The lazy, low prep approach is to load you map, open the fog tool and 'Fill Fog' to hide everything. Then use the fog tools to cut out what you need at the time your players get there. Its not as elegant as having pre-cut shapes, but for the time-pressed GM faced with a large dungeon it can save a lot of time.
This is what I used to do, but it is just me or did this functionality go away? It's like the system is forcing me to do it one room at a time instead the way you have suggested. What am I doing wrong?
@@HereComeMrCee-Jay load the map -> click the fog tool -> click "fill fog" between the hex shape and fog cutting switch -> make sure fog cutting is on -> choose the brush or polygon tool -> clear the fog! Hope this helps
I’d love to see a practical example video on organizing scenes, maps, NPCs, monsters, props, and PCs between multiple campaigns. I’m really unsure of best practices here.
I've been struggling with this too. My best approach is to create folders for various monster types, but sometimes it would make more sense to collect a variety of creatures for a particular session. But then I find myself frantically scrolling through, trying to find something that I just KNOW I had in my collection, only to find that somewhere along the line I un-favorited it, so it's invisible. Maybe a way to put tags on various creatures would be helpful?
We're due to release an 'asset management' video soon, which will cover how to organise and run multiple game systems, campaigns, and groups of players in OBR - keep an eye on the 'How To...' playlist!
I've finally had another reason to pull up 2.0 for the first time since the beta, and I'm constantly reminded of why I love this tool. Everything is so much more powerful and versatile than it first appears, but it's extremely approachable for new users. Keep up the great work!
Ahhh thanks! I was using multi-layer mode all the time not knowing that it cuts automatically in single-layer mode. Very clever design. I ❤Owlbear Rodeo. Great UI/UX (I am working in this field).
I'm a Patreon supporter of Afternoon Maps. I love that map in the tutorial. I'm gonna have to grab it and try to railroad it, I mean fit it into my campaign.
Fogs ought to be reveal-able by the player / character. Walls of fog should "melt" back as in as the character walks threw to vanish as they pass through it. The referee stages the area and the player(s) uncovers it. This of course can get complex some players may go some places and others may not. So information files may also have to be created for EACH character. The meliing back should not be just the room, it ought to be consistent to the shape of the character/Pip being moved through the visable space/room. As a referee I want the player to have the excitement of uncovering the gaming space by themselves. Player A: TO ARMS! Er guys ... unexpected monster ... Player B: Er ... Where's ... Joseph? ...
OBR now has the 'Smoke & Spectre!' extension that provides dynamic line of sight/fog of war, but also includes controls for Player Permissions so that you can grant only as much power to your players as they are capable of using responsibly! 😂
These tutorials are great. This is the first VTT I am confident I can actually use. I purchased two others and have had them for years but every time I decide I will finally learn one or the other I get frustrated and say the heck with it. This one seems very intuitive. I like that I can use it with my phone, In fact I started trying to use it with my phone exclusively. The interface is different then shown in the tutorial videos. So of course I would like to see videos that focus on smartphone interface. The only other thing and I am sure that if I play with OBR enough I will figure it out. When drawing out a dungeon, I can't seem to find an erase tool.
This has been a great tool thank you for all your effort. Has anyone had any luck importing mp3 files in for ambiance sounds or music. the bots that people suggest I haven't had any luck with
Thank you so much. This has been the best vtt site I've ever worked with. I was curious about live maps. Idk if you have a video about that yet or not.
The best tip was that I can hold spacebar to drag the map without leaving the fog tool. The other shortcuts are very valuable too, but I had been switching to the hand tool every time, or trying to manipulate zooming. When preparing a map, I like to place the PC tokens on the side so we don’t need to grab them later, s instead of â fill, I’ve just dragged a large rectangle over the whole map and a bit beyond, in single layer mode. to obscure the room shapes and overall map size. I guess the fill will be easier, I just need to cut a starting box in the fill.
