Tour

Hello adventurer,
My name is Dylan and I’ll be your host on this journey through TallTale.

TallTale is a browser-based VTT (Virtual TableTop) platform designed to be both as easy to use as possible, and to maximize the fun, the drama, and the anticipation of the dice roll. On this page, you will see how two key sections of TallTale work: the interactive whiteboard/map, and the dice.

The Dice

We had one rule when designing the dice: it should never feel like clicking a button to generate a number. Every roll in TallTale is a moment, something the whole table watches together – something you can feel.

Here’s how it works: press and hold on the die to charge it up. Release when you’re ready and watch it fly. That half-second of suspense before the result lands? That’s intentional. That’s the drama we wanted to give you.

Rolls happen in real time across the table. Everyone sees the same animation, the same tumbling die, the same result land – simultaneously. No “I rolled a 20, trust me.” Everyone was there. Everyone watched it happen.

Each room has its own theme, its own atmosphere, and its own set of reactions for the highs and lows of the roll. A natural 20 and a natural 1 aren’t just numbers, they’re events. View the demos and try to roll a crit to see!

The DX Dice: Roll Any Combination You Want

All four rooms support DX mode: a custom notation roller that handles complex multi-dice expressions. Type 4d6kh3 to roll 4d6 and keep the highest 3. Type 2d20kl1 for disadvantage. Add flat modifiers like 1d20+5. The dice animate as a single physics object while the results unfold individually – you see each die, which ones were kept, and the final total, all in one clean display.

Getting Started Takes Ten Seconds

When you enter a room as GM, the whiteboard is already there. Click the toggle button in the top-left corner to open the toolbar. Pick a tool. Draw. Done.

There is no import step, no layer management, no document to save. The board auto-saves as you work and syncs to every player in the room in real time. Your players see what you draw the moment you draw it.

The Drawing Tools

The toolbar gives you everything you need without burying you in options:

• Free Draw — sketch out terrain, scribble notes, mark a path. It works like a pen: fluid, fast, and forgiving.
• Line — drop precise borders, roads, and sight lines.
• Rectangle — rooms, buildings, zones of control. Draw the shape, and the fill handles the rest.
• Circle — area-of-effect templates, auras, blast radii.
• Move — select and reposition any object on the board (except free drawn elements). Handles appear on the selected shape, letting you resize and rotate with a drag. No mode-switching, no sub-menus.
• Eraser — brush away anything that doesn’t belong.
• Undo — every change is tracked. Made a mistake? One click.
• Clear — wipe the board and start fresh. Handy between encounters.

Stroke and fill colours are controlled through a single colour picker panel with two swatches – one for outlines, one for fills. Pick your colour, keep drawing. Changes apply to new shapes and to anything you’ve selected and want to update.

Fog of War — Your Secret Weapon

The most powerful tool on the board, and the simplest to use.

Enable Fog Mode with one click. Anything the GM draws or adds to the board while this mode is enabled is hidden to all other players. Then use the Reveal Area tool to drag and expose sections of the map — a room the party enters, a corridor they peek down, a clearing that emerges from the dark.

There are no layers to juggle, no export steps. Draw in the fog, reveal as needed, move on.

Character Tokens and NPC Placement

Every player in the room appears on the board automatically as a character token, labelled with their character name and portrait. Drag it to its new position and every player’s screen updates immediately. Players can always control their own character’s token position.

As GM, you place NPCs through the NPC panel: give them a name, upload a portrait (which gets cropped automatically into a clean token), and drop them onto the board with a click. Mark them as enemies and they display differently than allied NPCs. NPCs can also be assigned to another player to control.

The Initiative Tracker

When things kick off, click the Initiative button to open the tracker. Hit Start Initiative and every player at the table receives a prompt to roll their D20 — right there in the dice panel, no side conversation needed. Rolls come in as players make them, and the tracker fills out in real time, showing who’s rolled and who’s still thinking.

When everyone is in, place the order directly onto the whiteboard as a visual initiative list. It drops onto the board where your players can see it, sorted by roll, ready to reference for the whole encounter.

GMs can also use this feature to add drama by entering initiation mode, which causes the screen to darken with a little screenshake, forcing them to roll those D20s.

Pings and Player Board Control

Need to point something out on the map? The Ping tool drops an animated marker at any location — visible to every player simultaneously, then fades out. No talking over each other trying to describe a position. Just click. All players have access to this tool.

GMs can enable Player Board Control in the room settings to give players access to the basic drawing tools: free draw, lines, and shapes. Useful for collaborative mapping, note-taking, or just letting players sketch their own ideas. You stay in control of fog, NPCs, and initiative — players get just enough access to contribute. However, some tools remain in the hands of the GM only, such as NPC creation and fog mode.

Zoom, Pan, and a Board That Stays Out of Your Way

The board scales smoothly in and out with the zoom buttons, and you can pan freely across it with a middle-click drag (or two-finger scroll on touch). Zoom animations are fluid — no hard jumps. The board remembers where you are between interactions so you can switch tools and come right back to where you were working.

Everything auto-saves. When the session ends and a player comes back the next week, the board is exactly where you left it.

Character Sheets – Everything at the Table, Nothing in the Way

Character sheets in TallTale live inside the room. There’s no separate tab to open, no external PDF to hunt down, no “hang on, let me find my sheet” moment. Everything a player needs is one click away from the board.

For Players

Each player can build and maintains their own character sheet throughout your sessions. The sheet is divided into focused tabs that cover every aspect of a character without overwhelming the screen, or the user.

• Character Name  — The name that appears when pining or rolling dice
• Character Icon  — The profile image of the character, used as their token on the whiteboard
• Stats — core attributes (Strength, dexterity, HP, Grit, etc)
• Skills — proficiencies, ratings, training, or any custom fields you’ve set up
• Spells — spells and abilities
• Equipment — weapons, armor, and gear
• Items — for everything else: consumables, treasures, quest items
• Conditions — active status effects that affect your character right now, at a glance
• Notes — session notes, plot threads, anything you want to track in your own words

Each tab is a clean single-purpose view. You don’t scroll past four sections to find your hit points. You click the tab that has what you need and it’s there.

For GMs

As GM, you can pull up any player’s character sheet directly from the whiteboard. Just select the character/NPC tool, then click their token and the character sheet opens in a panel. This is the detail that changes how sessions flow: you don’t have to ask “what’s your Strength modifier?” You look it up in three seconds without interrupting anything.

During an NPC interaction, a contested skill check, or a rules question, the GM has full read access to the relevant character’s sheet without the player having to narrate their stats aloud or message in Discord.

Portraits and Tokens

Every character sheet includes a portrait. Upload your character art, and it gets automatically cropped and formatted into a clean circular token that appears on the whiteboard: labelled, positioned, and synced to every player in the room the moment you place it.

The portrait carries identity across both the dice panel and the board. When you roll, your name shows in the roll history. When you move on the map, your face moves with you. The sheet, the token, and the dice are all connected to the same character — one system, not three.

For Your Players

Players joining a TallTale room don’t need an account tutorial. They see the dice, they see the board, and within a minute they understand both. The toolbar appears only for those with drawing access, and the tools they do have are self-explanatory. Click a tool, use it, move on.

The best interface is the one nobody has to think about. That’s what TallTale is designed to be — for GMs and players alike.

Ready to run a session? Your board is waiting.

FAQ