The player view

A live, read-only screen for your table: seven built-in themes, mobile-friendly, synced the moment the round advances.

The player view is a live, read-only window into your encounter: the screen your players keep open on a tablet, laptop, or phone while you run the session. It shows the current turn order, HP totals, conditions, and round counter, all updating the moment you advance a round or apply damage.

Nothing installs on the player side. They open the link you share, and the encounter is right there. Here is what the player view does, and how it behaves across every screen at the table.

The TurnWarden player view open in a browser at desktop width, showing the initiative order and round counter. — The player view: a live window into your encounter, no install required.

On any screen

The player view was built to work cleanly at every width, from a 65-inch TV to the phone someone props against their dice tower. The layout adapts without losing information: initiative numbers, HP totals, tag pills, and the active-turn pointer all stay readable at narrow viewports.

At 375 pixels wide (the iPhone benchmark) the view renders at the same fidelity as it does at desktop. Nothing collapses to an illegible smear, nothing overflows the edge.

The player view rendered at iPhone width with full visual polish, initiative order, HP, and conditions all visible. — The player view at 375×812: phone-clean.

Any device with a browser and a network connection works as a player-view screen. Tablets, phones, second monitors, and shared laptops all join the same room simultaneously.

Seven themes

The player view ships with seven baked-in themes. Each one is a complete colour palette: backgrounds, text, borders, and accent colours all shift together. The themes are:

grimdark is the default; deep shadows, muted iron tones
frostbound is cool blues and silver highlights
verdant is forest greens and warm amber accents
infernal is embers and deep crimson
necrotic is bone white on near-black with sickly green highlights
celestial is bright gold and soft violet
spellbook is warm parchment tones with arcane purple accents

The theme picker lives inside the player view itself, not in your DM dashboard. Look for the small pill button in the bottom-right corner of the screen with two overlapping coloured circles (one for the active theme's accent, one for its background). Tap it to open a grid of all seven themes; tap any theme to commit. Each player selects whichever theme suits their setup independently. The choice sticks per device; it does not affect what other players see or what you see in the tracker.

The TurnWarden player view with the theme picker open, showing the seven available themes. — The theme picker: each player chooses independently, and the choice persists on their device.

Live across devices

The player view is driven by the same encounter state as your DM tracker. When you advance the round, apply damage, or toggle a condition, every connected player view updates immediately. No page refresh needed, no polling delay.

Multiple devices can join the same room at the same time. One player might have the view open on a tablet, another on their phone, a third on a shared laptop at the end of the table. All three see the same state simultaneously.

To share the player view, open Settings from the user menu in the tracker header and find the Room Link card. The full share URL sits there with a Copy button. Tap Copy and send the URL to your players (a message, a QR code, whatever suits your table). The URL is permanent for your account; you only need to share it once. The tracker header also carries an external-link icon labelled "Open player view in new tab", handy for keeping the player view open on a second screen during the session.

The TurnWarden DM tracker mid-encounter with initiative order, HP totals, and the active turn highlighted. — The DM tracker: every advance, damage roll, and condition lands here first.

The TurnWarden player view rendered in a browser, mirroring the DM tracker's initiative order and HP totals. — The player view in matching state. One advance on the DM screen, instant update here.

What's next

With the player view in play, your table stays oriented without you narrating the board state every round. When you are ready to run the full encounter workflow (initiative, round tracking, HP, and conditions), running your first encounter walks through every step. To understand how conditions and tags behave on the player view, conditions and tags covers the full reference.

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