What Roliando does

Roliando is a virtual tabletop for playing roleplaying games over the internet, in the browser, with nothing to install. This page lists everything the platform does, grouped by area, for anyone wondering whether it suits them and for assistants that need to look it up.

It is an independent project, not affiliated with any roleplaying game publisher, and it works in Spanish and English. There is a free plan to play on, with no expiry date.

The table

The tactical map is the centre of it. Upload an image or use one of the included battlemaps, line up the grid, and place character and creature tokens that drag around by squares.

Walls, doors and windows block movement and sight. Each player sees only what their character would see: vision is worked out live and the fog opens up as they advance. There are doors that open, secret ones that stay invisible until found, curtains you can walk through but not see through, and cover that slows movement without hiding anything.

Fog of war is dynamic: it is worked out step by step, as the token is dragged, from what that character can actually see. Each player has their own and sees only their token’s; explored ground is remembered in shadow (the layout stays, what moves inside it does not) and anything never seen stays black. Whoever runs the game sees the whole map and decides what gets shown.

Lights are sources with range and colour, telling bright light from dim, and characters who can see in the dark. One map can hold several floors (cellar, ground floor, tower), each with its own walls and lighting.

The map can stand up (Legend GM): a three-dimensional view of the same scene, tokens as figures on the board, with nothing extra to prepare.

Event zones turn part of the map into a trigger: when someone steps here, this happens. A trap that springs and calls for the saving throw, a door that opens, damage every turn while standing inside, a jump to somewhere else on the map, or a puzzle that has to be solved before anyone can pass. They can stay hidden until they fire, and the person running the game always pulls the trigger.

Broadcast mode (Legend GM) opens a mirror window meant for screen sharing or streaming: it shows what the players see, without what only the GM knows.

The map has weather and time of day: rain, snow or fog falling over the scene, and light that changes with the hour on outdoor maps, from morning to dusk.

Terrain and elevation on the map

The game master can paint terrain over the map image with strokes (a hill, a pit, a dais, a ravine) and give it a height in feet. It goes on the same plan, with no second map and nothing to rebuild, and as you move it the depth shows: low ground sinks into shadow and the edges cast theirs.

Tokens rise and fall with the ground they stand on, and the rules take it into account. Climbing a step costs climbing; dropping off one is a fall, with its damage applied on landing; and a shove can send someone over the edge of a cliff. A gentle slope does not count as a fall: the ground is read with a half-step tolerance, as at a physical table.

Terrain works together with floors: a multi-storey building on a hillside, with ramps and stairs linking each floor to the next and each with its own ground. A flying creature measures its height from the ground of its floor, and walls start from the ground they stand on.

In the three-dimensional view (Legend GM) the same terrain takes on volume: raised hills and sunken pits, tokens at their height, and the fog of war hugging the ground so nothing shows below what the character can see.

Combat

Initiative is rolled and sorted for you, and only the tokens marked for it join the fight: the rest stay on the map as scenery without cluttering the turn order.

Every token carries its own action bar with what it can do right now: attacks with their to-hit and damage, spells by level with the slots still left, items, and features with their uses spent and recovered. Each entry shows its icon, what it costs (action, bonus action or reaction) and the roll already wired up, which fires from there and goes to the whole table.

Movement measures itself. Dragging a token draws the ruler with the distance covered and the speed left for that turn, in squares or in the map’s own unit, and conditions that slow or immobilise are taken off without anyone having to remember them.

Areas of effect drop onto the map with the shape and size the spell asks for (cone, sphere, line, cube or emanation) and mark which tokens are caught inside. The saving throw is then resolved for all of them at once, half damage included for those who save. Cast from a character sheet, the template already arrives with its shape and range set.

Concentration keeps itself: the concentrated spell is marked, casting another replaces it, and when it drops it takes with it every effect hanging off that casting. Durations are counted in rounds and expire on their own.

Effects are automated: the spell asks for its save, damage is halved when it should be, resistances apply, and conditions go on and come off by themselves. If the system can't work something out, it tells you.

There are video effects for attacks and spells, played over the map as the action resolves.

Fifth edition rules, automated

On the sheet and on the map, the rules apply themselves. An attack is checked against AC, decides the critical and rolls each damage type separately; the target applies its resistances, immunities and vulnerabilities, and hit points go down in the right order: first whatever a ward absorbs, then temporary hit points, then regular ones. Character hit points are written on the server, so two hits at once never overwrite each other. At zero the character drops and death saves begin; healing resets them.

Saving throws are rolled by whoever should roll them. An area spell sends each creature caught in it its own card: players roll from their sheet and the game master rolls for their creatures, all at once if they like. The result applies full or half damage, the condition and its duration by itself. If the spell allows a new save at the end of each turn, it is asked for automatically; if the condition ends when the creature takes damage, like magical sleep, it ends. Creatures with legendary resistance choose whether to spend it.

Each reaction is decided by its owner. When an attack hits by a small margin and the target has a spell or feature that raises its AC, the prompt appears on that player's own screen: if they use it, the hit can turn into a miss, and their reaction and spell slot are spent. Opportunity attacks spend the reaction, and features that trigger on taking damage are offered at that moment.

