D&D General Your Thoughts on LoS, Dynamic Lighting on VTTs

[TheSword]

Rpgs are not a visual medium.

Computer games, console games etc are.

There is a whole industry around map making, miniatures, player handouts, GM screens, not to mention a couple of thousand artists who would disagree with you.

Spend 15 mins browsing deviant art and tell those people that RPGs aren’t a visual medium.

I’ve seen good storytellers...
I’ve seen great story tellers...
I’ve seen amazing storytellers...
I’ve not seen a storyteller yet who’s game wouldn’t be improved with a handout, map, or picture.

There hasn’t been a chargeable rpg product that I’m aware of in the last 25 years, that hasn’t had some piece of artwork attached.

So I will politely disagree and say it most certainly can be a visual medium.

 

[Steel_Wind]

I’m in total agreement with you.

When lockdown lifted in England I briefly experimented with Roll 20 on the TV screen. It means we can spread out in comfortable sofas in the living room. Don’t need to keep getting up to move minis. It means we can actually see the map. I can track HP/Status/Initiative far easier. Plus I don’t have to waste money and time printing off and laminating hundreds of battle maps.

I look forward to testing it at my next face to face session.

I would offer a word of caution about this approach. I was one of the first ones here on ENworld who started using LCD projectors on to the tabletop, back in the day and kept with it, also using a flat screen on the table instead of a projector when those got cheap enough to be able to do that instead of a projector (42" and even 55" flat screens are now ridiculously cheap!).

There is a real psychological phenomenon that happens with a flat screen on the table that people gather round. It's an electronic battlemat and being able to reach out and move their mini on that map engages them in the game. They are PART of it. The technology unites them all in the same endeavor.

But when you switch that to putting the TV back up on a wall, something odd in our psychology can happen that you need to guard against. The players can easily switch into "entertain me" mode. The game becomes something they are watching rather than something they are doing themselves. It's hard to explain why people act this way, but I have seen it. I think it comes down to having tactile control as they would around the table or at a desk in front of their own computer screen, but perhaps there are deeper emotions and cues at work. I admit that my explanations as to why may not be the whole of it.

Whatever the case, be on your guard against this phenomenon, because it's real. You wouldn't think moving the screen like that should matter - but it can.

 

[TheSword]

I would offer a word of caution about this approach. I was one of the first ones here on ENworld who started using LCD projectors on to the tabletop, back in the day and kept with it, also using a flat screen on the table instead of a projector when those got cheap enough to be able to do that instead of a projector (42" and even 55" flat screens are now ridiculously cheap!).

There is a real psychological phenomenon that happens with a flat screen on the table that people gather round. It's an electronic battlemat and being able to reach out and move their mini on that map engages them in the game. They are PART of it. The technology unites them all in the same endeavor.

But when you switch that to putting the TV back up on a wall, something odd in our psychology can happen that you need to guard against. The players can easily switch into "entertain me" mode. The game becomes something they are watching rather than something they are doing themselves. It's hard to explain why people act this way, but I have seen it. I think it comes down to having tactile control as they would around the table or at a desk in front of their own computer screen, but perhaps there are deeper emotions and cues at work. I admit that my explanations as to why may not be the whole of it.

Whatever the case, be on your guard against this phenomenon, because it's real. You wouldn't think moving the screen like that should matter - but it can.

I take your point, however the way we sit is often the case that the map on the table becomes an inconvenience. Though I persevere. For many years the group just had one person who would move the minis for them. They’re a pretty good bunch so I don’t think they would become disengaged. It’s just tracking after all.

 

[turnip_farmer]

Interesting to see everyone's different approaches here.

Personally, I don't find setting up dynamic lighting in Roll20 to be at all onerous, but I'm going to be doing less of it in future anyway. As a couple of others have mentioned, I find that players dragging tokens around a map leads to disengagement. I was thinking about different sessions the other day, and the most enjoyable dungeon-crawling session I can remember was one where I hadn't prepared a map. The dungeon consisted only of a flowchart and a couple of encounter maps.

Now, while stuff like Steel Winds showed looks fantastic, I lack the skills to produce this, and the time and motivation to learn them. Sure, I could find stuff others have produced, but that's deeply unsatisfactory to me.

Part of the appeal of rpgs, to me, is that the situations I present are limited only by my imagination. I don't want to limit myself to stuff that others have produced to a sufficient quality.

I'm going back to no maps except when a fight breaks out, and those are going to be schematic. To each their own!

 

[Oofta]

When it comes to DMing, I am fundamentally lazy. I also prefer to run a dynamic event based game. So I already have to spend far more prep time for my games just finding the right map and setting up LOS. I don't do generic dungeon crawls often so I need a lot of things like city streets, specific styles of buildings and so on. Add in making tokens and ... it's already a lot.

So spending a lot of time on extra flashy stuff that I don't absolutely need? Probably not going to happen any time soon. Maybe someday I'll just be able to draw a rough sketch or input some parameters and have and have the AI fill in the details. Until then? I'm glad if I have something other than a grid with a couple of lines drawn.

 

[Umbran]

Do you like dynamic lighting as a player on a VTT? As a GM do you use it?

It seems like it can be fun, but... it never works right. It always has issues with the GM having to lift it manually, slowing down the game and making everything more clunky. I have yet to see a smooth implementation on VTT, so I'm not really a big fan.

 

[Steel_Wind]

I have a question, maybe some of you know....Why don't any of these VTT look and operate like say, old school Baldur's Gate? They seem to want to go that direction, with animations and rendered sfx.

It looks like someone is releasing maps and tokens for Foundry VTT which do that, too. shrug

Feast your eyes upon it: