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

[tetrasodium]

I can see where you are coming from and I've done it this way. But I really like having large rooms and caverns with monsters hiding behind architectural or natural features. That harder to do with simpler fog of war reveal, unless you are also toggling the monster tokens to invisible mode until they jump out or a character moves by them. But that seems more fiddly than just using dynamic lighting.

However you do the reveal (I've done both depending on the situation) if you use a map with light borders (ie on the walls) to block FoW reveal you can prep the map by having monster tokens sitting on the dark side of the walls ready to just drag into the room as needed without having to show/hide them since they never enter clear FoW till you do it.

 

[MNblockhead]

Thanks for the reviews. Hadn't heard of this before. Checked out the intro video and it seems like a nice back-to-basics approach.

Do they have pre-configured D&D character sheets? Can you roll dice from the sheets by clicking on an ability or weapon (like Roll20)?

Yes. Kinda. Best not to compare to full-featured VTTs. Role is going in a different direction.

So out of the gate, Role currently supports the following:

Except MAGE. That is a custom template that I built.

I've attached an MP4 video showing the off-the-shelf 5e character sheet in Role and how rolling works. A few observations:

1. Very readable but takes a lot of screen real estate and scrolling.
2. Doesn't provide anything to help you build the character sheet. If you are building directly from the book, then it may make more sense to use the Role character sheet. If you use D&D Beyond, I would expect that people would just use D&D Beyond and manually select dice to role in Role
3. Not many automations. It will simply role the dice and apply the modifier.

 

[MNblockhead]

However you do the reveal (I've done both depending on the situation) if you use a map with light borders (ie on the walls) to block FoW reveal you can prep the map by having monster tokens sitting on the dark side of the walls ready to just drag into the room as needed without having to show/hide them since they never enter clear FoW till you do it.

Yep, and I've done that. But there is something cool about a player moving a token only to reveal a monster hiding behind something.

 

[Scott Christian]

Thanks for the reviews. Hadn't heard of this before. Checked out the intro video and it seems like a nice back-to-basics approach.

Do they have pre-configured D&D character sheets? Can you roll dice from the sheets by clicking on an ability or weapon (like Roll20)?

Yes. But nothing like Roll20. It's basic as far as attaching rolls to skills, attacks, etc. For example, if you have bless, you need to add it manually. It's easy to add, yet as I said earlier, has the drawbacks of being basic. But, I really do like the basic foundation of it all. For running a game where you trust your players, don't need a ton of behind the scenes mechanizations, it is spot on.

On thing concerning the mapping (not lighting), I really do like the sizing. When you upload a map or token, all you need to do is make sure they fit. You just type in the dimensions and it does it for you. So if my map is 18x24, that's what I type in. Tokens are even easier.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Foundry has a lot of great options out of the gate and may meet your needs. What it does not do well without mods is automations. If you want to run a 5e game and want all the 5e rules and official adventures, Fantasy Grounds or Roll20 are better bets. Fantasy Grounds is much better in terms of automations, inventory management, etc. I really love it for 5e. But it has a high learning curve and you have to install it locally. Roll20 sells official 5e content and nobody needs to install anything locally other than an Internet browser. But it doesn't offer the same amount of automation as Fantasy Grounds.

If you don't care about automations and character-sheet stuff, and just want an excellent battlemap tool, Foundry blows away the competition. Even before adding any community mods.

Throat-clearing intro: I found this thread fascinating. You see, I'm not a Roll20 user as I consider it to be too limited for my tastes, and I'm also not a 5e player/GM (I run PF1, PF2 and Starfinder). So the issues many keep bringing up as being synonymous with "VTTs" are really just complaints about Roll20.

I began with FG1 back in the day and then moved to D20Pro for nine years. I got Foundry VTT last May when it was released, but the Pathfinder support just wasn't there initially to justify it. The community developers have really beavered along though, and it's quite playable now for both PF1 and, especially, PF2.

I have to say though. I am jealous AF of the extra bells and whistles you 5e GMs get with Foundry VTT. There are awesome spell animations and automation available for 5e on Foundry VTT which don't work with the Pathfinder community build rules. I would kill to be able to use those spell animations in my game, tied to each spell by default! They are off the charts awesome in a 5e game!

[Speaking of animations, before this winter is out, fully animated tokens will be supported in Foundry VTT. From arbitrary view angles, too. So your token becomes a sprite, with different anims for walk, ready, melee attack, ranged attack and spell casting. And 6 diff poses for death, too. That's coming soon according to rumour.]

It's also apparent that there are a lot of people posting here who have only recently switched to VTT play as a result of Covid and for those people, VTT play is seen as an intrinsically inferior good. While I get that, I can say that I switched to VTT a little more than nine years ago, and exclusively VTT for seven (going on eight) years now. I would never, ever, go back to face to face gaming. I live in a large city and if I had to travel to game? I'd be playing about 1/8th as much as I do. If I'm lucky.

I ran a battle in PF1 at the entrance to the temple in part VII of the Savage Tide Adv Path. The entrance featured a lot of sight blocking pillars around which the battle took place, so LOS was critical and impacted the combat HUGELY. In Foundry, each player's LOS is individually calculated in real time. The player does not have perfect tactical information. At the same time, if you have explored part of the map, the map remains visible if you lose sight of part of it, but will not refresh or update to reveal tokens that move into areas you cannot actively see.

Here is what I am talking about. The added complexity to this fight created by the column terrain was really remarkable and turned a run of the mill fight into an epic tactical battle. Now, if you have on foot in the TotM camp, you probably won't like that. If, otoh, you got your fill of TotM back in the early 80s? This is right up your alley.

