Maps: Only for Battle, or Everything?

So I'm looking at potentially running a Final Fantasy game using Roll20, the app is great for what I'll need (jukebox, uploading my own maps and tokens, text chat, etc.). I was wondering, though, how other GMs do their games on Roll20? Do you use a large map with Fog of War and other stuff, keeping portions of it hidden until the players move there, or do you simply use it for the battlemap ala D&D4e's usual implementation? I'm curious, since I'm torn in both directions (either using a scaled-down 'dungeon map' and larger maps for the various encounters in said dungeons, or just being descriptive about moving around and only use the map for encounters. Thoughts?

Honestly, it comes down to personal preference. For dungeon crawls, I like having the full dungeon mapped out (either by the GM or the players). It can convey a sense of space and help the players to see that their characters exist in a world, not just an abstract string of encounters.

What I've done (disclaimer: I used Roll20 once for a game, a few days after the closed beta started; so my experience with Roll20 consists of a little bit less than an hour of gaming and a little bit of troubleshooting) is for the exploration parts, I put a bunch of images of jungle and swamp, covered them with Fog of War, and exposed them as I described the character's trek through the nasty swamps. I also had a map of the land of Lemuria itself, just to orient them a bit. In general, I use VTTs for battlemaps rather than hexcrawling (or its equivalent); anything between encounters is usually simply narrated accompanied by pictures dungeon halls or jungles or desert landscapes or whatever.

I like to see background images - descriptive pictures for mood, for instance -, not just maps with virtual miniatures. For instance, here is a screenshot of this that my GM made with Roll20: <a href="http://tinyurl.com/borwnjy" rel="nofollow">http://tinyurl.com/borwnjy</a>

Yeah, that is in the thread for sharing Roll20 screenshots. Concerning background images, right now in Roll20 is a bit of work to center the image correctly and hoping the players to do the same —a bit of work, at least in comparison with the automatic centering and auto-fit of iTabletop concerning not maps, but background images (<a href="http://tinyurl.com/c2k459l" rel="nofollow">http://tinyurl.com/c2k459l</a>). While doing tests about this, I noticed that it would be great to have a similar feature for background images in Roll20.

Sometimes it's too much work to put every location into the system. And creating every location can limit the imaginations of your group. If you only map locations that will be battles, you might find that you always tip your hand as to which locations will be battles. The players may cotton to which encounters should be negotiated and which should be bloody. So you could map every location that will be a battle, and a few more, to keep them guessing. It's especially handy if a location will be used more than once, and there's nothing wrong with designing your plot to trace back to previously-seen places from time to time.

That is good advice, Chirs Fitz. Good game mastering is an art that requires many techniques!

What I'm thinking about doing is having a 'movement' map, a slightly scaled down version that the party moves on as a whole (ala the top-down map in RPG video games, for example), and other, hidden 'battle map' areas that I can drop everyone onto when we have a battle. It lets them roleplay and work on the exploration aspects (especially if I insert puzzles and things that rely on positioning and such). I'm gonna give it a whirl and see how it'll work.

I would recommend having a handful of "generic" battle maps (forest, road, grass, basic dungeon/castle) for random encounters, and some fancier one-time-use maps for locations that advance the story.

Not sure if this has been already commented: Since the Ruler Tool now has Miles (and some of us still wait for more customization regarding measurement units), maps are naturally inclined to be used, as well, as overland area maps. It's fun to assign or create a "party token" or "party symbol" for planning travels across the overland area map in midst of the game session. Obviously the scale and the token itself would be different to the ones corresponding to a tactical battlemap.

Chris Fitz, Another idea, complementary to the earlier that you commented, is to present some map areas barely sketched to the players (with the drawing tools, for instance), so they will not expect a full-blown tactical combat there. The trick is to suddenly make visible (transferring from the GM layer to the Map layer) a completely finished battle map corresponding to the earlier sketch. In that way, players never can be sure by means of metagaming thinking of what is going to happen.

I usually have places that I know will be visited a lot and are likely to see fighting mapped out as well as some generic places too: 2 different Inns, Forest Roads, River bank, ally. I also have been known to actually draw a map up really quickly by hand, scan it in, and throw it up on the table for a fight too. This doesn't happen often but I find it useful especially If I realize that fighting will be happening in a specific place I don't have mapped yet and there is a short break for me to do it. This is basically what I do for my face to face games too though. Have Iconic areas mapped, places that are likely going to be visited a lot and may see fighting, some generic location that fit the setting, and my wet erase battle mat for anything else that might come up. Also overland maps of the area, but to me that one is sort of a given.