If you're running a campaign on World Anvil, you can use the DSTS (Digital StoryTeller Screen) to access everything you need easily from a single interface. It includes tools to reference your worldbuilding, party management tools, a virtual dice roller, and more.
This guide assumes you have already created a campaign and know how to use World Anvil to organize your RPG campaigns. You can check out the World Anvil for Game Masters Workflow for more information about this.
Contents
What's the DSTS?
The DSTS is World Anvil's all-in-one GMing tool, meant to be used while you're running your session. With it, you can have most of your GMing tools and resources open in a single place!
This is how the DSTS looks:
How to access it
To access the DSTS during a session, go to the Sessions tab in the campaign manager and click on the Start button:
When the session is over, click the red End Session button! You can always access the DSTS between sessions with the "Open your Storyteller's Screen" button at the top right of the campaign manager:
Player interaction and dice roller
The DSTS will open with the Home section active, where you can see the party stream (which you can use to send text messages to the group) and the dice roller with the public dicelog on the right. Click on any of the dice to roll them individually or type the dice formula (like "1d20+5") if you want to be more specific.
The dice roller accepts advanced notation. Check out the external dice roller documentation for a full list of all options available.
Party manager
On the sidebar, you have your party manager. Click each character's profile pictures to see their profile, and click the Party Summary button to see their character sheets.
The Party Summary screen also contains the shared party equipment and the quest manager:
- You can add, edit, and delete quests, with an option to set how important they are (main quest, side quest, etc.). They also include a GM-only text box where you can add notes that your players won't be able to see.
- The shared equipment only includes items that are shared by the party but don't belong to a specific character. Your players can also edit the shared equipment.
Referencing your session plan and your worldbuilding
Two sections of the DSTS are relevant for this: Library and Plot.
- The Plot has quick access to the session plot you set up while you were creating the session.
- The Library lets you quickly reference articles in your world as well as statblocks. To use it, type the name of the article or statblock in the search bar. When you select a result, you'll see an Add to Library button that you can use to add it as a shortcut.
Handout screen and background music
You have a handout screen at your disposal, which you can use to present images to your players. You can access it from the "Open..." option in the top bar. To add new images to the handout screen:
- Click on the "Media" option in the top bar and select "Image Gallery".
- Upload images from your computer to the gallery.
- Use the Screen icon to send the image to the Handout screen:
To clear the handout screen, click the "Clear Handout Screen" button at the bottom of the sidebar (you may need to scroll down).
Music and videos
Under the same "Media" item in the top menu, there's an "Audio/Video Collection" item. There, you can add links to YouTube, Spotify, or Soundcloud media that will be embedded on the page. The collection will persist between sessions too, so you can set up your entire music library for the campaign from the beginning.
Music playing in the media library will not be streamed to your players. This is useful if you're playing in person (so you control ambience music from your computer) or if you're playing online and using a third-party music sharing service.
