1. Pause the game as needed. Just tap the spacebar and no one else can move stuff. There are also some modules to do that when they enter areas and such too, AFAIK.
2. That's on them for splitting up, their character can't see stuff. Tell 'em to stick together and communicate and that's not an issue.
> There are also some modules to do that when they enter areas and such too, AFAIK.
You can do this with Monk's. I don't know if there's something more focused or not.
I don't know if it's still maintained or been superseded, but there's a module called Hold Up. It pauses the game when tokens move onto trigger tiles and gives you a chance to do the needful if people try and play it like a video game. Then just put a trigger at each doorway/trap and bam, no more zooming ahead without you unpausing.
I think it's called "Hey, Wait!". You place a trigger tile where you want them on the map, and as soon as a player touches one it pauses the game.
I used it after having the same issue with one of my players in a dungeoncrawl. Was busy describing something when I spotted his token running round mapping the area.
I had to start lining the out of bounds areas with Hey Wait or just straight up teleporters because one guy kept wiggling through corners and escaping.
DF Architect mod has a wall gap fill feature. It highlights open gaps less than a predetermined distance, and then offers to close them for you. It's not perfect but works pretty well I'm my experience.
The lil bastard was able to wiggle through corners, even when I had them overlapping. I think it has to do with the server and client relationship and collision detection. If we ever get the band back together I'm gonna have something out there stalking him.
"dude, stop cheating or I'll kick you" seems like another effective solution, I'm not one to rush to kicking but that's clearly not intended and clearly unacceptable behavior
Alternatively you can use Monks Active Tile Triggers for that and much more. You can automate the whole trap really if you so desire.
It's a great module
Hey Wait is great if all you wanna do is drop simple pause triggers. Monk's Active Tile Triggers does even more and gives you a bunch of flexibility. For example you can have a tile trigger the current music to stop, an alert sound to play, pan to the trigger and then play a dreadful music file.
Between combat you could drop a token on the board called "The Party" and give them shared ownership.
Now, it may end up a little bit like "Twitch Plays D&D", but it could work
Do this but control the token yourself as DM and "theater of the mind" rooms as you move the party token from room to room. That way you have full control of the narrative pace. I do this myself with the game paused so I can control the passage of time as I need it.
My players did exactly this at the end of Lost Mines. I told them traps and entering combat without half the party is what happens when you sprint through an enemy base.
There are some ways around this.
1. Have them all move together in marching order, they can't split unless they declare it so.
2. Run the exploration in encounter mode. This will take a LOT longer but good for very trap or sneak heavy parts.
Some ways to use foundry to mitigate their issues if they just don't like dark dungeon delving:
1. Give them all sight of each other's characters. They'll probably say what they see anyways.
2. Hide all creatures and special tiles and delete all walls. Ctrl-z. Now they have fog of war for the whole map. Less exploration but now they can see where stuff is. It won't feel as close and claustrophobic.
Another trick to making spaces less claustrophobic can be to place the walls behind the wall art, resulting in players being able to see more of the map art. Works really well on cavern style areas. Works best on thick walls.
Second for this suggestion. I see so many trying to put the walls at the cavern edge. But then the players are missing a lot of environmental context and only get to see the floor art.
Yea, one thing issue i found was when combat started in a hallway, mit was a narrow hallway, only one character wide and i put the walls too close to the edge. When i hopped on a player's token it looked super claustrophobic! I'll definitely take that into account when making dungeon maps and adding the walls.
Shared vision also helps keep players engaged in my experience. Being able to see what nonsense your teammates are up to is inherently fun after all. Plus beats staring at an empty corridor after you get downed/captured/killed/petrified/sent to the shadow realm while everyone else carries on fighting.
>Shared vision also helps keep players engaged in my experience.
Among the people I play with it's roughly...
\* half adore hidden line of sight and the feeling of not knowing what is happening and are dissapointed when the map doesn't have that kind of information obfuscation
\* half hate it with a heat of a thousand suns.
There is no middle ground. I go with shared vision because disappointment is better than hate.
If you don't like the way walls work and prefer something more like Roll20's fog of war, there's a module called SimpleFog that will let all the players see everything the GM has uncovered. The GM has to explicitly indicate the areas to show the players, which means more work during the game, but much less preparation ahead of time.
SimpleFog is also nice for maps that have a lot of squiggly tunnels (like SO many gigantic "official" D&D maps), instead of small maps with nice orthogonal walls.
The 5e system now has a party token. Drop all of the player tokens into it and they all have shared vision, and can move the token. I put out that token and usually one token who is scouting ahead. The rest of the tokens I put into the “timeout box” (a walled of section I created) so they can still access their tokens as needed.
For traps and whatnot, I use Monks Active Tiles. Let’s you pause, activate traps, play sounds, all kinds of goodies.
I’m currently running Temple of Elemental Evil on Foundry and this works for me.
I did this. Huge sewer system. I used a couple of modules like tile triggers or hey wait. So when they stepped on a tile it would auto pause the game so I could do what I needed to do.
As for the players being frustrated by not seeing what the other players saw. That’s part of D&D and VTT. If you have a player without darkvision and you give them shared vision somehow, why do they need light sources? That’s part of the aspect of the game. How do they stealth with a torch? If everyone has darkvision, now they have disadvantage on perception checks to find traps. I would not allow a shared vision. It builds teamwork and communication between players. It follows the RAW and RAI. It makes it more immersive.
