Environmental Effects (Smoke) Suggestion

Hello. My first post here. I'm currently working on my 2nd Roll20 campaign. I'm putting together the encounter maps for TSR 9108 Blade of Vengeance (from 1984). This is a One-on-One module designed for one player and one GM. I am using Dark Dungeons rules (BECMI D&D). The set up: after years of adventuring in distant lands, the PC (Erystelle of Dorneryll, a pre-rolled level 7 elf) has decided to return home. But the homecoming is far from pleasant; most of Dorneryll’s inhabitants lie dead, slain by the red dragon Khordarg, while Dorneryll itself is in flames. This vicious attack cannot go unavenged ... The issue: the first sequence of encounters take place around a large oak tree that is at the heart of the PC's home. This tree has been set ablaze by dragon breath and visibility effects the storyline. I have prepared my map assets in PhotoShop and exported to .png - I have a background layer with ground cover and trees and a 'smoke' layer (made with the Cloud filter) that has transparency (see attached). The background is on the Map & Background layer and the smoke is currently on the token layer. The solution(?): it dawned on me that this will get complicated when it comes time to use this set up. Selecting and moving tokens will inevitably end up dragging smoke around. Ideally the 'smoke' layer would sit on top of the other layers and not be selected. Tokens would move around 'under' the smoke. I was thinking of how to overcome this when a simple answer occurred to me. Tokens are 'controlled by' someone (the GM or a PC). Would it be possible to assign tokens to a 'non-playing' entity? An NPC layer, if you like? Or a 'dummy' GM. I can imagine this would be simpler to implement than creating another category of layer and dealing with excess data. However, it might need explicit 'editing' and 'playing' states ... Anyway, its just a thought. If needs be we can use our imaginations - we're playing 'old-school', after all. BTW - My first campaign was TSR 9050 The Gem and the Staff (a competition module from 1983) with 16 individual map pages. The campaign is split into two adventures. The PC (Eric the Bold, a pre-rolled level 8 thief) must steal a valuable item from the dwellings of 2 powerful, rival magic-users. The essential challenges in each adventure are to overcome the defenses of the magic-user's home, avoid tangling with the mage himself, obtain the desired item, and escape safely. We played using Roll20 over 2 evenings (in the same room - no video or voice) with the player's screen connected to an HDTV. Everything went off without a hitch except right at the end of the first session when we were both dumped out of the server for several minutes. Play was not disrupted and no assets were lost. Thanks for Roll20.

Riley: I don't think another layer is necessary (I've read your thoughts on this elsewhere). I think it can be achieved by allowing tokens to be 'controlled by' a virtual entity that is a sub-category of the GM. The issue to overcome is to have a 'locked' token during play. Thanks again, for a great platform.

Very interesting post, John Marshall. I was going to suggest an option for "locking tokens" (like the smoke layer), but I see that you already mentioned it.

I'm putting together the encounter maps for TSR 9108 Blade of Vengeance (from 1984). This is a One-on-One module designed for one player and one GM. I am using Dark Dungeons rules (BECMI D&D). By the way, that seems a very interesting adventure to my mind, and I'm also interested in running One-on-One games. I could adapt Blade of Vengeance to GURPS Fantasy or Dungeon Fantasy. In other words, Thanks for the reference!

Axel: Hello. Blade of Vengeance is a wilderness 'sandbox' adventure that plays out over a 30+ day period. The PC has to make their way around a number of locations and put together some clues to come up with a magical means of dispatching the dragon. The longer this takes the more devastation is wrought and the more the dragon's army of goblins, hobgoblins and ogres take over. The Gem and the Staff on the other hand, is more of a 'time trial' with the adventures unfolding in two 30 minute sessions of play. It was designed as a 'competition module' and there is a scoring system included (beyond XP). It is ideal for a league situation with many players competing or perhaps as a training module (except that the PC starts at level 8). It could be adapted. Anyway, thanks for the agreement.

I'd rather have an additional layer instead of adding some complex token locking/permissions code to the mix. Adding additional layers seems to me to be the easiest solution since the code for layers is already in the system and it would mostly be copy paste and change z-order levels. There'd also be ui elements changed, but they've just done that with the dynamic lighting...

Hrm... speaking of the dynamic lighting layer... have any mentors tried putting images on that layer?

Yep. Any image in the Dynamic Lighting layer isn't visible at all when you change the active layer.

i still prefer the 5 layers yew mentioned in the mentor forums Jonathan....id say post a link to that, but none of us "users" can get to it =P my question is, doesnt "fog of war" cover the "visibility" issue? though locked tokens does sound like a good idea, perhaps the "locked" feature could be on the map layer along with a "appear above (token)layer" option as well.

Fog of war isn't realistic when you're in a field during the middle of the day. Having a layer above tokens that we could use as battlefield smoke would be awesome. You could also use it to have a dragon flying overhead or airships. All kinds of things.

true about fog of war in daytime...but i guess im goin on the idea that in smoke/heavy fog yew would only see so far and then a proper spot check (3.5) would reveal whats around... back to the 5 layers, its well covered if one of the new layers appeared specifically over the token layer as that does the map layer.

Ideally... the grid would be a layer as well that we could hide/reveal without going into page settings. Something that players could use too, per their preference.

(. . .) though locked tokens does sound like a good idea, perhaps the "locked" feature could be on the map layer along with a "appear above (token)layer" option as well. As alternatives to adding more layers upon the already existent ones, I suggested a couple of tentative approaches for implementing these capabilities in the aforementioned Jonathan the Black's thread at the Mentor forum: REQ: Layer reorganization... (<a href="http://community.roll20.net/discussion/3283/req-layer-reorganization-#Item_1" rel="nofollow">http://community.roll20.net/discussion/3283/req-layer-reorganization-#Item_1</a>) One of them is extending the two additional layers from the (renamed) "middle layer" for not cluttering the app interface with too many of them at once: Another way is to handle this by means of additional options in the token contextual menu ( "is Object / is Overlay" , at the bottom-right of the screenshot). There, the selected token is an orange smoke overlay: Jonathan the Black said, Ideally... the grid would be a layer as well that we could hide/reveal without going into page settings. Something that players could use too, per their preference. That reminds to me that the grid still appears over images and tokens . . .

Jonathan the Black said, Fog of war isn't realistic when you're in a field during the middle of the day. Having a layer above tokens that we could use as battlefield smoke would be awesome. You could also use it to have a dragon flying overhead or airships. All kinds of things. I agree very much. Many maps can be visually and tactically enriched by adding smoke-clouds, spell effects and similar things. And to be able to place images over tokens is going to be useful even for treetops, differentiating who is ambushing over them and who is walking under them. Also, for placing Cards too. All kinds of things indeed.

I like the idea of the first image (objects/overlay) as much as adding 2 more layers. I'd personally like to see the option pop up for the individual tokens like the gearbox for status effects/bars if this is done instead though.