Design a Canvas sheet

Put your game's character sheets on artwork of their own, like a printed sheet, then draw and write on top; players click the artwork to roll.

For: Game Masters · Plan: Starter · 3 minutes · What it's for: Sheet designer

Every character sheet can be shown two ways: the Form View, the standard tabbed layout, and the Canvas view, the same sheet drawn on a picture with each number placed where it belongs. Design a Canvas sheet when you want your campaign's sheets to match its look, such as a stained parchment sheet for a horror campaign, or to recreate a printed sheet your players already know. The numbers are the same in both views: only the look changes. See Form and Canvas views.

Plan: designing Canvas sheets is on Starter and Pro.

Who can design

  • The Game Master (GM) can design any sheet in their game.
  • You can design any sheet in your own account library. See Your account library.

Design on a computer: the drawing tools are hidden on a phone.

Start designing

You change a sheet's look in the Canvas view's Edit mode.

  1. Open the sheet and click Canvas view. You see it even before the sheet has any artwork.
  2. Click Edit at the top. (Preview shows the sheet as players see it.)

A sheet can have two pages, a front and a back. Switch page moves between them.

Add artwork

The artwork is the picture the sheet is drawn on, one image for each page. There are two ways to give the sheet a look:

  • Upload your own: click + Page (Add front page, then Add back page) and choose a JPEG, PNG or WebP image.
  • Use a design: a design is a finished look you can reuse: artwork together with a layout, which says where each value sits on it. Click Design (Add design on a sheet with none) to pick from your own designs and RollQuest's artwork for the game's system (the set of rules the game uses, such as 5e):
    • Apply this design uses the design's artwork and layout.
    • Use this artwork takes the pictures and where they sit, but keeps your sheet's layout.
    • Import an image makes a new design from a single image.
    • Needs mapping marks a design that places fields this system doesn't have. Picking it lets you match those fields to your sheet's first.

Draw and write

What you draw or write here is saved on the sheet itself, so anyone who opens it in the Canvas view sees it.

The second row of the toolbar has the tools:

  • Pen, in widths of 2, 4 and 8 pixels, and Marker, in sizes from XXS to XL, in the colour you pick.
  • Text: click to place a text box, type, and use B, I and U. Click Done to finish.
  • Aa sets the sheet's default text Colour, Font and Size.
  • Eraser rubs out what you've drawn.

Undo (Ctrl+Z) and Redo (Ctrl+Y) go back up to 50 steps. On a Mac, use Cmd.

To place values, switches and areas that roll on the artwork, see Calculations and values.

During play

Players open the sheet in the Canvas view and click on it to roll. In in-game mode, where the sheet floats over the board during play, a player who clicks Unlocked can make their own notes with Pen, Marker and Eraser. See Form and Canvas views.

The Canvas view isn't available in 5e Compatible (2014) games.

Customise a sheet layout · Form and Canvas views