FreeVTT

A portable, offline-first DM and worldbuilding tool. Build worlds, run sessions, share with others and play together, all in one app. License: CC BY-NC 4.0 · Free to use Everything core works **without an account**. You only need one to play online, publish to the marketplace, or download other users' content. /images/general-media/1791564204_7DEx9r3t.webp Worldbuilding - Era Timeline: Split your world's history into eras on a timeline bar and move between them. Each era keeps its own map, pins, nested location maps and day-by-day timeline pins linked to cards and sessions. You can show the same city before the war and after it. - Templates & Packages: Every world is built on a template (D&D 5e is built in) and pulls content from packages. A package is a bundle of cards you can install into any world, link to other packages, or share on the marketplace. Custom templates are coming. - Codex: Schema-driven cards for NPCs, monsters, spells, items, locations and more. Every reference is a tappable link. Pin cards to the top, preview any card with a long press, and search by name, tag, category or text. - World Map: Pins, grid and scale, drawing, fog of war, and nested maps you can walk into (districts, dungeons, taverns). - Mind Map: An infinite canvas with linked nodes, workspaces, freehand drawing and undo/redo. /images/general-media/1791564252_TB7zwrCp.webp Running the Session - Second Screen: Give the table its own view. Pop out a window onto a second monitor, cast to a TV or projector, or project into every connected player's app. You choose how battle maps, images, cards and PDFs go out. Fog of war and hidden tokens stay hidden. - Battle Map: The session screen *is* the map, with the encounter panel and event log on top. It has layers, fog of war, AoE templates, 5e diagonal rules, creature-sized tokens, shapes and text, a DM-only layer, hidden tokens, movement trails for the round, and two maps joined into one. - Combat Tracker: Initiative, HP (with hit-dice rolls), conditions, turn order and an event log. - 3D Dice: Dice roll across the screen with named styles. Skills and saving throws roll from the character sheet with one tap. - Soundpad: Layered ambience with gapless loops, fades and ready-made soundpacks. - PDF Library: PDFs kept inside the world, opened in tabs and shareable with players. /images/general-media/1791564292_BnuuXJTS.webp Characters - Full 5e rules: Species, class, subclass, background and feats fold into one sheet. Each sense, resistance, proficiency, trait and always-prepared spell shows where it came from. Also covers multiclassing, spell slots, class resources (Rage, Bardic Inspiration, sorcery points…), weapon mastery, and short and long rests. - Character Builder: Pick species, class, subclass, background, ability scores, skills, starting equipment and feats from the SRD and any installed pack. - Level-Up: HP, proficiency bonus and hit dice update automatically. ASIs, feats, subclass and spell picks wait as pending choices. /images/general-media/1791564330_JBRRDNZ4.webp Playing Online - Online worlds: Put a world, package or character online and it stays the same on every device you sign in on. Players see the pictures even when the DM is offline. - Players: Join with an invite code, claim a character, move your own token on your turn, and send dice rolls to the DM's log. Shared cards update when the DM edits them. - .dmtz files: Export a world, package or character to one file and import it anywhere. No account or network needed. Content - SRD 5.2.1: Built in and works offline. - 19 one-tap packs: Tome of Beasts (1–3, 2023), Creature Codex, Monstrous Menagerie, Black Flag SRD, Deep Magic, Tome of Heroes, Vault of Magic, Tal'Dorei and more. - Ready-made worlds: 99 Devils of Uzrah's Palace (Shadowdark), Army of the Damned, The Cold Bounty, and soon our own campaign Aegis Act . - Marketplace: Publish worlds, templates, packages and characters as versioned snapshots with content previews. - Social: Profiles, follows, an activity feed, direct and group chats, and game listings with applications.

Codex Cryptica is an AI-assisted worldbuilding and campaign management tool built around a living knowledge graph instead of a folder of loose documents. Every character, faction, location, and event you create becomes a linked entity, so your world stays connected and explorable as it grows. Genre-agnostic across fantasy, sci-fi, cyberpunk, horror, post-apocalyptic, western, steampunk, and more.

