Fold&Roll is a free D&D companion app for iPhone and iPad (Android in beta) — no account, no subscription. Get Fold&Roll on the App Store · Download the PDF version
If you're looking for a D&D 5e app that takes the paperwork out of running the game, this guide covers all of it: an initiative tracker that keeps combat moving, battle maps with fog of war, a one-tap NPC generator for the shopkeeper your party just decided to interview, shops with real prices that haggle back, and session prep that can build a whole campaign in a single tap. It also walks through hosting players on their own phones — at the table, or online through Telepathic Bond — and putting a clean table display on a shared screen, all in one offline-first app.
Dungeon Master field manual - November 2026 edition (version 1.4)
Fold&Roll is an offline tabletop RPG companion for 5th-edition-style play. No accounts and no signal are needed at the table - everything runs on the devices in the room.
On launch, choose the DM role on this device. Your device becomes the campaign hub: campaigns, NPCs, shops, battle, the battle map, and hosting all live here. Players pick the player role on their own devices; a separate device can run as the Table Display (see Section 9).
On Mac and iPad the role screen shows three big tiles - DM, Player, and Table Display. Pick the one that matches the job this device is doing.
A fresh install starts empty: no sample campaigns, NPCs, or characters ship with the app. Everything at your table is content you made.
How to Play D&D (new in 1.3.0). The app also carries a complete, free How to Play D&D guide - 27 topics, group badges, and a Guide Master capstone. New players can learn from it between sessions; the Player Guide covers it in full.
NPC AC and exact HP live only on your device. Secret rolls and private player notes never leave a player's device. The players-only Party chat channel is never visible to you - see Section 11.
On the campaign list, tap New Campaign, name it, and set its table rules under Edit Campaign:
The Table tab shows these rules back as a read-only summary, values read live from the campaign. Editing always happens here, in Edit Campaign.
Tap Generate Random Campaign on the campaign list for a complete adventure in one pass:
You get a 3-chapter campaign - hook, trail, and lair - with locations, friendly NPCs, read-aloud text, DM notes, stocked shops, and encounters whose monsters are pulled from the Bestiary at Challenge Ratings matched to party level. Everything is ordinary campaign data afterwards: rename, rewrite, restock, or delete any of it.
Session tonight, zero prep, no campaign? A one-shot builds a complete short adventure in one tap: NPCs, monsters matched to your party, stocked shops, and read-aloud text - everything a full campaign generation produces, sized for a single sitting. It is ordinary campaign data afterwards: run it tonight, and if it sticks, keep playing from it next week.
The free tier allows 2 campaigns. Fold&Roll+ removes the limit - unlimited campaigns (and unlimited characters for players). Premium is a single one-time purchase; see Section 13.
Each campaign runs one edition: the 2014 rules (SRD 5.1) or the 2024 rules (SRD 5.2), set by you as the campaign's edition. The lanes are sealed - a campaign is one or the other, never both - and monster pools follow the campaign's edition: a 2024 campaign draws on the 330-monster 2024 bestiary. Players pick their edition when they create a character, and the compendium still browses both editions, every entry tagged with its own.
Opening a campaign lands on its Chapters view - a full-screen list with no bottom bar. Chapters are the acts of the story; each one holds its locations. Tapping a chapter header loads that chapter and lands on the Map with its location live - background, ambience, and the table sign all follow.
Tap a location row to play it: the location goes live (table sign, terrain, resolved ambience, battle and fog all switch to it) and you land on the Map. The wrench button on the row opens that location's Configure instead.
Getting here and leaving. From any DM tab screen, the back chevron beside Home leaves the location and returns you to this Chapters view - one step back, never further. On the Chapters view itself, that same chevron exits to the campaign browser (the campaign list). Home returns to role select from either place. So the loop is short: DM screen → chevron → Chapters → tap a location → you are back in, on the Map.
Add locations to a chapter as the party explores. Each location can hold its own NPCs, shops, notes, and battle map.
Ambience resolves in three layers, and the most specific setting wins:
So set a campaign-wide mood once, give a chapter its own sound where the story shifts, and override a single room only where it needs something different. When nothing is set at any layer, no ambience plays.
