OpenFray is in beta

The version number moved to 0.2.0 and the label moved from alpha to beta. Nothing about the way you use OpenFray changed. It still opens in a browser tab, still needs no account, and still keeps your fight in that tab until you decide otherwise. What changed is how much of a session it covers.

What’s new since the alpha

The alpha ran a fight: initiative, resources, effects, spells, group saves and dice. It had one book in it and stopped at the last hit point. Since then:

• Four more libraries. The alpha shipped the 2024 rules alone. There are now the 2014 rules as well, the three Tome of Beasts books from Kobold Press, and two OpenFray writes itself. See the libraries below.
• The creatures come from the source. The 2024 stat blocks and spells are now read from the official rules document rather than a third-party feed, which fixed a long tail of wrong sizes, missing alignments and mangled casting times.
• The fight is rated before it starts. The footer says how hard the board in front of you looks, and changes as you add and remove creatures.
• And summarized after it ends. Experience earned and what it works out to per player, how many rounds, how long in real time and in game time, total damage each way, and three awards.
• The roll log became a game log. It records the fight rather than the dice: turns and rounds, conditions applied and cleared, concentration started and broken, damage, healing, knockouts, and rests, kept for the whole fight, grouped by round, and filterable by kind. A resolved attack collapses into one line.
• Clocks while you fight. Real time, with pauses excluded, and in-game time at six seconds a round, which answers “how long has that spell got left?”.
• Never retype a stat block. Paste a creature as JSON, or use the free OpenFray Importer browser add-on to take one from a D&D Beyond page.
• Conditions explain themselves. Point at a condition anywhere it appears and its rules text comes up, the way spell names already did.
• Counters. A tally you keep by hand for the things nothing counts for you: Exhaustion, a corruption track, a countdown of your own.
• A handbook. Every part of the console, written out and illustrated, at openfray.app/docs.

What the console runs

The console holds one fight at a time, and it holds all of it:

• Initiative, rounds, and turns, with timed effects counting themselves down.
• Hit points, temporary hit points, and death saves.
• Creature resources: legendary actions, legendary resistance, recharge abilities, spell slots, and the reaction each creature gets back on its turn.
• Conditions, advantage, disadvantage, flat bonuses, and free-text reminders, which are all one kind of thing, so there is only one of them to learn.
• Concentration, checked the moment the damage lands.
• Group saves: one spell, every target rolling at once, with resistances and immunities already worked in.
• Dice you can check, because every roll is written into the game log with the numbers behind it.

Before a fight begins, the footer rates how hard it looks. When it ends, you get a summary of how it went: experience earned, how long it took, and the hits worth retelling. Both are estimates, and the handbook says what each one is built from. See how hard the fight looks and end of the fight.

The libraries

Open Settings (the gear at the top right of the console) and tick the libraries your table uses. Five ship with the app:

The last two are ours, and both are published on this site in full, free to read whether or not you ever open the console.

What you can add yourself

Signing in is free, with Discord or Google, and it is what makes things stick between sessions. With an account you get an editor for your own creatures and spells, a saved list of player characters to drop into any fight, and campaigns that carry your table’s house rules into every encounter you run. The OpenFray Importer turns a D&D Beyond creature page into an OpenFray creature, so a stat block you already have somewhere doesn’t get typed twice.

Without an account, everything above still runs. It just lives in the tab.

Still to come

A read-only player view: a second screen your table can look at, showing turn order and conditions without showing them your notes. The data is already shaped for it. It isn’t built yet, and this section is where it will be announced.

Where to start

If you have never opened it, getting started runs you through one fight from an empty board to the summary at the end. Otherwise, open the console.