Using the Stage

A Stage is an encounter setup — a grid with tokens placed on it, ready for a fight. Think of it as a single scene, not a permanent location. One location can have many stages: the foggy crossroads where goblins ambush the party is a different Stage to the same crossroads two sessions later when the giants are patrolling.

Setting up tokens

Open a Stage from your campaign. You’ll see three columns below the grid:

Party — characters from your campaign. Click “Place” to put them on the board. Their HP is automatically copied from their character sheet at placement time.
NPCs — NPC articles linked to your campaign. Place them the same way.
Monsters — type any creature name in the search box. Select from the results to place a token with HP from the stat block.

All tokens start in the centre of the grid. Move them into position by dragging.

Moving tokens

Drag any token to move it. A ghost shows you where it will land before you release. The board updates live for anyone watching (TV view, encounter tracker).

Right-click (or long-press on mobile) any token for options:

See the token’s label and current HP at a glance
Remove token — removes it from the Stage immediately

Running an encounter

When you’re ready to fight, press Encounter in the top bar. This opens the mobile-optimised encounter tracker where you can set initiative order, advance turns, track HP, and apply conditions.

At the end of the encounter, the tracker snapshots a Moment to the linked session so the fight is recorded.

TV view

Press TV to open a full-screen read-only display — put it on your table TV or second monitor. It stays live via Action Cable: token moves and HP changes appear there automatically as the encounter runs.

Encounter variants at the same location

If the party returns to a location with different enemies, create a new Stage for that encounter. Press Duplicate to copy the current Stage — same grid size and battlemap, no tokens. Rename it and add the new enemies.

Stages are cheap. Naming them clearly (e.g. “The Foggy Crossroads — Goblin Ambush”, “The Foggy Crossroads — Giant Patrol”) keeps them organised.

Playtesting with the Artificer

Before the players arrive, run a simulation. Press Encounter then Playtest, or run /txt-artificer stage-NNN from the CLI. The Artificer reads your stage via MCP, runs the fight round by round, and writes a scroll you can read back in the Playtest view. Use it to tune the encounter before session night.