In Inkscape, while U use Rotation of the Object and hold Shift, its rotate not from Center of the Object, but around the oposite side from rotate-arrows that U draging.
My biggest point of trouble is managing all my character assets. I would really like to be able to move things around in the collection since I have so many images. At the very least, I'd like to be able to scroll through images and click on something to move them to the top of the list. That would make it very simple to gather assets for a session. Yes, I know I can favorite them to make them not appear on the dock and yes, I know I can put them in a folder, but I would like to rearrange the ones that are favorited too, especially when during a session Things Happen that I didn't anticipate. I've found myself scrolling frantically through my dock looking for an unexpected asset, such as a creature for my druid's wild shape, only to realize that I must have un-favorited it at some point. A simple click to move to the top would be very useful.
This is amazing honestly im using owlbear for along time and its really great, I was just wondering if in the future you'll think about doing dynamic lighting, so if I put a circle on a player it wont pass the wall when they get close.
I love the tools from owlbear and the owlbear app in general i only now noticed the new version and i've been using rodeo for a while now My only question for thsi video would be on how to handle vision. I thought about using the triangle shape but that didnt seem apropiate
The amount new features is genuinly impressive. But i'm super bummed that music is no long available. Unless I'm blind? But the music tool was so simple and efficient and I loved it.
Thank you very much for these videos :) . Do you have a tutorial on what file extensions we can import (I use dungeon alchemist) for wall obstructions?
I generally just fog a Large square a bit larger than the map, but this is pretty cool fogging the whole screen players can't tell the max size of the Dungeon then, then I just cut it as they explore since its so easy... I would also LOVE to be able to see the ROOMS separately, maybe have options on the Room page to what they share, I prefer NOT to share Maps or Character Tokens, I run 3 Campaigns, (2) main and one backup if fewer players are Not able to make it and would like to keep my 3 Campaigns separate in Owlebear, So if I load of Lankhmar I only get its maps, its characters and maybe its Monsters, But I like to share the conditions and Spell Markers.
Dice in 2.0 use our extensions system. If you want a similar dice to 1.0 then we have an extension we made here extensions.owlbear.rodeo/dice There are also other dice rollers on the store that might suit you as well
It would be great if you could select a fog shape even when the Enable Fog Preview is off. I usually share MY screen cause we play live, not online, so I can't really go in preview mode.
It's almost there but it needs proper LoS from the tokens. That will mean coding for the walls etc and sight on the tokens. I'm sure lots of people will be fine with this basic fog but plenty more will want LoS function. Why? Reduces work and gives a little more speed and realism to the game. Great product though, hope it gets lots of support.
Hi there ! Thank you for the great 4 videos, helped me alot ! I got a question: if i have a scene with enablede grid mode and i put on a monster with 10ft or 20ft size the grid snap doesnt work: the monsters are not going into a 10/10 (or 20/20) rectangle, instead they are centralized over a single grid and spill over into all other adjacent grids. Is this just a bug or do I do something wrong? Strangely enough, 5ft, 15ft, 25ft monsters work well.
LOVE your app great work, and I also love you are allowing apps to be added to it, BUT, there is Very little info with them, Liek to see a RUclips Link or Instructions on how to use them, I have the Dynamic Fog app Downloaded and can't get it to work, I've outlined the map, I set the characters range, and Nothing, just Fog
I culdnt find any Layers, like in any graphic editor (Ps or Inkscape). It might be usefull for making Zelda looking like map - for removing roofs and trees tops.
does this new version of owlbear have an offline mode ? it would be great for face2face games too, but where we meet the mobile signal is very bad... an offline owlbear would be a lifesaver ! great work guys - very impressive
Is there a way to work on a map as DM that's separate from the map that your PCs are currently on? Like if they surprise me and do something that I did not expect and suddenly I need a whole different map, that I can make it on the side while still running them through the current map.