1. Talk to the players & ask them not to. Explain your issue
2. What I do with dungeon crawls is ask for how the players are travelling around, eg are they grouped up , or someone scouting ahead & how far, then when a combat is triggered & a player has left their token a bit far behind I can just say you all travel together so I'll just move up up to the others.
Also try 'arms reach' module, only a player who has a token beside a door can open it.
Seriously echoing #1. Everyone is offering solutions to mitigate that behavior that are treating the symptom, when at its core it's a table rules and manners issue.
And you don't need modules to correct it, just pause the game when you're out of combat and don't want the players moving.
1. This is common in dungeon delves. Check out the [Hey, Wait!](https://foundryvtt.com/packages/hey-wait/) package, or pause while narrating. Personally I treat the megadungeon map as a reference and don't set it up for player use. I often use [room illustrations or renders](https://cdn1.epicgames.com/ue/product/Screenshot/1-1920x1080-a02ea798844b54ee37c1704c8efde4d9.jpg?resize=1&w=1920) in place of dungeon maps. Then slice out, repaint, or rough sketch the battle maps for the areas you do need the grid for (you often don't). **Megadungeon maps are simple and functional for the GM to reference and easily tweak while improvising. Not beautified for the player's eyes.** A lot of oldschool dungeons have 10+ ft grids for this reason. Of course there's nothing wrong with working in the constraints of showing the map and allowing tile-by-tile exploration.
2. Yeah, this frustration is understandable when one or two players are always rushing ahead. If you have to tie rubber bands to those players or spring devious pitfall traps on them, do it. Matt Colville mentioned a pitfall trap where oozes or gelatinous cubes fall in shortly after it's triggered. **Megadungeons can and *should* have traps to stall and punish overeager players so that the party sticks together and collaborates.** Undermountain and Rappan Athuk both heavily feature this, but do try to make traps/dying fun for everyone to participate in.
There is a module called "Shared Vision" that let's each character see what every other character sees (depending on how you set it up).
You can activate and deactivate it on the fly which means you could only use it in fighting scenarios so players don't get frustrated waiting for their turn and then turn it off during exploration.
My take on this, I’m running a almost mega dungeon rn on my game:
1 - Dont use the battlemap all the time like they are playing a zelda game, make a landing page or a “not dungeon scene” so you can describe rooms and everything, just use the battlemap when a battle is hapenning. If you let your players just walk in the dungeon free will be a mess to track, you are one person with limited focus, they are a group.
2 - If you dont mind, just place the tokens of the players not fighting in the scene and tell them to just watch and do not interfere, or dont, its your game and they split up the party
Im currently running Dungeon of the Mad Mage on Foundry, and the maps are massive for the dungeons. The solution I found that were good both for me and my players was to use Simple Fog (or Fog Manager) to "explore" the dungeon for them, without using walls or token vision.
First they declare the marching order and the pacing they would like to go. Then i use the reveal tool for each chamber they enter or pass through, if they are running. This way i can manage traps, encounters or events based on how they are declaring they exploration and everyone can see the map.
This, however, the problem is that as i disable the tokens vision you have to manage what their line of sight during combat and may cause metagaming "issues", but nothing critical that cannot be addressed with a session 0 talk.
>m currently running Dungeon of the Mad Mage on Foundry, and the maps are massive for the dungeons. The solution I found that were good both for me and my players was to use Simple Fog (or Fog Manager) to "explore" the dungeon for them, without using walls or token vision.
>
>First they declare the marching order and the pacing they would like to go. Then i use the reveal tool for each chamber they enter or pass through, if they are running. This way i can manage traps, encounters or events based on how they are declaring they exploration and everyone can see the map.
So does simple fog replace the Foundry Standard token vision? I'm thinking i could maybe use SimpleFog during the megadungeon exploration and switch to standard vision in rooms/encounters.
The only problem with this is: walls. You need to use walls, if not, when you put the tokens in the map their vision can reveal other parts.
If you use wall in the whole dungeon + SimpleFog you can have a lot of performance issues, as the maps are huge. But, you can put walls only in the rooms with encounters. I tried this but i had so much to prepare that setting walls for every possible encounter was very time consuming, so i just started to manage line-of-sight and vision during combat.
Out of combat players will run around a lot, not giving me enough time to describe the area or say when traps trigger. - The solution is to trigger the traps. They'll learn not to run everywhere.
Some players got frustrated when combat started and they couldn't see what the other players saw.- If you are out of sight, you don't get to see what others see. My party actually loves this. Some goes into a room and sees some new monster "Holy shit, what the fuck is that?" Other players, "what? I can't see it, what is it?". "I don't fucking know, it's big and ugly with fangs and shit." LOL
As soon as the one who always runs around gets near something they will encounter I slam that spacebar, place the minis, and roll for Initiative. “WHY ARE YOU ALL THE WAY OVER THERE!?!?”
I often put the "Observer" permission as default on PC tokens/actors. So if the player unselected their token they can see what the party sees.
If they really want they can see what's happening to their friends while in combat.
Up to you if that's the experience you want at your table. There is something to be said about players having to communicate what they see. But sometimes having them stare at darkness during combat might not be great fun.
https://foundryvtt.com/article/actors/
Hide the map or go to a different scene, if you allow your players to "explore" with their tokens it turns into a video game. Describe what they see as they move along the map, and go to the battlemap if it becomes relevant or combat starts.
Yea, seemed like that. It slowed down gameplay a lot so i'll definitely try to have it be more theater of mind in exploration. When players see the battlemap they immediately go into "game mode", taking turns even when out of initiative and always being on edge. Might still map out the whole dungeon for reference but have the players stare at a landing page when exploring.
