DM Manual

Lore & Play is a Dungeon Master's operating console: it keeps your campaigns, party, session notes, battle maps, and rules reference in one place, so game night needs one browser tab instead of six apps and a paper screen.

Creating an account and logging in

1. Open lorenplay.com and press Sign up in the top-right corner.
2. Fill in your name, username, email, and a password, then confirm the verification email that arrives in your inbox.
3. Log in. New accounts start as DMs — if you were invited as a player, your DM's admin sets your role.

After login you land on the dashboard: the Library, a bookcase with your notebook beside it. The top shelf holds your campaigns — the newest facing out, the rest spine out, *All campaigns* and + New campaign — and, past the bookend, the games somebody else runs, where you play, with *Characters I play*. Open a campaign's book to see its open session (Open session, or + New session when every session has been played), ▶ Run it with only the tools you use at the table, its sessions so far, and its party; ← Bookcase, or the browser's Back, puts it back. The middle shelf is the Workshop, a book per kind of homebrew with how many you have made, then *Characters for my games*, Worlds and the Gallery. The bottom shelf holds the Tavern, Guilds, Friends, Settings and the rules reference. On a phone the books lie in stacks instead, and the notebook is below them.

Player view — the screen a player sees is on each campaign's *Party & Players* tab: it asks which player, and shows that campaign exactly as they see it, read-only. If you also play in someone else's game, it is listed under *Play as a player*, and the header's *Dashboard* link brings you back from that side. Your characters come in two lists: Characters for my games (party sheets, pregens and the characters your players brought you) and Characters I play (your own heroes at other DMs' tables). A character moves between them with one click on its card; one that sits in a game somebody else runs stays in *Characters I play*. Accepting an invitation to a campaign takes you straight to it. When you sign in, a welcome screen shows both sides at once — what is live and what is next — until you choose what it should open from now on.

• Invitations — players can propose their own characters to you; accepting copies the character into your pool (see §4).
• Set up your first game — on a new account, a three-step checklist (campaign → party → session) that tracks your actual progress and takes you to the right screen.
• Your notebook — beside the bookcase: invitations waiting for your answer, and the next session that has a date.
• A campaign's cover — in its open book, Edit the cover: leather, cloth, dragon scale or vellum, a colour, gold, silver, copper or blind-tooled lettering, and a typeface. Until you choose, each campaign has a cover of its own that never changes.

The campaign is the anchor of everything: sessions, party, battle maps, codex, and rules all live inside it. Campaigns lists yours; each one opens into its Campaign Hub.

1. Press New campaign.
2. Give it a name and (optionally) a one-line setting — both appear on every session screen.
3. Pick the ruleset: SRD 5.2 (2024 rules), or one of your own homebrew systems from the Workshop (§10).
4. Create it. Every campaign starts with Session 1, ready for your first game night — you land in the Campaign Hub.

The Campaign Hub

The Overview keeps the three things you come for in reach at every screen width: the story so far (shown whole — your players read the same text on their campaign page), the campaign's numbers (sessions, party, Codex, maps — each opens its tab) and How characters advance (§5). On a phone the numbers and the choice come first and the story follows; on a wide screen they sit side by side, with the campaign's panels in a third column.

Finishing, archiving, and taking it with you

• Campaign package — the whole campaign as a .zip. A Full backup keeps everything, sessions and transcripts included; a Shareable copy is the campaign as material for another DM, without your table's sessions. Import either from Campaigns → Import.
• Publish to the Tavern — share the shareable copy with every other DM (§9).
• Mark this campaign finished — the story ended. Everything stays readable, and every character in it is released to play somewhere else.
• Archive — only hides the campaign from your lists; nothing else changes, and one click brings it back.

Characters is your character pool: every PC you own, reusable across campaigns. Characters get into the pool three ways — you build them in the wizard, you import them from D&D Beyond, or a player sends you theirs. One character plays in one campaign at a time.

