New campaign/campaigns/new
Start a fresh campaign.
- Name it and set the edition and tone.
- You can change all of this later in Settings.
The manual
Every screen in the app and what it is for, in the order you tend to meet them. This is the same text the ? button shows you in the app, so it can never say something different from what you see on the page.
Setting up
Making a campaign, deciding how it runs, and getting your players in.
New campaign
Players & invites/campaigns
Onboard players and review their characters.
- Generate an invite link; a player builds their character in the creator.
- Review submissions and approve them into your party.
Settings/settings
How this campaign runs, and the devices attached to it.
- Every question here is the one the setup walkthrough asks, in the same words, so the two can never disagree.
- A “not set yet” mark means nobody has answered that one and it is sitting on its default.
- Answering here is identical to answering at creation: it sets the value and records that you chose it.
- Generate device tokens for the at-table Loupedeck control.
Decided versus defaulted
The app tracks which of these you actually chose, separately from what they are set to.
- A setting you picked and a setting nobody ever asked you about look identical in a switch. They are not the same thing, so they are recorded differently.
- Skip a question during setup and it stays marked unanswered rather than quietly accepting the default.
- That is what lets the app ask you once, later, at the moment the setting first matters, instead of you finding it months on.
- Saying “not now” to one of those prompts closes it without pretending you answered.
Notifications and quiet mode
What reaches you, and what waits until you look up from the table.
- A notification says that something arrived and takes you to it. It never carries the note, the message or the roll, which is what makes it safe on a phone.
- Quiet mode silences everything except what the table is waiting on you for: an approval, your turn, a reaction.
- Turning a kind off means it is not recorded at all, rather than hidden. The dice feed starts off, because at a real table that one is constant.
- Settings live in the bell itself, so players with a link and no account can set their own.
Create your character/invite
Your DM invited you to build a player character.
- Step through class, species, background, ability scores and starting gear.
- Your progress saves as you go - you can come back to a draft.
- Submit when you're done; your DM reviews and approves it.
Admin/admin
Behind-the-scenes controls for this deployment.
- Maintenance and operational tools - not part of normal prep or play.
- You can safely ignore this during a session.
AI Drafts/ai-drafts
A review queue for AI-generated content before it enters your world.
- NPCs, factions and other drafts wait here for your approval.
- Accept a draft to add it to your campaign, or discard it.
- Nothing AI-made becomes canon until you approve it.
Building the world
The places, people, powers and plot behind the screen.
World & modules/modules
Your world's regions and adventures. Each module holds areas, locations and maps.
- Open a module to edit its description, areas and locations.
- Region modules from a Nortantis import list their cities - assign locations with compass directions and link them to maps.
- Use “View on Continent” to see a region in place on the continent map.
Continent map/maps/import
Generate a continent right here, or import one from desktop Nortantis - every region, city and river arrives placed and oriented automatically.
- Generate in app: pick world size, regions and a seed, draft in seconds, re-roll until it feels right, then Accept.
- Or import: design and label in desktop Nortantis, export the image, save the .nort, and drop both into the Import tab.
- Either way, regions become modules and settlements become areas the moment the map lands.
- The full walkthrough is on this page - expand “How continent maps work”.
Continent map/maps/continent
Your continent as a live, zoomable map with a pin for every labeled place.
- Drag to pan; scroll or use the + / − buttons to zoom.
- Click any pin to see its name, type and compass bearing from its region.
- From a pin you can jump to its region module, or to a linked battle map.
- ⬇ .nort downloads the Nortantis save for desktop fine-tuning; ↻ Regenerate re-opens the generator pre-filled with this map's settings.
NPCs/npcs
Your cast of non-player characters.
- Generate or author an NPC with personality, a secret and plot hooks.
- Give them a portrait, and pull them into encounters or scenes.
Factions/factions
The powers and groups shaping your world.
- Track each faction's goals, scope and standing with the party.
- Connect factions to threads and NPCs to keep relationships clear.
A faction's treasury
What a faction is worth, why it is worth that, and whether the players know.