In 2.0 you can drop many map images in the same scene, so if it is all fog your players wont see it. I guess you could also load the map, edit it to not visible first and then drop it in the scene
Some users in our community like to have a "prep" room. All your data is shared between rooms in Owlbear Rodeo. So you can open a new tab to your "prep" room then prepare your scene and once your done open that scene back in your main room.
In the original version you could use fog cutting to slice out pieces of an entire blanket of fog to better represent line of sight as players are moving through an area. Is there a way to do this in 2.0? Edit: Never mind I figured it out 😊
We miss that feature as well but we removed it for two reasons. In the new dice we sync the physics across the network so that everyone can see each others dice trays. In order to do this efficiently we had to remove the drag feature. We also got a lot of feedback that in some gaming groups players were using that feature to cheat by grabbing the dice just before it landed and nudging it to land on a 20. To re-roll a dice now you can click on it once it has finished rolling and click the re-roll button that appears.
Find the Fill Fog (paintcan) button in the fog toolset, and toggle it off - it will ask you to confirm removing Fill Fog, and then just leave you with any of your hand-made shapes afterwards.
You can find the updated written tutorials at docs.owlbear.rodeo/docs/getting-started (same as the 'Help' menu option in your OBR Room). There are also some up-to-date video tutorials for various extensions in the 'How To...' playlist, and for general features in the 'Tips & Tricks' playlist, both found in our YT channel. Do visit our OBR Discord if you have specific questions; it has a thriving community of helpful users who can answer you: discord.gg/u5RYMkV98s
I don't think it solves anything, but I've been using owlbear since it was released, I currently have more than 700 mb of files that make up an rpg that's over a year old, now with the release of owlbear 2.0 I'm going to lose everything, because the signature is extremely expensive, for non-US like me (Brazil) I could try crying for a free subscription but I think just a local price would be fine
Can't believe how much worse and less intuitive it's gotten since 1.0. Every little thing that used to take 1 click now takes 10. I just wanted to know how to toggle the visibility of a single fog area - why in the world is it called "cut" and represented by a pair of scissors? Why not call it "toggle visibility" or "show/hide" and represent it with an eye? It's the little things like this that convinced me to go entirely theatre-of-the-mind rather than bother with 2.0.
Why this virtual tabletops look like isometric rpg videogames? I good to have a map but if the map loos more like a videogame where is the fun of ''mental theather''?
The lazy, low prep approach is to load you map, open the fog tool and 'Fill Fog' to hide everything. Then use the fog tools to cut out what you need at the time your players get there. Its not as elegant as having pre-cut shapes, but for the time-pressed GM faced with a large dungeon it can save a lot of time.
This is what I used to do, but it is just me or did this functionality go away? It's like the system is forcing me to do it one room at a time instead the way you have suggested. What am I doing wrong?
@@HereComeMrCee-Jay load the map -> click the fog tool -> click "fill fog" between the hex shape and fog cutting switch -> make sure fog cutting is on -> choose the brush or polygon tool -> clear the fog! Hope this helps
I would love it if there was an easy Fog Erase tool.
A tutorial going over some of the extensions like dynamic fog, Clash!, and dddice would be amazing
I’d love to see a practical example video on organizing scenes, maps, NPCs, monsters, props, and PCs between multiple campaigns. I’m really unsure of best practices here.
I've been struggling with this too. My best approach is to create folders for various monster types, but sometimes it would make more sense to collect a variety of creatures for a particular session. But then I find myself frantically scrolling through, trying to find something that I just KNOW I had in my collection, only to find that somewhere along the line I un-favorited it, so it's invisible. Maybe a way to put tags on various creatures would be helpful?
Yeah. A "work flow" type video. Tips and such.
We're due to release an 'asset management' video soon, which will cover how to organise and run multiple game systems, campaigns, and groups of players in OBR - keep an eye on the 'How To...' playlist!
YA BABY! This is what I’ve been waiting for! This is what it’s all about! WOOH!
I've finally had another reason to pull up 2.0 for the first time since the beta, and I'm constantly reminded of why I love this tool. Everything is so much more powerful and versatile than it first appears, but it's extremely approachable for new users. Keep up the great work!