Each campaign has an audio library - import once, assign anywhere. The location page can add to it without leaving the page:
Ambience is 100% your own audio - nothing is built in. The ambience pickers stay hidden until the library has its first track: import one, and the pickers appear everywhere.
Your campaign's cast lives on the NPCs tab. Three ways to add someone:
The Place button drops an NPC into the current location and adds them to the battle roster. Use it when the party actually meets someone - or when a fight breaks out. Place all drops a whole group at once, spaced a cell apart so nobody lands in a pile.
Taking tokens back off is just as direct: Remove from Map sits on the Battle card's pin, and in the Map fog popover for non-player tokens. The Clear Map button on the Map hub removes every token at once - tokens only: zones, terrain, fog, and the battle roster are untouched.
Tapping an NPC opens their detail view: the full character sheet inline, with two extra DM tools in the toolbar:
Set a token color for the NPC's map token so they are easy to spot at a glance.
If an NPC casts, their spellbook follows the same learning caps as a player's - see Spell learning caps in Section 5. You cannot add spells past the class cap, or of a level that class could not cast at its level in that class.
The Bestiary tab (pawprint icon, between NPCs and Shops) is DM-only and holds 334 SRD monsters, searchable by name.
Tapping a monster shows the full stat block: ability scores, AC, HP, saves, skills, traits, actions, reactions, legendary actions, CR, and XP. Hit Spawn and the monster becomes a DM-controlled NPC in your current location, ready to place on the map or into battle.
The spell compendium holds 147 spells - 24 cantrips and 123 leveled. Spellbooks are capped, and the caps are enforced when spells are added:
Core content is SRD 5.1 (CC-BY-4.0): the core background list is the Acolyte, and the core feat list is Grappler. Wild Magic isn't in Fold&Roll yet — it was set aside during the SRD-only content pass, and a way to bring it back is still being decided.
The Shops screen offers three plain rows - tap the whole row:
In the shop editor you manage wares and prices, set a discount, manage buying funds (what the shop can pay for goods players sell), and assign ambience that plays while the shop is open.
Beyond mundane wares, stock magic items from the 273-item magic item compendium. Search it, pick the item, and add it to the shop's wares. Prices follow the item's rarity, so a rare item is priced as a rare item without you having to price it by hand. Adjust the shop discount if this particular shopkeeper runs dear or cheap.
Open the shop to everyone at the table, or to a single player for a private browse. Players see each ware with a Buy button - and a Haggle option if your campaign's table rules allow it. When business is done, Close Shop pulls it back off the table.
Open the Battle tab - battle activates for the current location. Tap + to open Add Combatants and pull fighters in from your campaign NPCs or straight from the Bestiary. A fight you build often can be saved as an encounter and reopened from Add Combatants instead of rebuilt.
On wide screens the DM Battle layout runs three abreast - combatants | Quick Rolls | the map - with the roll history pinned at the foot of the Quick Rolls column, and the map pane following the selected token, then the current-turn combatant. Tap a token on the map to target it for your Quick Rolls and attacks. See Section 9 for the map itself.
The encounter difficulty meter rates the fight against the party using the DMG XP thresholds - from an easy warm-up to a deadly encounter. Check it before you publish initiative: add, remove, or swap a monster in Add Combatants and watch the rating move, instead of finding out mid-fight that the encounter was misjudged.
The spawn sheet carries two toggles. Minion flags a monster as a 1-HP minion - it hits like the real thing, but any solid hit drops it. Max HP spawns an SRD monster at its maximum hit points, for the boss. The encounter meter counts four minions as one monster, so a horde reads fair.
Timed effects show their remaining duration on the combatant - rounds or minutes, ticking down as turns pass, so "how long has Bless been up?" answers itself. Beside the round counter sits the world clock: the campaign's current day and time of day, yours to set and advance. Durations and the clock are bookkeeping every table already does on sticky notes - now the app carries them.
The star button opens XP awards: enter the total, check which connected players receive it, and review the split preview. Awards sync straight to each player's phone and a summary lands in the battle log. The Table Display is excluded.
After the fight, open the Loot Generator to roll treasure on the DMG treasure tables - coins, valuables, and magic items sized to the encounter. Then choose where it goes:
When anyone casts a zone spell, the cast flow places its area on the battle map - shaped to the spell, and rotatable, so a wall lines up with the corridor it blocks. The area stays on the map while concentration holds and vanishes the moment concentration ends, by any route. The Battle Zones panel lists the zones currently up.
