Feature Highlight: SessionFlow’s GM Panel (Patreon)

Hey everyone! :)

I want to do something a little different today. A Feature Highlight, taking a proper look at something inside one of my modules that I feel deserves a little more attention.

And I really wanted to start with SessionFlow's GM Panel.

I have a feeling a lot of people either haven't tried it or haven't realized how much you can do with it. Which is a shame, because honestly, this is one of the parts of SessionFlow I'm most proud of.

So let's open up my Exalted world and have a look. I've put together a couple of examples for this post, alongside some of the panels already in the campaign.

A little example built in my Exalted world: references, scene beats, reminders, and shortcuts, all in one GM Panel.

Your own GM screen, inside Foundry

You know that space behind a physical GM screen? The notes you keep close, a reminder about an NPC, the thing you absolutely must not forget tonight?

That's a good way to think about this.

A GM Panel is a workspace you build out of SessionFlow widgets. Pick the tools you need, move them around, resize them, and give each one the space it needs.

And it lives independently of your session outline. You don't need to create a session, then a beat, then a scene just to have your notes and tools nearby. You can use a GM Panel on its own.

There are nine slots in the floating dock. You could have one for everyday notes, another for travel, another for encounters, and one just for audio. Each gets its own name, icon, color, and keyboard shortcut.

Making your first one

Find the little numbered GM Panels dock and click an empty slot. If you don't see it, check Game Settings → Configure Settings → SessionFlow → Enable GM Panels.

Choose a Canvas Panel, give it a name, and decide where it should open: vertically on the left or right, or horizontally along the bottom. There are presets for Mood, Combat, Clues, and Travel, or you can start blank.

The preset is just a starting point. Add widgets from the toolbar and arrange them however you like. You can also use Load Template to try another layout or save your own.

Name, shortcut, color, layout. Start with a preset if the blank canvas feels a little too blank.

The things I want to remember while people are talking

This is probably the easiest place to start. A Quick Note for the little reminders, and Scene Beats for objectives, clues, and risks you want to keep track of.

In this example there's a question about what a spirit wants in return, a clue about fresh offerings, and a reminder to give the characters room to respond.

That's enough to help run a conversation without writing every possible answer in advance. When the players do something unexpected, you can add a note right there. When a clue comes up, mark it off.

For longer text, there's Paragraph. If you have a description you want to read aloud, there's Teleprompter. Different amounts of writing need different amounts of space, and you get to decide that.

A question, a clue, and a reminder. These are example notes for the walkthrough, not a script the players have to follow.

Keep your references close too

Journal Board lets you keep references to Foundry journals, individual pages, or even headings. So that bit of lore you need doesn't have to disappear into a folder somewhere.

And if you already prepare scenes in SessionFlow, The Compass gives you shortcuts to them. Here I've pinned a royal banquet and a desert journey from my campaign.

You can keep the places you expect to need nearby, then jump into their prepared workspaces when the party gets there. The GM Panel becomes a convenient place to return to between those moments.

It also means the panel can grow with the way you use SessionFlow. Start with notes. Add references. Bring in scene shortcuts when they're useful to you.

The Compass keeps selected SessionFlow scenes within reach, even when they belong to different beats.

When the table needs a little pressure

A Progress Clock can sit right beside those notes. Reinforcements getting closer. A ritual approaching completion. A rival slowly gaining influence. Or, like this one in my world, a boss phase.

You decide what a segment means and when to advance it. It doesn't have to be combat at all. Sometimes a clock is just a very useful reminder that the world keeps moving while the party is busy.

There are controls to show the clock to players or flash it on their screens when you want to draw attention to it. You choose when that information becomes part of the shared scene.

For actual elapsed time, add a Timer. For rolls and frequently used actions, you can bring in The Bones and a Macro Pad. Put the tools you reach for together, and you have an encounter panel that makes sense for your table.

A clock already in my campaign. The same tool can track danger, progress, or something happening elsewhere in the world.

A panel for the road

Travel is another lovely use for this. You can bring together a map, the time of day, a journey counter, and whatever else matters to the trip.

The Day/Night widget gives you the sky, time, weather controls, and temperature. Its time buttons advance Foundry's world time. Time Tracker can keep a count of days or another recurring thing you want to follow.

The screenshot below is from my existing panel. It also has the Mortal Needs integration, so I can see how the characters are doing alongside the time and travel tools. That part uses the separate Mortal Needs module.

You could build a travel panel around the Map widget too, with markers and the parts of the map you choose to reveal to players. A way to keep the journey in view while you're actually running it.

Time of day, party condition, and a day counter in the same workspace. Mortal Needs is an optional companion module.

And yes, the party's money can have its own corner

This is another panel from the world, dedicated to The Treasury.

Balances, adding and spending money, splitting loot, transfers, and a ledger of what happened. The sort of thing that is very easy to postpone until everyone has forgotten who paid for the supplies.

You can use manual tracking, as shown here, or actor currency with supported systems. You don't have to make one giant panel with everything squeezed into it. A separate panel for a job you do regularly is perfectly fine.

A dedicated Treasury panel. This example uses manual balances in my Exalted world.

The Audio Panel deserves a moment

When you create a GM Panel, you can choose Audio Panel instead of Canvas Panel. This opens a dedicated audio workspace connected to Narrator's Jukebox.

Music, ambience, sound effects, and a Cue Deck, with your library and prepared setup close to the controls you use during play.

Here I prepared some music and a couple of ambience layers for the example. The sources on the left are from the world's library; the middle is the mix I'm preparing; the right shows what's actually playing.

That separation is useful. You can get your next sound ready while still deciding when to bring it into the scene. Adding something to the prepared mix doesn't mean you have to play it immediately.

This part needs Narrator's Jukebox. The ordinary notes, clocks, and other core GM Panel tools don't require it.

Preparing forest ambience and rain in the Audio Panel. Nothing is playing in this capture.

Save the moment as a cue

The Cue Deck lets you save that prepared music, ambience, and FX setup under a name.

For the example, I called mine Rain at the sacred lake. You could prepare Arrival, The Doors Open, Combat Starts, Aftermath, whatever moments make sense for your session.

You can load a cue into the panel, or load and play it. So you can prepare the atmosphere beforehand, then call it back when the conversation reaches the right moment.

I really like that possibility. The tools are there when you need them, and you can keep listening to the people at the table.

One saved cue for the example, with Load only and Load + Play options.

Start small. Seriously.

I know, I just showed you a lot of things :)

But your first panel can be a note, a reference, and a clock. Three things you would normally go looking for during the game. Use that for a session, then change whatever gets in your way.

The dock can be moved, arranged horizontally or vertically, locked in place, and faded until you hover over it. You can reopen a panel from its slot or shortcut and come back to the layout you prepared.

One useful distinction before you try it: opening a GM Panel doesn't share the whole workspace with your players. Widgets that support sharing have their own broadcast or flash controls. Your preparation and what you choose to present are separate.

The artwork and character presentation around the panels in these screenshots come from Exalted Scenes. That's another optional integration, and you can use the GM Panel with an ordinary Foundry map too.

If you already have SessionFlow, give this corner of it a try. And if you've built a panel you're happy with, I'd love to see a screenshot. I'm curious what ends up being useful at your table.

SessionFlow on Foundry VTT · Come chat on Discord

Thank you for being here and supporting these projects. It means a lot to me.

Gabú