"Fog of War" on physical battlemats

[Bill Zebub]

I use something similar to this when I play in person. What I do is add small dots onto the grid to help me for when I draw in the rest of the map. I, fortunately, have not run into the scenario where a player looks at the map and (in)correctly guesses that there must be something there because of the blank space. But I'm just lucky.

Part of that is the style of map. The one I will be using will tend to make blank areas obvious, unfortunately.

 

[dbm]

Part of that is the style of map. The one I will be using will tend to make blank areas obvious, unfortunately.

If you have the tools and are up for it, my suggestion would be to modify the map to blank out the hidden parts before sending it to be printed. Then separately print out the original section but as an overlay you can use if the party find the secret doors in question.

 

[Baron Opal II]

Or, you could build a 3D representation like Wyloch did on Wyloch's Armory!

3D Tomb of Horrors

 

[TheSword]

I laminate the battle map for stability and then just up individual room. Then piece them together on the table with a bit of blu tac if needed to keep them in place (don’t usually need it)

My preference now though is to either project on a TV or just use the maps for the set piece battles and theatre of the mind everything else.

 

[aramis erak]

This weekend I'll be running a dungeon session on a large map that I'm printing on poster-sized paper. Of course, I don't want the players to see the whole dungeon; I want them to discover it room by room. Approaches I'm considering:

1. Cut out paper the shape of each are and lay (tape) each one in place. Downside: the shapes themselves will convey a lot of information.
2. Same as above, but use larger rectangles (whole sheets of paper) to mask shape. Downside: the overlapping regions will mean that I'm constantly shuffling pieces of paper around, and probably revealing things I don't mean to.
3. Cut up the map itself into individual areas, and lay (tape) down each area as they discover it. Downside: I hate to cut up my new map. :-/

Anybody try these or other solutions and have advice?

Color copy the new map THEN chop the copy

 

[Bill Zebub]

Cut up into foam-core backed pieces (blurred with spoiler tags; click to see clear version)

(we ended last session at the entrance to the secret tunnel so I left the first cavern intact)

And reassembled:

 

[DragonBelow]

Impressive, good job! Are you going to do the same about the crevice?

 

[Bill Zebub]

Impressive, good job! Are you going to do the same about the crevice?

No because that's the first area they'll encounter.

 

[Tonguez]

copy the maps, print and chop up the copies

 

[Bill Zebub]

copy the maps, print and chop up the copies

Or do what I did and print from .jpg from dndbeyond....