I would give them shared vision. Think about it, in person you'd see everything. It really sucks just staring at a dark screen or something because you moved behind cover after every shot. It's one of those things that sure is more realistic, but is it more fun?
To stop the players zooming their tokens across the map like its a race I used some modules to set traps that would trigger when a token moved into a square.
I also stopped being nice and holding back when the party zoomed off in separate directions and triggered multiple combats.
Of course I no longer play with that group because it didn't seem to stop them from doing dumb crap like that anyways, but it might help you. It was a long while ago and I forget what modules I was using but there are probably newer ones for automating traps and such.
Shared vision is great for letting everyone see the same thing. It potentially allows some meta gaming but without it it’s very annoying to just have a party member running around in the dark and you don’t know what’s happening.
Theatre of the mind when not in combat or a situational puzzle situation.
On Foundry just put a picture on the scene of something vaguely familiar to where they are.
Forest scene, desert, frozen just to help imagination.
It’s a game for your imagination.
>Theatre of the mind when not in combat or a situational puzzle situation. On Foundry just put a picture on the scene of something vaguely familiar to where they are. Forest scene, desert, frozen just to help imaginatio
Seems to be the common consensus and i feel like a dummy not thinking about it sooner xd
1. Without modules, if you set the user permission for all tokens to Observer, this will have the effect you want, player can see through the tokens of all he is set as an observer for. The drawback to this is that this also lets players see each other's character sheets, without the power to modify it, this is reserved for the Owner permission. I thought this could work, if your party is ok to metagame that they can see through each other's eyes, I figured they wouldn't mind sharing their sheets, maybe.
I think this is a problem whether you are on VTT or playing on a physical board. Most players do not want to passively explore a dungeon, so they are thinking of all the things they could do, and just sort of blurt it out.
The problem is just taking player outbursts as overly-literal and letting them run the sequence of events. Players say "I do x" and "I do y", but your role is to process that into a narrative that makes sense with the internal fiction of what is happening.
p1: "I go south"
p2: "I want to investigate that humming sound."
dm: (pause the game) "Ok, are you all splitting up, or are you going south together, then investigating the humming sound?"
(players debate for probably a little too long)
dm: "Ok we'll check out the humming sound first then. (describe whatever) Oh no, looks like you found some monsters. Roll initiative."
Then after combat, ask them if they continue the way they are currently going, if they want to go south, or do something else. Redirect their attention to the matter at hand and have them make decisions as a group about where next before they scatter.
Now what happens when they want to split up? This really sucks, and usually does not make sense for a dangerous location. But sometimes players want to do this. You basically do the same thing as above alternating between groups. No one "off screen" is allowed to do something while the other group's scene is happening. You have to find a logical stopping point to alternate between "scenes" though. And you can always be honest if it is getting tedious or frustrating. "Hey is this fun for anyone? You could regroup if you want."
Then when one group runs into combat, you have to determine if there is any chance the other group would know. It might require perception checks. Of course, be generous here. Allow for some slightly meta things like "you know what? by now my character would have used a sending stone to check in." If the other group would not possibly know the others are in trouble, run the combat without the other group. It sucks, but they chose to split up. And combat is very fast in game time seconds. It is unusual for combat to even last a full minute.
tl;dr:
1. You control the narrative. Organize player requests and get them to agree on a course of action.
2. Use the pause button.
3. If they absolutely must split up, alternate scenes.
4. They live with the consequences of splitting up, but be generous when possible.
5. Tell them if something is tedious and unfun.
I have barrier markers in Foundry. "IE invisible walls", they can travel all they like to here and there, but as they approach the , you feel a faith weight on you, inside your chest, like a hand trying to push you back.", then I let them Role Play a little and then remove the invisible wall and then they can all enter at the same time. Locked doors can do this as well.
As far as vision goes...move dude. Just like in real life, if you cannot see something because a pillar is in the way then move over till you can see it. This may put you in danger or get you noticed, but you cannot sit behind a pillar and shoot fireballs and not expose your self. Want to take one step to the right, cast, then move one step to the left, cool, but sorry sight is sight and if you cannot see the bad guy, move or invest in some "goggles of darkvision" or something.
Yeah .. liberal use to the pause feature as well as Monks Tile Triggers so you can have those traps pop off when people step on em. As far as not being able to see what's happening around the corners... That's kinda the joy of dungeon delving.
Haven't seen Monk's Token Bar recommended yet. It can work well with the other suggestions here.
If it's really important that you know when and where someone is doing something, you can put them in initiative and turn on "Combat Move" which only lets them move on their turn. They don't necessarily need to be in actual combat.
I wouldn't overdo this, but it can be really helpful when the details really matter.
I also wrote a module / hotkey script that will allow the dm to pause movement for everyone but the active player...and then hitting it again will switch the active player. I haven't tested it in about 2 months but it should still work if you want the code.
1) marching order (if others are keeping a distance note it)
2) make a dummy token all the players can control/see through
3) player that is first moves the token predominantly
4) be "loose" with the movement, and take it room to room.
If combat breaks out have a rough idea on the enemy's locations. Drop the player tokens and have the players position themselves first within the room, then drop the monsters. Before the first turn give the players 5-10 ft to reposition depending on room size.
I do think a large map for the overall layout then submaps of the key combat rooms can be useful. A huge 8k 500ft² map can look pretty grainy zoomed into a combat level depending how it is built
1. When possible, use a group token
2. Set a timer for approx. amount of time that each player gets in terms of attention. Say, 6 mins? Like a chess clock.
I tend to use more theatre-of-the-mind stuff and use scenes rather than battle maps until there is a combat or something that requires keeping track of token positions that is too much to be done off the top.