LOVE THIS! The simplicity makes this one of the most versatile tt systems out there!
Ahhh thanks! I was using multi-layer mode all the time not knowing that it cuts automatically in single-layer mode. Very clever design. I ❤Owlbear Rodeo. Great UI/UX (I am working in this field).
That player preview really helps give you an idea how it looks without having to guess. An excellent tutorial. Thanks.
This is absolutely dope!! Single layer mode is such a time (and confusion) saver, damn
Awesome to see how far it has come since the 1.0 days! Congrats to you both on 3+ years of OR!
this is so much easier than any of the other vttrpg i've used.
Yes! Thank you so much for this!
I'm a Patreon supporter of Afternoon Maps. I love that map in the tutorial. I'm gonna have to grab it and try to railroad it, I mean fit it into my campaign.
Fogs ought to be reveal-able by the player / character. Walls of fog should "melt" back as in as the character walks threw to vanish as they pass through it. The referee stages the area and the player(s) uncovers it. This of course can get complex some players may go some places and others may not. So information files may also have to be created for EACH character. The meliing back should not be just the room, it ought to be consistent to the shape of the character/Pip being moved through the visable space/room. As a referee I want the player to have the excitement of uncovering the gaming space by themselves.
Player A: TO ARMS! Er guys ... unexpected monster ...
Player B: Er ... Where's ... Joseph? ...
Dynamic fog is really fun but it can get messy if the players can move their own tokens.
OBR now has the 'Smoke & Spectre!' extension that provides dynamic line of sight/fog of war, but also includes controls for Player Permissions so that you can grant only as much power to your players as they are capable of using responsibly! 😂
These tutorials are great. This is the first VTT I am confident I can actually use. I purchased two others and have had them for years but every time I decide I will finally learn one or the other I get frustrated and say the heck with it. This one seems very intuitive. I like that I can use it with my phone, In fact I started trying to use it with my phone exclusively. The interface is different then shown in the tutorial videos. So of course I would like to see videos that focus on smartphone interface. The only other thing and I am sure that if I play with OBR enough I will figure it out. When drawing out a dungeon, I can't seem to find an erase tool.
Amazing tool, looks really good 😁
A tutorial for dynamic maps would certainly be useful
This has been a great tool thank you for all your effort. Has anyone had any luck importing mp3 files in for ambiance sounds or music. the bots that people suggest I haven't had any luck with
thank you for doing these, i learned from them
This is an awesome tutorial! Thank you so much for this. 🙏
Thank you so much. This has been the best vtt site I've ever worked with. I was curious about live maps. Idk if you have a video about that yet or not.
Great job! Having the option to blur the shapes would be really nice too. Thanks!
Perfect instruction! Thank you! :)
amazing thank you so much!
Great stuff
The best tip was that I can hold spacebar to drag the map without leaving the fog tool. The other shortcuts are very valuable too, but I had been switching to the hand tool every time, or trying to manipulate zooming.
When preparing a map, I like to place the PC tokens on the side so we don’t need to grab them later, s instead of â fill, I’ve just dragged a large rectangle over the whole map and a bit beyond, in single layer mode. to obscure the room shapes and overall map size. I guess the fill will be easier, I just need to cut a starting box in the fill.
In Inkscape, while U use Rotation of the Object and hold Shift, its rotate not from Center of the Object, but around the oposite side from rotate-arrows that U draging.
Amazing!
Great video!
My biggest point of trouble is managing all my character assets. I would really like to be able to move things around in the collection since I have so many images. At the very least, I'd like to be able to scroll through images and click on something to move them to the top of the list. That would make it very simple to gather assets for a session. Yes, I know I can favorite them to make them not appear on the dock and yes, I know I can put them in a folder, but I would like to rearrange the ones that are favorited too, especially when during a session Things Happen that I didn't anticipate. I've found myself scrolling frantically through my dock looking for an unexpected asset, such as a creature for my druid's wild shape, only to realize that I must have un-favorited it at some point. A simple click to move to the top would be very useful.