Building a character in the wizard

1. Press New character → the creation wizard opens.
2. Pick class (and subclass from level 3), species, background, and assign ability scores — the wizard enforces the 2024 rules for you.
3. Choose skills, equipment, and spells where the class calls for them.
4. Save: the engine computes AC, HP, initiative, saves, skills, and attacks. The character appears in your pool, ready to link to a campaign.

The character sheet

Assigning a character to a player

1. Open the campaign's Party & Players tab and invite the player by username (+ Invite someone).
2. On the character's row in the pool, choose that player under Played by.
3. That player now sees the character on their own home page and can open its sheet and the live table (see the Player Manual). While the character is in your campaign, its player may only level it up — anything else is yours to correct.

Importing from D&D Beyond

From the character pool, paste a D&D Beyond character URL and press Import. The character must be set to Public on D&D Beyond for us to read it. The importer rebuilds the sheet into the same computed model the wizard uses, so from then on the character behaves exactly like a wizard-built one — and the ⟳ Resync from D&D Beyond button on an imported character re-pulls the latest version (overwriting changes made here since).

No URL? Use the PDF. Press Import PDF next to it and upload the character sheet PDF that D&D Beyond exports (on the character sheet: ⚙ → Export → PDF). This works for characters that aren't Public, and you get the same fully computed sheet. Two differences: there is no resync (a file can't be re-fetched), and because a PDF prints totals rather than the reasons behind them, the import tells you about anything it couldn't reproduce — most often which armour to tick as equipped. Check those before play.

On the campaign's Overview, How characters advance has three answers. Every campaign starts on Free and stays there until you change it.

Award XP is on the session's Party roster, in Wrap up, and on the campaign's Party page. Type the total, what it was for, and tick who gets it: the total is split among them, rounded down (450 XP among four is 112 each). Each award writes a line in the Timeline and the Chronicle, shows a toast on the player's screen, and has Undo on your toast.

The battle's XP box. In an XP campaign, pressing End on the initiative tracker opens a box before anything is given: every hostile creature on the map with its worth — the defeated ticked, the ones who fled or were talked down listed unticked — and the characters with a token on the map ticked. The sum follows your ticks, or type another total. Not now gives nothing. Ending the same battle again after an Undo says the XP was already given instead of offering it twice.

Players see Ready for level N on their sheet and their home the moment a level opens, and the level-up editor stops there and says why. You can always raise or lower a level by hand, in every mode, and only you can change a character's XP.

The session workspace is your screen for game night. Open a session from the Campaign Hub (or from Run a game on the dashboard), and everything for the evening is in one place, organised in tabs.

The bar along the top is all the header a session has: Back, the campaign, the session (click its name to rename it), whether it is ● Live — recording, or the map your players see was revealed from here — and on the right Prep | Run, Open on phone and Full screen (remembered on that device; a reload brings you back to the map you had open).

Prep and Run

A session has two modes. Prep is every tool, with a strip across the top for getting ready: plan and notes, building battle maps, the Codex, the AI prep brief, importing a transcript or recording, the party. Run is the same screen without the tools that build a game — only what you use at the table. Each device remembers its own choice, so the laptop at the table can stay in Run while your desk stays in Prep.

On a computer, Prep is a book. The session sits in the middle, bound in the campaign's cover, its tabs hanging above it as ribbons. On a wide screen the campaign's sessions stand on a small shelf to its left — each a chapter, one click to its own prep — and a notepad to its right keeps the Notes and Wrap up open beside the book (on a narrower screen they are the two buttons beside the tabs).

Wrap up — before you close

Wrap up (top right of the tabs) is a short checklist for the end of the night. It changes nothing by itself; each line takes you where the work is: the story so far (edit it, or draft it with AI), the quests this session touched, Experience points or Levels (Award XP or Grant a level, §5), a session note, the Codex (names heard tonight that are not in it yet), and Played?