Seven SRD zone spells are supported: Moonbeam, Flaming Sphere, Spike Growth, Spirit Guardians, Wall of Fire, Cloudkill, and Sunbeam.
Dispel Magic resolves inside the cast flow: cast it, then target an active spell effect. Effects at their base level dispel automatically; an upcast effect gets the proper ability check - no pausing for a rules dive.
New in this edition: instead of asking the table out loud and chasing answers, call for a roll and let the app collect it.
In Battle mode, tap the Call button and choose the kind of roll:
Then set who it is for and what it says:
Each targeted player gets an alert on their device and rolls in one tap. They do not need to find the right dice or bonus - the call already knows what is being rolled.
You watch the answers come back in one tally, per player:
No more asking "did everyone roll?" - the tally is the answer. An initiative call also fills the initiative tracker, so a Call for initiative at the start of a fight does both jobs at once.
Your table's physical dice still count. With Real Dice, a player - or you - rolls real dice and enters the die face on the tap-to-commit pad; the app applies the modifiers, works out the crits, and logs the result exactly as if it had rolled itself. It works in the DM Tray, Quick Rolls, Called Actions, initiative, and fresh death saves - and a mis-tapped face can be taken back with Undo. Real Dice is free.
Every roll is now recorded in one roll log: who rolled, what they rolled, and the total. When the table argues about what the fighter got on that save twenty minutes ago, the log settles it.
The map is the shared tactical picture: tokens for the party, NPCs, and monsters, positioned where the fight actually is. A new battle map starts fully revealed - fog is a tool you add, not a default you fight against.
When you create a map you choose its size - a tight room or a sprawling field. Terrain you paint snaps to the same grid the tokens move on, so walls and features line up with the squares instead of fighting them.
Tokens are never dragged. Tap a token to select it - it highlights - then tap an empty cell to move it there. The selection stays after a move, so chained moves are tap, tap, tap. Tap the token again to deselect.
Long-press a token (about half a second) on DM surfaces for its info sheet: name, HP and AC including cover, conditions, the reaction and legendary pips - and, for NPCs, the − / + level steppers from Section 4.
Placing and clearing tokens lives in Section 4: Place, Place all, Remove from Map, and Clear Map (tokens only).
Short on prep? Dice-Drop Maps build a dungeon from a literal dice drop. Pick 6 to 16 dice and roll them onto the map: where a die lands is the chamber, and its value decides what it is - 1 Entrance, 2-3 Room, 4 Hall, 5 Treasure, 6 Hazard.
Corridors carve between the chambers at the width set by the Corridors control: 1-wide for tight and tense, or 2-wide (the default) so the whole party can actually move - at width 2, rooms and halls carve 3x3. Flip the width and the same drop re-carves in place; the dice do not move. Not feeling a drop? Re-rolls are free until you accept the map. An accepted map starts fully fogged, so players never see its silhouette. Your first 10 generated maps are free; unlimited generation is a Fold&Roll+ benefit.
Use the DM fog tools to hide parts of the map, then reveal areas as the party explores or as sight lines open. Fog state syncs with the table, but only as you reveal it - players and the Table Display see the revealed map, never your hidden areas.
The Table Display is the shared screen: a second device facing the table, showing the battle map, the table sign (campaign and chapter), and shared log entries. It is also the table speaker for ambience and sound effects.
Players never see DM-only information on it: no hidden HP or AC, no unrevealed fog, no secret rolls.
Ambience plays through the Table Display, which acts as the table speaker. Keep the display device near a speaker or paired to one, and the room hears the location the party is in - not a sound from your phone. The Soundboard tab triggers combat and spell effects live during play.
On Mac and iPad the Table Display runs as a second window beside your Prep+Play window - see Section 14.
From any DM screen, the top-right quick buttons mirror the player's bar: Notes (the active location's read-aloud and DM notes), Table (the WiFi icon - hosting, as a sheet), and Soundboard.
That is the in-person table - the mode named At the Table. When the party cannot share a room, the same table can run online instead: Telepathic Bond, next page.