This is amazing honestly im using owlbear for along time and its really great, I was just wondering if in the future you'll think about doing dynamic lighting, so if I put a circle on a player it wont pass the wall when they get close.
Some great members of our community are actively developing dynamic fog extensions. extensions.owlbear.rodeo/
If you're using the extension, don't forget to "attach" each map layer if you're using more than one!
I love the tools from owlbear and the owlbear app in general
i only now noticed the new version and i've been using rodeo for a while now
My only question for thsi video would be on how to handle vision. I thought about using the triangle shape but that didnt seem apropiate
The amount new features is genuinly impressive. But i'm super bummed that music is no long available. Unless I'm blind? But the music tool was so simple and efficient and I loved it.
Thank you very much for these videos :) . Do you have a tutorial on what file extensions we can import (I use dungeon alchemist) for wall obstructions?
I generally just fog a Large square a bit larger than the map, but this is pretty cool fogging the whole screen players can't tell the max size of the Dungeon then, then I just cut it as they explore since its so easy... I would also LOVE to be able to see the ROOMS separately, maybe have options on the Room page to what they share, I prefer NOT to share Maps or Character Tokens, I run 3 Campaigns, (2) main and one backup if fewer players are Not able to make it and would like to keep my 3 Campaigns separate in Owlebear, So if I load of Lankhmar I only get its maps, its characters and maybe its Monsters, But I like to share the conditions and Spell Markers.
Very cool, but definitely still a lot of work. Any update on dynamic lighting?
Thank you very much. This is so much better than any vtt 🙏🏽
1 thing... What happened to the dice tool? I miss the 1.0 version ☹️
Dice in 2.0 use our extensions system. If you want a similar dice to 1.0 then we have an extension we made here extensions.owlbear.rodeo/dice
There are also other dice rollers on the store that might suit you as well
Thanks
It would be great if you could select a fog shape even when the Enable Fog Preview is off. I usually share MY screen cause we play live, not online, so I can't really go in preview mode.
It's almost there but it needs proper LoS from the tokens. That will mean coding for the walls etc and sight on the tokens. I'm sure lots of people will be fine with this basic fog but plenty more will want LoS function. Why? Reduces work and gives a little more speed and realism to the game. Great product though, hope it gets lots of support.
I’d love to have a tutorial for the dynamic fog of war
Sinceraly i will like a tutorial of a player perspective and his interaccion whit the map oh tools.
Could you do examples on the various extensions and their practical applications?
Are you planning on adding simple HP and AC tracking for tokens pls?
Hi there ! Thank you for the great 4 videos, helped me alot !
I got a question: if i have a scene with enablede grid mode and i put on a monster with 10ft or 20ft size the grid snap doesnt work: the monsters are not going into a 10/10 (or 20/20) rectangle, instead they are centralized over a single grid and spill over into all other adjacent grids. Is this just a bug or do I do something wrong? Strangely enough, 5ft, 15ft, 25ft monsters work well.
LOVE your app great work, and I also love you are allowing apps to be added to it, BUT, there is Very little info with them, Liek to see a RUclips Link or Instructions on how to use them, I have the Dynamic Fog app Downloaded and can't get it to work, I've outlined the map, I set the characters range, and Nothing, just Fog
I culdnt find any Layers, like in any graphic editor (Ps or Inkscape). It might be usefull for making Zelda looking like map - for removing roofs and trees tops.
does this new version of owlbear have an offline mode ? it would be great for face2face games too, but where we meet the mobile signal is very bad... an offline owlbear would be a lifesaver ! great work guys - very impressive
It currently does not have an offline mode. It is something we would like to explore in the future though.
Can you shift your "Outdated" videos to Unlisted. It would help clean up search results.
Is there any posibility for Isometric maps drawing in OBR2?
