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FAQ
This page answers common questions about Local VTT.
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Local VTT is a local-first desktop app for in-person tabletop RPG sessions.
It gives the Game Master a private GM View and a separate Player View for a TV, monitor, or projector.
It is designed for digital battle maps, fog of war, lightweight tokens, dice, turn order, table tools, drawings, templates, and effects.
No internet connection is required during play.
Local VTT stores campaigns locally on your computer. Once the app and your campaign assets are available, you can run a session offline.
No.
Local VTT does not require accounts, logins, subscriptions, or cloud sync.
Campaigns are stored as local folders on your computer.
A campaign folder contains files such as:
campaign.json
assets/
scenes/
backups/
For more details, see Campaigns And Backups.
Yes.
Close Local VTT, copy the full campaign folder to the other computer, then open that folder from Local VTT.
Make sure you copy the full folder, including:
campaign.jsonscenes/assets/backups/
Yes.
For a complete backup, copy the full campaign folder.
Local VTT also creates metadata-only JSON backups before overwriting campaign and scene data, but those backups do not duplicate maps, videos, token images, or thumbnails.
Backups include campaign and scene metadata, such as:
- Campaign structure.
- Scene data.
- Token placements.
- Fog shapes.
- Drawings.
- Templates.
- Effects settings.
- Grid settings.
Backups do not include large asset files, such as:
- Map images.
- Video maps.
- Token images.
- Generated thumbnails.
Back up the full campaign folder if you want complete protection.
Not directly.
Local VTT does not currently provide remote player clients, player accounts, browser links, or online rooms.
It is designed for in-person play with a local player-facing display.
For remote play, you would need to use external screen sharing or streaming tools.
Yes.
Local VTT is designed for this.
Open the Player View, move it to the TV, monitor, or projector, then use fullscreen when ready.
For details, see Player View Setup.
Yes, if your display setup supports it.
Use Player View display scale calibration to size the grid appropriately for physical minis.
This works best with a flat screen setup where the display is used as a tabletop map.
Yes.
Local VTT supports:
- Animated GIF maps.
- MP4 video maps.
- WebM video maps.
Video maps render muted and looped in GM View and Player View.
Yes.
Scenes can use:
- Gridless mode.
- Square grid mode.
- Hex grid mode.
Hex scenes support hex-aware snapping and measurement.
Yes.
Use Fog of War to hide and reveal parts of the map manually.
Fog tools include:
- Brush.
- Rectangle.
- Circle.
- Polygon.
No.
Fog of war is currently manual. The GM controls reveal and hide areas.
Local VTT does not currently include dynamic lighting, walls, line of sight, or token vision automation.
Yes.
Tokens can be hidden from Player View.
Fog of war can also hide player-visible tokens if they are outside revealed areas.
No.
Tokens are lightweight map markers. They do not currently include full character sheets, health bars, inventories, stat blocks, or rules automation.
Yes.
Tokens can have conditions assigned from their context menu.
Conditions can be GM-only or visible in Player View as ring indicators.
Yes.
The Dice Bag supports common dice formulas, quick dice, custom presets, recent roll history, text results, 3D Panel results, and 3D Scene Rolls.
Yes, if dice display settings allow it.
Dice results can be shown or hidden independently for GM View and Player View.
Yes.
Turn Order can track entries, initiative values, rounds, groups, countdowns, count trackers, linked scene tokens, and Player View turn indicators.
No.
Turn Order helps track encounter flow, but Local VTT does not automatically resolve attacks, damage, saves, health, or rules effects.
Yes.
Drawing tools include brush, line, rectangle, ellipse, triangle, and polygon tools.
Placed drawings can be selected, moved, resized, rotated, duplicated, hidden, deleted, and managed from drawing sub-layers.
Yes.
Template tools include line, radius, cube, and cone templates.
Templates can show measured areas and grid footprint previews.
Yes.
The Effects layer supports weather effects such as rain, snow, fog, and sand.
It also supports localized animated effects such as fire, water, smoke, lava, arcane, radiant, force fields, and more.
Not yet.
Dynamic lighting, walls, doors, windows, light sources, and vision-aware fog are not currently implemented.
The Windows installer is not currently code signed.
Windows may show a publisher or SmartScreen warning because it cannot verify a signed publisher.
Only install builds from a trusted source.
No.
To update Local VTT, download and install the latest release manually.
Your campaign folders are separate from the app installation.
Usually no.
Published GitHub release assets may be immutable. If a release has already been published for a version tag, use a new version and tag for corrected builds. The release workflow now checks for an existing release and stops before trying to replace published assets.
Check these in order:
- Is the correct scene open in GM View?
- Was the correct scene sent to Player View?
- Is Player View in Hold, Blackout, or waiting screen mode?
- Is the relevant layer visible?
- Is the item visible to players?
- Is fog of war hiding it?
- Are required asset files still inside the campaign folder?
For more help, see Troubleshooting.