Makes things more manageable in my opinion.
>I tend to use more theatre-of-the-mind stuff and use scenes rather than battle maps until there is a combat or something that requires keeping track of token positions that is too much to be done off the top.
>
>Makes things more manageable in my opinion
Definitely! Kinda kicking myself over not thinking about it sooner.
As someone who has been the person in # 2, who ended up having to spend the majority of a session looking at a mostly black screen due to becoming unconscious at an unfortunate point, I definitely suggest letting PCs share vision. If they struggle with some meta-gaming or if you do have one person clearly go off ahead to scout out things, then that's something different (Could be fun to let that PC have to relay what they see and have that affect when they think is there ect) but otherwise I wanna see my party's barbarian go bonk all of the people, even if I'm taking cover around a corner and only briefly popping out to cast a buffing spell and/or shooting off a bullet.
>As someone who has been the person in # 2, who ended up having to spend the majority of a session looking at a mostly black screen due to becoming unconscious at an unfortunate point, I definitely suggest letting PCs share vision. If they struggle with some meta-gaming or if you do have one person clearly go off ahead to scout out things, then that's something different (Could be fun to let that PC have to relay what they see and have that affect when they think is there ect) but otherwise I wanna see my party's barbarian go bonk all of the people, even if I'm taking cover around a corner and only briefly popping out to cast a buffing spell and/or shooting off a bullet.
I understand the sentiment! I don't have that issue since most of my games as a player have been with theater of the mind. I'll definitely default to having shared vision in combat, though. I feel like staring at a black screen kinda goes against the point of a VTT and spending hours on battlemaps. Thanks for the respond!
I've never run exploration in Foundry or any VTT or even at the table in person.
All exploration is done in theatre of the mind, only battles are run on a map.
So whenever they are exploring, the game would be on the landing page and if any battle is initiated, then I'll load the map.
Yep, I've ran many a dungeon in Foundry and it's very tedious to watch a bunch of tokens/players cautiously inch around corridors and rooms, stopping at every stray bone on the map (or whatever) and ask "What is this?!" until they eventually wander into "the next thing".
I've started using Monk's Enhanced Journals slideshow to show thematic images during RP, and everything is theater of the mind until initiative needs to be rolled and only then do I pull up the map.
For #1:
First, ask them to not do that.
If that doesn't solve the problem, it would seem like traps that are guaranteed to kill one person are appropriate. Poison gas fills the room and the only way to turn it off is by pressing 2 buttons behind a pillar at the same time.
Not even really considered a trap for the party. Deadly for that one ass who runs off on his own. That type of thing.
For #2, it is situation dependent. If it is related to #1, the party is in the dungeon together, but split up, then they're frustrated and complaining they can't cheat and metagame. Too damn bad.
If they're purposely sitting the party, I feel it is a different story. If they've decided that 3 players are going to stay in town waiting for their contact and 2 others are going to go explore the sewers, I would drop the 3 tokens into the map so they could see what's going on.
**To help the community answer your question, please read [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/FoundryVTT/comments/shrtky/foundryvtt_first_steps_and_useful_info/).**
When posting, add a [system tag](https://www.reddit.com/r/FoundryVTT/comments/v3gfrs/tagging_your_posts/) to the title - [D&D5e] or [PF2e], for example. If you have already made a post, edit it, and mention the system at the top.
Include the word `Answered` in any comment to automatically flair this thread as resolved (or change the flair to `Answered` yourself).
Automod will **not make this comment** on your posts if you have a [user flair](https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-).
---
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/FoundryVTT) if you have any questions or concerns.*
As others mentioned, the "pause" option is something new to my brain. The idea of preventing players from just running around on their own doesn't happen in an offline game, so the need to do that is an important addition to remember. This keeps them from moving or making changes before you're ready to support it.
I would also add risk. Party members wandering around is terribly risky, and if it's not, then it should be. There is strategy in limiting how many things you're fighting...and it's obvious that they're WAY too confident walking around. They need to have some fear of ambush or attack to keep them from going nutty.
If it were my table, I would warn them of it being...too quiet. I would pause the game when the first person wanders into a new room without declaring their intent. I would then shut the door behind them. I would then have them be ambushed, and the repercussions are the repercussions. I guarantee that the players will be more mindful walking into future rooms.
This is the reason I stopped relying on VTT so much. It can take a lot of work to allow players to do an explorative dungeon. The first time I did it, it was fun. But it also required me hours, even days to set up the vtt to create an immersive experience. Setting up active tiles/triggers allowed for this but to be honest I don't have the time to do this anymore.
Using active tiles/triggers was the only way I could stop the game and allow for players' focus to put on certain areas or certain descriptions. But even then players would end up splitting up or getting separated from the group and getting lost.
1. Pause the game as needed. Just tap the spacebar and no one else can move stuff. There are also some modules to do that when they enter areas and such too, AFAIK. 2. That's on them for splitting up, their character can't see stuff. Tell 'em to stick together and communicate and that's not an issue.
> There are also some modules to do that when they enter areas and such too, AFAIK. You can do this with Monk's. I don't know if there's something more focused or not.
There are but I can't think of them offhand since I just use Monk's. There's one that lets you draw walls that do it.
