RollCall Tavern started as CogForge, the table I built for my weekly steampunk D&D campaign. I made it public in August 2026. It runs a whole tabletop night from one browser tab: the game master preps and runs the story, the battle map lights up for the fight, and every player takes their turn from their own phone.
CogForge was built for one table, mine. Once other groups started playing on it I rebuilt most of what you see. The app now has two states, Prep and Run, instead of a long row of modes. Combat, the map, and anything that goes off script are layers inside Run, so the game master never has to leave the screen they're running from.
I redid the look from the ground up too. I studied the VTTs and D&D sites people already love, mocked up four directions, and went with the one that feels like sitting at a real table: painted art, warm lamplight, and plain words on the buttons. Every screenshot on this page is the live app running one campaign.
Scenes get written ahead of time with read-aloud text, notes only the game master sees, and the maps and fights that go with them. On game night the GM reads from the script and puts a picture, a map, or a fight on the players' screen with one click. An on air light shows what the table is looking at right now.
Every hero gets a full 5e sheet and a painted portrait. The GM can change hit points in one tap mid-fight, and the player sees it on their phone right away.
This is the part I've spent the most time on. A GM uploads their own battle map or starts from a ready one, then places lights: lanterns, hearths, lava, a shaft of daylight. Walls and pillars cast real shadows, and weather and time of day sit on one slider. The lighting runs in a WebGL2 layer on top of the map.
When the fight starts, spells play out on the map, dice roll where they land, and the app does the rules math: attacks, saving throws, damage, conditions, movement range, and opportunity attacks. The frames below are all from one fight, taken straight off the board.
Running real sessions on my own tool showed me where combat slowed down, and most of it was building encounters on the fly. So now encounters get built before anyone sits down. The GM picks monsters from the SRD 5.1 catalog, places them on the map, and a difficulty meter reads the party's level and says how hard the fight will be. One button starts it on the night.
The library holds the full SRD catalog of monsters, spells, and items, and each GM's own creations sit in a separate My library section so they're easy to find.
Each player makes a free account and opens their GM's invite link. Their phone becomes their controller. They see the board, their own sheet, and whatever the GM reads aloud, and they can attack, cast, or end their turn with one tap. The GM's notes stay with the GM.
Everything stays in sync over Socket.IO. When the GM applies damage, the player's hit points drop on their phone in the same moment, no refresh needed.
GMs can grab a ready-made map, monster, or character from the Community shelf and add it to their campaign in one click. Showcase maps come with their lights and weather already set.
There's a helper that knows your campaign and can draft a scene, a stat block, or a name from what your table has already played. It's off until you ask for it, and nothing goes into the campaign until the GM keeps it. The helper is the only paid part. Everything else is free for players and GMs.
It's 5e, SRD 5.1 underneath. Free for players and game masters, and it works in the browser on desktop, tablet, and phone. Live at rollcalltavern.com.
