Photos, Clues, and Portraits

The Assets sub-tab of the Atlas, tinted amber, holds every picture in your campaign that is not a map. A tavern's interior, a bloodstained letter, a player's character art: one idea, three types.

• Photo. Something the party looks at. Scenery, a face, an object.
• Clue. A photo you expect them to reason about. Same mechanics, different label, so your own library reads at a glance.
• Portrait. Character art belonging to one player. Portraits are never pinned to a map; they attach to a person.

Photos and clues behave identically. The split is for you, not the app.

Getting pictures in

Everything here is DM work. Drill into a section first (chapter 7, The Atlas, covers the two-level structure), because assets always belong to the section you were standing in when you made them. There is no unfiled bucket.

Tap the add button and pick one of two paths.

Add one image. A source sheet opens. On a phone or tablet you get Camera and Photo Library. On a Mac or Windows machine you get Pick from Files, plus Camera only when a phone is paired; if that phone is asleep the row reads "Turn on phone" and does nothing until you wake it (chapter 34, Pairing Your Phone). Then a small dialog: a thumbnail preview, an optional Label field, and a Photo / Clue / Portrait selector. Skip the label and the tile just shows the type.

Import a batch. For when you have a folder of monster art or handouts. Pick many files at once (JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, GIF, and BMP are accepted; anything else is skipped with a count). A review screen follows:

• A "Group these under" field. Whatever you type is prefixed to every filename, with a live preview of the result.
• A "These are" row of Photos, Portraits, and Clues chips that sets the type for the whole batch.
• A grid of everything you picked. Tap any tile to leave it out.
• An import button that counts what is selected, then a progress line reading "Importing... N of M".

Imported assets keep filename order, so a numbered batch lands in the order you named it.

Everything starts unrevealed

Every asset you create is private. On your device an unrevealed asset shows dimmed with an UNREVEALED badge. On a player's device it is not dimmed, it is absent, and so is any section holding nothing revealed.

Two DM-only chip rows above the grid help you keep track: All / Photos / Clues filters by type, and Revealed / Unrevealed filters by what the table has seen. There is no Portraits chip; use All to find those.

Managing one asset

Long-press an asset tile, or right-click it on a Mac or Windows machine, for its menu:

• Display on Play tab. Presents the picture full-screen to every connected player, revealing it first if needed.
• Place on Explore Map, offered when the photo or clue is not yet on a map. This arms a drag; the drop both pins and reveals it.
• Locate on Explore Map, offered instead once it is pinned. This jumps your own view to the pin and pulses it. It reveals nothing.
• Assign to player, offered only for portraits. Covered below.
• Rename, Move to Section, and Delete.

Chapter 18, Revealing Your World, is the full account of the reveal verbs and the pacing behind them.

Assigning a portrait

Long-press a portrait and choose Assign to player. A roster appears, listing connected players plus any party member this campaign already knows from an earlier session, each with their character name, player name, and color dot. Pick one and the portrait becomes that character's face on tokens and combatant cards (chapter 22, The Combat Tracker).

Assigning works offline during prep. If nobody has ever joined this campaign the roster is empty, and the app says a player appears there after they first join a session. In a live session the portrait ships to the table immediately, and any portrait it displaces is cleared first so no two pictures claim one character. Deleting an assigned portrait reverts that character to the default token.

Looking at pictures

Tapping a tile does different things under different hats.

• As DM in a session, a tap opens the full-screen viewer: dark chrome, the label in the title bar, pinch to zoom between half size and five times.
• As a player, and as DM browsing offline, a tap jumps to the asset's first pin on the map and pulses it, so you see where the thing was found. An asset with no pin opens the viewer instead.

Players cannot add, rename, or delete assets. Chapter 30, Browse Offline: the Player's Atlas, covers what stays on their device.