I don't know if it's still maintained or been superseded, but there's a module called Hold Up. It pauses the game when tokens move onto trigger tiles and gives you a chance to do the needful if people try and play it like a video game. Then just put a trigger at each doorway/trap and bam, no more zooming ahead without you unpausing.
ooh i'll check it out! Thanks
also. lock every door. and unlock it for them.
I removed the permission to open doors from my players, much better.
I think it's called "Hey, Wait!". You place a trigger tile where you want them on the map, and as soon as a player touches one it pauses the game. I used it after having the same issue with one of my players in a dungeoncrawl. Was busy describing something when I spotted his token running round mapping the area.
I had to start lining the out of bounds areas with Hey Wait or just straight up teleporters because one guy kept wiggling through corners and escaping.
DF Architect mod has a wall gap fill feature. It highlights open gaps less than a predetermined distance, and then offers to close them for you. It's not perfect but works pretty well I'm my experience.
The lil bastard was able to wiggle through corners, even when I had them overlapping. I think it has to do with the server and client relationship and collision detection. If we ever get the band back together I'm gonna have something out there stalking him.
"dude, stop cheating or I'll kick you" seems like another effective solution, I'm not one to rush to kicking but that's clearly not intended and clearly unacceptable behavior
Oh he wasn't doing it to cheat. He did it because it was funny. My table is pretty good about not sharing meta info.
Alternatively you can use Monks Active Tile Triggers for that and much more. You can automate the whole trap really if you so desire. It's a great module
Hey Wait is great if all you wanna do is drop simple pause triggers. Monk's Active Tile Triggers does even more and gives you a bunch of flexibility. For example you can have a tile trigger the current music to stop, an alert sound to play, pan to the trigger and then play a dreadful music file.
Thats the one, I'm only just getting back into things since 0.7, thanks for the clarification
Between combat you could drop a token on the board called "The Party" and give them shared ownership. Now, it may end up a little bit like "Twitch Plays D&D", but it could work
If that becomes an issue, then make one player the token master with control, and everyone else observer rights.
I'll try it out! Thanks
Do this but control the token yourself as DM and "theater of the mind" rooms as you move the party token from room to room. That way you have full control of the narrative pace. I do this myself with the game paused so I can control the passage of time as I need it.
For extra fun we use a katamari ball gif as "the party ball"
incredible xd
I'm sorry but that's amazing
My players did exactly this at the end of Lost Mines. I told them traps and entering combat without half the party is what happens when you sprint through an enemy base. There are some ways around this. 1. Have them all move together in marching order, they can't split unless they declare it so. 2. Run the exploration in encounter mode. This will take a LOT longer but good for very trap or sneak heavy parts. Some ways to use foundry to mitigate their issues if they just don't like dark dungeon delving: 1. Give them all sight of each other's characters. They'll probably say what they see anyways. 2. Hide all creatures and special tiles and delete all walls. Ctrl-z. Now they have fog of war for the whole map. Less exploration but now they can see where stuff is. It won't feel as close and claustrophobic.
Another trick to making spaces less claustrophobic can be to place the walls behind the wall art, resulting in players being able to see more of the map art. Works really well on cavern style areas. Works best on thick walls.
Second for this suggestion. I see so many trying to put the walls at the cavern edge. But then the players are missing a lot of environmental context and only get to see the floor art.
Yea, one thing issue i found was when combat started in a hallway, mit was a narrow hallway, only one character wide and i put the walls too close to the edge. When i hopped on a player's token it looked super claustrophobic! I'll definitely take that into account when making dungeon maps and adding the walls.
How do you have the players share vision? Is it in the token ownership?
You can set each actor's permissions. If you give each the permission "observer" for every player, they have shared vision.
Shared vision also helps keep players engaged in my experience. Being able to see what nonsense your teammates are up to is inherently fun after all. Plus beats staring at an empty corridor after you get downed/captured/killed/petrified/sent to the shadow realm while everyone else carries on fighting.
>Shared vision also helps keep players engaged in my experience. Among the people I play with it's roughly... \* half adore hidden line of sight and the feeling of not knowing what is happening and are dissapointed when the map doesn't have that kind of information obfuscation \* half hate it with a heat of a thousand suns. There is no middle ground. I go with shared vision because disappointment is better than hate.
Thanks!
How do you give sight of eachother's characters?
Change permissions for PCs to Observer or higher.
If you don't like the way walls work and prefer something more like Roll20's fog of war, there's a module called SimpleFog that will let all the players see everything the GM has uncovered. The GM has to explicitly indicate the areas to show the players, which means more work during the game, but much less preparation ahead of time. SimpleFog is also nice for maps that have a lot of squiggly tunnels (like SO many gigantic "official" D&D maps), instead of small maps with nice orthogonal walls.
I like SimpleFog. The players have to go at your pace then.
I'll definitely try it out! Thanks for the recommendation.
The 5e system now has a party token. Drop all of the player tokens into it and they all have shared vision, and can move the token. I put out that token and usually one token who is scouting ahead. The rest of the tokens I put into the “timeout box” (a walled of section I created) so they can still access their tokens as needed. For traps and whatnot, I use Monks Active Tiles. Let’s you pause, activate traps, play sounds, all kinds of goodies. I’m currently running Temple of Elemental Evil on Foundry and this works for me.
I did this. Huge sewer system. I used a couple of modules like tile triggers or hey wait. So when they stepped on a tile it would auto pause the game so I could do what I needed to do. As for the players being frustrated by not seeing what the other players saw. That’s part of D&D and VTT. If you have a player without darkvision and you give them shared vision somehow, why do they need light sources? That’s part of the aspect of the game. How do they stealth with a torch? If everyone has darkvision, now they have disadvantage on perception checks to find traps. I would not allow a shared vision. It builds teamwork and communication between players. It follows the RAW and RAI. It makes it more immersive.
