There is an information leak in the current Fog of War implementation
When a map is covered with Fog of War, the fog appears to be constrained to the finite dimensions of the uploaded map. Players therefore cannot see the hidden content, but they can still see the map's boundaries. Additionally, stickers or other map elements that extend beyond the map's borders cannot be obscured by Fog of War, causing them to remain visible outside the fogged area.
This can unintentionally reveal information about unexplored areas. For example, if a dungeon has a large amount of fog extending beyond an explored corridor, players can infer that there is likely another room, corridor, secret area, treasure, or encounter there. This encourages metagaming based on the map's footprint rather than anything their characters have actually discovered.
This takes some of the fun out of exploration. Players should not be able to determine whether the map ends immediately outside the revealed area or continues beyond it.
My suggested solution is to have Fog of War extend to the boundaries of the player's viewport rather than being constrained to the uploaded map's dimensions.
The unexplored area could simply use the map's configured background color/hex value, with revealed portions of the map appearing as windows through that background. From a rendering perspective, this could be implemented as a viewport-sized or effectively infinite background layer beneath the revealed portions of the map.
The goal is to prevent unintentional spatial information leakage. Fog of War should conceal:
The contents of unexplored areas.
The geometry of unexplored areas.
The boundaries and dimensions of the underlying map asset.
Any map elements extending beyond the currently revealed area.
This would preserve the intended mystery of exploration and prevent players from inferring hidden content simply from the physical footprint of the map asset.
I love D&D Beyond's ecosystem and want to continue using Quickplay and Maps with the material I've purchased. This is a pain point that other VTTs have addressed, so I'm hopeful a similar solution can eventually come to Maps.
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There is an information leak in the current Fog of War implementation
When a map is covered with Fog of War, the fog appears to be constrained to the finite dimensions of the uploaded map. Players therefore cannot see the hidden content, but they can still see the map's boundaries. Additionally, stickers or other map elements that extend beyond the map's borders cannot be obscured by Fog of War, causing them to remain visible outside the fogged area.
This can unintentionally reveal information about unexplored areas. For example, if a dungeon has a large amount of fog extending beyond an explored corridor, players can infer that there is likely another room, corridor, secret area, treasure, or encounter there. This encourages metagaming based on the map's footprint rather than anything their characters have actually discovered.
This takes some of the fun out of exploration. Players should not be able to determine whether the map ends immediately outside the revealed area or continues beyond it.
My suggested solution is to have Fog of War extend to the boundaries of the player's viewport rather than being constrained to the uploaded map's dimensions.
The unexplored area could simply use the map's configured background color/hex value, with revealed portions of the map appearing as windows through that background. From a rendering perspective, this could be implemented as a viewport-sized or effectively infinite background layer beneath the revealed portions of the map.
The goal is to prevent unintentional spatial information leakage. Fog of War should conceal:
The contents of unexplored areas.
The geometry of unexplored areas.
The boundaries and dimensions of the underlying map asset.
Any map elements extending beyond the currently revealed area.
This would preserve the intended mystery of exploration and prevent players from inferring hidden content simply from the physical footprint of the map asset.
I love D&D Beyond's ecosystem and want to continue using Quickplay and Maps with the material I've purchased. This is a pain point that other VTTs have addressed, so I'm hopeful a similar solution can eventually come to Maps.