Initiative and turn order, token positions, fog reveals, battle log entries, shop openings and closings, XP awards, Called Actions, and chat (Section 11). Table state is per session - when a player rejoins, they reconnect to the live table.
The Players section lists who is connected, with each player's character. Need to check a sheet mid-game - a save bonus, a passive score, what a character is carrying?
Tap a connected player's row to open their full character sheet on your device, read-only.
From the Players area you can grant things to connected players - for example a level-up - which lands on the player's own device, where they run it on their character.
The back chevron beside the home icon steps back exactly one level. On any DM tab screen it leaves the location and returns to the Chapters view (Section 3) - it does not exit the campaign. On the Chapters view itself, the chevron exits to the Campaigns list: use it there to switch campaigns between sessions. Home returns to role select from either place.
Telepathic Bond takes the table online. You host from your device just as you do in person - but players join from anywhere, over the internet instead of from the room. The in-person mode keeps its own name, At the Table; an online table is a Telepathic Bond table. Everything the table shares works the way it does in the room.
Start the table from the same table controls and choose the online table. Fold&Roll+ is needed only to create one - joining is free for every player. A DM runs one live online table at a time: a stopped table still holds its place, and archiving it frees the slot for the next one.
Players join from your invite link. If a link will not open on a player's device, they can paste it inside the app instead - Paste Invite Link - and land at the same table.
The battle map with its fog of war, initiative and turn order, and rolls stay in sync for everyone at the table, wherever they are. As in the room, sheet sharing is the player's choice - each player decides what to share, including sharing with you only.
Each location now carries a set of DM notes fields written for the moment the party walks in: Checks, Saves, Secrets, and If the party… - the DCs, the traps, and the consequences you always meant to have ready. Above them runs a passive-perception strip built from the sheets your players share, so the party's passive scores sit in front of you without asking.
A saved encounter no longer has to be rebuilt at the table: Place on Map puts it straight onto the battle map. And a Dice-Drop Map can travel by recipe: the drop is described compactly and replayed on each device, so the same generated map appears on every screen at the table.
As DM you have a Chat tab with:
Players also have a Party channel. It is never visible to the DM.
That is by addressing, not by a setting you can toggle: Party messages are sent only between player devices. They are not sent to the DM or the Table Display, and a DM device drops them if one ever arrives. Do not expect to read party planning in chat - that privacy is the point of the channel.
Point the campaign at a Discord webhook - in Edit Campaign, host-only - and Table chat is mirrored to your Discord server as it happens: a searchable session log of the night's calls, rolls, and table talk, written while you play.
Cloud Sync is a Fold&Roll+ feature. With it on, your characters and campaigns sync via iCloud, so the campaign you prepped on one device is waiting on the other. At the table itself nothing changes - play is still local and offline.
If the same character or campaign is edited on two devices before they sync, one version becomes the live version - and the other is not deleted. The losing copy is parked in the Cloud Sync screen, listed by name, so you can deal with it deliberately instead of losing work silently.
For each parked copy you have two choices:
After a session where you edited on more than one device, open the Cloud Sync screen once and clear any parked copies while you still remember which edit was which. A parked copy does nothing until you choose - it waits for Restore or Discard.
Export themed PDFs of characters and campaigns and spell cards - every theme and spell-card style is free for everyone, and a themed file carries the theme name in its filename.
Fold&Roll+ is a single one-time purchase - $14.99 - no subscription. It unlocks:
The app's look is set by a theme. Arcane is the free default. With Fold&Roll+ you also get Crimson, Forest, Midnight, and Ember, plus a Custom theme - your own accent and secondary colors, with a live preview, from the theme picker on the role-select screen.
Note: app themes (above) are a Fold&Roll+ extra, while export themes and spell-card styles stay free.
With Fold&Roll+, Campaign History keeps a campaign's past sessions and events as part of the campaign itself.
With Fold&Roll+, a campaign remembers itself: Recall searches everything the campaign has lived - names, places, events, notes - alongside a linked Notebook, and Previously on assembles a structured recap before the session. No AI, no server - it all lives on your phone.
