Dynamic lighting vs fog of war?

How many people use dynamic lighting and how many use fog of war?  I prefer fog of war as I dig up maps from Google Images and such and don't want to take the time to prep the maps for dynamic lighting.

I use dynamic lighting because I feel that it gives me more creative options. YMMV :) I too use maps from other online sources and almost always need to set up the DL layer manually, but since I only GM every other week, I have time for it. It comes down to personal preference. (edited for typos)

As Rick A notes, it's personal preference.  I and two other DMs I play with use fog of war exclusively.  I played with dynamic lighting, but one of my players had a much older PC that couldn't support the GPU requirements (he'd see stuff appear after minutes of waiting, really old PC).  The othe DM tried it, but the tendency of corners to display things not in line of sight of the player, if not constructed very carefully, and the ability of players to "stick their heads through the wall" and see things they shouldn't at times finally turned him off from it. It's nice when it works, but for manually created homebrew maps it adds a lot of extra work, for what I consider very little narrative/immersion benefit. And that extra work is the reason the third DM has avoided it (one of my reasons also). But others clearly like it. Not that fog of war is perfect.  In using the new UI I recently managed to reveal half the map when it somehow got stuck in "show a rectangle" mode when I was done doing a reveal and trying to move my mouse back to the side menu to switch to another tool. Much hilarity from my players ensued.

I use a mix. If I don't plan for a map to use DL, then I will buffer it with two empty rows/columns of squares on the margins, and conceal those with FoW. Makes a great place to stow reinforcements, images you plan to reveal with a Shift-Z later and other surprises My DL setups are very loose. I don't try to adhere to the edges of caverns and walls, for instance. I think it's more immersive for the players to actually see the cavern wall texture rather than have their sight inexplicably end at some point. It's also faster to set up and less resource-intensive.

keithcurtis said: If I don't plan for a map to use DL, then I will buffer it with two empty rows/columns of squares on the margins, and conceal those with FoW. Makes a great place to stow reinforcements, images you plan to reveal with a Shift-Z later and other surprises I do the same thing, a border area to keep bad guys and other tokens that may be needed for the fight.

I have never used Fog of War, I have been using Dynamic Lighting for 10 years. I have gotten pretty efficient at setting up very complex maps in a minimum amount of time. The clear and one way D.L. lines make it even easier to produce effects. I find a second monitor with a sock puppet account makes it easier to fine tune the effects. Some of my maps will overwhelm some older computers, I try to keep them to a manageable size.

For SOME adventures I use DL but if I am playing without a battle map and just use Images, I hide them on the GM Layer and just put them onto Map Layer if needed. Of course having a nice Background Image to not have players stare on a white space (or whatever color I decide to use) and of course grid turned off after everything is placed...

I have only ever used Fog of War since 2014, and only to provide a border around the battle map where I can hide the tokens used in the Tracker so I don’t delete them by accident. 

Andrew R. said: I have only ever used Fog of War since 2014, and only to provide a border around the battle map where I can hide the tokens used in the Tracker so I don’t delete them by accident.  If I had a nickel...