The live transcript

Lore & Play can capture what is said at the table. Recording runs in your browser — no install — and lines land in the Transcript tab with speaker and timestamp. From any line you can make a note, a marker, or ask the assistant about it.

The whole table's microphones: set *Table microphones* to Whole table in the Transcript tab. Every player in the campaign can then open their own microphone from Join live table on their own page — no link to send, no QR to scan, and their name is already filled in from their character. Set the recognition language and your own name (I am…) there too: the language applies to every device at the table, not just yours.

What was said that you haven't written down (Prep, under the transcript, and Wrap up's *Review names*) compares tonight's transcript with your Codex. It lists the names spoken that are not in it — and, first, the ones that look like a mishearing of something that is (*“The transcript says Hothoro Faro. Your Codex has Harthorn Farm. Same place?”*). Nothing changes until you click: add the entry, correct the line, or dismiss it.

The battle map stays on your computer (or the TV), and your phone becomes the remote. Press Open on phone in the session bar: a QR code opens this session in Run mode. Sign in on the phone with the same account once and it stays signed in.

• The bottom bar — Party, Table, Notes, Story, and More (Prep | Run, the other tabs, Full screen). The session bar above still says whether you are ● Live.
• Party — the same live cards as on the computer, one per screen width: XP, HP, damage, healing, rests.
• Table — the map's remote (below).

The map's remote

• Players' screen — reveal the map to the players or hide it, and Sync view: players' screens follow the part of the map your computer shows.
• Battle — whose turn it is, Previous and Next turn, and the whole turn list one tap away.
• Fog — fog on or off, reveal or hide the whole map.
• Turns, Library, Rolls, Effects — the map's side panes, as tabs.

The battle map is a full virtual tabletop: token movement, initiative, fog of war, spell templates, dice, and live sync to your players' screens. Maps belong to the campaign, so any session can reopen an old map.

Creating a map

1. In the session workspace (Prep), open the Battle Map tab → New map.
2. Pick a map image — upload one, or choose from your Gallery (§12).
3. Adjust the grid (columns, rows, cell size) until it lines up with the image; set feet-per-cell if your map isn't 5 ft.
4. Your party appears automatically as tokens in the tray — drag them onto the map.

Monsters and NPCs

Running combat

• Start battle — creatures roll initiative at once; each player rolls their own on their screen (the app's dice, or a real d20 typed in), and you can enter it or roll for anyone. The fight begins when everyone has rolled; a player whose turn it is gets a sign on their phone.
• Turns — Prev/Next steps turns and rounds; reorder, add, or re-roll freely. End finishes the fight (in an XP campaign it opens the XP box, §5).
• HP and conditions — click any token to damage, heal, set temp HP, or apply conditions (prone, poisoned…). PC tokens sync with the character sheet both ways.
• Fog of war — hide the map and reveal as the party explores, or enable dynamic line-of-sight if your map has walls.
• Spells — cast from a PC's sheet or drop an area template (cone, circle, line…). Templates stay on the map and effects track their duration in rounds.
• The session's other tabs hang as ribbons above the map: each opens its page in a notebook over the map, and Open as a page ↗ takes you to the whole tab. The turn order hangs as ribbons on the left, the one acting longest.
• A PC's sheet opens as the same notepad your players have, on the right of the board: bookmarks on its left edge, actions on its Sheet & Combat page. ⟩ puts it to the edge of the screen, ✕ closes it.
• Auto-combat (opt-in) — resolve attacks and saves automatically: attack roll vs AC, damage applied, save DCs checked. Turn it off any time for full manual control.
• Undo — every change is a move in the map's history; step backward and forward freely.

Showing the map to players

1. Press Reveal to players — it becomes ● Live to players. Your players see the published state of the map on their own table, and it follows the session it was revealed from.
2. You control what they can do per map: move their token, open their sheet, roll dice, measure, cast, attack. Nothing is allowed until you allow it.
3. One map is on the table at a time: revealing a map hides the one before it, and every player — and the Table screen — moves to the new map on its own.

