Handbook

Getting Started

1. Open the app. No account or install.
2. Create a campaign from the Data Manager sidebar. Everything is scoped to a campaign: maps, tokens, playlists, story slides, sheets.
3. Switch between modes using the top nav bar. DMs see five modes; players see only the VTT.
4. All data persists locally in your browser. To share with players, start a multiplayer session (see Multiplayer).

The Modes

VTT

The live battle map where tokens move, initiative runs, and dice roll. This is what players see.

Map Editor

Authoring environment for battle maps. Not shared live with players.

Data Manager

Campaign, map, token, asset, playlist, and status library. Also where you import and export.

Sheets

Character and creature sheet editor and viewer. Markdown+ format.

Story

Narrative slide reel for image reveals, NPC portraits, and location descriptions.

Companion

A phone-sized view for players: sheet, inventory, HP, abilities, and rolls. See Companion Mode.

The music player is not a mode -- it lives as an always-visible widget in the bottom-left corner (see Music).

Campaigns

A campaign is a self-contained bundle of maps, tokens, playlists, story slides, and sheets. Create and switch campaigns from the Data Manager sidebar. Only one campaign is active at a time.

Token templates are campaign-scoped but can be copied across campaigns via import/export.

Large assets (over ~200 KB) need a bit more browser support. In Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Edge, Brave), FeyGate will ask once for a folder to store them in; everything after that is automatic. In other browsers, stick to smaller assets or use tokens with tiny portraits.

Asset Store

The Store on this website is stocked with content packs and plugins you can add with one click. Open an item and press Add to Fey-Gate.

• Packs ask Add to which campaigns? -- tick as many as you like. A pack is saved once and shared, so adding it to five campaigns doesn't take five times the space. Accidentally deleted something from a pack? Add the same pack again and everything you deleted comes back, while the items you edited stay exactly as you left them. A progress bar shows how far the install has got; keep the tab open until it finishes. Changed your mind later? In the Data Manager's campaign panel, tick or untick it under Store packs in your campaign. No campaign yet? The Store sends you to Fey-Gate to make one first.
• Plugins are saved into your campaign folder, so pick a folder in Settings first (Chrome or Edge). After adding one, approve it in Fey-Gate under Settings → Plugins -- nothing runs until you say so.

Every item is labelled for how much AI went into it: AI Free, AI Supported or AI Generated. Set the AI content filter at the top of the Store to hide whatever you'd rather not see.

Map Editor

Switch to Map Editor mode and open or create a map from the Data Manager.

Tools

• Select (V) -- click or drag-select. Multi-select with shift. Rotate with the orange handle (shift snaps to 15°).
• Rectangle (R), Ellipse (E), Polygon (P), Line (L) -- shape primitives. Shift constrains to square/circle.
• Brush (B) -- freehand fill.
• Pan (H, Space) -- move the viewport.
• Asset (A) -- drop in pre-built assets (vegetation, structures, furniture, light sources).

Boolean draw modifiers

• Ctrl + draw -- union with selected shape.
• Alt + draw -- subtract from selected shape.

Layers, undo, filters

• Layers: visibility, lock, drag-to-reorder.
• Undo/redo with no practical depth limit.
• Hand-drawn filter toggles per map, turning crisp shapes into sketched, organic lines.
• Dynamic lighting: place point lights, choose a time-of-day preset (dawn, day, dusk, night, underground, none), or disable lighting with none.

For every tool option and every shortcut, see Map Editor Tools.

Running a Session

1. Load a map in VTT mode from the map picker.
2. Drag token templates from the Data Manager onto the canvas to place instances.
3. Pan with right-click drag or Space+drag; zoom with the scroll wheel.
4. Open the dice tray (R), initiative tracker (I), and token picker (T) as needed.
5. Toggle the grid with G.

Initiative

Open the tracker with I. Add combatants from the canvas selection or type manually. Cycle turns to advance the round counter. Selecting a tracker entry highlights the token and vice versa.

Line of Sight

Toggle line of sight from the VTT toolbar (DM only). With it on, each player only sees what their tokens can currently see -- everything else fades into fog, and areas a player has already explored settle into a dimmer "remembered" fog instead of snapping back to black.

The DM never gets blacked out. With line of sight on, you see the whole map, dimmed everywhere the players' tokens can't see -- so you know exactly what the party is looking at, and what's still lurking in the dark.

Players: lost your character on a big map? Click the crosshair button on the VTT toolbar (Focus next token you control) to jump the camera to your token. Control more than one? Each click hops to the next.

Tokens

HP & stat bars

• HP input accepts +5, -3, or an absolute number.
• Custom stat bars: name, max, one of seven colours, visibility (all, dm, hidden).

Statuses

Click a token and tap an icon in its Statuses row to switch it on or off. Each active status shows as a small colored badge around the top of the token, on every screen at the table. If a token piles up more than fit, the last badge turns into +N. The DM can set statuses on any token; players can set them on tokens they own.

Every campaign starts with ten: Stunned, Poisoned, Burning, Frozen, Prone, Invisible, Frightened, Blinded, Paralyzed and Concentrating. Need something odd for one fight? Type it into Other condition… and it shows as a grey badge with its first letter.

To make the list your own, open the Data Manager → Statuses:

• Click a status to rename or recolor it, or swap its icon. Reset puts an edited one back the way it came.
• + New status adds your own. Pick one of 36 built-in icons, or Upload image… -- any picture works, it's cropped square and shrunk for you.
• Export set saves your statuses as a .fey file; bring them into another campaign with Import.

Hexed, Marked for Death, Smells Faintly of Cheese -- if your table tracks it, it can have a badge.

Built-in icons by Lorc, Delapouite and contributors from game-icons.net, CC BY 3.0.

