Here's my situation: I use a projector to display battlemaps onto a physical table, and then my players and I use miniatures. I currently use Maptools, and I love the Fog of War feature, but since we're using physical miniatures I have to manually reveal stuff. I reveal things a room at a time, so the detailed FoW features actually make it harder for me to do what I want. The only other features I use are multiple maps and hiding traps/secret doors.
Does anyone know of a simple VTT (or heck, a complex one) that allows you to reveal whole rooms at a time with a simple interface? I'm seriously considering writing my own VTT with exactly those 3 features (room-based FoW, hidden traps/secret doors, and multiple maps), but I'd rather download one if it already exists.
Instead of manually revealing things could you have tiny tokens on the map for each of the PCs that you move to the square their mini is on?
I'm not all that familiar with maptools otherwise I'd probably have a more helpful suggestion.
I've done that in the past, and it's definitely an option, but for this simple use, it's more work than manually revealing rooms.
Create a large radius light source on a transparent PNG token.
Create a GM state on the light source, so only you can see it.
Then just drop it in the room you want to reveal, and let it remove the fog for you.
If you're willing to abandon the VTT format (since it sounds like you aren't using it for anything other than layers), I'd suggest looking into a drawing program such as Visio, LibreOffice's Draw, or any of the other things listed here. On the mac, I'd suggest OmniGraffle.
Either way, the workflow is something like this:
Step 1: Create a background layer with your map on it.
Step 2: Create two layers on top of it - one with a series of room-shaped blocks in the background color to mask each room, one with all the traps and secret doors marked.
Step 3: Display the first layer on top of the background via projector, and look at the second layer on the background on your screen.
Step 4: When the players enter a room, delete the masking object.
I did something similar to this technique using AppleWorks for my World's Largest Dungeon campaign, and my players loved it. It took a while to set up the maps such that each room had it's own mask, but it wasn't an unreasonable chore.
(Ah OmniGraffle - I loved this program when I had a Mac)
That's an interesting idea. Do those programs support multiple views of the same document, or do you have to do fullscreen on one monitor with the layer tool on another?
(Ah OmniGraffle - I loved this program when I had a Mac)
That's an interesting idea. Do those programs support multiple views of the same document, or do you have to do fullscreen on one monitor with the layer tool on another?
OmniGraffle does. So did AppleWorks. I couldn't tell you about anything PC-side, though. It's probably less likely, just because of the Windows legacy of using everything at full screen size. There may still be some that do, though. It is a useful feature, although not a frequently needed one.
Even if they don't, you can always delete the mask even while players are watching (just make sure you click on the right area), and pre-generate a PDF or something to use as your GM reference. It's nicer if you can do multiple views on the same document, but certainly not a requirement. Unless you're moving tokens around in the masked areas (aware monsters outside of vision range?) - then you'd need to have an editable token layer behind the masked layer, and an active view to that layer on your own screen.
Honestly, with the game-specific features available in most VTTs, but especially Roll20 and MapTool, I couldn't imagine using an image-manipulation program in gameplay. Maybe if I was a graphic designer who was highly comfortable in those programs, but even then — VTTs have the tools to reveal the map from a player perspective, and it would take some serious work to get that functionality out of an IMP.
I believe the most recent update to D20Pro now has an updated fog of war system. Instead of manually painting and erasing FoW, you can create preset zones using simple shapes. Simple shapes can be linked together into more complex areas. You then activate and deactivate these FoW zones. It's not perfect, but still much faster than painting manually.
I believe the most recent update to D20Pro now has an updated fog of war system.
That looks like exactly what I want. I'll have to play around with the demo. I'll also have to decide whether it's worth $30 for just that one feature.
If you have another laptop that your players could use, you could have them move their tokens within MapTool, and dispense with the minis...