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<blockquote data-quote="MNblockhead" data-source="post: 8224813" data-attributes="member: 6796661">MapTool is great for this. It is open-source and free. Most of the frustration people have getting started with it is networking, which is not an issue if you are using it for displaying to horizontal TV display.&nbsp; I have yet to find another product that makes it as easy to sift through thousands of tokens and hundreds of battlemaps and set up a map with tokens in a couple minutes.It support line of sight and lighting, but if you don't have time to prep the maps, it has excellent manual review for fog of war. Basically you connect your laptop to the horizontal TV with extended desktop. You run two instances of MapTool, one as GM, one as player.&nbsp; Put the player window to the horizontal TV and size to 1&quot; = 5' scale, which is as easy at zooming in/out until the grid fits a 1&quot; miniature base.&nbsp;&nbsp; You add media folders to MapTool like you would when you import/link a folder in an image program. Then you can easily filter through the images (you can set it to show all images in all subfolders as well, so you can keep your foldering but still filter through everything without drilling down into subfolders) and open an image with fog of war auto applied.&nbsp; Matching the grid to to grid on the map is easy, but if you are using physical minis, you don't even need to do that. If you want to use line of sight and lighting, however, you will of coarse need to use digital tokens. The only downside with MapTool is that if you want players to control their own tokens, you'll need to set up a local network. That is easier then configuring it to work remotely, but it still isn't as easy as a hosted tool. If you want automations and official content and don't mind spending a bit of money, then I would recommend Fantasy Grounds. It also works well with in-person play and horizontal TV, but networking is much easier, and you can get all the official 5e content for it. Fantasy Ground has a high learning curve, but I think it is the best option for in-person VTT play using official WotC 5e content.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="MNblockhead, post: 8224813, member: 6796661"] MapTool is great for this. It is open-source and free. Most of the frustration people have getting started with it is networking, which is not an issue if you are using it for displaying to horizontal TV display. I have yet to find another product that makes it as easy to sift through thousands of tokens and hundreds of battlemaps and set up a map with tokens in a couple minutes. It support line of sight and lighting, but if you don't have time to prep the maps, it has excellent manual review for fog of war. Basically you connect your laptop to the horizontal TV with extended desktop. You run two instances of MapTool, one as GM, one as player. Put the player window to the horizontal TV and size to 1" = 5' scale, which is as easy at zooming in/out until the grid fits a 1" miniature base. You add media folders to MapTool like you would when you import/link a folder in an image program. Then you can easily filter through the images (you can set it to show all images in all subfolders as well, so you can keep your foldering but still filter through everything without drilling down into subfolders) and open an image with fog of war auto applied. Matching the grid to to grid on the map is easy, but if you are using physical minis, you don't even need to do that. If you want to use line of sight and lighting, however, you will of coarse need to use digital tokens. The only downside with MapTool is that if you want players to control their own tokens, you'll need to set up a local network. That is easier then configuring it to work remotely, but it still isn't as easy as a hosted tool. If you want automations and official content and don't mind spending a bit of money, then I would recommend Fantasy Grounds. It also works well with in-person play and horizontal TV, but networking is much easier, and you can get all the official 5e content for it. Fantasy Ground has a high learning curve, but I think it is the best option for in-person VTT play using official WotC 5e content. [/QUOTE]

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