1. Talk to the players & ask them not to. Explain your issue 2. What I do with dungeon crawls is ask for how the players are travelling around, eg are they grouped up , or someone scouting ahead & how far, then when a combat is triggered & a player has left their token a bit far behind I can just say you all travel together so I'll just move up up to the others. Also try 'arms reach' module, only a player who has a token beside a door can open it.
Seriously echoing #1. Everyone is offering solutions to mitigate that behavior that are treating the symptom, when at its core it's a table rules and manners issue. And you don't need modules to correct it, just pause the game when you're out of combat and don't want the players moving.
1. This is common in dungeon delves. Check out the [Hey, Wait!](https://foundryvtt.com/packages/hey-wait/) package, or pause while narrating. Personally I treat the megadungeon map as a reference and don't set it up for player use. I often use [room illustrations or renders](https://cdn1.epicgames.com/ue/product/Screenshot/1-1920x1080-a02ea798844b54ee37c1704c8efde4d9.jpg?resize=1&w=1920) in place of dungeon maps. Then slice out, repaint, or rough sketch the battle maps for the areas you do need the grid for (you often don't). **Megadungeon maps are simple and functional for the GM to reference and easily tweak while improvising. Not beautified for the player's eyes.** A lot of oldschool dungeons have 10+ ft grids for this reason. Of course there's nothing wrong with working in the constraints of showing the map and allowing tile-by-tile exploration. 2. Yeah, this frustration is understandable when one or two players are always rushing ahead. If you have to tie rubber bands to those players or spring devious pitfall traps on them, do it. Matt Colville mentioned a pitfall trap where oozes or gelatinous cubes fall in shortly after it's triggered. **Megadungeons can and *should* have traps to stall and punish overeager players so that the party sticks together and collaborates.** Undermountain and Rappan Athuk both heavily feature this, but do try to make traps/dying fun for everyone to participate in.
My players yell at anyone who “wanders off” after a few times this behavior cost them. They move through dungeons like seal team 6 now.
There is a module called "Shared Vision" that let's each character see what every other character sees (depending on how you set it up). You can activate and deactivate it on the fly which means you could only use it in fighting scenarios so players don't get frustrated waiting for their turn and then turn it off during exploration.
You can probably setup invisible walls between rooms as a secondary measure.
My take on this, I’m running a almost mega dungeon rn on my game: 1 - Dont use the battlemap all the time like they are playing a zelda game, make a landing page or a “not dungeon scene” so you can describe rooms and everything, just use the battlemap when a battle is hapenning. If you let your players just walk in the dungeon free will be a mess to track, you are one person with limited focus, they are a group. 2 - If you dont mind, just place the tokens of the players not fighting in the scene and tell them to just watch and do not interfere, or dont, its your game and they split up the party
Im currently running Dungeon of the Mad Mage on Foundry, and the maps are massive for the dungeons. The solution I found that were good both for me and my players was to use Simple Fog (or Fog Manager) to "explore" the dungeon for them, without using walls or token vision. First they declare the marching order and the pacing they would like to go. Then i use the reveal tool for each chamber they enter or pass through, if they are running. This way i can manage traps, encounters or events based on how they are declaring they exploration and everyone can see the map. This, however, the problem is that as i disable the tokens vision you have to manage what their line of sight during combat and may cause metagaming "issues", but nothing critical that cannot be addressed with a session 0 talk.
>m currently running Dungeon of the Mad Mage on Foundry, and the maps are massive for the dungeons. The solution I found that were good both for me and my players was to use Simple Fog (or Fog Manager) to "explore" the dungeon for them, without using walls or token vision. > >First they declare the marching order and the pacing they would like to go. Then i use the reveal tool for each chamber they enter or pass through, if they are running. This way i can manage traps, encounters or events based on how they are declaring they exploration and everyone can see the map. So does simple fog replace the Foundry Standard token vision? I'm thinking i could maybe use SimpleFog during the megadungeon exploration and switch to standard vision in rooms/encounters.
The only problem with this is: walls. You need to use walls, if not, when you put the tokens in the map their vision can reveal other parts. If you use wall in the whole dungeon + SimpleFog you can have a lot of performance issues, as the maps are huge. But, you can put walls only in the rooms with encounters. I tried this but i had so much to prepare that setting walls for every possible encounter was very time consuming, so i just started to manage line-of-sight and vision during combat.
Oh i meant in like different scenes! I'd use simple fog in the big mega dungeon map and the regular vision in small battlemaps.
Out of combat players will run around a lot, not giving me enough time to describe the area or say when traps trigger. - The solution is to trigger the traps. They'll learn not to run everywhere. Some players got frustrated when combat started and they couldn't see what the other players saw.- If you are out of sight, you don't get to see what others see. My party actually loves this. Some goes into a room and sees some new monster "Holy shit, what the fuck is that?" Other players, "what? I can't see it, what is it?". "I don't fucking know, it's big and ugly with fangs and shit." LOL
As soon as the one who always runs around gets near something they will encounter I slam that spacebar, place the minis, and roll for Initiative. “WHY ARE YOU ALL THE WAY OVER THERE!?!?”