The Homebrew Library can carry content as a pack - one file of homebrew spells, feats, monsters, items, and classes. Export Pack shares your own creations out (whole-row toggles, your name as creator); Import Pack brings a file in (re-importing offers Replace the previous copy); Imported Packs lists them and removes one completely. Imported content is locked against re-export. Making packs for patrons: see the Creator Guide.
Under More, Tables holds rollable tables you build yourself - the "something happens" charts every DM keeps in a notebook. Entries are a flat list or dice ranges; the editor checks your ranges live for gaps and overlaps, and Even Out spreads entries across the die for you. Tap Roll for a result, and share it straight to table chat when the table should see it. Three original starters are included: Something Happens (d20), Weather (d10), and Tavern Happenings (d20).
Also under More, the Screen replaces the cardboard: Actions in Combat, Conditions, Typical DCs, Cover, Death Saves, and Skills - the panels a DM actually glances at, one tap away, no unfolding anything.
Every search in the app now matches body text, not just names - search the Bestiary for "pack tactics" or the spells for "underwater" and the right entries surface. Name matches still sort first.
On Mac and iPad, DM mode becomes a two-screen setup built for prep at a desk and play at a table.
Pick your role from three big upright tiles - DM, Player, Table Display - instead of the phone-style list.
The header flattens the setup into three modes: Prep, Play (the map), and Battle.
Notes also sits in the header as a glyph popover - both routes edit the active location's Read Aloud and DM Notes.
Entering DM on iPad starts at the campaign chooser, same as iPhone - no campaign auto-opens. The browser is pinned panes, no collapsible menu: the campaign list (always visible, left), the campaign detail (middle), and a Configure pane that slides in from the right when you tap a location's wrench or Configure Campaign - tap the same target again, or its ✕, to close it. Location rows work as on the phone: row tap plays the location, the wrench drives Configure.
Open the Table Display as a second window on the same Mac or iPad. It shares your DM store in the same app, so it always shows the current public view - map, table sign, shared log - and carries the table audio, while your main window keeps the DM-only information.
The Mac window header carries a Campaigns button at the front, so switching campaigns does not mean digging to the bottom of a tab.
Fold&Roll DM Guide - November 2026 edition. Current app as of November 2026 (version 1.4).
Locations grow floors. Any location can have floors — a tab strip above the battle map switches the whole board: terrain, fog, tokens, and zones are kept per floor. Free locations get one floor; Fold&Roll+ adds as many as the tower needs. Existing maps become floor 1.
One-shots that delve. The one-tap one-shot generator learned a second shape: the dungeon — one location delved floor by floor, each floor's cast on its own floor, the villain at the bottom (dungeon shape with Fold&Roll+). The classic adventure shape is unchanged and free under the one-shot cap.
Stones that talk, items that work. Sending Stones pair at the first tap and trade 25-word messages, one exchange per dawn. A Lantern of Revealing burns oil by the pint and the hour; a Bag of Tricks spends a ball on the summon. The compendium marks every working item Functional.
Online tables, hardened. Party and DM chat at online tables is encrypted, and character sheets travel as encrypted payloads. The Sync Health panel on your table card shows the channel, your seat state, and any problem in plain language — plus published vs. applied revisions. Seats persist until the DM removes a player. A Table Display — including the new Apple TV app — can join an online table as a display seat.
Yes — Fold&Roll's battle maps start fully fogged, and the DM reveals areas as the party explores. Maps you generate with a Dice-Drop start fogged too, so the dungeon stays hidden until the party reaches it.
Fold&Roll's initiative tracker rolls and orders every combatant when a fight starts, shows the turn order on every screen, and keeps it through the whole fight — no index cards or whiteboard required.
Yes. Local tables sync phone-to-phone in the room, and Telepathic Bond tables let remote players join online — and a TV running the Table Display app can join either kind of table as a display seat. Joining is free for players either way.
Yes — Fold&Roll is offline-first: characters, spells, monsters and maps all work with no signal at all. Sync happens when you're together, and Fold&Roll+ adds cloud sync for characters and campaigns.
Yes — Fold&Roll is free to download with generous free tiers. Fold&Roll+ is a one-time $14.99 unlock, not a subscription.
Yes — new in 1.4, locations can have floors: each floor keeps its own board, fog, and tokens, and a tab strip above the map switches floors in one tap. Free locations get one floor; Fold&Roll+ adds more.