VTT Mapping

[Ahzad]

So I'm looking for a mapping solution. My home group moved to online gaming years ago, before Covid even for a variety of reasons. Some of us have moved states away, or to a different city, and scheduling has become much easier since folks don't have to leave their home or arrange sitters. Where we used to play once or twice a month we are pretty solidly playing once a week now. So it has been a good move for us overall. We do get together a couple of times a year to have a few face to face games.

While I enjoy the convivence of online gaming and the benefits it brought us I've come to dislike the prep and stuff that comes with it, especially mapping homebrew things or products that aren't in any of the VTT's we use. I used to be a very prep heavy type of DM when I started out decades ago, but somewhere 2 decades or so I became a very improv type of DM. I'm actually a much better DM when it's loose and I'm flying by the seat of my pants and I can just riff off things. When we first started using VTT's it was new and I was like a kid with a new toy, loved every aspect of it, but I've tired of most aspects of the prep that I have to do using a VTT. A bit of an aside we originally started with Roll20 and bounced off that fairly quickly, switched to Fantasy Grounds and I really liked that, ended up trying out Foundry b/c of some of the players wanting to give it a try. So now we bounce between FG and Foundry depending on the game we are playing, my preference is FG.

We typically use a mix of theater of the mind and battle maps depending what's going on. The battle maps help the nieces and nephews that are now starting to play with us visualize the action, and TBH it also helps us old timers who sometimes lose track of where things in the battle b/c we are getting old. Anyway I'm looking for a solution to mapping I want to allow the players to handle the mapping of the game, just like the old days when players mapped, without making them a co-gm. Perhaps that function is available in the VTTs that we use, but I don't think I've ever logged in as a player to explore that option, and I was just sitting here today planning out next Saturday's game when this thought occurred to me and I thought I would ask the community if there's a solution to allow players to handle the mapping.

Thanks,

 

[innerdude]

I've found that for the most part, Owlbear Rodeo gets me 97% of what I really want.

I have a full Foundry license that I self-host on a private domain that I own, but I don't really use it. Don't get me wrong, it's very, very capable. Can really do some amazing stuff when put through its paces.

I've just found that, ultimately, I don't need to automate rules . . . or dice rolls . . . or set up intricate soundscapes and "fog of war" and real-time lighting.

Owlbear Rodeo is basically what I really want---a basic battle map view, with a few tokens placed on it for some basic visual orientation.

I've found just about everything else I've ever tried to be overkill.

 

[Ahzad]

I've found that for the most part, Owlbear Rodeo gets me 97% of what I really want.

I have a full Foundry license that I self-host on a private domain that I own, but I don't really use it. Don't get me wrong, it's very, very capable. Can really do some amazing stuff when put through its paces.

I've just found that, ultimately, I don't need to automate rules . . . or dice rolls . . . or set up intricate soundscapes and "fog of war" and real-time lighting.

Owlbear Rodeo is basically what I really want---a basic battle map view, with a few tokens placed on it for some basic visual orientation.

I've found just about everything else I've ever tried to be overkill.

I've heard good things about Owlbear rodeo. Does it allow for the players to draw the map as I describe the corridors or rooms to them? I'm not looking for fancy just the ability for the players to map out the "dungeon" on virtual graph paper.

 

[Cruentus]

We used Owlbear rodeo, which was simple for throwing up a map, putting tokens on it, and away we went. We used it, though, mostly for TOTM, and a dice roller.

I've seen people use virtual white boards, specifically Miro, to do just what you mentioned. Have the players draw their own maps based on the DM's descriptions. I've seen it used in the OSR YT actual play 3d6 Down the Line. Their Arden Vul campaign featured it heavily (all dungeon crawl). I think if you watched an episode or two, you could get an idea. Never used it myself.

My group went back to FG after Owlbear, just for the automation of character sheets and all (though we play OSE).

 

[nyvinter]

Dungeon Draw for Foundry VTT allows a trusted player to draw maps with it. I haven't tried it myself, but they say it supports a player mapper for TotM games.

 

[pete284]

I have used Dungeon Draw in Foundry to draw maps on the fly, it works very well when the players end up going somewhere you aren't expecting.

