D&D General Your Thoughts on LoS, Dynamic Lighting on VTTs

[Nebulous]

It is a time sink to set up the lighting, especially when first learning, but I do quite enjoy the result. I still get frustrated with it sometimes though.

 

[Charlaquin]

As I'm sure you are aware, but I'll mention it for the other Roll20 novices out there (myself included, despite having played on it since last March), you can solve for the "players can quickly scrub their token around to see whatever they want" issue by using the "Update when Token Drop" feature.

This is true, but wort noting that the Update when Token drop feature can cause lag, especially on larger maps.

in my experience though, this isn’t as much of an issue as players spending time moving their tokens around to try and see what’s ahead instead of just moving ahead.

That way there's no "scrubbing" going on. That, and setting the expectation that players should not move their tokens until asked to do so. Which is kinda basic playing-in-good-faith style.

Yeah, good faith play is important. That said, when I’ve played in games on VTTs and the DM has set the expectation that we should not move out tokens until asked to do so, I’ve mostly found it frustrating.

I open a door. DM tells everyone to stop while they read a description of the room. At this point, no one can actually see more than a tiny sliver of the room being described. The description is overly prose-y, hard to follow, and not particularly helpful, but the game can’t proceed until the DM finishes and says we can start moving again. Once we’re allowed to move, everyone starts doing the little token jitter-dance to try and get a look at the room before rushing into it. There’s nothing in the room. We hesitantly move our tokens inside, waiting to be told to stop. Nothing happens. We jitter around the room some more until we’re confident we aren’t going to stumble on the square that triggers another bit of narration. I open another door, rinse, and repeat.

 

[iserith]

This is true, but wort noting that the Update when Token drop feature can cause lag, especially on larger maps.

in my experience though, this isn’t as much of an issue as players spending time moving their tokens around to try and see what’s ahead instead of just moving ahead.

I had always heard updating token on drop actually improves performance on slower machines, but it's been a while since I've looked into this.

 

[Charlaquin]

I had always heard updating token on drop actually improves performance on slower machines, but it's been a while since I've looked into this.

I could be wrong about that. It always made it feel laggier to me, but maybe that’s a product of the jerky way the lighting updates with that setting on.

 

[Retreater]

I was just testing out "exploration mode" on Roll20 on one of my maps. The performance was terrible, my computer could barely handle updating the views. I'll have to test out other methods.

 

[Voadam]

I use Fantasy Grounds Unity and the line of sight feature is pretty neat. I do not expect to spend the time to figure out how to set up maps myself to use it, but I have predone ones for the Iron Gods game I am running with that done out already, and primarily why I rebought the modules on FG.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Yeah, good faith play is important. That said, when I’ve played in games on VTTs and the DM has set the expectation that we should not move out tokens until asked to do so, I’ve mostly found it frustrating.

I open a door. DM tells everyone to stop while they read a description of the room. At this point, no one can actually see more than a tiny sliver of the room being described. The description is overly prose-y, hard to follow, and not particularly helpful, but the game can’t proceed until the DM finishes and says we can start moving again. Once we’re allowed to move, everyone starts doing the little token jitter-dance to try and get a look at the room before rushing into it. There’s nothing in the room. We hesitantly move our tokens inside, waiting to be told to stop. Nothing happens. We jitter around the room some more until we’re confident we aren’t going to stumble on the square that triggers another bit of narration. I open another door, rinse, and repeat.

If a DM wants to describe a room, then I would think the DM should ask the players to move into the room first to avoid the strangeness you describe. If there is a visual of the room, I would think that would enhance the verbal description (and vice-versa). Enemies can be hidden on the GM layer until the DM reaches them in the description (if, in fact, there are any non-hidden enemies there). I guess even after 10 months of being forced to play online (for those of us who hadn't before), some DMs (like me) are still figuring out how best to run things. Thankfully, we have this thread!

 

[Swarmkeeper]

I was just testing out "exploration mode" on Roll20 on one of my maps. The performance was terrible, my computer could barely handle updating the views. I'll have to test out other methods.

Strange. It works just as quickly On as it does Off for my computer. Maybe a connection or bandwidth thing?

 

[Charlaquin]

If a DM wants to describe a room, then I would think the DM should ask the players to move into the room first to avoid the strangeness you describe. If there is a visual of the room, I would think that would enhance the verbal description (and vice-versa). Enemies can be hidden on the GM layer until the DM reaches them in the description (if, in fact, there are any non-hidden enemies there). I guess even after 10 months of being forced to play online (for those of us who hadn't before), some DMs (like me) are still figuring out how best to run things. Thankfully, we have this thread!

Absolutely! I think my experience playing with dynamic lighting is largely more a critique how the DMs I’ve played under have handled it than of the dynamic lighting system itself. But I think they’re easy pitfalls to stumble into, and something to watch out for if you’re considering using such tools.

 

[cmad1977]

So if I’m describing a room that the players aren’t “in” I will totally drop one of my little Scry-eyes in it so the players can see the entirety of the room.

The dynamic lighting is, to me, neat but unnecessary. My players however really seem to like it.