D&D 5E (2014) Please help me understand Dnd Beyond "Maps"

[Echohawk]

The next two steps are very easy, assuming that your players have characters that have joined your campaign. Click on the Token Browser:

 

[UngainlyTitan]

yep haven't even done that. Ok I made a campaign. Do my players need to be subscribers to join the campaign or can I just put their characters in there?

I don't mind moving their characters for example, I just want to get the map and the tokens up when we do our calls and then share the screen on discord.

If you just want to do this then in the campaign create a character sheet for each pc. Level one is fine and you do not need a complete character but add a token image to each character.
In in the maps page when you have maps running from the campaign page and shared on discord you can use the sidebar to add monster tokens and the player tokens to the map.

 

[Echohawk]

Next click on Players and you should see tokens for all the players in your campaign. Click on the + next to each of the players involved in the encounter, and those token will appear on the map.

You will need to move them to an appropriate starting point, and for characters with surnames, I generally edit the token name to save space. Here's what my screen looks like after I've done that. I note that none of the players in this campaign have bothered to upload pictures for their characters, so the tokens are all the same blank portrait. If they had picked a character portrait, the token would reflect that.

 

[Echohawk]

Finally, click on Monsters in the Token Browser and choose the critter you want to add. Like so:

 

[Echohawk]

Once you've gotten that far, you've done 1-3 on your list. I'd encourage you to experiment with the other features, in particular you can click on the d6 on the bottom right to see a log of all the die rolls you've made or your players have made on their character sheets, as well as clicking on a monster and then on the scroll to see its statblock. You can roll from within Maps very easily, but it doesn't adjust any of the numbers automatically. You will need to do that.

 

[F5]

Full disclosure, it's been a while since I ran any encounters in Maps, but I have been able to make it do all of what you're looking for. Lately, I've been using the Owlbear Rodeo VTT, which is a 3rd party barebones VTT which does most of what I need it to. Much lower-tech than Roll20 or Foundry or Fantasy Grounds or any of the big name VTTs on the market, but it does the job and everyone can run it without much issue.

The thing to remember about Maps is that it's tightly integrated with the rest of DNDBeyond, so you have to have certain things set up ahead of time. Adding custom maps is easy if you have the map you want to use as a file, since it's just the background. Adding actual functional tokens/monsters etc is where it gets tricky.

You can only add stuff that you have access to in D&DB as a token. The only way I've been able to add/upload a new token is to add a homebrew monster. When you do that, you can select whatever image you want for it, and once saved it becomes available to select as a token in Maps. I had assumed there's a better way to just upload a one-off token, but due to the tight integration with the rest of the D&DBeyond platform, I'm not sure there is.

 

[LordEntrails]

@Echohawk is a saint for detailing all that!

Every time I hear "Maps is so easy to use!" I will just remember that it takes ~173 steps to set it up and get tokens on the map and think, "yea, sure".

 

[Echohawk]

Maps really is easy to use though. But that does assume that you are already using D&D Beyond for a campaign and characters. I just tested setting up a map for an existing campaign and characters using one of the default basic maps and it took under 20 clicks to have the whole thing up and running.

 

[Belen]

@Echohawk is a saint for detailing all that!

Every time I hear "Maps is so easy to use!" I will just remember that it takes ~173 steps to set it up and get tokens on the map and think, "yea, sure".

It is pretty easy to use. I was up and running in less than 5 minutes with a map that I cut and pasted from a module. The main Maps page even asks you to either pick your campaign or use one of the premades.

Of course, I am a heavy DDB user and always use the campaign feature to share content with my players so I did not need to create a campaign.

I will say that it is much easier to learn if you're a windows user. If you came up use google suite or ios, then, there is more of a learning curve.

 

[Clint_L]

@Echohawk you are a gem. This is a really great guide and service to the community!

A note about the character tokens: once your players choose art for their characters (via their character sheets), that art will also appear on their character's token.

@ OP, I am bad with technology, but I got Maps to work for me almost immediately. Note that basically every book on DDB now has its maps available for the Maps interface, so if you purchase an adventure or whatever, you should already have all its maps ready to go on Maps. That includes setting guides, so maps of the continent of Wildemount from Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, etc. Same for rules books (so all of the generic maps from the 2024 DMG and so on).