The tap-to-play campaign companion for 5th Edition
Three things meet at the table: the tokens, the DM's portal, and each player's phone. Here is how they fit together, from the box to the end of a campaign.
The Core Pack holds sixteen item tokens and sixteen miniature coins. The tokens stand for magic items, from common up to two legendaries. The coins are engraved by role: four Hero coins, four NPC coins and eight Enemy coins, and each one sits under a miniature. Every token and coin has an NFC tag sealed inside, the same kind of chip your phone uses for contactless payment. There is no battery and nothing to charge.
The Expansion Pack adds sixteen more item tokens and a seven piece dice set. It has no coins, because the coins in the Core Pack get reused for every fight and every new face.
The DM signs up for a free account at the DM Portal and starts a campaign. This is where you pick the rules the campaign runs on, D&D 5e (2014) or the 2024 rules. New accounts can start a 30 day DM Pro trial, so everything in the box is unlocked from the first session.
Signed in on your phone, tap a token. The page sees a token it has never met and offers to claim it for your party. Do that once for each token and coin. From then on, those pieces belong to your table and no one else can load them.
In the DM Portal, pick what each piece is. An item token gets a magic item from the library, or one you write yourself on DM Pro. An Enemy coin gets a creature and its stat block. An NPC coin gets a person from your codex. You can also mark an item as unidentified, cursed, puzzle locked or stolen, and give an enemy a threat level. None of it shows to players until they tap.
Each player makes a free account and builds a character. Hand them a Hero coin. They tap it and press Claim Token, and that coin is bound to their character for the rest of the campaign. Tap it again any time to pull up the hero.
That is the whole setup. Most tables are done in a few minutes, and none of it needs doing again until you start a new campaign.
Play runs the way it always has. You describe the room, the players roll their own dice, and the pieces sit on the table. The difference is what happens when someone picks one up.
Hold the token flat against the back of a phone for about a second. The phone opens a page in its browser and the item reveals itself, with its rarity, its description, its charges and its estimated value. A player with an account can claim the item into their character's inventory, so the party always knows who is carrying what. If a tap does not land, the setup guide covers where the reader sits on different phones.
Someone sitting in for one night, or a friend who will never make an account, can still play. Tapping a token needs no login. A guest sees exactly what the DM has chosen to reveal, the same as everyone else.
Set a coin under a miniature and any player can tap it to find out what they are looking at. A shopkeeper gives up a name and whatever you have decided the party knows about them. An enemy gives up what the party would know about it, and if you have set a threat level, the tap warns them first. On Deadly, the name and stat block stay hidden until you decide the party has earned them.
On DM Pro, the Combat Manager tracks initiative, hit points and conditions for every creature in the fight. Players on Player Pro get their own combat drawer with HP, death saves and spell slots, so nobody is scribbling on scratch paper while the turn order stalls.
When the dice go back in the bag, the campaign keeps going in the background. The DM logs the session. Players write in their journals and choose who gets to read each entry: just them, their DM, or nobody until the campaign ends. The DM can open a quick vote for the night's MVP, best Nat 20, biggest Nat 1, best roleplay, smartest play and most lethal hero.
On DM Pro, all of that feeds the Campaign Chronicle, a page shared by link that tells the story of the whole run: arcs, chapters, the NPCs who mattered, and the heroes who did not make it. You can read a sample one to see where it ends up.
Nothing in the box is single use. When an item changes hands or a campaign ends, the DM points the token at something new and the next tap shows the new thing. The printed TokenTab inside each token takes dry erase marker, so the label on the front can change with it. One Enemy coin can be a bandit in the first session and a lich by the last.