A premium cinematic layer for narrative RPGs, designed to make your whole session feel like a visual novel, not just the boss fights.
Cinematic full-screen scenes. Character portraits with emotions players control in real time. Visual novel–style hero sprites that emote, shift, and react. Every dialogue, every reaction shot, every quiet beat, not just the cold opens and boss reveals, wears the production value of a directed scene.
Exalted Scenes isn't a module for big moments. It's the rendering layer for the whole game. Players don't zone out between turns because they're still in the frame, reacting through their characters' faces while the GM does the same with the NPCs. The session feels watched the entire time.
What you get
A complete cinematic toolkit built around three pillars:
🎬 Scenes & Cinematic Display
Full-screen broadcasts with images or video backgrounds, configurable cast layout (rows, columns, freeform, theater shots), and rich transitions between scenes. Scenes can be tagged, foldered, favorited, and live-edited mid-broadcast. Three display modes - Token (classic bordered portraits), Hero (full-body transparent sprites in JRPG/visual novel style), and Cast-Only (transparent overlay that keeps your battlemap visible).
🎭 Living Characters
A character library where every named NPC and PC has multiple emotions, portrait framing per emotion, hero poses grouped by "Looks" (outfits, armor, caste marks), animated borders with two-color effects, theme playlists, and entrance sounds. Players control their own emotions in real time, swap expressions, change borders, request music, turning the cast into a living, reactive stage instead of static portraits. The villain doesn't describe anger; you see it.
🎛️ Live Show Control
A dedicated GM Live Dock for play-time work - switch scenes, edit the cast, change emotions, advance sequences, all without leaving the table. Plus a Foundry sidebar tab for one-click access, slideshows for auto-advancing scene decks, sequences for manual multi-background scenes, and Theater Mode for cinematic shot composition with camera angles.
Plus: 24 fully art-directed color themes, deep Narrator Jukebox integration (opt-in, auto-detected) for soundtracks/ambience/quick sounds per scene, drag-and-drop everywhere, Foundry Actor imports, public API for macros and module integrations, and localization in 7 languages.
What's new in 7.0
Version 7.0 is the first appearance of Exalted Scenes on Foundry's official premium catalog - and it ships with the largest feature push since the module's debut. Every workflow has been audited end-to-end across the data model, library, scene editing, character editing, live playback, drag-and-drop, importers, public API, settings, themes, performance, and localization.
New play-time surfaces
- GM Live Dock - a compact play-time cockpit with Scenes/Characters tabs, live cast updates, scene previews with folder navigation, fast favorites, and broadcast controls. Built to keep the GM's hands at the table instead of in the editor.
- Foundry sidebar integration - a native Exalted Scenes tab on Foundry's right sidebar, plus a sidebar panel with quick scene options, preview cast editing, and live status.
- Hero Looks - group large hero sprite libraries by outfit, armor, caste mark, or any visual variant. Hero pose imports with subfolders organize automatically.
Display & cinematic improvements
- Hero Mode with flip, scroll-to-scale, drag-to-reposition (full body), and Theater Mode shot strips for plan/contra-plan dialogue scenes.
- Smooth emotion crossfades - no more flash/flicker when characters change expressions.
- Free composition mode - drag characters anywhere on the scene, scroll-to-scale individually, mirror with one click, positions persist per scene.
- Portrait shapes - Circle, Rounded Square, Square, or Portrait (3:4) for visual novel–style framing.
Library & editor refresh
- Tabbed Scene Editor (Scene / Layout / Audio) replaces the long scroll.
- Slideshows redesigned as a full GM panel tab with inline editing and dedicated deck cards.
- Card context menus - right-click any scene or character for the full action set (broadcast, edit, rename, favorite, delete) with destructive actions safely separated.
- Inline rename - double-click any card title.
- Library refresh - stronger toolbars, clearer search, richer cards in both grid and list views.
Audio (with Narrator Jukebox)
- Per-scene soundtracks with multi-track and multi-playlist builders, playback modes, master volume, and fade-out duration.
- Up to 8 ambience layers per scene with per-layer volume.
- Soundboard quick sounds as scene-attached one-shot trigger buttons.
- Character themes - multi-playlist music plus an entrance sound auto-played when a character is added mid-broadcast.
Foundation
- Performance pass across rendering, video lifecycle, socket coalescing, and large-library handling.
- Migration safety for older worlds (v3+ data is recovered cleanly).
- Configurable keyboard shortcuts for opening panels, advancing sequences, pausing slideshows, and stopping live output.
A full changelog ships inside the module for the curious.
How it shapes your sessions
Exalted Scenes isn't where you queue up showpiece moments, it's where the whole session lives.
- From open to close - broadcast a scene at session start and the cinematic frame stays present for the whole night. Every dialogue, every interaction, every quiet beat is framed inside it.
- Players never zone out - between turns, they're still on screen. They cycle their character's emotions to react to NPCs, mirror each other across the frame, smirk silently through a tense exchange. The visual never goes flat just because someone isn't acting.
- NPCs become real cast - every named character has a portrait, emotions, a hero sprite. Switching emotions mid-scene gives you reaction shots without breaking flow.
- Pre-prep is production - writing your session means building the scenes, drafting the cast list, defining the emotions you'll need. The way you prepare for play is the way you prepare for the visual.
- Set pieces still land - dramatic backgrounds, slideshow montages, sequence cuts, Theater Mode shots, music swelling via Narrator Jukebox. They hit harder because they happen on the same canvas the rest of the game lives on.
The module is designed so the most common moves take a single click and complex compositions take three.
Built for real sessions
Exalted Scenes isn't a side project, it's the tool I built for myself first.
I'm a GM with nearly 30 years of storytelling, and this module exists because I want every minute of my session, not just the boss fight, not just the cold open, to carry the same level of production. Every NPC has a portrait. Every dialogue has emotions players can use to react. Every scene wears the cinematic frame. Players never zone out because they're always part of the picture.
Hero Mode exists because some campaigns are visual novels. Theater Mode exists because dialogue deserves real shot composition. The Live Dock exists because losing thirty seconds fishing for a panel breaks the spell. The 24 themes exist because cinematic tools should feel cinematic, not generic.
You'll feel that throughout. The defaults are what a GM actually wants mid-scene. The keyboard shortcuts follow how you actually move. The polish isn't decoration - it's there so the module disappears and the story stays present.
Compatibility & Requirements
- Foundry VTT v13 and v14
- Optional integration: Narrator's Jukebox - fully optional, auto-detected; unlocks per-scene soundtracks, ambience layers, and soundboard quick sounds.
- Optional integration: Monk's Common Display - broadcast and Cast-Only mode work cleanly on dedicated player displays.
- Background media: PNG, JPG, WEBP, GIF, MP4, WEBM, OGG, MOV.
- Languages: English, Português (Brasil), Deutsch, Español, Français, 日本語, Polski.
- Public API for module developers and macro authors (
game.modules.get('exalted-scenes').api) - full read/write coverage of scenes, characters, folders, slideshows, sequences, cast-only, audio, plus hooks for live state changes.
About Wand & Widgets
We're Wand & Widgets. We build premium modules for Foundry VTT - ambitious in scope, cinematic in design, and obsessed with UX. Crafted with love, from one storyteller to another. ❤️
If you'd like to support our work, get early access to upcoming modules, and hang out with our community, find us on Patreon at patreon.com/WandAndWidgets.
Companion module: Narrator's Jukebox - premium audio for Foundry, designed for the same kind of session.