Concentration is tracked: taking damage asks for the saving throw with its DC already worked out, and if it fails every effect hanging from that spell ends. Marks like Hex add their damage to each hit against the marked target and move to a new one with a bonus action when the first falls. Surprise under the 2024 rules gives disadvantage on initiative to the surprised side only.

Resources keep count: spell slots, feature uses that grow with level and come back on the right rest, hit dice by size, creature recharges at the start of their turn, legendary actions, and creature spellcasting with its own slots. Summons arrive on the map with hit points and attacks calculated from whoever called them, and spells that leave something on the map (a spiritual weapon, a wall, a zone) place it there.

This isn't limited to official content. Everything the engine can do can be declared from the module creator without writing code: a homebrew spell with its save, damage over time and duration; a feat that grants resistance or advantage; a feature with uses by level; a subclass with its expanded spell list. What you create works on the sheet and on the map just like what comes built in.

Character sheets

The D&D 5e sheet is native and does the maths itself: modifiers, proficiencies, spell slots, carrying capacity, attacks with their to-hit and damage. It supports both editions, 2014 and 2024, and they can be mixed at the table if the GM allows it.

Building a character is a guided walk: class and subclass, species and background, ability scores (point buy, standard array, rolled or typed in), proficiencies and tools, the spells that level grants, starting equipment either chosen or bought with coin, and weapon masteries. Each step offers only what the rules allow given what came before, and nothing moves on half done. Levelling up is the same walk, with what that level grants and the choices it brings; multiclassing asks for its prerequisites.

The compendium carries spells, feats, classes, subclasses, species, backgrounds, items and creatures, with the real mechanics behind each text.

Summons and animal companions scale with whoever called them; infusions and magic item plans are built in; modes and stances, such as a barbarian's rage, switch on and affect rolls while they last.

A sheet exports to PDF on a layout of our own, can be shared with the GM, and has permission rules: who may touch what, and which changes need approval, so nobody gifts themselves an item halfway through the session.

The GM can leave pre-made characters for each player to pick from, with nothing to build from scratch.

Every character and creature can have its own token, separate from the portrait: built in layers, with art that breaks out of the circle, a mask and a frame, and updated on every map token that already used it.

GUMSHOE has guided creation too (concept, investigative and general abilities, sources), with the right budget for the number of players, in its three rulesets. Any system built in the creator defines its own steps: point allocation with caps, rolls that must be assigned, fixed values, advantages and flaws with their cost, or chained creation-by-rolling tables. The GM can require every sheet to be created inside the campaign and approve it before play.

Build your own roleplaying game

The system builder lets you put together a complete roleplaying game without writing a line of code. Define the attributes, skills, resources, roll types and rules, and the platform produces a playable sheet.

The logic lives in the fields and the visual editor only places things: drag boxes, reference values, write formulas using field names. Nothing comes preloaded from any particular game.

It comes with skill-tree progression, choice pools ("pick two of these five"), custom slot tables, equipment catalogues, party templates, and paper-style sheets you can give colour and texture.

On top of a system you can create content modules with new classes, creatures, items or spells, which add to the sheet without touching the original system.

A system can stay private to your table, be shared with whoever you choose, or be published for anyone to use. Roliando publishes over twenty ready to play: original creations, adaptations made with their authors’ permission, and open-licence games. The community publishes its own in the Workshop.

Campaigns, world and material

A campaign gathers the people, the sheets, the maps, the scenes and the material. It has a world section holding places, non-player characters, factions and notes, with control over who sees what: the GM's own stays the GM's until they choose to show it.

The library is the personal store that outlives campaigns: maps, creatures, items, roll tables, adventures and scenes, organised in folders and reusable in any game. What you lend to someone shows up on their shelf without ceasing to be yours.

There is a map editor of our own for drawing dungeons and scenery with textures, stamps, prefabs, paths and roofs, and a computer-generated world map for campaigns that start with no geography.

Roll tables are written once and rolled from anywhere; card decks deal in three dimensions and flip on the table.

Material can be imported from other virtual tabletop files, so you don't rebuild what you already have: the section below explains it format by format.

Bring your whole world, and the systems and modules of your other virtual table

A world exported from another virtual table comes in whole from a single .zip, from both the modern and the old versions of its format: scenes with their folder tree, image or video background, square or hex grid, walls with their doors, secret doors and locks, windows, curtains and cover, lights, tiles, ambient sounds and tokens. Also a data folder with several worlds, a module's compendiums, scene packages from the most used map tools, or loose scenes.

Regions come in as event zones and teleports as portals; whatever can't be translated comes in switched off with a report, so nothing fires without review. Floors are split into levels of the same map, fifth-edition non-player characters go to the bestiary with their stat block, characters to Roliando sheets and journals to an adventure with chapters.

That same table's systems and modules also install into Roliando by uploading their .zip, and play here without the original program or a server of your own. The system brings its own sheet and makes its own rolls, its compendiums drag onto the sheet and modules switch on per campaign, with their settings, windows and macros. Packages from versions 9 to 14 of the format are read, and compatibility is built on the latest two; the reference system, fully tested, is Pathfinder Second Edition, with its character builder guided by its real rules.

