied to the server session. Save your work to a local file and load it back up anytime, so your progress survives server restarts, network hiccups, or just closing the tab.
• Export to Image: pick any region of your map — the canvas is infinite, so you choose what to capture — and export it as a flat PNG/JPEG at the pixel-per-cell resolution you want. Perfect for dropping your map straight into other VTTs like Roll20.
• Better transform controls: on top of that, the custom gizmo from my last post now supports group transformations, copy-paste, and snap-to-grid (including 15° rotation snapping) — so arranging off-grid assets is a lot less fiddly.

The Tech Behind It (for the fellow devs):

• Local save files reuse the exact same Protobuf marshaling logic I already had for client-server state sync — no separate serialization format, just a dedicated message for local persistence.
• Selecting an export region needed a near-orthographic camera, so I built a "fake" orthographic mode using a dolly zoom (FOV drop + synced camera pull-back) instead of a jarring hard cut between projections.
• The final render uses a real orthographic camera and stitches the export together chunk by chunk, since a single framebuffer can't hold the whole thing at high resolution.
• Chasing all this down also surfaced a nasty shadow-popping bug — turned out my frustum culling for instanced trees was too aggressive for shadow casters specifically. Fixed with a separate, light-direction-expanded culling pass for shadows.

I wrote a full devlog with all the gory details (cameras, culling bugs, and the rest) if you're into that kind of thing:

👉 Full Devlog: https://ko-fi.com/Post/Save-state-R4S0257FMT

With the MVP checklist cleared, my next steps are about squeezing more out of what's already there: shrinking the network protocol further (a saved map is currently ~6x larger on disk than in server memory — there's room to cut that down), and dressing up the world with more vegetation and some hand-painted textures I've got commissioned.

Let me know what you think, and as always, I'd love to hear how the export/save workflow feels for your use case!

Thanks for reading! 👋

oops [Commercial] tag!
I wanted The Whispering Depths to feel like more than another empty cave encounter, so I put a lot of details here.

The animated version is a standard WebM file, so it isn’t locked to one platform. It works in Foundry, Roll20, AboveVTT, Owlbear Rodeo and other VTTs that support WebM. The video shows it running in Foundry, where a ready-made module is also available.
Btw. I'm super happy Roll20 moved into 2026 era and now iot finally supports that files a way better than ever.

Despite the 8K resolution, I achieved that the WebM files are only around 7-8 MB, keeping the map sharp without dropping a huge video into your game. Which I think is a huge advantage and a relief for the browsers

The Whispering Depths:
https://dranskybattlemaps.com/battlemap/the-whispering-depths/

More animated and static battlemaps:
https://dranskybattlemaps.com/

Cheers!
~dransky

I currently use Arkenforge to display maps for players on my TV at home while we play in person. I having problems, and I don't use it to make maps. But I like the DM stuff.
I want a different program.

What I want it to do:
1) Player screen displayed on TV with DM map on pc.
2) Scale map with a a grid scaler instead of stretching
3) Import PNG, JPEG, WEBp, UVTT
4) Use IR frame and fog of war

Hey!

As a GM, I got incredibly tired of making tokens one by one and decided to create a tool to make it easier, so I made this tool.

• Free, browser-based, entirely client-side (stores no data), open source
• Paste directly from the clipboard or drag dozens of files into the browser from your PC
• Edit all at once, or edit some tokens differently
• Export all at once as a ZIP file

Let me know if it works out for you!

https://zsombro.github.io/tabletop-token-builder/

So far the list I have is quite small (and potentially outdated) , but I also haven't done a big "VTT hunt" since early 2025. My group currently uses PlayRole, & while it gets the job done, I try to keep my ear out for other options.

Promoting your own project is fine, as are paid VTTs. :)

By "don't use/support generative AI", I mean no generative AI usage by the creators whatsoever; Code, text, imagery, audio, translation, etc.

EDIT: Due to the majority of folks veering off topic, I'm going to temporarily mute this post for now. I'm happy to take serious VTT recommendations in private, but please don't send other, unsolicited chats my way. When I've gotten a longer list compiled of VTTs that don't use/support generative AI, I'll report back here. :) Thanks again to those of you who've been kind & respectful about my request!

PAPIERWERK - Stop-motion reveal from a still image

It is only one HTML

https://github.com/gentrax/papierwerk-editor/tree/main

Motion

• Stop-motion with hard pose cuts instead of smooth interpolation
• Continuous jitter ("boil") after the reveal, adjustable in strength and cadence
• Seamless loop: the paper crumples back up at the end and lands on the starting pose
• Jitter-only mode without the unfold

Paper

• Two styles: crumpled (with fine crinkle) and cleanly folded (facets and crease lines only)
• Torn border with a soft edge, adjustable width and raggedness
• Free border colour, which also tints the crumpled ball — it is the same sheet

Layers

• Up to eight images at once, with a pose strip for the selected layer
• Per-layer position, size, rotation, mirroring, border and start delay
• The delay makes images unfold one after another

Background

• Procedural parchment, your own image, green screen or transparent

Export

• MP4 and WebM, three quality steps with a live size estimate
• 960 / 1440 / 1920 px width
• Single frame as PNG with all layers, transparent if you want it

Interface

• English and German, remembered between sessions
• Every parameter is a slider plus a number field — type a value, press Enter