✦ Loremaster’s Compass
Web app

The DM ScreenAlpha

A browser console for running a 5e table: party, initiative, conditions and Roll20 control, kept in step with D&D Beyond.

Open the DM ScreenGetting started and supportGet Compass Bridge
This is an alpha. The DM Screen is alpha, and with the Compass Bridge connected it can write to your players' real D&D Beyond sheets and to your live Roll20 game. Every write is read back and reported in the Recent activity panel, but most of the outward writes have so far been proven at one DM's table, not many. Before you rely on it in a session, make a test campaign, watch the first write of the evening land, and untick Write HP back to D&D Beyond on the Party overview until you trust it. Export your console state from the profile menu now and then.

About

The DM Screen is the page you keep open beside Roll20 while you run a session. It holds your party, the initiative order, conditions and spell effects, and with the Compass Bridge extension it keeps your D&D Beyond sheets and your Roll20 tokens in step with each other. It is for a DM who already plays on D&D Beyond and Roll20 and is tired of copying hit points between three tabs. It has been used at a real table but is still changing quickly.

Requirements

Get started

  1. Open the DM Screen and choose New here? Create a profile. Enter a username, a password and a display name, then click Create profile.
  2. Install Compass Bridge in Chrome (see its page), then reload the DM Screen tab. The top bar should read Bridge followed by a version number instead of Bridge offline.
  3. In the same Chrome, sign in to D&D Beyond and open your players' character sheets in tabs.
  4. On the Party overview, click Sync D&D Beyond. The first time, choose Open character tabs, click Scan open sheets, check what it found, then click Import.
  5. Open your Roll20 game as GM in the same Chrome window and open its Turn Order window. Keep it open while you play.
  6. Go to Initiative and click Import once. That links the game; Table settings will then say it is linked to your game's name.
  7. Back in Roll20, select the party's tokens and the monsters, right-click and choose Add Turn. On Initiative click Roll party, then Creatures for the monsters, then Export to write the scores onto the Roll20 tracker.
  8. Click Next turn. Roll20's Turn Order and the DM Screen now step together.

Features

Party overview Alpha

A card for every character at your table showing HP, temp HP, AC, conditions, auras, concentration, death saves, exhaustion, class resources and coins, with a comparison table beside them. Click any HP number and type -10 for damage, +5 to heal or 35 to set it.

D&D Beyond sync, live view and write-back Alpha

Sync D&D Beyond scans your sheets and imports them after you review them. While the DM Screen is open it then re-reads each sheet about every 30 seconds and shows what changed. HP, temp HP, max HP, conditions, exhaustion and death saves you change here can be written onto the sheet and are read back to check, unless you untick Write HP back to D&D Beyond.

Initiative and turn order Alpha

Roll the party and the creatures, import and export Roll20's Turn Order, drag rows to reorder, add timers, and step turns from either side; both screens follow each other. The DM Screen can post whose turn it is to Roll20 chat, optionally whispering the player, and a player ends their own turn by typing done in chat.

Conditions, durations and concentration Alpha

Add a condition, a class or spell effect such as Raging or Bless, or anything you type, and let it count down in rounds, minutes or hours at the start or end of a chosen creature's turn. A concentrating party member who takes damage gets a Kept or Lost prompt, and the conditions D&D Beyond knows are written to the sheet.

Attack cards and damage Alpha

Attack and spell cards that land in Roll20 chat appear as Table cards with their rolled totals. Pick a target and the card is checked against its AC, then one Apply button takes the damage off (temp HP first, resistances considered) and, for life-drain attacks, lowers the maximum. Spell cards for a spell on the caster's sheet also open a Who is affected dialog.

Roll20 token bars, light and vision Alpha

Sync token bars puts temp HP, AC and HP on your party's tokens through Roll20's own token model, and a bar a player edits on the map comes back here. You choose what each bar means for party and NPC tokens, and you can give a token a torch or lamp, set vision from a stat block, number duplicate goblins, and have dropped tokens join the Turn Order.