Size categories

Tiny (0.5x), Small (0.75x), Medium (1x), Large (2x), Huge (3x), Gargantuan (4x). Sets the grid footprint.

Templates & instances

Create a token template in the Data Manager. Each placement on the canvas is an instance with its own HP, statuses, and position. Editing a template's max HP propagates to instances; editing an instance's current HP does not.

Visibility

Per-token: visible, dm (DM sees it, players do not), or hidden (nobody sees it, for staging).

Copy / paste

Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V duplicates selected tokens with every property intact.

Dice

Open the dice tray with R in VTT mode. Rolls are 3D, physics-simulated, and sync to every connected player.

Notation

Supported polyhedrals: d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20, d100. Every roll lands in the dice log, and natural 20s and 1s on a d20 get called out there.

Dice themes

Pick your dice from the dropdown in the dice tray: Midnight, Ivory, Arcane Amethyst, Emerald, Dragonfire, Frost, Galaxy, Onyx & Gold, Forged Steel, Dwarven Gold or Granite -- or Custom colors to choose your own. Your choice is saved in your browser and only changes what you see, so everyone at the table can roll in their favourite set. Daggerheart Hope and Fear dice keep their own colors.

Story Mode

Story Mode is for narrative beats -- image reveals, NPC dialogue, and scene descriptions. Slides are grouped into named sessions.

Slide types

Image

Fullscreen picture. Use for dramatic reveals.

NPC

Portrait, display name, and DM-only notes: tone of voice, personality, key phrases. DM notes never cross the network.

Location

Optional image and sensory notes (what players see, hear, smell), plus private DM notes.

Character Sheets

Sheets are Markdown+ documents: standard Markdown plus custom interactive components. Autosaves on every edit.

Components

• HP tracker -- same math input as tokens.
• Stat box -- numeric value with label; good for ability scores and modifiers.
• Skill check button -- clickable roll button.
• Pip tracker -- consumable resource (spell slots, abilities with limited uses).
• Tabs -- split a long sheet into sections.

Because the format is text-first, there is no required structure. Write whatever the system calls for.

Music Player

The music player is an always-on widget in the bottom-left corner. It appears as soon as the active campaign has at least one playlist. There is no separate Music mode.

Creating playlists and tracks

1. Open the Data Manager and switch to the Playlists content type.
2. Create a playlist (campaign-scoped).
3. Add tracks by pasting any YouTube URL.

Playing music during a session

• Pick a playlist from the dropdown in the player widget.
• Use prev / play-pause / next. DM controls are mirrored to every connected player in real time.
• The progress bar along the top of the widget shows track position.

Roles

DM (or solo)

Full control: switch playlists, transport, volume.

Connected player

View-only transport (disabled buttons show what's playing). The volume slider is always enabled, so each player balances music against voice chat on their own.

Collapsed state

A chevron in the top-right corner collapses the widget to a compact pill (play-pause + track title). The widget auto-collapses when you switch to Map Editor so it does not cover your drawing surface; toggle it back open at any time.

Multiplayer

Hosting

1. Click Invite in the nav bar. That one click starts the room and copies the player invite link.
2. Paste the link to your players, or let them scan the QR code in the popover that opens.
3. Need the link again? Click the room code in the nav bar and it's copied once more.

Joining

Players open FeyGate with a URL parameter:

https://www.fey-gate.com/app/?join=ABC123

URL parameters

?room=CODE

DM: rejoin an existing room as host.

?join=CODE

Player: join a room.

?join=CODE&companion=1

Player: join and open straight into Companion Mode. This is what the invite QR code links to.

Who's at the table

As DM, click the session indicator to see who's connected. If a player drops out -- a phone goes to sleep, a laptop lid shuts -- they stay on the list as offline, along with how long they've been gone, and their character sheet stays with them. When they come back under the same name, they pick up where they left off. Click the × next to an offline player to remove them and their sheet from the session.

How it works

A lightweight relay passes messages between everyone at the table and stores nothing itself. The DM's game is always the source of truth; late joiners catch up automatically, and a dropped connection reconnects with tokens exactly where they were left. Shared images aren't re-sent if someone at the table already has them, so reconnecting and catching up stays fast.

If the DM drops for long enough that the room closes, Fey-Gate opens it again under the same code when the DM reconnects, as long as nobody else has grabbed it in the meantime. Your invite links keep working, and players just refresh to rejoin.

Companion Mode

Companion Mode gives each player a phone-sized view instead of the full VTT: their character sheet, inventory, HP, abilities, and a roll log, synced live with the DM.

Joining

Open the session popover in the nav bar while connected and scan the QR code, or share the invite link -- both drop a player straight into Companion Mode on their phone, no separate app or login.

What syncs

HP and sheet edits made in Companion Mode sync to the DM's screen immediately, and abilities a player has shared are visible to the DM in a drawer on the VTT toolbar.

A player can also reach Companion Mode from a desktop browser via the same invite link -- it's a view, not a device restriction.

Import / Export

Pack your maps, tokens, textures, assets, playlists and collections into a single .fey file to back them up, move them to another device or hand them to a co-DM. The images they use come along inside the file.

Export

1. In the Data Manager, click Select.
2. Tick what you want to take with you. You can switch sections and keep ticking. In the maps, tokens, textures and assets sections, Select All ticks everything in view.
3. Click Export. A .fey file lands in your downloads.

Statuses have their own Export set button in the Data Manager's Statuses section. Story slides and character sheets don't go into .fey files.

Import

1. Open the campaign you want the content in.
2. Data Manager → Import, then pick a .fey file.
3. If a token, texture or map in the file is already in this campaign, choose Overwrite or Skip for each one (or Overwrite All / Skip All), then click Import.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Map Editor

VTT