A Question about stacking maps

[merkvah]

WARNING: Minor Curse of Strahd spoilers below.

A couple of years ago I was running a party through the Death House, the introductory mission for Curse of Strahd, and I got the idea to cut out each floor of the mansion and stack them. That way, when the party got to the stairs and went up, for example, i could just make the higher layer visible, and they could change floors without changing maps. I also wanted to use the second version of each floor, the one where the house is on fire and trying to kill the players as they are fleeing from the thing in the basement, the same way... so they could stay on the same map, in the same place, and explore the house.

What I found was that they explored the first floor thoroughly, and then when they went up to the second floor (the maps were stacked, the upper floors hidden) they had the black and white vision of everything on the second floor. This is because, apparently, vision is its own layer. They could see black and white vision of the whole second floor.

I fixed this by making different maps for each floor, but it had always bugged me that I couldn't do it this way. Then, a couple of months ago, I got invited to play in a Vaesen campaign with a friend who was using Foundry VTT, and it accomplished the multi-layer trick. Is it possible to add something like that to FGU? Or should we just keep using different maps?

many thanks,

[pindercarl]

WARNING: Minor Curse of Strahd spoilers below.

A couple of years ago I was running a party through the Death House, the introductory mission for Curse of Strahd, and I got the idea to cut out each floor of the mansion and stack them. That way, when the party got to the stairs and went up, for example, i could just make the higher layer visible, and they could change floors without changing maps. I also wanted to use the second version of each floor, the one where the house is on fire and trying to kill the players as they are fleeing from the thing in the basement, the same way... so they could stay on the same map, in the same place, and explore the house.

What I found was that they explored the first floor thoroughly, and then when they went up to the second floor (the maps were stacked, the upper floors hidden) they had the black and white vision of everything on the second floor. This is because, apparently, vision is its own layer. They could see black and white vision of the whole second floor.

I fixed this by making different maps for each floor, but it had always bugged me that I couldn't do it this way. Then, a couple of months ago, I got invited to play in a Vaesen campaign with a friend who was using Foundry VTT, and it accomplished the multi-layer trick. Is it possible to add something like that to FGU? Or should we just keep using different maps?

many thanks,

What you're seeing is that the fog-of-war (showing the explored areas of the map) is revealing "new" areas because they overlap previously explored floors. For now, the best practice is, when possible, to put each floor of the map on a different part of the same image. That way tokens do not need to be moved from map to map when exploring. Tokens can be "shift-dragged" without revealing anything to the player until the token is dropped. This may not be advisable for large maps. While support for multi-layer maps is not currently being worked on, it is tangential to features actively in development and there have been discussions about this topic.

[merkvah]

Thank you!! I appreciate your time!!

[LordEntrails]

You can do it, but as Moon says, FoW will give you funny after images. You have to reset FOW when you change levels, and you have to make sure you have lighting and LOS walls on each layer appropriately. IMO, Moon's suggestion is the better one. Esp. when you have balconies and things.

[Zacchaeus]

You can do it, but as Moon says, FoW will give you funny after images. You have to reset FOW when you change levels, and you have to make sure you have lighting and LOS walls on each layer appropriately. IMO, Moon's suggestion is the better one. Esp. when you have balconies and things.

@pindercarl and @Moon Wizard aren't the same person you know :)

[LordEntrails]

@pindercarl and @Moon Wizard aren't the same person you know :)
Are you sure? ;)
Have you ever seen them in the same place at the same time? And photos don't count.

[pindercarl]

Are you sure? ;)
Have you ever seen them in the same place at the same time? And photos don't count.

Philip has seen us both in the same room at the same time.

[Zacchaeus]

Are you sure? ;)
Have you ever seen them in the same place at the same time? And photos don't count.

I have and I do have the photos :D

[Trenloe]

I have and I do have the photos :D
I know those photos - please don't show them!

;)

[johnecc]

Do you proof they are not AI generated?

[LordEntrails]

So, the take away is not that John and Carl are the same person, but rather that John, Carl, and Phillip are the same person!

[Dakadin]

I've at least seen 3 separate people in separate videos claiming to be them but that doesn't disprove your point! ;)