Clint_L
Legend
I tried this out today. It works really well. It automatically built the encounter just from the tokens that I had on the map. Everything is point and click - super intuitive. As proof: I was able to do it. Not the best with tech.
D&D (2024) DDB Maps now integrates the combat tracker
- Thread starter Clint_L
- Start date
I tried this out today. It works really well. It automatically built the encounter just from the tokens that I had on the map. Everything is point and click - super intuitive. As proof: I was able to do it. Not the best with tech.
MNblockhead
A Title Much Cooler Than Anything on the Old Site
Just played around with it. Very slick. I rarely run D&D. Just the rare one shot. But when I do, this is my goto.
Curious, I know from your other posts that you are big into terrain and minis. Do you only use DDB Maps when you run games online, or do you integrate into your in-person play as well?
Curious, I know from your other posts that you are big into terrain and minis. Do you only use DDB Maps when you run games online, or do you integrate into your in-person play as well?
Demetrios1453
Hero
That was one of the main things I was waiting for. I'll test it out later tonight, but it sounds pretty awesome.
Clint_L
Legend
For school games I mostly use a VTT now unless it's a special occasion, as it's too much to lug around a big physical battle map. At home I almost never use a VTT - even for online games I set up a camera.
Iosue
Legend
So I ran a session last week using D&D Beyond Maps, and thought I'd give some thoughts.
So, some background, we are an international group: I live in Japan, while my family and friends still live in the States, so online play is our only way to play together. We were longtime users of Roll20, but my aging computer and building dissatisfaction with Roll20 led us to switch over to AboveVTT. We've been largely happy with AboveVTT, though it can get a little buggy or laggy. As the primary DM of the group, though, my main issue as far as VTTs go is prep and game flow.
We'd played with an earlier version of Maps last year. Here is my review from that session. I should also note that we used it when we had two live sessions when I went home for Christmas. It worked really well for that purpose, as I noted in my review.
Since that initial game, much functionality has been added. The ability to hide and rename tokens, a pointer, a ruler, drawing tools, and now shape overlays for AOEs. And, of course, now the integrated combat tracker.
Prep was an absolute breeze. Our session involved Ebondeath's Mausoleum from Divine Contention (the additional campaign content based on Dragon of Icespire Peak). This is a big map, with 10' scale squares. AboveVTT's dedicated group of volunteers prep many of the maps you can import from DDB. Unfortunately, for this map, it was scaled to 5' squares, instead of 10'. This meant that the first thing I had to do was rescale the map in AboveVTT. I like AboveVTT's map scaling tool much more than I liked Roll20's, but even still the rescaling was a bit of work. AboveVTT will also create tokens for various NPCs/monsters that are only generic silhouettes on DDB. When it works, this is a great feature. Unfortunately, for some reason, many of the tokens in the Mausoleum were blank. Which means I had to delete them and replace them anyway.
There were no such problems with Maps. The Mausoleum map was perfectly scaled from the start. I merely had to drop the tokens, and set the fog of war. There was a bit of busywork that turned out to be completely unnecessary, to my pleasant surprise. The Mausoleum contains many enemies of the same type, and when I first placed them, I gave them all unique color borders so my players could tell them apart once combat began. Aesthetically, I didn't like the borders, but used them anyway for practicality.
But! It turns out that when you add multiple of the same monster to the combat tracker, and start the encounter, Maps automatically adds letters to their name in initiative order. So, the Greater Zombie that got the highest Initiative was Greater Zombie A, and then the next one was Greater Zombie B, and so on. Very nice!
Accessing the monster stats from the combat tracker was smooth and easy. My only let down is that rolling from the tracker does not trigger the 3d dice animation. Hopefully that will be added eventually.
My players appreciated the smooth handling of tokens. With AboveVTT, a other people's tokens would generally "jump" from their starting points to their destinations, but Maps, all token movement was easily viewable.
