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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 9809657" data-attributes="member: 143">For my tabletop game, I used to use a gridded battlemap with dry-erase markers. Earlier this year I switched to a flat TV using Fantasy Grounds (FG) on my laptop. It took some getting used to, especially running the two screens with two instances of the software (a DM's instance on the laptop, and a player's instance on the TV), but I've gotten it running pretty smoothly now. Sharing maps and other images is very easy. There's a free extension for FG that automatically scales maps to a 1" scale but I haven't figured out how to use it; I usually just keep a ruler on the edge of the map box and manually scale up the map once I share it, takes about five seconds.I have the players put their minis directly on the screen (there's a protective coating on top of it to avoid scratches), and use two player character placeholders in the software to track their movements/reveal the map, one set with darkvision and the other with a light source that I can toggle on or off as needed. For larger maps it becomes necessary to occasionally move the minis, but I think the players enjoy moving their physical representations on the map themselves. When they're just exploring on a big map I'll sometimes zoom out and let them see as they go by moving the placeholder tokens; when an encounter takes place I reset the scale and have them place their minis in the encounter location, to save time. FG even has a useful feature that allows you to reset the fog of war, which came in handy recently as the party was teleported to another part of the map (this was in The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, as published in Quests from the Infinite Staircase).</blockquote>

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