Installing systems and modules is part of Legend GM; playing in a campaign that already has them is free. What's installed is private to whoever uploads it and their campaigns. Export works too: a Roliando scene goes out to that table's format or to the universal map format. The names of each format, and what to press, are in the guides.

Formats in and out

Maps: the universal map format with walls, doors and lights (.dd2vtt, .uvtt, .df2vtt, exported by Dungeondraft and other tables), Dungeon Alchemist scenes with all their levels, Dungeondraft asset packs with their tags, and images or video of any kind: iPhone videos the browser can't play are converted automatically on upload. Almost two thousand Tom Cartos battle maps and eight hundred decoration props are included, free for everyone.

Characters: from the most used character-sheet sites (public characters, by link), from other virtual tables into any custom system with a mapping from each attribute to its field, and from HexSheet with its homebrew actions. Creatures from another table's sheet or from a stat block pasted as is.

Systems and rules: sheets written in code for another table (HTML, CSS, sheet workers and roll templates) become a playable system; a whole system from JSON; the rulebook from PDF or Markdown; a PDF or image template to place fields on. Macros written in other tables' syntax, pasted as they are. Items and catalogs in JSON or CSV, roll tables by pasting a list, JSON adventures, 3D dice models (.glb, .obj, .stl) and ready-made dice themes, and Spotify and YouTube playlists.

For export: the sheet to PDF with its own design and to JSON, the scene to other tables and to the universal map format, and the campaign's whole world to a .zip that opens as an Obsidian vault. What you create is yours to take.

Playing live or in writing

A campaign is played in live sessions, in writing across the week, or both ways within the same campaign.

Live play has voice built into the table itself, with no second program to open, plus music and ambience the GM controls for everyone.

Play-by-post has conversation channels by topic, private messages, rolls inside the thread, a marker for where you left off and alerts for what is new, on desktop and on the phone.

The waiting room collects whoever arrives early, with its own channel and its own voice, for session zero and for the five minutes before each game.

The GM gets a screen with what they need at hand, and can present small interactive applications to the table: a puzzle, a mechanism, a clue to handle.

Macros automate whatever repeats: build them by picking steps from a list, paste them in the syntax you already know from other virtual tabletops, or program them. They can do the same things as the rest of the table (roll, apply damage, set a condition, move a token), always with the permissions of whoever presses them.

Immersion mode puts the scene full screen and keeps in front only what you need to narrate: non-player character windows float over the art with their rolls at hand, and combat can run in narrative mode without leaving it.

Broadcast: the game live, element by element

For those who stream their game, Roliando provides a clean feed for OBS, with no menus and nothing only the GM sees. There are four one-tap modes (Cinema for narration; Game, with combat, turns and 3D dice; With cameras; and Overlay on a transparent background) plus one to customize everything.

Each element gets its own OBS link. Scene, combat map, 3D dice, roll list, lower third, chat, whiteboard, handouts, the party, a single character, turns and turn and crit alerts each come out in their own browser source, on transparent, to place as layers in the OBS scene. The links work without signing in through a key that can be regenerated, and they see the table with a player's permissions: fog, hidden things and the GM's secret rolls never show. You can run the game on one computer and broadcast from another.

There is also a layout editor to place and scale each piece with snapping, the party with portrait, frame, health and the sheet fields you choose, lower thirds that follow the game, turn, round, crit and fumble alerts, pause screens with countdown and a separate cameras window, round or rectangular, with chroma. It's part of Legend GM; viewers don't need an account.

Dice

Dice are three-dimensional and actually roll across the table, with sound and physics. The whole table sees the same roll.

The dice studio lets you design your own: shape, material, colour, numbers, even importing a model of your own. A system can bring its own signature dice.

The usual formulas are understood (advantage, disadvantage, rerolls, exploding dice, opposed rolls, success thresholds) and any system built here defines its own.

Community

There is a board for finding games where tables are posted with their open seats, schedule, system and age range, and people sign up where they fit.

A forum for talking about roleplaying, profiles with a reputation the people you have played with can rate, and achievements earned by playing and by running games.

Times are shown in each person's own zone and there are reminders before each session, for groups spread across several countries.

How you get in and what it runs on

It runs in the browser, on desktop and mobile, with nothing to install. There is also an installable desktop application and a native Android app.

The whole interface is in Spanish and English, and you can switch language without losing the game.

You can try the table without an account from the public demo on the home page.

The free plan is enough to run and play: three campaigns at once, with as many players as you like, and one of each to create. Paid plans lift those caps, open up publishing and the dice studio, and bring the full table: 3D, broadcast, teams and uncapped voice. Playing in someone else's game costs nothing.

Content, permissions and licences

Roliando does not redistribute game manuals. Open-licensed content is included; what is not, each person brings for their own table and it is not published in their name.

Third-party systems published here are up with their authors' permission, and each carries its credit and its licence in plain sight.

Game trademarks mentioned belong to their holders and are cited only to indicate compatibility.