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D&D General Using the GM layer of a VTT
- Thread starter TheSword
- Start date
I use arkenforge so have a bit of a different interface with the gm screen & player screen attached to my laptop but hide things from the players pretty often, monsters especially
Before I switched to foundry, The Gm layer I found to be mixed bag. Many gm's and tuts would offer the same tips and while it can be convenient for some things it really wasn't as nice as I had first thought. Not all maps lend well to having notes and after time it gets cluttered and distracting. The other part is its not always practical to switch between the layers. The api if you are pro offers you some flexibility with this. However if you are free tier its rather clunky IMO. When I was a pro user I used the api and two scripts and a transparent token that gave better options, One was gmnotes, the other was bump (it allowed to easily switch between gm layer and token layer). The bump I could use to put on monsters and keep them hidden when needed and the transparent token I used on the token layer as no one could see and I used the aura but only shown to the GM. I used the Gm notes script to put into to chat. If you are new to roll20 there is a thread of stupid tricks that will give you wealth of ideas you may like to use.
Lyxen
Great Old One
I, on the other hand, never had problem with this, there are shortcuts to switch from one layer to another, or to send selected tokens straight to another one, which I used all the time.
TheSword
Legend
Yeah I thought it was one click to switch layers? Or send items to different layers.
I do agree that map colouring makes a big difference. Though I’ve found I can always set the page background to white and extend the table area to jut out on one side of the map giving me a nice area to type in if I need to. The amount of detail in the notes makes a big difference of course. Pages of text ain’t gonna work, but a couple of paragraphs on each room is fine. Depends how dense things are. I try and avoid dungeon levels with more than a dozen rooms now… it’s just too much otherwise.
Zio_the_dark
The dark one :)
Never used roll20 because I always used a free VTT program (maptools). Sure it has a learning curve, but you can put simple pins (using any picture you want) in the "hidden" layer, add them a description in "GM Notes" and when you click on it while on the "token" layer (the most used while playing) it pops up the description. If you click again anywhere on map, the pop up dissapear.
Sample GM view with pop-up
The player view in this scene
Edit: it can also import directly maps done in Dungeondraft with the VBL (fog of war) already set on the walls!
Sample GM view with pop-up
The player view in this scene
Edit: it can also import directly maps done in Dungeondraft with the VBL (fog of war) already set on the walls!
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Lyxen
Great Old One
YMMV, but I have a huge screen, and even the menus on the top left are far to reach and take my focus away from what I'm doing, and keyboard shortcuts are much faster at least for me:
Ctrl/Cmd+M: Switch to @ Map/Background layer
Ctrl/Cmd+O: Switch to b Object/Token layer
Ctrl/Cmd+K: Switch to E GM Info layer
Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+M: Move selected object to @ Map/Background layer
Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+O: Move selected object to b Object/Token layer
Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+K: Move selected object to E GM Info layer
MarkB
Legend
Those are useful - I'll have to try them out. I've tended to just use the toolbar and right-clicking on tokens.
I haven't needed to use the GM layer for notes before, as I run two monitors and tend to keep notes and stat sheets open on the second one. However, it is very good for dropping in hidden/invisible foes, and also, on things like town maps, you can put the locations of specific buildings on the GM layer and then drop them down to the map layer once the players discover or interact with them.
TheSword
Legend
I’m on a laptop, so one small screen for me, hence me not wanting to have to keep flicking to pdf adventure supplements.
Awesome short cuts though! Is there one for switching to the dynamic lighting page?
That’s one area where I could do with Roll20 being better. Foundry has an awesome little tool where you can designate some objects as doors and then open, close or even lock them with a click. The PCs can open and close which is awesome!
I’ve not figured a smooth way of doing it in Roll20 yet short of drawing a line on dynamic lighting and then moving/removing it when they open door.
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