- Record a movement with a reason and the ledger keeps the running balance. The balance is never edited directly, so it can never drift from its explanation.
- A treasury can go into debt, unlike a character's purse. An organisation owing money is a story hook, not an error.
- Own a shop with a faction and its takings arrive here on their own, inside the same transaction as the sale.
- Finances are hidden from players until you reveal them, and the toggle sits next to the number rather than in settings.
Shops/shops
Storefronts your players can actually buy from, with stock and prices you control.
- Stock a shop from the reference, your homebrew, or by hand, and set a price per line.
- Decide whether a purchase happens immediately or waits for your approval. Either way the app carries the offer and a human decides.
- A sale moves the coin and the item together, so a purchase can never half-happen.
- Point a shop at a faction and its takings flow into that faction's treasury.
Monsters/monsters
This campaign's own bestiary, separate from the full reference.
- Import from the reference or your homebrew, or build one from scratch.
- Give a monster a portrait and it follows through to encounters and map tokens.
- Encounters add monsters from here, so the roster is the thing you curate once.
- Flags show which statblocks still lack the numbers combat needs.
Plot/plot
A living graph of your plot beats and how they connect.
- Add beats and link them to show how the story branches and pays off.
- Reshape it freely as players make choices - it's an outline, not a script.
Threads/threads
Open story threads, so nothing important slips.
- Track each unresolved plot line, its urgency and how long it's been open.
- Connect a thread to the NPCs, factions and places it touches.
Secrets/secrets
DM-only notes you can reveal to specific players - secret, asymmetric knowledge.
- Pin a note to the whole party or to specific characters.
- Stage it during prep, then push it live to that player's portal in game.
- Players only ever receive what's meant for them - never another player's secret.
Sessions/sessions
Your session log and recaps.
- Paste raw notes from a session and get a structured recap.
- Decisions, NPC interactions and open threads are pulled out for you.
Characters & content
Sheets, gear, your own homebrew, and the rules reference.
Party/party
Your player characters and their full sheets.
- Open a character for HP, AC, resources, spells and inventory.
- Level up, toggle equipment, and spend/restore resources with a rest.
- Generate a share link so each player sees (and updates) their own sheet.
Rolling from the sheet
Pick a character and what they are rolling for, and the modifier comes off their sheet.
- Skills and saves use the same numbers printed on the sheet, proficiency and expertise included, so a roll can never disagree with the card above it.
- Attacks come from equipped weapons, so the roller and the encounter panel always offer the same list.
- Initiative is offered as the Dexterity check it is. Nothing on a sheet stores an initiative bonus, and inventing one would be a modifier the character does not have.
- Players get the same roller on their own portal, scoped to their character.
Money and the ledger
Every purse is stored exactly, and every movement leaves a line saying why.
- How money reads (gold only, or broken into coins) is a campaign setting and is purely display, so changing it mid-campaign loses nothing.
- Award a pile and split it across the party in one step. There is no shared pool: coin belongs to characters.
- Whether players may move their own gold is your call, in Settings. Buying through a shop you set up is unaffected either way.
- A character cannot spend more than they hold. A faction can, because an organisation can be in debt.
Inventory, stacks and packs
One Add control, and quantities that go both ways.
- Add a custom item, pull one from the reference, or add a spell, all from the same button.
- Identical items stack instead of piling up as separate rows, and the stepper commits when you finish typing rather than on every keystroke.
- Unpack a pack to turn it into its contents; the pack row disappears and its items arrive individually.
- Handing something to another character mid-fight asks you first, because a gift during combat costs a bonus action.
Items/items
Your campaign's item library.
- Create a magic item, or generate one tailored to a specific character.
- Assign gear to PCs and track who has held what over time.
Homebrew/homebrew
Add content you own - the app provides the empty frame, you supply the rules.
- Author homebrew classes, subclasses, species, spells, feats, weapons and armor.
- They appear alongside SRD content in the character creator and level-up.
Lookup/lookup
Searchable SRD reference.
- Search spells, monsters, items, conditions and rules.
- Press ⌘K (Ctrl+K) anywhere for instant search.
