GM Controls

As the Game Master, you have access to a set of controls that players don’t see. These let you manage what’s visible on the map, move players between pages, and keep things running smoothly behind the scenes. Everything here syncs in real-time: when you hide an asset or summon your players, they see the result instantly.

Asset Visibility

The GM panel gives you two tools for controlling how players can see and interact with individual assets on the map: Hide and Restrict. These work on any selected asset: tokens, images, map tiles, anything.

To access these controls:

1. Select one or more assets on the map
2. In the toolbar that appears at the top, click the GM button
3. A sub-panel slides down with the Restrict and Hide buttons

Hiding Assets

Hiding an asset makes it completely invisible to players. They can’t see it, click on it, or interact with it in any way. As far as they’re concerned, it doesn’t exist.

You still see hidden assets, but they’re shown at reduced opacity so you can tell at a glance which assets are hidden and which aren’t.

This is useful for:

• Pre-placing enemies before the party reaches a room
• Staging map elements you want to reveal at a dramatic moment
• Keeping GM reference markers on the map that players shouldn’t see

To hide or reveal an asset, select it, open the GM panel, and toggle the Hide button.

Restricting Assets

Restricting an asset prevents players from selecting or modifying it. The asset is still visible to everyone, but only GMs can click on it, move it, resize it, or otherwise interact with it.

This is useful for:

• Locking down map backgrounds so players can’t accidentally drag the terrain, though this is better done with locked layers now
• Preventing players from moving NPC tokens that the GM is managing

To restrict or unrestrict an asset, select it, open the GM panel, and toggle the Restrict button.

Adding Assets as Hidden by Default

If you’re setting up a map before a session and want everything you place to start hidden, there’s a shortcut. In the asset manager panel, GMs see an Add as hidden checkbox. When this is checked, every new asset you add to the map is automatically hidden from players.

This allows you to sneak NPCs into your scenes and position them before players can see. Place all your assets with the checkbox on, then selectively reveal things as the party explores.

Token Ownership

By default, any player can select and move any token on the map. This is fine for most sessions, but sometimes you want tighter control. Maybe a player keeps accidentally nudging another player’s token, or you want to make sure nobody moves a token except its owner.

Restrict Token Movement to Owners

This is a per-page setting that limits token interaction based on character ownership. When enabled, players can only select and move tokens linked to their own character. The GM can still move everything.

To enable it:

1. Open the Settings panel (gear icon)
2. Under the General tab, check Restrict Token Movement to Owners

The setting syncs to all players immediately and is saved per-page, so you can have it enabled for a combat map and disabled for a social scene.

With this setting enabled:

• Players can select and move tokens linked to their own character
• Players cannot select or move tokens belonging to other players
• Tokens not linked to any character can still be moved by anyone
• The GM can always select and move any token

This works alongside the per-asset Restrict button. Use the per-page setting when you want general ownership rules across the board, and use per-asset Restrict to lock down specific assets entirely from all players.

Summoning Players

When players are viewing a different map page than you, or you want everyone looking at the same spot, you can summon them to your current view.

The Summon Alert

When one or more players are on a different map page than you, an alert banner appears at the top of your screen telling you how many players are elsewhere. The banner includes a Bring Them Here button.

Clicking Bring Them Here:

1. Switches all players to your current map page (if they’re on a different one)
2. Moves their camera to match your exact position and zoom level
3. Saves your current view as the default view for this page

The alert automatically dismisses after a couple of minutes if you don’t act on it. You can also close it manually with the X button, and it won’t reappear until players move between pages again.

The Presence Indicator

At the top-right of the screen, the presence indicator shows how many users are connected. This indicator is visible to everyone, not just GMs.

Hovering over the presence dot opens a tooltip listing all other connected users. Each user row shows:

• A colored dot: green if they’re on the same map page as you, amber if they’re viewing a different page
• Their character name, pulled from the game’s character data
• A [GM] tag next to any Game Masters

GMs are sorted to the top of the list, with everyone else in alphabetical order. If a user doesn’t have a character in the game, they’ll appear as “Game Master” or “Player” based on their role.

On touch devices, you can tap the indicator to pin the tooltip open. Tap again to dismiss it.

As a GM, you also see a location button next to the indicator. This works the same way as the summon alert — click it to bring everyone to your current view. When players are on different map pages, this button pulses to get your attention. You can use it in place of the summon alert button if you’ve already dismissed the banner.

Setting the Default View

The default view is the camera position and zoom level that players see when they first load a map page. As a GM, you can set this to make sure everyone starts looking at the right spot.

1. Open the Settings panel (gear icon in the bottom-left)
2. Navigate your camera to the position and zoom you want as the default
3. Click Set current view as default

This saves both the camera position and zoom level. It also marks this page as the starting page for the game. When someone joins the map, this is where they land.

Map Management

Map management lets you organize your maps into multiple pages and folders. This is how you run campaigns with different locations. A tavern, a dungeon, an overworld map, all within the same game.

To open the map management panel, click the map management button in the bottom-left of the screen. From here you can:

• Create new map pages to add locations to your game
• Create folders to organize pages into groups (e.g., “Chapter 1”, “Town”, “Dungeons”)
• Switch between pages by clicking on a map card
• Rename maps and folders
• Delete maps and folders you no longer need
• Drag and drop map pages between folders to reorganize

When you switch to a different map page, players stay on whatever page they were viewing. Use the summon feature to bring them along when you’re ready.

Encounters

The asset manager has an Encounters tab that’s only visible to GMs. This tab lists encounters from your RPG Sessions game, letting you browse and add encounter assets directly to the map without uploading images manually.

You can search and filter encounters by name, then click into an encounter to see its available assets and add them to the map.

Use encounters to prepare a set of NPCs ahead of time and drop them into your map the moment they enter the scene. Combine this with multiple map pages to set up entire sessions in advance.

Related Features

Some GM-specific features have their own dedicated pages:

• Fog of War: draw and erase fog areas to control what players can see on the map
• Layers: organize assets into layers with per-layer visibility and locking