Tomb of Annhilation Gears of Hate

[Kai Lae]

Warning: Spoilers possible for ToA, so don't read in if you aren't ok with that.

I'm planning on running ToA coming next year. After looking at the 5th level of the tomb (gears of hate), I'm not sure at all how to, well, represent this in game. Anyone do this before? The map is locked in one orientation and that's a bummer, especially considering that I know that Roll 20 actually allows you to spin the gear orientation in their implementation, which makes things easy.

I'm just talking about how to present this in FGU, not how to play it (which is a different set of challenges as I'm aware). Maybe something with layers? Not super proficient in that sort of stuff.

Suggestions welcome, specifically how you use the "Gears of Hate Mapping" part.

[Zacchaeus]

There are a bunch of maps for each of the rooms in different orientations (Acid 1, 2, 3 Cog 1-4, Rot 1-4). So use those when the PCs are in that room and move the gears.

[Tooting Dog]

Because the cogs are images in FGU, I could not place them on the map. I found some images on the web that I could save as assets, and then I placed them on the battle map and used the visibility function to turn them on and off. I remember the toughest part was resizing the aftermarket images to fit correctly, but once I got it all set, it worked great.

[Kai Lae]

Because the cogs are images in FGU, I could not place them on the map. I found some images on the web that I could save as assets, and then I placed them on the battle map and used the visibility function to turn them on and off. I remember the toughest part was resizing the aftermarket images to fit correctly, but once I got it all set, it worked great.

Can you describe this in more detail? I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "visibility" here. Anything that "worked great" I would like to shamelessly stea...er..copy with permission please.

[Zacchaeus]

Can you describe this in more detail? I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "visibility" here. Anything that "worked great" I would like to shamelessly stea...er..copy with permission please.

When you add a layer to an image the layer has two icons next to it on the image list when you unlock the map. One of these icons makes that layer visible or invisible to players even when the map is shared. The other does a similar thing for the DM. So, I imagine, that what @tooting Dog is saying is that he found images on the web for just those rooms and he dragged these from assets > Images onto the original map and made then all invisible to the players. Then, when the players moved the cogs he made the relevant layers visible which would darw those rooms over the top of the original map, and thus making it look like the rooms have rotated.

[Ecks]

I did something similar and created a layer in the image for each gear orientation. Each layer had line of sight drawn for that gear orientation. Whenever the players rotated the gears I changed which layer and which set of walls were used.

At the time there were issues with multiple layers and line of sight, so when the players changed the gears, I did something like the following to update it:

Stop sharing the map
Hide the layer corresponding with the old gear layout
Disable walls from the old layer
Enable walls on the new layer
Reveal the layer with the new gear layout
Re-share the map

This might not be necessary anymore.

An alternative is to just have a separate image for each gear orientation, but you'll lose any fog of war history when you switch tokens between maps.

[LordEntrails]

If each cog is on its own layer, and the LOS for each cog is on the same layer. Can't you just rotate the layer with the drag handles?

[Tooting Dog]

Can you describe this in more detail? I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "visibility" here. Anything that "worked great" I would like to shamelessly stea...er..copy with permission please.

It's been over two years since I did this, but yeah, Zach seems to explain it spot on. Back when I did it, the visibility button was a toggle that cycled through every option; now, they have broken it out to DM only and Players.

I can't remember how many images it was, but I stacked them as layers for each cog and its orientation and would turn the one they were on not to be visible and turned the one they were now on to be visible. I don't really know a better way to explain it. Of course, I had to have really good labels so I knew which cog to make visible and which one to hide. But you need to find images you can save as Assets so that you can then drag them onto your map.