D&D General Improving your online D&D game

[Retreater]

VTTs are really bad at exploring dungeons.

The way I learnt was that you had an exploration map, drawn by a player, and you might get out minis and draw the room if necessary. You could do something similar with a VTT, have some of scaling map where a single token represents the party and then scale that down, but there seems to be no interest - it's all about the battlemaps. (And I've seen this approached used on the table top too, with the party moving through photocopied maps that get laid out as they move along)

Going to respectfully disagree on this. I am running in Roll20, and using the tools dynamic lighting tools in a dungeon environment have done the best exploration we've had in decades.
Using dynamic lighting, characters are able to see only around 60 feet of it at a time. I even tint darkvision a red color so the vision is a little murky. I turn off "explorer mode" so the instant the characters move out of an area, it grows dark again. Torchlight isn't as good as they've thought it was either.
The players (not their characters) began to feel overwhelmed, oppressed by the magnitude of the location. They got lost. They asked me to "turn on the lights" so they could retrace their steps - and I refused. Now they are lost in a megadungeon. For the next session they are pulling out graph paper to try to record where they are going.
I think this is the best way to run a dungeon I've ever done.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

Going to respectfully disagree on this. I am running in Roll20, and using the tools dynamic lighting tools in a dungeon environment have done the best exploration we've had in decades.
Using dynamic lighting, characters are able to see only around 60 feet of it at a time. I even tint darkvision a red color so the vision is a little murky. I turn off "explorer mode" so the instant the characters move out of an area, it grows dark again. Torchlight isn't as good as they've thought it was either.
The players (not their characters) began to feel overwhelmed, oppressed by the magnitude of the location. They got lost. They asked me to "turn on the lights" so they could retrace their steps - and I refused. Now they are lost in a megadungeon. For the next session they are pulling out graph paper to try to record where they are going.
I think this is the best way to run a dungeon I've ever done.

What VTT do you use?

I have to say the dynamic lighting was pretty neat when I played a non-darkvision character. People are doing stuff and you can't see anything! It was an eye-opener...which I guess is a pun? In one of the games our dm did the same as you and turned off the map reveal (push back fog of war) so that we had to remember where we were going. I told the dm I was using chalk to mark arrows that pointed towards the exit. I used a draw tool to mark them directly on the map.

I think it gets most frustrating when combat and events move slowly and you can't see what's happening. So, you can't spectate when it's not your turn, which makes it hard to stay focused on the game. I think it's useful, during combats to remove vision blocking on pillars and other obstacles so players can see the whole battlefield and use their imagination when something is 'behind cover'.

So, while I love dynamic lighting, I find it can be as much a bane as a blessing. I really think there's a right and wrong way to use it.

 

[Don Durito]

What VTT do you use?

I have to say the dynamic lighting was pretty neat when I played a non-darkvision character. People are doing stuff and you can't see anything! It was an eye-opener...which I guess is a pun? In one of the games our dm did the same as you and turned off the map reveal (push back fog of war) so that we had to remember where we were going. I told the dm I was using chalk to mark arrows that pointed towards the exit. I used a draw tool to mark them directly on the map.

I think it gets most frustrating when combat and events move slowly and you can't see what's happening. So, you can't spectate when it's not your turn, which makes it hard to stay focused on the game. I think it's useful, during combats to remove vision blocking on pillars and other obstacles so players can see the whole battlefield and use their imagination when something is 'behind cover'.

So, while I love dynamic lighting, I find it can be as much a bane as a blessing. I really think there's a right and wrong way to use it.

It’s probably best not used for pillars and things like that.

 

[Retreater]

What VTT do you use?

Roll20.

I told the dm I was using chalk to mark arrows that pointed towards the exit. I used a draw tool to mark them directly on the map.

That's a great idea. I might drop a hint to the players about that.

I think it gets most frustrating when combat and events move slowly and you can't see what's happening. So, you can't spectate when it's not your turn, which makes it hard to stay focused on the game. I think it's useful, during combats to remove vision blocking on pillars and other obstacles so players can see the whole battlefield and use their imagination when something is 'behind cover'.

I haven't used a large enough area for a combat where they wouldn't be able to see an encounter area, or if that was the case, there were torch sconces/braziers/etc. that gave illumination to the targets. Also keep in mind that the opponents need light sources or darkvision as well.

And like @Don Durito said, don't use pillars that way. Too many blocking objects will also slow down the loading of the game.

So, while I love dynamic lighting, I find it can be as much a bane as a blessing. I really think there's a right and wrong way to use it.

The worst aspects of it I've found is when you have twisting tunnels that can completely block movement when drawing in blocking walls. And sometimes if the map doesn't update, tokens can't move through opened doors.

I'm curious how Foundry VTT and other platforms handle dynamic lighting. I got a new computer on a Black Friday deal, so I'll be exploring some new options.

But the point I was making in general is that VTT play can let me plan out things that I couldn't realistically do in f2f games. I can have maps ready to go, handouts that can be read by all players and stored in files. I can access character sheets to plan encounters. I can have the perfect "mini" ready to go for every situation and pictures of NPCs ready to go. It also makes it easy to copy and paste information from PDFs, making them for the first time more useful to me than print copies.