Spell templates and area effects Alpha

Pick a caster and a spell on the Area effects panel and the DM Screen places a template token on the map, sized to the page grid, using art from the Spell art page. It works out who is inside as people move and turns change, rolls creatures' saves from their sheets, and asks the party's players to roll their own.

Auras Alpha

Spirit Guardians, Twilight Sanctuary, Beacon of Hope and the paladin auras run as a countdown chip on the card and a ring on the token. The DM Screen rolls their dice, reads who stands inside from the Roll20 map, grants temp HP or asks for a Full, Half or Saved result as the aura requires.

Linked tokens: mounts, riders, swallowed Alpha

The chain button on an initiative row links tokens so the base leads and the others come along, each still its own token. Drag a rider clear to dismount. A swallowed creature takes the swallower's damage on its turn and gets the matching conditions.

Stat blocks, search and keyboard Experimental

The book button on a creature's row shows its traits and actions. Ctrl-K searches your tracker, party, conditions, rulings and spells, and Space steps the turn, Shift+Space steps back and 1 to 9 open that row's HP. Keys never fire while you are typing, and there is a Keys on switch beside Grouped.

Encounter builder Alpha

Load your D&D Beyond monster catalogue once, filter it by type, CR and source, build a roster and see its difficulty against your party under the 2024 or 2014 rules. Add & roll in DM Screen puts it on the tracker, and Send to map places numbered tokens from matching Roll20 journal characters.

Party inventory and magic item workshop Alpha

Keep a snapshot of each character's inventory, move items and coins between sheets, add gear from your account's catalogue and export the queue to D&D Beyond, with every write read back and logged in a transfer ledger. The workshop designs a magic item and creates it privately in your D&D Beyond homebrew.

Rests, legendary actions and group initiative Experimental

Short rest and Long rest buttons preview what they would change before they touch anything. A creature's row can carry a legendary-action budget and lair actions on initiative 20, and identical creatures on one score collapse to one row that takes one turn. These shipped very recently.

Notes, spellbook and reference Alpha

Session notes are kept per character and for the party, and can be sent to a sheet's Background journal as tagged blocks. Spellbook lists what each character can cast, and the reference pages cover conditions, core rulings, actions in combat, factions, random tables and circle casting. Sync health and four lamps in the top bar show whether the connector, Roll20, D&D Beyond and the Compass are working.

