Tower of Mouths, original design by Matt Finch
Of the many minor experiments I built into the first Grimmsgate session last night, one was using Hangout screenshare along with gimp to do fog of war reveal of the dungeon map.
Overall, I was pretty satisfied with how that worked, though it did require preparing a separate map beforehand without room numbers or hidden features (such as secret doors).
A side benefit of this approach, compared to something like Twiddla, is that the layered and partially revealed map can be saved in native Gimp format, thus preserving the last state of fog of war reveal.
No redrawing will be necessary during the next session.
I gather you can do something similar with Roll 20 (though I’m not sure about state saving). I kind of like the modularity of the approach that I used though, given that I didn’t need to learn anything new or test any software that I wasn’t already using.
Other minor downsides to this approach:
- Unlike with Twiddla, players can’t make marks on the map.
- Screenshare replaces referee video, which decreases interpersonal interaction slightly.
- Erasing fog of war requires care to not accidentally reveal extra info.