Player's Guide¶

Finally, ready to start your adventure! This is the beating heart of YaVTT. Reading this guide will quickly onboard you on all the basics of the software.

The tools¶

The screen you are looking at right now is what will accompany you in all your adventuring. Get comfortable with it! Almost all parts of it can be resized and moved around. The client will remember their positioning. If you want to return to vanilla, you can reset the client's memory in the Client Settings. Now let's go over each tool available in your RPG toolbelt.

The chat screen¶

On the bottom left, you have the chat screen. Here you can communicate by text with the other members of the adventure. Simply click on the text box and write around.

The chat screen is also used to type handy commands.

1. Private messages: type /tell or /t, and select another player in the adventure. They will receive your message and it will be seen by just you two.
2. Rolls: by typing /roll you can roll dice in various formats. The YaVTT roll engine for now supports the following:
   • drop/-dr highest/lowest x: Drop the highest/lowest x number of dice. Example: /roll 4d20 drop highest 2.
   • advantage/-a: Roll two, take the highest. Example: /roll 1d20 -a.
   • disadvantage/-d: Roll two, take the lowest. Example: /roll 1d10 -d.
   • explode/-e: Reroll at will as long as a dice returns the highest value possible. Example: /roll 1d6 explode. (Don't try /roll 1d1 -e!)
   • reroll/-r x: Reroll a value or a list of values. Example: /roll 1d6 -r 1.

The roll screen¶

Directly above the chat you have the roll screen. The roll screen is the history of all rolls made in the adventure. The results of the /roll commands end up there. If your system has automations, the results of those automations end up there, together with buttons if planned.

The tool bar¶

On the top left corner you have your tools. You can keep them always visible if you check the "Pin tools" checkbox in Client Settings.

• Select: this is your standard tool and the one you will use 99% of the time. Stay in Select mode to select and move tokens, and select tokens in bulk (as long as you are their owner) by dragging the mouse on the screen.
• Measure: use this tool to measure distance on the map.
• Drawing: use this tool to draw on the map. Drawings are visible by everyone. You can also choose to draw with temporary ink; it will disappear after 5 seconds.

The scene selector¶

On the top centre, you can find the Scene selector. If the Master allowed you to see scenes with their "Visible to player" per-scene checkbox, you will be able to move around the scenes. Otherwise, you can move to a scene only if you have a token there (usually placed by the Master or after a portal moves you there). Some scenes have floors: each floor has their own scene settings. To access a different floor (if you have permission) you simply need to click the dropdown arrow and select the floor you want to move to from the dropdown menu.

The side panel¶

On the right, you can find the side panel. That is the scaffolding where all your characters, abilities, items, notes etc... live. The side panel depends heavily on the system: I will walk you through the defaults and make some examples with the YaRS system.

Combat tracker¶

Very often, the default combat tracker will be the left-most panel. Here, you can usually find the combat logic, that is per-scene. The system author chooses what to include in the tracker. Usually, tokens can be in combat state or peaceful state. To switch to combat state, hover over your token. You will find a little dove icon beside it. Click it, and the icon ill switch to two crossed swords: that token is now considered in combat. Only the Master can start a combat, though.

System panels¶

To the right of the combat tracker you have the system panels. Each system declares so-called "Archetypes", such as Items, Characters, Abilities. They become panels in the side panel. Each of them has Kinds, that can serve as groupings in the respective panels.

The author can declare some Archetypes as less important; in that case, you can find them in the dropdown menu in the side panel.

Journals¶

This panel stores all your notes and journals. You can write them in markdown, share them with other players, or hide them.

Settings¶

Here you can find the Settings.

The quickbar¶

On the bottom of your screen, you can see the Quickbar.

The quickbar is per-token and can be customised directly from the character sheet. Simply open a sheet, drag an ability to the quickbar to it, and you can instantly use that ability by clicking on it! It is system-dependant, but for YaRS, it is as easy as that. Then take that sheet and tokenise it by dragging it to the map. You will see the token shares the same quickbar.

Having a quickbar handy greatly increases the speed of play. Left-clicking the ability uses it; right-clicking the ability shows you various additional actions (system-dependant).

You may ask yourself: if it is only used for tokens, why is it always there? In the future, I'd like to create a macro system that allows declaring some simple actions to be executed in order (a classic example: starting a combat and flipping all the tokens' combat states); for now, though, it does nothing. Sorry!