How to

Bring my party in from D&D Beyond
  1. Sign in to D&D Beyond in this Chrome and open each player's character sheet in a tab.
  2. Open the Party overview and click Sync D&D Beyond.
  3. Choose Open character tabs the first time. Later you can choose Current campaign to refresh only the sheets you already imported.
  4. Leave Reload sheets before reading ticked, then click Scan open sheets and wait for the sheet count.
  5. Click Import. The characters appear as cards and in the Party list on the left.
  6. Leave Write HP back to D&D Beyond ticked if you want HP and condition changes made here to reach the sheets, or untick it to keep them local.
Run a fight from start to finish
  1. On Initiative, click Import once so the Roll20 game is linked and the Turn Order is read.
  2. In Roll20, select the combatants' tokens and use right-click, Add Turn. Monsters you add later in Roll20 appear on the DM Screen by themselves.
  3. Click Roll party. Type each monster's initiative bonus in the + box on its row and click Creatures.
  4. Click Export to write the scores onto the Roll20 tracker and sort it.
  5. Click Next turn, or press Space, or use Roll20's own arrow. Click a creature's HP and type -10, +5 or a new value; add conditions from the + effect list.
  6. When the fight ends, use Reset round or Clear all, and the Short rest or Long rest buttons on the Party overview if the party rests.
Get HP onto my Roll20 tokens and keep it there
  1. Link the game with Import on Initiative and open Table settings.
  2. Open the Tokens & bars group and click Sync token bars. Bar 1 gets temp HP, Bar 2 AC and Bar 3 HP over max for the party's tokens on the map you are looking at.
  3. Tick Bars follow D&D Beyond syncs so every later sync pushes new values by itself.
  4. Check the party and NPC bar layouts in the same group; the DM Screen finds each token by the id it learned on import, else by name.
  5. If a character's token is named differently, tick Whisper the player under Announcements and use Roll20 token names to tell the DM Screen what the token is called.
Place a spell's area on the map
  1. Make sure the Roll20 game is linked and Area effects is on in Table settings.
  2. On the Area effects panel, choose the caster (it defaults to whoever's turn it is) and type or pick the spell.
  3. For an upcast spell, set the slot level, then click Place on caster.
  4. Drag the template token to where the spell lands. The caster can click the link the DM Screen posts in chat, or you can click It is placed - roll.
  5. Answer the Full, Half or Saved prompts for party members, who roll their own saves; creatures are rolled for you unless you turned auto-resolve off.
  6. Click remove on the effect when it ends. Spells that last several rounds count down with the initiative clock.
Move an item or coins between characters
  1. Open Party inventory, stay on the Current inventory tab and pick the character in the list on the left.
  2. Click Refresh to read their current inventory from D&D Beyond, or use the saved snapshot.
  3. Find the item, click move, choose the destination and confirm. Coins use Move coins.
  4. To give something from the catalogue, find it under Account-available catalogue, click Queue, then use Export to D&D Beyond.
  5. Check the Transfer ledger for the result. Each move is read back from the sheet before it counts as done.
Back up my console or move it to another profile
  1. Click your name in the top right of the DM Screen.
  2. Choose Export console state (JSON) and keep the file somewhere safe.
  3. To restore, sign in to the profile you want, open the same menu and choose Import an export file.
  4. On the import page, pick your file and follow the prompts.

Known limits

Questions

The top bar says Bridge offline. What do I do?

The DM Screen cannot see the Compass Bridge extension. Check it is installed and enabled on chrome://extensions, then refresh the DM Screen tab. The Sync health page lists what the connector can see and has Check buttons for D&D Beyond, Roll20 and the Compass.

Next turn does nothing in Roll20, or Import says no game is open. Why?

Roll20 must be open as GM in this same Chrome window with its Turn Order window showing; the toolbar icon opens it. If the game was closed or reloaded, reopen it and click Import again to relink. With several games open, close the others first.

A player typed done but the turn did not move.

The name Roll20 gave has to match the tracker row. When it does not, the DM Screen shows a warning with buttons to accept that name for the row or to let anyone end the current turn. If you see Roll20 has stopped listening to chat, refresh the Roll20 tab; that happens after the extension reloads.

HP changed on D&D Beyond but the DM Screen has not updated.

The extension re-reads your sheets about every 30 seconds while the DM Screen is open, so there can be a short delay. You must be signed in to D&D Beyond in the same Chrome, and the character has to be one of this campaign's imported sheets.

HP is not reaching the Roll20 token.

Link the game with Import, then click Sync token bars. The token is found by the id learned on import, else by name, so a token named differently needs an entry under Roll20 token names. Also check the NPC bar layout: a bar has to be set to HP for monster damage to be written.

A spell I want has no template.

The panel says not in the spell inventory or no area the engine can draw when it cannot place the spell. It needs an area to draw, and the list comes from your party's spellbooks and a built-in set. You can still apply the spell from its Roll20 chat card through Who is affected.

The top bar says read-only.

Another DM Screen tab in this browser is the one writing to D&D Beyond and Roll20, and this one only watches. Close the other tab to hand over.

Do my players need to install anything?

No. Only you install the extension. Players use Roll20 as usual and end a turn by typing done in chat, or by clicking the End turn link if you left it on.

Privacy

Your console state, including the characters and notes you import, is saved to your DM Screen profile on the site's server so the same console opens on any browser you sign in from. No email address is needed, and you can export everything as a JSON file from the profile menu. What the Compass Bridge reads from D&D Beyond and Roll20 is described on the Compass Bridge page.

Feedback

The alpha is open and what breaks is the point. Tell us what happened, what you expected, and which tool.

Report a bug