The Table screen (TV)

Table screen (TV) opens the screen for the room's TV in a new tab: the map the players see with every name in big type, whose turn it is along the top, and each roll large for five seconds. It shows nothing of yours — no menus, no notes, no hidden tokens — even in your own browser, and when nothing is revealed it shows the campaign and the story so far. Bottom-left: full screen, and 🔊 Sound from the TV to play the map's music through the TV. To invite a spectator, use Copy battle-map link in the map list.

The Tavern (in the header) is where DMs share campaigns and characters. Take a campaign to run it at your own table, or an adventurer for your party — free, and yours to change once you have it.

• Publish from the campaign's Overview → Publish to The Tavern. What is published is always the shareable copy — Codex, world, maps, homebrew, pictures — never your table's sessions or transcripts.
• Publishing again adds a new version to the same listing; people who installed it are told a newer one exists.
• Take it from a listing to install the campaign as your own; it arrives with everything it carries.

The Workshop is where reusable content lives: monsters, NPCs, items, character options, and whole rule systems. Everything you make here can be attached to campaigns and dropped onto battle maps.

Monsters

1. Find a creature close to what you want and press Edit a copy (or New monster for a blank stat block).
2. Edit the stat block: name, type, CR, traits, actions — anything.
3. Add art: upload your own, or generate it with AI if you have an art key or credits (§14).
4. Assign to campaign pins it to that campaign's map library so it sorts first when you're building encounters.

NPCs

Systems: your house rules as a package

A system is a named bundle: house-rule toggles and custom mechanics plus the monsters/NPCs/items that belong to it. Set a campaign's ruleset to your system and every table you run gets the same rules. Rulings (Campaign Hub → Rules & Rulings) are the lighter cousin: one-off table decisions written down so they stay consistent.

The codex is your campaign's memory: NPCs, locations, quests, factions, lore, and items, cross-linked so you can follow the thread from a quest to its giver to the faction behind them.

Codex entries can bridge to the Workshop: an NPC entry linked to its Workshop profile shows the at-the-table cues (voice, personality) and stat block right where you need them, and a quest can point at the NPC who gave it.

The Gallery is your media shelf: battle-map images, artwork to spotlight, and background music. Everything here is one click away during a live session.

• Maps — still images used as battle-map backgrounds; the stored grid size carries into new maps.
• Art — images you can spotlight to players from a live map: the dragon reveal, the mysterious letter, the villain's face.
• Music — uploaded audio or YouTube links you can play to everyone at the table from the map toolbar.

Reference is the searchable 2024 SRD: spells, magic items, conditions, glossary rules, and monsters — the same lookup that's embedded inside the session workspace, so a rules question never means leaving the app. Content is bilingual: with the interface in Greek, translated entries show in Greek.

The Assistant tab in the session workspace is a DM copilot that actually knows your table: it reads this session's transcript, your notes and markers, the codex, your homebrew, and the rules reference — and answers with sources.

• “Who told the Watchers where to wait?” — answered from your notes and the transcript.
• “Stat reminder for the Roof-Captain” — answered from the map and the rules reference.
• “Draft a recap of tonight” — generated from notes, markers, and the transcript (Wrap up has a shortcut).

👁 The watcher (optional, off until you switch it on) reads the transcript as it comes in and suggests what to keep: a marker, a Codex entry, a moment for the Timeline, or a flag when what was said disagrees with what is recorded. Each card counts down for about ten seconds; if you do nothing it is kept — a wrong one is one click to take back in the Timeline, a missed moment is gone. Flags are only warnings and save nothing.

• Language — English or Greek, for the whole interface (and translated SRD content).
• Theme — several visual themes; the 3D dice have their own skin setting.
• Tutorials — replay any of the on-screen tours (the dashboard, a campaign's Overview, the session, the battle map).
• AI (BYOK) — bring your own OpenAI (or other provider) key; your AI features then run on your key.
• Profile — display name, username, email, and password changes.