 

[kronovan]

I own Foundry and Fantasy Grounds, was a previous subscriber to roll20 and have used 3 other VTTs. I personally don't care for the mapping tools in any of the VTT's I've used. I find all of them lacking - missing features or being too difficult to use for the results they give. I'm a long term user of Campaign Cartographer 3, which can create virtually any kind of map you want, so a VTT would have to have some stellar tools to make me use it instead. That said, CC3 has a steep learning curve and takes a lot of practice to get to the point where you can bang out a map during a player break.

The big decision IMO is for those times you do use maps, whether you want Line Of Sight on them. If mapping is left up to a player, that's not an issue as they can't map what there PC hasn't seen. If on the other hand, you want to load up some premade maps as GM and want LOS on them, that narrows the choices down. IME using a VTT's own LOS tools are, if not awkward, too time consuming. A number of mapping apps allow you to auto-gen LOS in exported files. Sadly CC3 doesn't support it, but I also own Dungeondraft which does - Dungeon Alchemist and MapForge do too. If I want to knock out a quick map with LOS, I'll use dungeondraft instead of CC3.

Out of all the VTTs I've used, Arkenforge has had the best mapping tools, but Foundry sewed up second place. So I'm not suprised a player useable tool like Dungeon Draw has been created for Foundry. While I haven't used it, it does look promising and IMO very cool that it provides an old school Moldvay style. There's also the Virtual Graph Paper online mapping tool, which can be shared realtime with other players. I've no doubt that other, web-based mapping apps like it also exist. As well, a mapping player can always stream a map they're building in a chat client that supports it - i.e. Discord.

 

[Zaukrie]

I find the maps Baileywiki or Forgotten Adventures make for Foundry to be awesome. For tools? Dungeon Alchemist is very, very, very good. Really, there are so many free maps out there, i often find myself using those.

 

[Ahzad]

I own Foundry and Fantasy Grounds, was a previous subscriber to roll20 and have used 3 other VTTs. I personally don't care for the mapping tools in any of the VTT's I've used. I find all of them lacking - missing features or being too difficult to use for the results they give. I'm a long term user of Campaign Cartographer 3, which can create virtually any kind of map you want, so a VTT would have to have some stellar tools to make me use it instead. That said, CC3 has a steep learning curve and takes a lot of practice to get to the point where you can bang out a map during a player break.

The big decision IMO is for those times you do use maps, whether you want Line Of Sight on them. If mapping is left up to a player, that's not an issue as they can't map what there PC hasn't seen. If on the other hand, you want to load up some premade maps as GM and want LOS on them, that narrows the choices down. IME using a VTT's own LOS tools are, if not awkward, too time consuming. A number of mapping apps allow you to auto-gen LOS in exported files. Sadly CC3 doesn't support it, but I also own Dungeondraft which does - Dungeon Alchemist and MapForge do too. If I want to knock out a quick map with LOS, I'll use dungeondraft instead of CC3.

Out of all the VTTs I've used, Arkenforge has had the best mapping tools, but Foundry sewed up second place. So I'm not suprised a player useable tool like Dungeon Draw has been created for Foundry. While I haven't used it, it does look promising and IMO very cool that it provides an old school Moldvay style. There's also the Virtual Graph Paper online mapping tool, which can be shared realtime with other players. I've no doubt that other, web-based mapping apps like it also exist. As well, a mapping player can always stream a map they're building in a chat client that supports it - i.e. Discord.

Big fan of CC3, and your right it does have a steep curve. I still think of myself as a newbie and I've had it for years. I've not tried Arkenforge I'll have to give it a try. I do enjoy Inkarnate though. I'll have to try out the Virtual Graph Paper as well.

I don't mind some mapping, but I want the old school mapping experience that we had before online play, where the players handled the mapping. I'll still take over for the big set piece battles but the day to day dungeon crawling I want them to handle, and they do as well. We have a few options so hopefully one of those will work out for us.

We had a player that loved the mapping. He would go buy those easel sized pads of graph paper and just go to town. When I ran them through Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil he outdid himself. I think that map was close to 10' long, close to half that wide, taped together with multiple levels he could flip, it was insane. We kept it for years b/c it was a thing of beauty but it eventually got lost in a move.