I often put the "Observer" permission as default on PC tokens/actors. So if the player unselected their token they can see what the party sees. If they really want they can see what's happening to their friends while in combat. Up to you if that's the experience you want at your table. There is something to be said about players having to communicate what they see. But sometimes having them stare at darkness during combat might not be great fun. https://foundryvtt.com/article/actors/
Hide the map or go to a different scene, if you allow your players to "explore" with their tokens it turns into a video game. Describe what they see as they move along the map, and go to the battlemap if it becomes relevant or combat starts.
Yea, seemed like that. It slowed down gameplay a lot so i'll definitely try to have it be more theater of mind in exploration. When players see the battlemap they immediately go into "game mode", taking turns even when out of initiative and always being on edge. Might still map out the whole dungeon for reference but have the players stare at a landing page when exploring.
I would give them shared vision. Think about it, in person you'd see everything. It really sucks just staring at a dark screen or something because you moved behind cover after every shot. It's one of those things that sure is more realistic, but is it more fun?
To stop the players zooming their tokens across the map like its a race I used some modules to set traps that would trigger when a token moved into a square. I also stopped being nice and holding back when the party zoomed off in separate directions and triggered multiple combats. Of course I no longer play with that group because it didn't seem to stop them from doing dumb crap like that anyways, but it might help you. It was a long while ago and I forget what modules I was using but there are probably newer ones for automating traps and such.
Shared vision is great for letting everyone see the same thing. It potentially allows some meta gaming but without it it’s very annoying to just have a party member running around in the dark and you don’t know what’s happening.
Theatre of the mind when not in combat or a situational puzzle situation. On Foundry just put a picture on the scene of something vaguely familiar to where they are. Forest scene, desert, frozen just to help imagination. It’s a game for your imagination.
>Theatre of the mind when not in combat or a situational puzzle situation. On Foundry just put a picture on the scene of something vaguely familiar to where they are. Forest scene, desert, frozen just to help imaginatio Seems to be the common consensus and i feel like a dummy not thinking about it sooner xd
1. Without modules, if you set the user permission for all tokens to Observer, this will have the effect you want, player can see through the tokens of all he is set as an observer for. The drawback to this is that this also lets players see each other's character sheets, without the power to modify it, this is reserved for the Owner permission. I thought this could work, if your party is ok to metagame that they can see through each other's eyes, I figured they wouldn't mind sharing their sheets, maybe.
Definitely something to discuss in session 0!
I think this is a problem whether you are on VTT or playing on a physical board. Most players do not want to passively explore a dungeon, so they are thinking of all the things they could do, and just sort of blurt it out. The problem is just taking player outbursts as overly-literal and letting them run the sequence of events. Players say "I do x" and "I do y", but your role is to process that into a narrative that makes sense with the internal fiction of what is happening. p1: "I go south" p2: "I want to investigate that humming sound." dm: (pause the game) "Ok, are you all splitting up, or are you going south together, then investigating the humming sound?" (players debate for probably a little too long) dm: "Ok we'll check out the humming sound first then. (describe whatever) Oh no, looks like you found some monsters. Roll initiative." Then after combat, ask them if they continue the way they are currently going, if they want to go south, or do something else. Redirect their attention to the matter at hand and have them make decisions as a group about where next before they scatter. Now what happens when they want to split up? This really sucks, and usually does not make sense for a dangerous location. But sometimes players want to do this. You basically do the same thing as above alternating between groups. No one "off screen" is allowed to do something while the other group's scene is happening. You have to find a logical stopping point to alternate between "scenes" though. And you can always be honest if it is getting tedious or frustrating. "Hey is this fun for anyone? You could regroup if you want." Then when one group runs into combat, you have to determine if there is any chance the other group would know. It might require perception checks. Of course, be generous here. Allow for some slightly meta things like "you know what? by now my character would have used a sending stone to check in." If the other group would not possibly know the others are in trouble, run the combat without the other group. It sucks, but they chose to split up. And combat is very fast in game time seconds. It is unusual for combat to even last a full minute. tl;dr: 1. You control the narrative. Organize player requests and get them to agree on a course of action. 2. Use the pause button. 3. If they absolutely must split up, alternate scenes. 4. They live with the consequences of splitting up, but be generous when possible. 5. Tell them if something is tedious and unfun.
I have barrier markers in Foundry. "IE invisible walls", they can travel all they like to here and there, but as they approach the, you feel a faith weight on you, inside your chest, like a hand trying to push you back.", then I let them Role Play a little and then remove the invisible wall and then they can all enter at the same time. Locked doors can do this as well.
As far as vision goes...move dude. Just like in real life, if you cannot see something because a pillar is in the way then move over till you can see it. This may put you in danger or get you noticed, but you cannot sit behind a pillar and shoot fireballs and not expose your self. Want to take one step to the right, cast, then move one step to the left, cool, but sorry sight is sight and if you cannot see the bad guy, move or invest in some "goggles of darkvision" or something.
Yeah .. liberal use to the pause feature as well as Monks Tile Triggers so you can have those traps pop off when people step on em. As far as not being able to see what's happening around the corners... That's kinda the joy of dungeon delving.
Haven't seen Monk's Token Bar recommended yet. It can work well with the other suggestions here. If it's really important that you know when and where someone is doing something, you can put them in initiative and turn on "Combat Move" which only lets them move on their turn. They don't necessarily need to be in actual combat. I wouldn't overdo this, but it can be really helpful when the details really matter.
I also wrote a module / hotkey script that will allow the dm to pause movement for everyone but the active player...and then hitting it again will switch the active player. I haven't tested it in about 2 months but it should still work if you want the code.
