Maps
Two maps live in the side panel. The battle map, in the Battle tab while a fight has one up, is the grid a fight plays on. The region map, in the Map tab, is the wider world between fights: places, roads, rivers, borders and the pins of things the party has found. Both come from the Dungeon Master or from the workshop, and both are drawn on your device from the data the server sends, so they are sharp at any zoom.
The battle map
- Painted terrain. Every battle map is painted from its terrain: stone, water, rubble, walls with worn edges, props set along the walls. A skin is chosen from the campaign's setting and the map's theme; fantasy has sixteen, and cyberpunk, steampunk, wasteland, horror and mystery each have their own. A map with an uploaded backdrop keeps it. The Painted battle maps switch in device settings turns the painting off for an old phone and keeps the drawn board.
- Fog and sight. The picture is drawn only from what your character has explored and can see, using the light model: torches, darkvision, blindsight, tremorsense, truesight and magical darkness. The Dungeon Master sees it unfogged. Torches burn down on the board as in-world time passes.
- Tokens. Tokens wear faces: an uploaded portrait, else a plate for the lineage and class, else the monster's plate. Health in words and condition glyphs sit on the token; hover or tap for the name. Large creatures fill their squares.
- Walls, doors and hazards. Walls block movement and give half cover. Doors open, close, lock, and can be secret. Hazards, light zones and ambience cues are placed by the Dungeon Master.
- Sky and hour. An outdoor map is lit by the in-world time of day and weather, which carry rules riders.
- Effects. Resolved outcomes play on the board: attack arcs, spell bursts, heals, conditions, deaths, doors, teleports, with a particle layer over the drawn effects. Low effects and reduced motion tone them down.
Moving and acting
On your turn, drag your token or tap a destination; the turn HUD counts movement from the engine's budget. Aiming a card from the Hand highlights valid targets on the map. The board sits in a fixed window that rests on a fit of the whole map, so its header and footer stay put on any screen, a phone held sideways included: drag to pan, and pinch or Ctrl and the scroll wheel to zoom the board (Ctrl or Cmd with plus and minus zooms the page, not the board). With the board focused, a strip lists its keys. Enlarge it and the bigger board keeps Play as, Point, Draw and the move hints. The Dungeon Master can pull the camera and lock it for a set piece.
On a wide screen during a fight, the fight stage puts the board on the table beside the chronicle, with a Board and Story switch in the header.
What players can draw
With Players may draw on in the Setup tab, anyone can add freehand drawings and map notes: an arrow to the ambush, a note pinned to a door that links to a place in the lore. Notes and drawings are visible to the table.
The region map
Between fights, the Map tab shows the region: a hex or tile map with places, roads, rivers, borders, labels and pins. Arriving somewhere new raises a banner and, for an unwritten place, the settlement generator can invent its people, shops and rumours. A place's kind of scene (a tavern, a cave, a road) sets its sound, its battle map theme and its placeholder picture. A place links to its lore entry, and an area map or location picture opens in the lightbox.
Where maps come from
An AI table draws a battle map when a fight starts, from the scene: the map studio turns a sentence into terrain. A human Dungeon Master prepares maps in the workshop's Map Forge and Map Editor, imports a Universal VTT file, or drops a picture in. Region maps can be rolled at any size, painted by hand, or read in from Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator and Watabou's city and dungeon generators. See Maps for dungeon masters.