Why NotVTT exists
NotVTT started as a passion project by a Dungeon Master trying to keep a campaign organized. The notes were everywhere: notebooks, Post-it notes tucked into adventure books, Obsidian vaults, documents scattered across a computer, and all the other places useful thoughts tend to land.
The problem became obvious during an actual session. When a detail mattered, finding it could take longer than it should. Sometimes it was forgotten entirely. Sometimes the memory arrived just after the session: “Ah, that’s what I was supposed to remember.”
The goal was not to make another place to store notes. It was to make everything available when running the game.
The idea behind it
Many campaign-management tools were tried. Some worked better than others, but none quite matched the way this DM wanted to run a game. Virtual tabletops came closest in one important way: they made a lot of information accessible and organized in one place.
But a traditional VTT is designed to do much more than help a DM running a game at a physical table. The question became simple: what if that useful organizational power could come to the table without bringing the VTT itself? That question became the foundation of NotVTT.
The workflow took months to think through. The first realization was that one campaign needed one connected home for characters, locations, items, lore, quests, story plans, notes, sessions, and everything else that makes a campaign a campaign.
Storing everything was only half the answer. It also had to be immediately reachable while play was happening.
What it is designed to solve
🔗 A connected campaign
Characters, locations, items, lore, quests, story plans, sessions, and notes belong together instead of living in separate apps and documents.
🔍 Find things immediately
Search should get a DM to the right thing faster than navigating a complicated hierarchy or hunting through browser tabs.
🧠 Capture the thought
Quick Notes make it possible to record an observation during play before deciding where it belongs.
📚 Bring adventure books to life
Maps and locations should lead straight to the trap, NPC, secret, or detail that matters, rather than sending a DM on a page hunt.
🗓 Prepare the next session
The Sessions workspace supports a Lazy DM-inspired preparation flow so upcoming material is visible without digging through old notes.
📌 Keep the important things close
The Dashboard is the command center during play, surfacing what matters now instead of making the DM tour the whole application.
⚔️ Run practical combat
Initiative, monsters, statistics, actions, HP, and combat participants should be available without pretending to replace every dedicated VTT.
🏠 Work at a real table
The core workflows are mobile-first for the times a DM wants a phone instead of a laptop between themselves and the players.
The small things matter too
A shared journal keeps the campaign’s history with the campaign. Players can see the information they are meant to know, while homebrew rules, creatures, items, lore, and locations have somewhere to live. Quests stay visible instead of disappearing into an old session note.
And then there are the little table-savers: a random table, an encounter or name generator, a timer, a quick dice roll, a character’s current location, a relationship, whether someone is alive, the weather, the time of day, or the in-world date when the last session ended. Each is small. Together, they keep a session moving.
Built around a DM’s workflow
NotVTT is designed around the DM’s workflow rather than around a list of features. Every part exists because it answers a problem that can happen while preparing or running a tabletop campaign.
The aim is straightforward: help a DM remember the past, manage the present, and prepare for what comes next. That is the thinking behind the Campaign Operating System: Dashboard, Quick Notes, and Search at the center, with the rest of the campaign connected around them.
It is especially shaped by its creator’s own style of DMing: easily distracted, allergic to unnecessary preparation overhead, and happiest when the needed information is available immediately. NotVTT is intentionally built for an ADHD Dungeon Master who benefits from low-friction workflows and fewer things to manage.
A humble ambition
NotVTT is not the best campaign application for everyone. There are many excellent tools, and different DMs need different things. It is simply the application that works best for the way its creator wants to prepare and run games.
It may not be the right campaign tool for everyone. But it is the one I wanted at my own table. And if you have ever spent five minutes looking for a note you were certain you had written down somewhere, maybe it is the one you wanted too.