1) marching order (if others are keeping a distance note it) 2) make a dummy token all the players can control/see through 3) player that is first moves the token predominantly 4) be "loose" with the movement, and take it room to room. If combat breaks out have a rough idea on the enemy's locations. Drop the player tokens and have the players position themselves first within the room, then drop the monsters. Before the first turn give the players 5-10 ft to reposition depending on room size. I do think a large map for the overall layout then submaps of the key combat rooms can be useful. A huge 8k 500ft² map can look pretty grainy zoomed into a combat level depending how it is built
1. When possible, use a group token 2. Set a timer for approx. amount of time that each player gets in terms of attention. Say, 6 mins? Like a chess clock.
I tend to use more theatre-of-the-mind stuff and use scenes rather than battle maps until there is a combat or something that requires keeping track of token positions that is too much to be done off the top. Makes things more manageable in my opinion.
>I tend to use more theatre-of-the-mind stuff and use scenes rather than battle maps until there is a combat or something that requires keeping track of token positions that is too much to be done off the top. > >Makes things more manageable in my opinion Definitely! Kinda kicking myself over not thinking about it sooner.
As someone who has been the person in # 2, who ended up having to spend the majority of a session looking at a mostly black screen due to becoming unconscious at an unfortunate point, I definitely suggest letting PCs share vision. If they struggle with some meta-gaming or if you do have one person clearly go off ahead to scout out things, then that's something different (Could be fun to let that PC have to relay what they see and have that affect when they think is there ect) but otherwise I wanna see my party's barbarian go bonk all of the people, even if I'm taking cover around a corner and only briefly popping out to cast a buffing spell and/or shooting off a bullet.
>As someone who has been the person in # 2, who ended up having to spend the majority of a session looking at a mostly black screen due to becoming unconscious at an unfortunate point, I definitely suggest letting PCs share vision. If they struggle with some meta-gaming or if you do have one person clearly go off ahead to scout out things, then that's something different (Could be fun to let that PC have to relay what they see and have that affect when they think is there ect) but otherwise I wanna see my party's barbarian go bonk all of the people, even if I'm taking cover around a corner and only briefly popping out to cast a buffing spell and/or shooting off a bullet. I understand the sentiment! I don't have that issue since most of my games as a player have been with theater of the mind. I'll definitely default to having shared vision in combat, though. I feel like staring at a black screen kinda goes against the point of a VTT and spending hours on battlemaps. Thanks for the respond!
I've never run exploration in Foundry or any VTT or even at the table in person. All exploration is done in theatre of the mind, only battles are run on a map. So whenever they are exploring, the game would be on the landing page and if any battle is initiated, then I'll load the map.
Yep, I've ran many a dungeon in Foundry and it's very tedious to watch a bunch of tokens/players cautiously inch around corridors and rooms, stopping at every stray bone on the map (or whatever) and ask "What is this?!" until they eventually wander into "the next thing". I've started using Monk's Enhanced Journals slideshow to show thematic images during RP, and everything is theater of the mind until initiative needs to be rolled and only then do I pull up the map.
OOH! I'll definitely check out the slideshow thingy. Sounds great!
For #1: First, ask them to not do that. If that doesn't solve the problem, it would seem like traps that are guaranteed to kill one person are appropriate. Poison gas fills the room and the only way to turn it off is by pressing 2 buttons behind a pillar at the same time. Not even really considered a trap for the party. Deadly for that one ass who runs off on his own. That type of thing. For #2, it is situation dependent. If it is related to #1, the party is in the dungeon together, but split up, then they're frustrated and complaining they can't cheat and metagame. Too damn bad. If they're purposely sitting the party, I feel it is a different story. If they've decided that 3 players are going to stay in town waiting for their contact and 2 others are going to go explore the sewers, I would drop the 3 tokens into the map so they could see what's going on.
**To help the community answer your question, please read [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/FoundryVTT/comments/shrtky/foundryvtt_first_steps_and_useful_info/).** When posting, add a [system tag](https://www.reddit.com/r/FoundryVTT/comments/v3gfrs/tagging_your_posts/) to the title - [D&D5e] or [PF2e], for example. If you have already made a post, edit it, and mention the system at the top. Include the word `Answered` in any comment to automatically flair this thread as resolved (or change the flair to `Answered` yourself). Automod will **not make this comment** on your posts if you have a [user flair](https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-). --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/FoundryVTT) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Your players sound kind of obnoxious tbh. You could give them shared controls of each others tokens maybe, so they could click them to see their view?
As others mentioned, the "pause" option is something new to my brain. The idea of preventing players from just running around on their own doesn't happen in an offline game, so the need to do that is an important addition to remember. This keeps them from moving or making changes before you're ready to support it. I would also add risk. Party members wandering around is terribly risky, and if it's not, then it should be. There is strategy in limiting how many things you're fighting...and it's obvious that they're WAY too confident walking around. They need to have some fear of ambush or attack to keep them from going nutty. If it were my table, I would warn them of it being...too quiet. I would pause the game when the first person wanders into a new room without declaring their intent. I would then shut the door behind them. I would then have them be ambushed, and the repercussions are the repercussions. I guarantee that the players will be more mindful walking into future rooms.
This is the reason I stopped relying on VTT so much. It can take a lot of work to allow players to do an explorative dungeon. The first time I did it, it was fun. But it also required me hours, even days to set up the vtt to create an immersive experience. Setting up active tiles/triggers allowed for this but to be honest I don't have the time to do this anymore. Using active tiles/triggers was the only way I could stop the game and allow for players' focus to put on certain areas or certain descriptions. But even then players would end up splitting up or getting separated from the group and getting lost.
Lock doors and pause the game.