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Local VTT is a lightweight, local-first virtual tabletop app for in-person tabletop RPG sessions. It gives the Game Master a private control view and a separate player-facing view for a TV, monitor, or projector used as a physical battle map.

Local VTT is built for groups who play around the same table and want digital maps, fog of war, tokens, dice, turn order, and table effects without needing accounts, cloud sync, subscriptions, or an internet connection during play.

What Local VTT Is For

Local VTT is designed for running live, in-person sessions where the GM controls the map and players see a clean shared display.

Use Local VTT when you want to:

• Display battle maps on a TV, monitor, or projector.
• Keep GM-only controls private while players see only the revealed scene.
• Manage scenes, maps, fog, tokens, drawings, templates, effects, dice, and turn order from one local desktop app.
• Use campaign folders that can be backed up, moved, or stored wherever you prefer.
• Run sessions without relying on internet access.

Local VTT works best as a digital battle-map companion for physical or hybrid tabletop play.

What Local VTT Is Not

Local VTT is intentionally not a full campaign-management platform.

It does not currently include:

• Character sheets.
• Player accounts or permissions.
• Remote multiplayer connections.
• Health bars or automated combat tracking.
• Rules automation.
• Dynamic lighting, walls, doors, windows, or vision-based fog.

Tokens are lightweight map markers, not full character records. The app focuses on helping the GM run the table smoothly rather than replacing the entire game system.

Core Concepts

Local VTT is organized around a few main ideas.

Campaigns

A campaign is a local folder on your computer. It contains campaign data, scene files, imported assets, thumbnails, and metadata backups.

Campaigns are portable, so you can copy or back them up like any other folder.

GM View

The GM View is the private control window. This is where the GM manages scenes, layers, tools, tokens, fog, effects, dice, turn order, and Player View controls.

Player View

The Player View is a separate window intended for a TV, monitor, or projector. It shows the player-safe version of the active scene.

GM-only information is filtered out before it reaches the Player View.

Scenes

Scenes are individual maps or table setups inside a campaign. A scene can have a static image map, animated GIF, video map, grid settings, fog of war, tokens, drawings, templates, weather, animated effects, and turn-order visibility.

Layers

Layers keep scene content organized. Local VTT includes layers for the map, grid, fog of war, effects, drawings, tokens, and future scene features.

Layer visibility can differ between the GM View and Player View.

Tools

The Tools menu contains live-session tools such as fog tools, drawing tools, templates, table pings, laser pointer, ruler, dice, and turn order.

Main Features

Local VTT currently supports:

• Local campaign folders with portable assets.
• Static image maps, animated GIF maps, MP4 maps, WebM maps, and same-size map variants.
• Map asset replacement while preserving scene setup.
• Scene folders, thumbnails, thumbnail regeneration, duplication, ordering, and save indicators.
• Separate GM View and Player View windows.
• Player View display targeting, fullscreen support, hold screen, blackout, and waiting screen behavior.
• Square, hex, and gridless scenes.
• Map calibration and measurement settings.
• Manual fog of war with brush, rectangle, circle, and polygon tools.
• Lightweight tokens with styling, visibility controls, movement paths, and Player View animation.
• Token Library with reusable token assets and default presentation settings.
• Token conditions with optional Player View ring indicators.
• Drawing tools for annotations and map markings.
• Area templates for lines, radius effects, cubes, and cones.
• Weather effects such as rain, snow, fog, and sand, with preset packs for quick scene setup.
• Localized animated environmental effects such as fire, water, smoke, lava, arcane, radiant, and more.
• GM-only ruler, ping, Arrow Pointer, and laser pointer table tools.
• Dice rolling with formulas, presets, history, text results, 3D panels, 3D scene rolls, impact audio, and throw direction controls.
• Turn order with rounds, groups, countdowns, token links, and Player View indicators.
• Metadata-only backups for campaign and scene JSON files, with in-app Restore Revision recovery.

Suggested Reading

If you are new to Local VTT, start here:

1. Getting Started
2. Player View Setup
3. Campaigns And Backups
4. Scenes And Maps
5. Tokens And Token Library
6. Fog Of War
7. Dice And Turn Order
8. Troubleshooting

If you are preparing for your first session, the most useful path is:

1. Create or open a campaign.
2. Import a map.
3. Configure the grid and measurement.
4. Open the Player View.
5. Add tokens.
6. Add fog of war.
7. Send the scene to players.

Data And Privacy

Local VTT is local-first.

There are no required accounts, no cloud sync, and no internet connection required during play. Campaign data is stored in folders on your computer. Imported maps, cropped token-ready images, thumbnails, scene files, and backups stay inside the campaign folder.

This makes campaigns easy to back up, archive, move to another computer, or store in your own preferred file-sync system.

Current Limitations

Local VTT is still evolving. Some advanced VTT features are not implemented yet, including dynamic lighting, walls, doors, player permissions, character sheets, health bars, and full rules automation.

Backups currently cover campaign and scene metadata only. Restore Revision can restore those metadata backups from inside the app, but backups do not duplicate large asset files such as maps, videos, token images, or thumbnails.

For more details, see Known Limitations.

Getting Help

If something does not behave as expected, start with Troubleshooting.

Useful troubleshooting topics include:

• Player View opening on the wrong display.
• Missing map or token assets.
• Recovering from backups.
• Video map playback issues.
• Large map performance.
• Unsigned installer warnings.
• Scene visibility differences between GM View and Player View.

For development setup, release notes, and contributor information, see Development And Contributing.