Host Your First Session

This is the shortest path from a fresh install to a live table. It takes about ten minutes and needs two devices: yours, and a friend's phone.

It assumes you have finished the tutorial's first rung from chapter 3, "The Demo Campaign and the Tutorial": the encounter called "The bridge of the Mossy Maw" is staged, its map scale is set, both trolls are placed, and you pressed Save. The tutorial deliberately stops there. Everything that follows needs a live session, which is what this chapter is.

Your friend needs Far Table installed too. Nothing else: no account, no sign-up, no server.

Start hosting

On your device, open the demo campaign and go to the Session tab at the bottom of the screen.

1. Tap Start Hosting.
2. A color picker opens and will not close until you choose. Pick your color. It marks your token and everything you place, all night.
3. A card appears with your join code in large letters. It looks like FAR-TABLE- followed by four characters.

Under the code, Far Table spells the last four characters out phonetically for you, so you can read them down a voice call without spelling arguments. Tapping the code copies it, and so does the Copy Code button below it, if you would rather paste it into a chat.

Leave this tab open. As people join, they appear in the Players card underneath, one row each: their color, their character name, their own name, and their species and class.

Chapter 14, "Hosting a Session", covers the rest of this tab.

Your friend joins

On their phone, your friend taps Join as Player on the first screen they see.

1. The Session Code field is already filled with FAR-TABLE- and the cursor sits after it. They only type the four characters you read out.
2. Your Name, then Character Name.
3. Species and Class from the dropdown lists, a Speed in feet (30 unless they know better), and Darkvision in feet, which fills itself in from the species.
4. Tap Join Session.

The same non-dismissible color picker appears for them once your device answers. Colors already taken show faded and cannot be picked.

Chapter 15, "Joining as a Player", is written for them and is worth sending their way.

One rule catches people out: the device that authored a campaign cannot also join that same campaign as a player. You need a real second device for this walkthrough. Your friend having their own copy of the demo on their phone is fine; every install's demo is its own campaign.

Put the fight on the table

Now go back to the bridge, with the session live.

1. Tap the Atlas tab, then the Encounters sub-tab.
2. Open the section holding the demo's encounters and tap The bridge of the Mossy Maw.
3. In the encounter, tap Stage on Map.

The trolls are where you left them, because Save wrote their positions down. What is new is your friend: with a session running, connected players are loaded into the staging tray as well, and their token is not placed yet.

Tap the Monsters bench along the top, find your friend's character chip in the strip of unplaced tokens (party chips are outlined and carry a person icon), tap it, then tap the map where they should stand.

With everyone placed, tap Start Encounter in the top bar. That button only lights up when a session is live and at least one token is on the map.

Chapter 13, "The Map Prep Workbench", explains the four benches properly.

Confirm they can see it

Ask your friend to look at their Play tab. The bridge map is there, with their token on it in their color.

The trolls are not. Monsters go hidden the moment an encounter starts, so you can describe what steps out of the mist rather than having the app spoil it. Revealing them is a tap in the combatant panel, covered in chapter 23, "Managing Combatants".

You have a live table. Rolling initiative and running the fight properly is chapter 21, "Setting Up a Fight".

End the night

Go back to the Session tab and tap End in the top bar. Far Table asks you to confirm, and tells you what it is about to do: the active map and the session's dice photos clear on every device, while pins, maps, and assets stay in the Atlas.

Your friend gets a "Session ended" screen with a Return to Home button. Everything you revealed to them stays on their device, browsable with no session at all. Chapter 30, "Browse Offline: the Player's Atlas", is their side of that.

If you are hosting from a Mac or Windows machine

Everything above works the same. The one gap is dice: a computer has no camera pointed at your table, so pair a phone first. Chapter 34, "Pairing Your Phone", takes a minute.