The Official D&D VTT: Navigating Maps on D&D Beyond

A view of the D&D VTT interface in Maps

Bring immersive encounters and exploration to your games with Maps, D&D's official virtual tabletop (VTT). Whether playing remotely with friends or gathering around a big screen, Maps seamlessly integrates with your D&D Beyond library to give you everything you need to prep less and play more.

Explore the benefits of this D&D VTT, find out how to access it, and start playing today!

Start Playing with the Official D&D VTT

With a 30-day Master Tier free trial, you can experience the full potential of D&D Beyond's virtual tabletop. Quickly craft encounters from your official and third-party books, populate your VTT with monster and player tokens, and invite your players to join in on the action! 

What Is the Maps VTT?

D&D Beyond's Maps virtual tabletop is an online tool designed to emulate the experience of playing at a real table with maps and miniatures. Maps integrates into your D&D Beyond library, allowing you to pull together your collection of books, monster tokens, and your player's character sheets for an experience that combines the convenience of digital tools with the experience of playing around a table.

A graphic highlighting the features of the Maps D&D VTT

Maps can be used for online D&D play or as an in-person VTT. Join your friends online for virtual D&D game sessions or simply drop in gorgeous maps and tokens on your projector or TV screen for in-person fun. The players in your campaign can connect to Maps remotely through their free D&D Beyond account, enabling them to control their tokens as you control their enemies, allies, and environment.

What Can the Maps VTT Do?

Create Battle Maps. Maps is designed to help Dungeon Masters prep less and play more. You can select from a massive library of official and third-party maps or upload your own using the intuitive map scaling feature to get their sizing just right. Once you have the perfect map for your encounter, you can pull in tokens from the books you own, your homebrew collection, and even your player's character sheets.

Craft Dynamic Encounters with Rich Features. With your game up and running, Maps offers several invaluable features for running your game. You can measure, mark, and ping the map to display key information accurately. There are area of effect templates and fog of war, as well as the ability to hide and display tokens, rename them, and add colored borders so you know which Goblin is which.

Invite Your Players and Adventure Together. Manage what maps your players see through the session controls, see who is connected, roll 3D dice, and even display your map in a separate browser window for use on multiple monitor setups and digital tabletops. There is also a Spectator mode for when you want to launch Maps and display it on a TV or projector during an in-person session.

Everything You Need in a D&D VTT

Maps is a tool designed specifically for the unique needs of Dungeon Masters and players of fifth edition D&D. Maps integrates directly with your D&D Beyond library, allowing you to pull maps, tokens, and character sheets from the official and third-party content you own.

Craft Combat Encounters Quickly

Whether you're planning a heroic boss battle or your players randomly stumble upon an Owlbear in the woods, you can populate your Maps VTT with a couple of clicks and jump into your encounter!

You can access all the maps and tokens from official and third-party books you own on D&D Beyond. If you're just getting started, you can access starter maps or upload your own for free, then populate them with creatures from the Basic Rules (2014) and D&D Free Rules (2024).

A gif showing how to populate the D&D VTT with a map and tokens.

Integrated with D&D Beyond's Suite of Virtual D&D Tools

When you create a campaign on D&D Beyond, you can easily add the tokens from your player's digital character sheets to Maps. Whenever they roll from their character sheet, the result will show up in the Game Log on Maps, so everyone will know the second your Barbarian lands a massive Critical Hit to down your foe! 

You can even combine Maps with D&D Beyond's Encounters tool to easily prep challenging encounters that perfectly suit your game narrative. Then, when it's time to roll Initiative, you can use the combat tracker to send rolls directly from your monster stat blocks to the Game Log on Maps.

A gif of the D&D Beyond Encounters tool sending a dice roll to the Game Log on the Maps tool.

Explore with Ease

When your players are delving into a labyrinthine dungeon full of lurking dangers and valuable treasure, the last thing you want is to spoil the many surprises that await them! 

With Maps, you can use the fog of war feature to block anything you don't want your players to see. In addition, you can hide tokens in visible areas just in case your party doesn't realize that the chest in the corner is actually a Mimic.

A gif of the D&D Beyond Maps VTT where a Mimic is revealed from hiding in front of unsuspecting adventurers

Play D&D Online or In-Person

Maps is the perfect VTT to immerse your players in an online D&D session. It emulates the experience of a tabletop battle map with miniatures, and your players can join and control their tokens, even if they have a free account.

When you're gathered around a TV or projector for an in-person session, you can use Spectator mode to share the battle map from your Dungeon Master's account without revealing any hidden secrets. Great for groups that prefer good old-fashioned pen-and-paper character sheets!

A gif of the D&D Beyond Maps VTT in Spectator mode

Prep Less, Play More with the Maps VTT

With Maps, the official fifth edition D&D VTT, you can spend less time setting up adventures and more time having them. Jump straight from a campaign into a combat encounter and use the features to enhance your play. Be it online using Discord or in-person using a projector, Maps is the tool that adapts to how you enjoy D&D. Get started now by checking out Maps. All you need is a Master Tier subscription and a campaign. Oh, and an adventuring party!

D&D Beyond Maps: How to Start Playing Today
by Davyd Barker
Start Playing Today with the 2024 D&D Free Rules
by Michael Galvis
Updates in the Player's Handbook (2024)
by D&D Staff
A displacer beast stalks its prey. Text reads, Join the official D&D Discord!

Davyd is a moderator for D&D Beyond. A Dungeon Master of over fifteen years, he enjoys Marvel movies, writing, and of course running D&D for his friends and family, including his daughter Willow (well, one day). The three of them live with their two cats Asker and Khatleesi in south of England.