Scenes or Whole Map with Mask

[geewaagh]

Hey all,

From a dungeon crawl perspective, I am torn. Do I narrate the dungeon (you see a passage open up to a larger dim lit room with a door to the north and to the east....what do you do?" or advance tokens on a map using the mask (aka FOW). From a mini battle perspective, we use tokens on squares. In the first example, I would load an encounter map when there was an encounter during narration.

What do you think? Whole map FOG vs narrate with battle maps?

[Draca]

Both, narrate until you need to use the map , then open up what they have explored and can see once an event takes place.
The map will also provide you with those lovely little story pins to help keep everything moving smoothly.

[Nickademus]

My style may be different than most, but I recommend the third option: both at the same time.

I find it is easier for players to stay focused and understand the layout of something if a map is used. I recommend having a map (even if it is just one drawn in FG) to give people a visual of directions and distances.

But also narrate the entire time. The map only gives one of five sense, and only part of that. As they are traveling, tell them what their characters see, hear, smell, even taste or feel as they wander.

The map alone can be boring, but using descriptive terms for three to five senses while they explore will add a level of atmosphere and you'll still provide your players with a good point of reference for the layout of the area.

[damned]

Some maps will work really well with the players making every move on the map while others - especially old school D&D maps with tonnes of stupid long corridors etc - can really suck if you try to do everything on the map.
Mix it up - always use the map where tactics come into play - avoid interacting with the map if its not aiding the atmosphere.

[Larac]

Also remember with shift key held you can unmask any shape.

[Nickademus]

And Ctrl remasks.
And Ctrl+Shift remasks any shape.

[geewaagh]

great replies all! Thanks for the input!

[geewaagh]

Both, narrate until you need to use the map , then open up what they have explored and can see once an event takes place.
The map will also provide you with those lovely little story pins to help keep everything moving smoothly.

I like the idea of avoid the constant unmasking as the player move, but this might just do the trick. If I am understanding you correctly, you would narrate the dungeon until an encounter takes place, then reveal the all the explored area of the maps once an area is needed. Meaning once a combat is started.

[damned]

I like the idea of avoid the constant unmasking as the player move, but this might just do the trick. If I am understanding you correctly, you would narrate the dungeon until an encounter takes place, then reveal the all the explored area of the maps once an area is needed. Meaning once a combat is started.

I still unmask as they go i just dont have the players have to move their tokens every single turn in between rooms.
i still like to unmask as they go because they might notice something in the shape of the corridor etc that encourages them to investigate...

[Draca]

Yep , thats what im planning to do with a mega dungeon im going to run , especially since my map has a tendency to show the locations of traps and such.
Narrate the hallways and the like then when the fit hits the shan , reveal all the areas they have been to along with the current room.
Have the players arrange a standard marching order for a 5 foot and 10 foot corridor including who is in front ect and the amount of spacing they will keep. ( This can be set up easily on the party tracker map for easy reference.

[Mirloc]

I narrate the dungeon, but have maps for encounters and maps of the world and continents.

My personal maps are kept on my desktop, but not in Fantasy Grounds. Like Draca, I have a small "map" set up for marching order based on the environment (dungeon, wilderness, caverns, etc). I prefer simplicity over the complexity of setting up masking. For me, I just feel like the whole revealing part was just too much work for the result. I do remember in the old days of pen & paper that we would be told what we could see, and we did our best to map those elements out manually.

[Xorn]

I use all four styles myself--sometimes it's straight TotM (especially for random encounters and such). Other times I just have an encounter map that I load unmasked, where they would reasonably know where everything is. Then there's times I have a full map that I unmask as we go--I leave tokens unlocked then, but they aren't really moving their tokens around until they start interacting with stuff and it matters where everyone is standing--or they'll just move the "leader" token and assume the rest are in marching order. The final method which I just started doing after Griogre talked about it, is leaving the map masked and using draw tools to draw the map as we go by tracing. I do this when I don't really have a good player version of the map, or sometimes just for that old-school feeling!