This screen capture is taken from the perspective of one of the players. That player cannot see what is behind the shadows cast by those columns. The amount of time taken by the PCs (who are all Arcane casters, every one of which can and was flying in this fight) was pretty interesting. Everybody's LOS was very different depending where on the map they were of course.

As for VTT use generally? Every one is different, but I consider creating a complicated group of modules and/ or Adv Path installment and getting it all into Foundry VTT (a task which I have just completed last night for Abomination Vaults Vol 1 and two connecting modules, Menace under Otari and Troubles in Otari) to be an immensely satisfying accomplishment. Creating it and covering everything, from custom art, custom tokens not just for monsters, but for spells, abilities, items and loot containers -- took me some time, sure. Add in to this props and effects, custom maps in DungeonDraft, work in Photoshop and in Foundry VTT itself? It was a learning process both to learn quirks and get my workflow down.

But that's one of the points worth making: establishing your preparation workflow takes time, but you become much better at it over time, too. Relatively early on, your workflow proficiency takes off, on the graph it would be an 70 to 80 degree angle -- to the point where you are spending perhaps a fifth or a sixth the time you did initially to accomplish the same task. This time efficiency understates (by a lot) the effect of familiarity and workflow in many cases, too. So a "holy crap" that took me 20 hours to do all of that" becomes a far more manageable 2 to 4 hours for every 20-25 hours of play.

For some people, this will never be enjoyable for him or her and all I can say to that GM is "Well, they have pre-made campaigns designed by others for you to buy; Use those." If you don't like doing it yourself? You don't. No amount of advice or pro tips will change that emotional experience for you.

[But for general VTT enjoyability when others build it and you just buy it to run? You might tell your players they have to plug an ethernet cable into their computer. Wi-Fi and VTT play is a really bad idea and slows the game down for everybody. Be firm in your insistence. Yes, really. ]

And if you DO enjoy puttering about building things in a VTT? If, for you, that becomes "gaming by other means"? Then you'll LOVE Foundry VTT and I urge you to get it, install it, watch Youtube tutorials for inspiration (baileywiki 's Youtube vids are awesome) and get playing with it. For 5e, especially, it is a treat, but PF1 and PF2 support is pretty robust now, too. On the PF2 side, the new character sheet is awesome and supports automatic character download in real time from Herolab Online. Type in the token share code and POOF - the sheet is in game and looking spiffy! It even supports multi-monitor set-ups, so a player can log in via chrome and "pop out" their sheet to move to another monitor (where it remains "hot" for "click here" rolling purposes). but is out of the way of the main map.

And as I've said, on the 5e side? It's even better frankly. Give it a try. It's only $50 and supports direct import from D&D Beyond.

 

[jgsugden]

As a suggestion: If you think Dynamic Lighting has proven to improve your game experience, how about posting a video? And then provide commentary on why it improved the situation?

For those that have found it to be frustrating, post a video.

Then people can address real reference points.

 

[Steel_Wind]

As a suggestion: If you think Dynamic Lighting has proven to improve your game experience, how about posting a video? And then provide commentary on why it improved the situation?

For those that have found it to be frustrating, post a video.

Then people can address real reference points.

An image which shows multiple shadows in an area, isn't referring to a "real" reference point as part of the discussion? I need to go make videos of my games as they are happening so that I can edit them down, all to then be able to post a clip of my game a couple of weeks later just to make a point on EnWorld?

Uhmmm... how about "No. I don't think so". While it might be optimal, that's not a reasonable expectation or request.

 

[Li Shenron]

Since moving exclusively to VTTs for gaming in 2020 and the foreseeable future, I've been trying to provide a better experience online. For the past several months I've been using Line of Sight/Fog of War/Dynamic Lighting to reveal areas of the map to individual players only as their characters can see the areas.
This has had the effect of making it so players can't see what's going on in the adventure unless they're actually in the room. It's more realistic, but I feel like it might be causing the players to be disengaged in what's going on when their player isn't in a certain area when the rest of the party is.
I also feel like it is slowing down the game as each player inches forward to uncover a bit at a time.
Do you like dynamic lighting as a player on a VTT? As a GM do you use it?

Sounds awesome to me! About slowing down, that is probably more about the players being afraid of the DM springing up something bad if they go too fast, but you can always tell them you guarantee a fair warning.

 

[Retreater]

Throat-clearing intro: I found this thread fascinating. You see, I'm not a Roll20 user as I consider it to be too limited for my tastes, and I'm also not a 5e player/GM (I run PF1, PF2 and Starfinder). So the issues many keep bringing up as being synonymous with "VTTs" are really just complaints about Roll20.

As the OP, I can say our issues have nothing to do with the VTT platform. It's the concept of strict LoS blacking out the screen and disconnecting players from the game world as they stare at a black computer monitor for sometimes 30 minutes to an hour at a time.
When I ultimately made the decision to try a session without LoS and using a very basic fog of war, my players loved the change. Oddly enough, they became more invested in the exploration.

 

[Steel_Wind]

As the OP, I can say our issues have nothing to do with the VTT platform. It's the concept of strict LoS blacking out the screen and disconnecting players from the game world as they stare at a black computer monitor for sometimes 30 minutes to an hour at a time.
When I ultimately made the decision to try a session without LoS and using a very basic fog of war, my players loved the change. Oddly enough, they became more invested in the exploration.

You got the point above where I mentioned that the map that had been explored stays visible, but parts no longer with LOS fade a bit to let them know they don't know what creatures/NPCs might have moved into it behind them, right?

Because that map display technology is most definitely tied to a particular VTT platform. Some support it, many do not. I think that is addressing your player's complaint. Perhaps I am wrong?