Dungeons, our 3D virtual tabletop, and the initiative tracker are open source. The code is on GitHub under the GNU AGPL-3.0 licence, so anyone can read it, run their own copy and help make it better.
Why
Virtual tabletops come and go, and when one shuts down, everything people built in it goes with it. Sigil going offline at the end of October 2026 is the latest example, and Dungeons itself was offline for a long time before this version.
I don't want your table to depend on one website staying up. With the code public, if DM Tools ever closed, Dungeons and the tracker wouldn't close with it. Anyone could keep running them.
What's open
- The 3D tabletop. The viewer you play in: 3D maps, tokens, the camera, walls and doors, lighting, fog of war and map building.
- The tabletop server. It keeps everyone in a room in sync and saves the room.
- The initiative tracker, including its built-in creature list from the D&D 5e SRD 5.1.
This website is built on those same packages, so improvements made on GitHub end up here too.
What isn't
The rest of DM Tools is built around that code and stays private: accounts and signing in, campaigns and invite links, plans and payments, the built-in token and map library, the dice roller and Power Word-le. Some of the library's art is licensed to us and can't be shared, so a copy you run yourself starts without it. You bring your own maps and token images.
Your account and everything you save on DM Tools stay here. None of it is part of the open-source project.
Run your own copy
You need Node.js 22.5 or newer and Git.
git clone https://github.com/nishbish/dm-tabletop.git
cd dm-tabletop
npm install
npm run demo
Then open the link it prints in two browser tabs and you have a shared table. The initiative tracker runs on its own with npm run dev -w @dm-tabletop/initiative-tracker.
By default anyone with the link can join, which is fine on your own computer or home network. To put it on the internet you'll want it behind HTTPS and a sign-in check of your own. The README and each package's README explain how.
If you'd rather not run anything, that's what this site is for. The demo needs no account, and making a campaign is free.
Help out
Bug reports, ideas and pull requests are all welcome on GitHub. Before your first pull request, please read CONTRIBUTING.md. It explains the terms contributions are accepted under, so the same code can keep running this site.
Not a developer? Playing, telling me what's missing and sharing the site with your group helps just as much. Come and say hi on Discord or email [email protected].
The licence
The code is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0. In short: you can use, change and share it, including for your own server. If you share a changed version, or run one that other people use over the internet, you have to make your changes available under the same licence. The licence text has the exact terms.
The licence covers the code only. It doesn't cover the DM Tools name and logo, this website or the content on it (see the Terms).