Is there a way to work on a map as DM that's separate from the map that your PCs are currently on? Like if they surprise me and do something that I did not expect and suddenly I need a whole different map, that I can make it on the side while still running them through the current map.
In 2.0 you can drop many map images in the same scene, so if it is all fog your players wont see it. I guess you could also load the map, edit it to not visible first and then drop it in the scene
Some users in our community like to have a "prep" room. All your data is shared between rooms in Owlbear Rodeo. So you can open a new tab to your "prep" room then prepare your scene and once your done open that scene back in your main room.
Can we swap our maps (with monsters placed) with other friends on Owlbear?
In the original version you could use fog cutting to slice out pieces of an entire blanket of fog to better represent line of sight as players are moving through an area.
Is there a way to do this in 2.0?
Edit: Never mind I figured it out 😊
Any plans for battle music addons like 1.0?
Why you deleted rolling dice by dragging them with mouse? That was the beast feature.
We miss that feature as well but we removed it for two reasons. In the new dice we sync the physics across the network so that everyone can see each others dice trays. In order to do this efficiently we had to remove the drag feature. We also got a lot of feedback that in some gaming groups players were using that feature to cheat by grabbing the dice just before it landed and nudging it to land on a 20.
To re-roll a dice now you can click on it once it has finished rolling and click the re-roll button that appears.
Can we have tutorials on how to use the extensions?
is there any chance we might get a guide but for players to use, so it could be sent to new players
What about dynamic lighting? That's in the 2.0 launch trailer but unless I missed something you never did a tutorial on that
After you cut the section of fog so the players can see, can you turn them back on after they leave (fog it back in)?
Yep, you can toggle it back and forth (between transparent and opaque) all day if you like 😉
Are you shutting down the good old Owlbear when 2.0 releases?
Sadly :(
@@scarf9527 Hope they make 2.0 run as good as 1.0. Because right now 2.0 runs like ass.
I accidentaly applied fog to everything in addition to the shapes I created and haven't been able to undo it.
Find the Fill Fog (paintcan) button in the fog toolset, and toggle it off - it will ask you to confirm removing Fill Fog, and then just leave you with any of your hand-made shapes afterwards.
@@OwlbearRodeo Nailed it. Thanks.
Is there a limit of storage on 2.0?
does the scenes retain the fog or do i need to do it right before starting a session ?
All changes will be saved
I’m wanting to learn how this site works but all of the tutorials say they’re outdated?
You can find the updated written tutorials at docs.owlbear.rodeo/docs/getting-started (same as the 'Help' menu option in your OBR Room).
There are also some up-to-date video tutorials for various extensions in the 'How To...' playlist, and for general features in the 'Tips & Tricks' playlist, both found in our YT channel.
Do visit our OBR Discord if you have specific questions; it has a thriving community of helpful users who can answer you: discord.gg/u5RYMkV98s
I don't think it solves anything, but I've been using owlbear since it was released, I currently have more than 700 mb of files that make up an rpg that's over a year old, now with the release of owlbear 2.0 I'm going to lose everything, because the signature is extremely expensive, for non-US like me (Brazil) I could try crying for a free subscription but I think just a local price would be fine
please you need to find a way to pass your data from olwbear 1.0 to 2.0
We have a conversion tool available. We have a tutorial on using this tool in our documentation docs.owlbear.rodeo/docs/migration/migrate-from-1-to-2/
Can't believe how much worse and less intuitive it's gotten since 1.0. Every little thing that used to take 1 click now takes 10. I just wanted to know how to toggle the visibility of a single fog area - why in the world is it called "cut" and represented by a pair of scissors? Why not call it "toggle visibility" or "show/hide" and represent it with an eye? It's the little things like this that convinced me to go entirely theatre-of-the-mind rather than bother with 2.0.
Please don't shut down 1.0, it's simpler to use, has WAY more storage, and is just better than 2.0.........
Why this virtual tabletops look like isometric rpg videogames?
I good to have a map but if the map loos more like a videogame where is the fun of ''mental theather''?