At the table
Running a live session: the map, the fight, the second screen, your players.
Run session/run
The live at-table screen - run the whole session here without leaving for other pages. Nothing in the game changes unless you trigger it.
- The initiative tracker is the spine: advance turns, set HP, and toggle conditions on the active combatant.
- If the encounter has a battle map, the ⚔ Battle map docks as a tray - pin it to the Side or Bottom, or hide it. Drag tokens, and the active token's reach shows green (reachable) / red (within an enemy's reach).
- Tap a combatant for its stat block, actions and inventory; pull AI tactic suggestions on demand - they never act on their own.
- Push a staged secret to a specific player's portal mid-session from the secrets panel.
- Open the player monitor on a TV (📺) so your table sees the map and pushed images live.
Encounters/encounters
Build and run combat encounters.
- Create an encounter and add monsters and party members.
- Roll or set initiative, then advance turns tracking HP and conditions.
- Link a battle map to place tokens and run it live.
What is missing before initiative
A banner before the fight naming anything combat-relevant that has no number behind it yet.
- It reads the structured fields on each creature's actions, not their prose, so it flags what the app genuinely cannot compute.
- “To check” means we parsed something and want your eyes on it; “unset” means nobody has filled it in.
- An entry ticked as having no mechanical effect is never flagged. That tick is what separates nothing-to-track from not-done-yet.
- Fix it here rather than mid-fight: the save helper stays silent on anything unresolved rather than inventing a DC.
The save helper
When the selected action forces a save, the panel spells out the sentence you say to the table.
- It names who rolls, which ability, the DC, and what happens on a success and a failure.
- Rolling it is optional and only offered for monsters and NPCs. A player character's save is the player's to roll.
- The roll button shows the modifier it is adding, because a hidden bonus that disagrees with the statblock flips outcomes.
- A DC it cannot resolve is shown as unresolved with the reason, never as a guess.
Action, bonus action and reaction tracking
Optional per-turn counting. It reports what has been used; it never stops anyone doing anything.
- Off by default, and off is a real default: everything works identically without it.
- Turn it on from Settings or the chip on your dashboard. Safe to switch on part-way through a fight.
- Effects that grant an extra action raise the ceiling, so a hasted second action reads as legal rather than over budget.
- Undoing a logged action gives back everything it spent, including the resources it consumed.
Maps/maps
Upload, generate and run battle & travel maps - and view an imported continent.
- Upload an image or generate one with AI, then calibrate its grid on the map page.
- Place tokens, draw fog/lighting, and push a map to the player monitor.
- Imported a Nortantis continent? Use the Continent View toggle, or “Import it →” to add one.
Player monitor studio/monitor-studio
Build what your table sees on the second screen, and save it to fire in one tap.
- Compose a screen from maps, scene art, portraits, items and text, then save it as a preset.
- Portraits are split into players, NPCs and monsters so you are not scrolling one long list.
- Line presets up as a cue list for the session and fire them from the run page without coming back here.
- Fired something by accident? Un-fire it. Nothing reaches the table until you send it.
Player monitor/monitor
The shared screen for your table - put it on a TV or second display.
- It shows the live battle map, images your DM pushes, and combat.
- It updates on its own as the DM runs the game - nothing to click.
- Just keep this tab open on the shared screen.
Your character/player
Your character's live sheet - shared with your DM in real time.
- Tap your HP to take damage or heal; spend spell slots and class resources.
- Take a short or long rest to recover, and toggle conditions as they change.
- Opened from a share link? It's view-only - sign in to update your own character.
Table chat/chat
Messages between you and your players, and between players, without leaving the app.
- Threads arrive live and the badge counts what you have not read. Your own messages never count against you.
- Whether you can read player-to-player threads is a campaign setting, and players are told which way it is set either way.
- With oversight off, a private thread is genuinely invisible to you rather than merely hidden.
- Reading a thread you are not in is a read right only. Posting into it would be impersonation, not moderation, so it is refused.
Something missing or wrong? Tell us - help that is wrong is worse than help that is absent.