Player/GM map on Monitor

[Mean DM]

I have been toying with the idea of taking my old flat screen CRT TV and turning in flat to make a video battle map out of it. If I can pull it off I will then try to make a table to surround it. I know, crazy idea, but I love building things. I think it would be a cool way to show maps and other images.

My question is this. I am interesting to find out if there is software that will allow me to have a master image/map on my laptop and then project a modified map with what I want to have the players to see. So, if we are going through some caverns, I can have them only see what they have explored and what is seen with their light source. Is there such a thing?

Cheers,

Mark

 

[DMFTodd]

You could use kloogewerks to do that. Run a master on your laptop showing the full map, run a client version on the flat screen showing the player map.

 

[andargor]

My group has been dreaming about an LCD tabletop for about 20 years now.

With those new 60" Taiwanese babies, it might be possible... Although you need a big budget...

Andargor

 

[Mean DM]

You could use kloogewerks to do that. Run a master on your laptop showing the full map, run a client version on the flat screen showing the player map.

Thanx for the tip Todd. Let me see if I understand you correctly though (I am not very knowledgeable with this stuff)....I can run both a master and client on one computer, and have the client set up to the second monitor?

 

[Sieobahn]

Thanx for the tip Todd. Let me see if I understand you correctly though (I am not very knowledgeable with this stuff)....I can run both a master and client on one computer, and have the client set up to the second monitor?

Yes.

I do something similar, but with a projector supported near the roof pointing down on the table. With that distance, we have an image around 800x600mm using a whiteboard as a screen. You can see some images here. The setup was inspired by this thread.

It makes a great tool when running dungeon crawl adventures.

 

[DMFTodd]

Cool picture, I like the shadows the figures give off. Sieobahn notes that he's running two computers. Klooge will also let you run a master and client on one computer. If you have 2 graphic cards you can use Windows dual-monitors to have the client on 1 screen and the master on the DM screen. Klooge does figures if you want to do that (I imaging players pointing at the screen to indicated movement, the DM moves them?) or use figures as Sieobahn does.

 

[Mean DM]

Thanx guys! I will give klooge a try!

 

[Mr.Ice]

For a free alternative that can also do this, try maptool from http://rptools.net/

 

[Hand of Evil]

Ever watch BASSMASTERS on ESPN...they have this table...sweet!

 

[Mean DM]

Just in case anyone is interested, I settled on Fantasy Grounds (http://www.fantasygrounds.com/). I found that I could run both the player and GM application on one machine and will send the player map to another monitor by extending my screen. I had to make some modifications to the base program, but the programmers were kind enough to show me how to make the map screen bigger. Although I am using this app in a non-traditional way, it does exactly what I need it to. Check it out!

Mark