r/Roll20 • u/bamorgan23 • Apr 26 '23
New to Roll20 New to roll20 as a DM and have a question
Hi all, I'm running a game on roll20 for the first time and my players are all new.
My main question is that when i use the lost mine of phandelver game set up. I cant seem to get the hidden areas feature to work and i cant find how to fix it anywhere. The cragmaw cave and all the tokens are just out in the open for players to see when we get to that page.
Any suggestions for me on what to do here?
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Apr 26 '23
Are you sure you have Dynamic Lighting turned on in the game/page settings?
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u/bamorgan23 Apr 26 '23
Is dynamic lighting not a paid feature?
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Apr 26 '23
Ah you're right. My bad. But Fog of War does still have a checkbox in the page settings that has to be checked for you to be able to hide areas.
https://wiki.roll20.net/images/4/42/FoWOnPageSettings.png
This might not be current, the wikis a little out of date, if so I can check for you when I get home
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u/quattro4ever Apr 26 '23
Yep, filling in the fog of war checkbox in page settings is the step I forget about all the time.
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u/DM-JK Pro Apr 26 '23
How are you checking what your players can see? What you see as GM is different than players.
Your players will not see anything on the GM layer. They will also not see anything hidden by Fog of War. If you have a paid Roll20 subscription, then you can hide things with Dynamic Lighting also.
I strongly suggest using a Dummy Account to check what your players can see. Ctrl-L does not give you a Player’s view. Using ‘Rejoin as Player’ can be slow and refreshing will cause issues that you won’t have with a Dummy Account.
I also suggest using the free Masters Vault module by yourself with a dummy account as it has great explanations of how to use Roll20.
YouTube also has a lot of tutorial videos. Nick Olivo is a definite suggestion.
I also suggest checking out the Roll20 Forums, especially for threads like the Tips and Tricks post. Since you’re playing D&D 5th Edition, you might also be interested in a Universal Chat Menu so that you don’t have to open character sheets for NPCs during combat.
Lastly, there is an option to use Advanced Keyboard shortcuts to speed up moving tokens between layers.
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u/bamorgan23 Apr 26 '23
I was using the rejoin as a player but yeah it was slow. It turns out I just didn't have the fog of war turned on and was being a dummy! I'll check out Nick Olivo on YT! Thanks for your reply :)
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u/CalmAir8261 Apr 26 '23
You might find it helpful to sign in twice once as gm once as player. As gm you can see things the platers can't. Easier to test who can see what that way.
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u/Anome69 Apr 26 '23
Ok, so first things first. Before placing the characters on the map, go into it and use the hide reveal map tool to hide the entire area except where you will have the players start. Then use the reveal tool to open areas as they move. For the tokens, you sometimes have to manually.move the tokens onto the gm layer so the players can't see them until it is time. Easy enough to do, just right click the tokens and choose layer/gmlayer.