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<blockquote data-quote="MNblockhead" data-source="post: 8778250" data-attributes="member: 6796661">A VTT for in-person play is a great compromise that avoids the worst of prep time with for online games and the worst of time spent on setting up terrain or drawing on a battlemap. Of course if you play almost entirely TOTM, then none of this is an issue. I bought a TV case from Collabrewate for gaming.&nbsp; Not touch screen. I used it with minis. I used Map Tool (which is free, open source VTT).&nbsp; I only used it to display maps and reveal areas from fog of war as the party explored. There is some initial learning curve, especially figuring out how to have the DMs view on your laptop and the player view on the external screen, both running from your own laptop. And it takes a bit of time to learn how to quickly prep a map and use the drawing tools to clear fog of war.&nbsp;&nbsp; But once you figure that out, the prep time is almost nil.&nbsp; I could run complete sand box games.&nbsp; No need to prep maps with walls, lighting, etc. I can have thousands of maps organized in folders--or just dumped in one folder if they are file-named well--and search and pull one up in seconds.&nbsp; A few more seconds to apply fog of war filter. A few more seconds to reveal it and size it so that the squares are 1&quot; by 1&quot;, and then everything else works just like using a Chessex battlemap, except you can have maps with cool artwork with fog of war.&nbsp;&nbsp; If you don't want to use minis, you can use digital tokens, but that does require applying a grid, which gets a bit more fiddly, but is probably less time than hunting out minis and placing them. But like using minis. I just wanted an easier and quicker way to pull up maps and put them into play and a way to have fog of war without having paper cutouts or cotton balls to hide areas.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="MNblockhead, post: 8778250, member: 6796661"] A VTT for in-person play is a great compromise that avoids the worst of prep time with for online games and the worst of time spent on setting up terrain or drawing on a battlemap. Of course if you play almost entirely TOTM, then none of this is an issue. I bought a TV case from Collabrewate for gaming. Not touch screen. I used it with minis. I used Map Tool (which is free, open source VTT). I only used it to display maps and reveal areas from fog of war as the party explored. There is some initial learning curve, especially figuring out how to have the DMs view on your laptop and the player view on the external screen, both running from your own laptop. And it takes a bit of time to learn how to quickly prep a map and use the drawing tools to clear fog of war. But once you figure that out, the prep time is almost nil. I could run complete sand box games. No need to prep maps with walls, lighting, etc. I can have thousands of maps organized in folders--or just dumped in one folder if they are file-named well--and search and pull one up in seconds. A few more seconds to apply fog of war filter. A few more seconds to reveal it and size it so that the squares are 1" by 1", and then everything else works just like using a Chessex battlemap, except you can have maps with cool artwork with fog of war. If you don't want to use minis, you can use digital tokens, but that does require applying a grid, which gets a bit more fiddly, but is probably less time than hunting out minis and placing them. But like using minis. I just wanted an easier and quicker way to pull up maps and put them into play and a way to have fog of war without having paper cutouts or cotton balls to hide areas. [/QUOTE]

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