Player Mapping

Hello Gamer Nation! I am brand-spanking new to Roll20 so forgive me if this question is obvious: one of the things I love about tabletop is player mapping. To quote Monte Cook: "I think it's just an invaluable tool that enhances game play. It allows the players to feel like they're really exploring the unknown. If the DM just hands them a map, there's less an air of mystery. Plus, sometimes it's fun to incorporate tricks into the mix like teleporters or shifting walls that can make having a reliable map a challenge." How do you achieve player mapping in Roll20 where you're throwing the map down for them to see? -Nathaniel

Welp, using the Fog of Battle stuff as the GM allows you to reveal parts of it and hide it again so your players have to map it themselves if they want anything reliable. That's a basic feature available to everyone. Another option is making draw their own map as they go along based on your descriptions. As everyone has access to the drawing tools (although not necessairily the back ground layer), this could be easy to do. This way they get the map, but only as well as they made it, and you can add or change things to it as you need to. But it does require you to have your own private copy somewhere as well - a non-shared journal item could work well.

Thanks guys, this answered my question and introduced me to Dynamic Lighting which looks very cool.

You definitely want to go with Dynamic Lighting.

Kristin C. said: It's a bit trickier without Dynamic Lighting, but using the fog of war to uncover only the area the players are currently in forces them to remember in their head where they came from. Supporter and Mentor accounts have access to Dynamic Lighting which blocks line of sight, so it'll hide areas the players aren't in automatically. I was playing Dungeon World a while back where the party was wondering around in a multi level catacomb that used Dynamic Lighting. I had no idea where the hell we were! :) A couple weeks ago I stuck my players in a fairly simple hedge maze with dynamic lighting. (The maze was not one that could be solved with the classic "put one hand on the wall" trick.) One of my players somehow managed to go straight to the center without a single wrong turn as far as I saw. Two other players got lost for nearly half an hour, wandering in circles multiple times. =3

I upgraded to access Dynamic Lighting and I'm totally jazzed to run my first session, however I'm confused about one thing: what is the impact of having Fog of War on or off with Dynamic Lighting?

With Fog of War on, even if the player enters an area where his sight should see he won't as the Fog has priority over Lighting. Most people leave Fog of War off when they have Dynamic Lighting on, as it's a layer of maintenance you don't particularly need to go through. One good use of it though is if something throws a darkness spell that drops light below actual visibility you can use the Fog of War to turn off light in that area.

I find it's also a decent idea to keep Fog of War on in part when you have corridors or tunnels close together... it's extremely easy for players in tight quarters to accidentally (or intentionally.. naughty naughty) drop their token in an area they shouldn't see yet. I usually notice that more in tight crawl-space type areas where the grid spacing doesn't really accommodate fine placement-control without using ALT.

Narrow, tightly spaced areas are the only time I use F.O.W. since I turned on Dynamic Lighting. Thanks Brandon for the suggestion there, F.O.W. would also work for fogs and such.

On the issue of accidental token placement spoiling the fun with dynamic lighting you can use fog or war at the same time as dynamic lighting. I do this on large maps.