Fantasy Grounds Unity is a high-power virtual tabletop originally released in 2004 and completely rebuilt on the Unity engine in 2020. Developed by SmiteWorks, it is the industry pioneer of "automated play," where the software handles complex rules, modifiers, and combat math natively. In a massive industry shift in late 2025, the platform moved to a completely free-to-play model, removing the traditional $50 license fee to compete directly with modern browser-based rivals. Description Fantasy Grounds is often described as a "Digital Dungeon Master’s Assistant." It is a standalone application (not a browser site) that provides the most stable and deep automation available. While it has a more traditional, window-based interface that can feel daunting to new users, it rewards the "Power GM" with unparalleled control over combat and data. Since becoming free in late 2025, it has positioned itself as the premier "zero-cost" entry point for groups who want professional-grade automation without a subscription. System Overview & Key Features Native Ruleset Automation Unlike other VTTs that rely on community plug-ins, Fantasy Grounds features "Hard-Coded" automation for its primary systems. When a player drags an attack onto a target, the software automatically checks for cover, calculates the hit against Armor Class, applies damage, and tracks temporary hit points or resistances without any manual input. V5.1 Visual Intelligence The 2026 update introduced "Aggregated Notifications." Instead of scrolling through a wall of text in a chat box, combat results like damage, saving throws, and status effects now appear as elegant visual icons and pop-ups directly over the tokens on the map. 2.5D Tactical Mapping While it supports traditional 2D top-down maps, FGU includes a unique 2.5D camera mode. This provides a sense of depth and perspective to battlemaps, making the digital table feel more like a physical diorama with "placeable" 3D-like objects like trees and furniture. Total Offline Capability Because it is a localized application, you can prepare your entire campaign, build NPCs, and write story entries without an internet connection. Your data is stored on your hard drive, giving you total ownership of your campaign files. The Fantasy Grounds Forge FGU features an integrated marketplace and community portal called "The Forge." This allows GMs to browse and auto-install thousands of community-made extensions and themes that update automatically whenever the main software is launched. Cross-Platform Unity Engine Built on the Unity 6 engine (as of 2026), the software offers smooth performance on Windows, macOS, and Linux. It uses hardware acceleration to handle complex dynamic lighting, weather effects, and large-scale vision blocking for massive dungeon crawls. Additional links fantasygrounds.com : Official Fantasy Grounds website fantasygroundsacademy.com : Community-led training and free classes forge.fantasygrounds.com : Official community content and extension portal

Car Wars is a vehicular combat tabletop miniatures game of armed cars fighting in arenas and on the highways of a collapsed United States, designed by Chad Irby and Steve Jackson and published by Steve Jackson Games. It first appeared in 1980 as a small ziplock-bag game, and it won the Charles S. Roberts Award for Best Science Fiction Boardgame of 1981. Later editions followed, including the Deluxe Edition (1985), the Compendium (1989) and Car Wars 5.0 (2002). Sixth Edition, which replaced the 2002 edition, was funded on Kickstarter in early 2020 with $652,995 from 3,936 backers, and it began shipping to backers in 2021. The rulebook is written for competitive play, although earlier supplements added light roleplaying elements and a GURPS-based setting, Autoduel America. Description Players are drivers who build their own armed vehicles, using pre-assembled 1/64 scale plastic cars on a shared arena, and fight until one is left running. The setting is a fallen United States around 2069 to 2070, a time of banditry and regional dictators, in which armed driving grew out of demolition derbies. It is played as a head-to-head contest between the players themselves, with a starter set built for two players and an arena of around 36 inches square. The game asks players to accept that their carefully built cars will be wrecked. A reviewer of the two-player starter set found one-on-one play limited, with the first player often at an advantage, and recommended more cars, more players and objectives.

Gamma World is a post-apocalyptic science fantasy roleplaying game created by James M. Ward and Gary Jaquet, first published by TSR in 1978. Over more than four decades the game has been rebuilt from the ground up seven times by nearly as many publishers, and the most recent overhaul came in 2010, when Wizards of the Coast released a stripped-down, card-driven edition built on a pared-back version of the Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition engine.  Where D&D sends heroes out to save a kingdom, Gamma World drops mutant scavengers into the wreckage of a shattered Earth to fight over technology nobody left alive still understands. Description Gamma World is gonzo by design. A character isn't built so much as collided into existence: two randomly rolled Origins get mashed together into one being, however little sense the combination makes ("I'm a Radioactive Yeti," to use the game's own example). From there, characters spend the session drawing from decks of mutation and salvage cards that shift constantly - the powers a character has at the start of a fight are rarely the ones they'll have by the end of it.  Combat is lethal and character turnover is high, so the game leans into its own chaos rather than fighting it: sessions play fast, tonally silly, and are built to be picked up and put down in a single evening rather than carried across a long campaign.

Nico de Gallo is an actor, voice actor, and pro GM that loves TTRPGs so much, they started a video series called Spicy Dice just to talk about them more. Their channel features bite-sized TTRPG tips for veteran GMs and newbies alike, podcasts, and occasional pre-recorded and livestreamed actual plays.