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

[Nebulous]

And what if I want to run a dungeon that is not a set of underground ruins with rectangular rooms but is the inside of a colossal tree, or the inside of a giant statue?

To rely on pre-made maps is always to vastly limit what you can do.

I have to disagree. I have maps of the inside colossal trees. I have a battlemap of the inside of the goddamn TARRASQUE fighting through its organs. If you look hard for maps they are there. I can't draw well, but I'm sure glad people that can, and they play D&D.

 

[Oofta]

I use dynamic lighting and explorer mode in Roll20 and do enjoy it. I don't always use it, but I've done everything from tree trunks blocking line of sight (heavy forest) to everyone only being able to see 10 ft because of fog to everyone being totally blind because of darkness.

Exploration though is handled mostly using theater of the mind, I don't want to hassle with mapping out large areas. Another thing I do is "ping" where sounds are coming from so people know general direction. I'd much rather play in person, but I will miss line of sight when we go back to in person games. I definitely won't miss the extra prep time and overhead.

 

[Don Durito]

I have to disagree. I have maps of the inside colossal trees. I have a battlemap of the inside of the goddamn TARRASQUE fighting through its organs. If you look hard for maps they are there.

I've got better thing to do then spend hours trawling through images on the net looking for something that vaguely resembles a concept but still doesn't have the layout I want.

There's so much more productive ways to spend my time.

 

[cmad1977]

I use dynamic lighting and explorer mode in Roll20 and do enjoy it. I don't always use it, but I've done everything from tree trunks blocking line of sight (heavy forest) to everyone only being able to see 10 ft because of fog to everyone being totally blind because of darkness.

Exploration though is handled mostly using theater of the mind, I don't want to hassle with mapping out large areas. Another thing I do is "ping" where sounds are coming from so people know general direction. I'd much rather play in person, but I will miss line of sight when we go back to in person games. I definitely won't miss the extra prep time and overhead.

I agree. I think the best use of the dynamic lighting is to not use it for everything.

 

[tetrasodium]

I have to disagree. I have maps of the inside colossal trees. I have a battlemap of the inside of the goddamn TARRASQUE fighting through its organs. If you look hard for maps they are there. I can't draw well, but I'm sure glad people that can, and they play D&D.

that particular map is made by Cze & Peku & they put out a new set of maps (or map depending on your level) every month of similarly awesome quality.

Also for people who want to make their own maps, arkenforge has a ton of free assets you can add to it

 

[kenada]

I use dynamic lighting. It was kind of a pain to set up in roll20, but it’s much better in Foundry. There are more and better wall types, and dynamic lighting just seems to work better (especially when you pair it with a module that implements darkvision according to your system’s rules). There’s also a module that imports maps from Dungeondraft and sets up the walls, which is super helpful. I know there is also something for roll20, but it requires API access (Pro account).

I don’t find it really slows things down, but I run an exploration-centric game, and I tended to draw the maps out as the PCs explored when we were running in person any, so it’s not really very different in practice. PCs are going to be cautiously navigating their environment regardless of whether I have a VTT handling visibility. However, I don’t use it when we’re not down in a dungeon, and I wouldn’t be using it if I weren’t running the kind of game I do.

 

[MNblockhead]

I used VTTs for a long time before using dynamic lighting. I didn't want to fiddle with tracing walls, doors, etc. When I played with it on Roll20 performance was bad.

For in person games I used Realmworks with the player view displayed on a horizontal display. It had great tools for the DM to reveal areas and revealed areas stayed revealed. I didn't see the need for dynamic lighting. When I went online and needed to display tokens, I went with Map Tool, sharing the map via Google Hangouts. I just used Map Tool to quickly search through my hundreds of maps and tokens and set things up with Fog of War which I would manually reveal. It worked okay. I never so the need for anything more.

But Foundry has converted me. Tracing walls and doors are simpler than in any other tool that I've used and the line of sight experience for players and DM is excellent.

