Your first session

About twenty minutes before your players arrive, and then the game you already run. Nothing here changes how you DM.

The whole thing in six lines.

Install it, sign in, make a campaign, type your party in.
Put the microphone where it can hear the table, and say so out loud.
Start the session, turn the microphone on, run the game as normal.
Cards appear at the edge of your screen. space takes one, esc ignores it.
Nothing reaches your players unless you accept it.
When something is wrong, press the speech-bubble button. It comes straight to me.

Before the table arrives

Twenty minutes, once

Install it

Download Sidebard and run the installer. Windows 10 or 11; there is no Mac version yet. Windows will probably say “Windows protected your PC” the first time — choose More info, then Run anyway. You only see that when installing. Updates after this install themselves.

Sign in

Press Sign in with your browser. If you are already signed in on sidebard.app it is one click — check that the code in the browser matches the one Sidebard is showing before you approve it. Email and password works too. Voice needs you signed in and online.

Make a campaign

Press + New campaign. You can start from nothing, or point it at the notes you already have and let it read them in. Either is fine for a first night — a campaign with a name and nothing else works.

Add the party

In the campaign, add each character: type them in, or import from D&D Beyond.

Spend the five minutes on the names. The names are how Sidebard knows who you mean when somebody says “Kerv got 17 for perception”. Hit points and armour class are what it checks an attack against. Everything else can wait for a second session.

Put the microphone where it can hear everyone

A laptop microphone works. A conference microphone in the middle of the table works considerably better, and a noisy table is harder for Sidebard than a quiet one. Start the session and check the header says MIC LIVE and that its level bar moves when someone at the far end of the table talks. If it does not: Windows Settings > Privacy & security > Microphone, and make sure apps are allowed to use it.

Optional: open the players’ screen

If you have a TV or a second monitor plugged in, press Players’ screen at the top of the session and then Open the players’ screen. It opens full screen on the other monitor, and that is where maps and dice land. You can also fill it with a colour, or put a picture on it. Skip it for the first night if you like — everything else works without it.

Joining from players’ own phones is built but switched off for now, while it gets more testing.

What to tell your players

Say it before you turn the microphone on, in front of everyone, and do not bury it. It is the right thing to do, and in some places the law requires everyone at the table to know. It also takes about fifteen seconds.

“Quick thing before we start. I’m running a program called Sidebard that listens through this microphone. It turns what we say into text so it can offer me things — a monster’s turn, how much damage that was, what the rule actually says.

The audio goes to a speech-to-text company to be turned into words — under their standard terms they may keep some of it to improve their systems. Parts of that text then go to Anthropic, so Sidebard can work out what to offer me. The transcript lives on this computer, Sidebard doesn’t save a recording of tonight, and nothing it suggests reaches you unless I press a key.

If anyone would rather it was off, say so now or any time tonight, and it’s off. No reason needed.”

Then mean it. If someone says no, turn it off — being able to say no to a microphone and have it actually go off is the entire difference between a tool at the table and a thing being done to people at the table. With the microphone off, everything that starts with a spoken sentence stops; the parts you drive yourself, like the initiative order and the players’ screen, keep working.

The privacy policy is the long version, and it is written to be read by a player, not only by you.

Where to put a second screen

If you have one:

Facing the players — a TV or a monitor turned round, showing the players’ screen. Maps and dice land there.
Angled away from the players — your own. Sidebard’s cards sit down one edge of it, and they say things like what the monster is about to do. Worth them not being able to read it.
Phones — not yet. The players’ screen is a web page and phones will be able to join, but that is switched off while it gets more testing.

If you only have the one laptop screen, that is fine. Everything works; you just keep the lid angled the way you already do.

The first ten minutes

Start the session and turn the microphone on.
Say “let’s introduce your characters”. Each player says who they are, and Sidebard attaches that voice to that character for the evening. Now “I hit it with a 17” is about the right person.
Run the game. Do not perform for the microphone and do not change how you talk. It is listening for the things you were going to say anyway: “roll initiative”, “14 slashing”, “how does grappling work?”
The first card will arrive within a minute or two, usually a check or a die roll. Read it. space if it is right, esc if it is not.
Ignore a lot of them. Genuinely. Dismissing a card costs nothing and the game does not stop. A first night where you take one card in three is a normal first night.

The one habit worth forming

Keep talking. The reason the cards are cards is so that you never have to stop a sentence to operate a computer — you glance, you press one key, you carry on. If you find yourself reading a card for more than a second or two, press esc and do it the way you always have. That is not a failure; that is the tool staying out of the way.

The keys worth knowing

Six of these get you through a first night. Press ? inside Sidebard at any time for the full list, along with every sentence it listens for.

spaceAccept the card on top. Also ends a turn in a fight.

escDismiss it. Costs nothing, breaks nothing.

MMap a place: press M, describe the room out loud, then space. Maps are never offered unless you press M first.

NA person: describe someone new, or name one you have already written down, and it reminds you who they are.

HPut a picture on the players’ screen. shift+H takes it down.

?Everything you can say, and every key. This is the one to remember.

And, when you want them:

↑ ↓Move between cards when more than one is waiting.

1–9Take one of a card’s alternatives instead of the top one.

ADesign a fight, here, now.

GStuck? A few ideas for what could happen next.

USomething went in wrong — take it back out, without losing what came after.

EChange when tonight’s session should end.

QBack to your campaigns.

When something is wrong

Use the speech-bubble button in the bottom-right corner. It opens a box for a bug or an idea, it works mid-session without stopping anything, and with no internet it waits and sends when you are back online. For a bug, tick Include recent logs — it helps a great deal, and the box tells you what the logs can contain before you send them.

Things that go wrong on a first night, and what they mean:

Nothing is happening at all. Check the header says MIC LIVE and the level bar moves. Voice needs you signed in and online.
It heard the wrong character. Say “let’s introduce your characters” again, or use the name in the sentence: “seven damage to Ghost A”.
It refused a rules question. That is deliberate. It answers from the SRD and declines rather than inventing something. Annoying, and the right failure.
The map is not the room you described. Dismiss it and press M again with a plainer description. This is the part that is most obviously new.
Too many cards. Settings > Suggestions turns each kind on or off. Things you ask for directly still work.

Sidebard is version one and it is rough in places. What you send through that button is what decides which part gets fixed next. That is not a figure of speech.