Some things we missed that would be nice to have: the Game Log still does not serve any kind of chat function. We used our Zoom chat for this, so it was no big deal, but one of the nicest features of AboveVTT is the ability to not just chat in the game log, but also to send pictures of monsters, or the complete text of a spell description. Also, in AboveVTT, we make use of HP auras: the health of a character is represented by a border around the token that both gets thinner and goes from green to red as HP is depleted. This is a very nice way for players to see the health situation of friends and foes, without the clutter of a health bar. Maps doesn't have any kind of player-visible display for HP or health, so the players could not easily track which of their foes were the most damaged. (PC HP did show up in the combat tracker.)
In terms of in-game interface, Maps is nothing special compared to most VTTs out there. But it's a simple, easy-to-use VTT that runs smoothly, and integrates well with DDB character sheet and monster statblocks. It is very much what I'm looking for in a VTT.
So, some background, we are an international group: I live in Japan, while my family and friends still live in the States, so online play is our only way to play together. We were longtime users of Roll20, but my aging computer and building dissatisfaction with Roll20 led us to switch over to AboveVTT. We've been largely happy with AboveVTT, though it can get a little buggy or laggy. As the primary DM of the group, though, my main issue as far as VTTs go is prep and game flow.
We'd played with an earlier version of Maps last year. Here is my review from that session. I should also note that we used it when we had two live sessions when I went home for Christmas. It worked really well for that purpose, as I noted in my review.
Since that initial game, much functionality has been added. The ability to hide and rename tokens, a pointer, a ruler, drawing tools, and now shape overlays for AOEs. And, of course, now the integrated combat tracker.
Prep was an absolute breeze. Our session involved Ebondeath's Mausoleum from Divine Contention (the additional campaign content based on Dragon of Icespire Peak). This is a big map, with 10' scale squares. AboveVTT's dedicated group of volunteers prep many of the maps you can import from DDB. Unfortunately, for this map, it was scaled to 5' squares, instead of 10'. This meant that the first thing I had to do was rescale the map in AboveVTT. I like AboveVTT's map scaling tool much more than I liked Roll20's, but even still the rescaling was a bit of work. AboveVTT will also create tokens for various NPCs/monsters that are only generic silhouettes on DDB. When it works, this is a great feature. Unfortunately, for some reason, many of the tokens in the Mausoleum were blank. Which means I had to delete them and replace them anyway.
There were no such problems with Maps. The Mausoleum map was perfectly scaled from the start. I merely had to drop the tokens, and set the fog of war. There was a bit of busywork that turned out to be completely unnecessary, to my pleasant surprise. The Mausoleum contains many enemies of the same type, and when I first placed them, I gave them all unique color borders so my players could tell them apart once combat began. Aesthetically, I didn't like the borders, but used them anyway for practicality.
But! It turns out that when you add multiple of the same monster to the combat tracker, and start the encounter, Maps automatically adds letters to their name in initiative order. So, the Greater Zombie that got the highest Initiative was Greater Zombie A, and then the next one was Greater Zombie B, and so on. Very nice!
Accessing the monster stats from the combat tracker was smooth and easy. My only let down is that rolling from the tracker does not trigger the 3d dice animation. Hopefully that will be added eventually.
My players appreciated the smooth handling of tokens. With AboveVTT, a other people's tokens would generally "jump" from their starting points to their destinations, but Maps, all token movement was easily viewable.
Some things we missed that would be nice to have: the Game Log still does not serve any kind of chat function. We used our Zoom chat for this, so it was no big deal, but one of the nicest features of AboveVTT is the ability to not just chat in the game log, but also to send pictures of monsters, or the complete text of a spell description. Also, in AboveVTT, we make use of HP auras: the health of a character is represented by a border around the token that both gets thinner and goes from green to red as HP is depleted. This is a very nice way for players to see the health situation of friends and foes, without the clutter of a health bar. Maps doesn't have any kind of player-visible display for HP or health, so the players could not easily track which of their foes were the most damaged. (PC HP did show up in the combat tracker.)
In terms of in-game interface, Maps is nothing special compared to most VTTs out there. But it's a simple, easy-to-use VTT that runs smoothly, and integrates well with DDB character sheet and monster statblocks. It is very much what I'm looking for in a VTT.
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