In my experience, and based on player feedback, it really adds to the experience. I'm currently running Rappan Athuk, which is a massive mega-dungeon. In other campaigns I don't know that I would prep every map with lighting and line of sight, but it really adds to a dungeon crawl.

To address some questions and detractions raised by other posters:

1. In Foundry, you can use progressive reveal so that explored areas stay revealed. When not in line of sight, they will be a bit darker but still revealed. I used to require that at least one character in the party have cartography skill to enable this, but its become something the players expect and like that I just assume that all adventurers have decent mapping skills.

2. I like how it makes different characters dark vision distances mean something and lighting sources are important. The deep gnome will see further on the map than the dwarf. The human will need some light source. In theater of the mind, tracking and determining lighting resources or remembering to take into account how far different characters can see in darkness feels like a chore or is something easily forgotten or generally fudged as I juggle everything else I have to do as a DM. The deep gnome looses that differentiating characteristic when I'm not using lighting and line of sight. It is nice to have the VTT take car of that for me.

3. Regarding players running ahead. We'll, if they move over a trap, that's on them. But I get your point. There have been some spoilers when I started using line of sight and lighting when I first started using it instead of manual fog-of-war reveal. But Foundry has a number of features that help with this, which has kept this from being a problem.

• First, I can "pause" the game at any time by hitting the spacebar and unpause it by hitting the spacebar again. This makes it easy to stop character from going around a corner if there is something that should happen before the do, or if I need a moment to react, etc.
  
  
• Second, you can set doors as "locked" so that characters cannot open them until you unlock them. Having all doors as locked can also help prevent players from accidentally clicking on them opening them.
  
  
• While in combat, you can prevent a player from moving his or her character's token until it is that character's turn.

4. As for the extra prep time. That was what stopped me from using these features at first. And, when I did start using them, it DID make prep time take longer. But now that I'm used the software I find it has reduced my preptime because prepping the map more effectively familiarizes the map for me than just reading and reviewing it in a book or PDF. Also, I make sure to have the monsters places so I'm familiarizing myself with the likely encounters. I'm placing notes about traps etc. It makes the game run a lot more smoothly when I have the maps prepped in my experience. So overall, I don't think the prep time is onerous.

 

[Shiroiken]

Our few forays into this on Roll20 have been disastrous. The biggest issue was the necessity of the players to "crawl" by using their arrow keys, rather than picking up their mini. Might be more useful/interesting in combat, but in exploration it drove things crazy. Things were fine in long passages, but in caverns that twist and turn, it was moving a space at a time. The time put in by both the DM and players was not worth the minor benefit it provided.

 

[Don Durito]

Our few forays into this on Roll20 have been disastrous. The biggest issue was the necessity of the players to "crawl" by using their arrow keys, rather than picking up their mini. Might be more useful/interesting in combat, but in exploration it drove things crazy. Things were fine in long passages, but in caverns that twist and turn, it was moving a space at a time. The time put in by both the DM and players was not worth the minor benefit it provided.

The idea that the exploration map and the combat map are the same map is one of the weirdest things to me about modern D&D.

I also don't understand why VTTs put no effort into an exploration mode, with maps at a different scale.

 

[Nebulous]

4. As for the extra prep time. That was what stopped me from using these features at first. And, when I did start using them, it DID make prep time take longer. But now that I'm used the software I find it has reduced my preptime because prepping the map more effectively familiarizes the map for me than just reading and reviewing it in a book or PDF. Also, I make sure to have the monsters places so I'm familiarizing myself with the likely encounters. I'm placing notes about traps etc. It makes the game run a lot more smoothly when I have the maps prepped in my experience. So overall, I don't think the prep time is onerous.

I agree. A well prepared map embedded with all the monsters, traps, treasures, props, etc. is all I need, although some work is required up front. I actually have Foundry but haven't dug into the system very far. Roll20 has taken all my time, and it works well, but I do want to try Foundry as it sounds better in many ways.

We had to cancel a game last week, so I went back to the Roll20 map and just kept tweaking things. Small stuff, but it adds to the experience. I like making the map look more realistic with 2D props added wherever I can.