The Road Ahead: Join Our Journey to Improve the Maps VTT

Please let us add our own Reveals and our own Stickers. Until this happens your maps are crippleware.

Some suggestions I hadn't noticed in other comments, though might still be a repeat:
1. The ability to copy/paste anything selectable like Monsters, Stickers, etc.  For example, if I want to add beds to a barracks, dragging to the map, resizing, and rotating each one at a time is a huge timesink.

2. The sticker search is also effectively pointless. There are so few stickers and what the search keys off of is very sporadic. If I'm looking for a bookshelf, searching for "Shelf" only gives me a Coffin Shell sticker (which is nonsense), while searching for "Books" still doesn't show the bookshelf. 

3.Stack Order - What determines what is shown above something else? Creatures seem to have priority to be on top, but it would be best to be able to set that in some way

4. Just to reiterate what others have said: DM NOTES, DM NOTES, DM NOTES. Something to mark traps, rooms, etc. with more information about what is there, any needed DCs, treasure, etc.  This would be the ideal solution.  A secondary,  imperfect solution would be to be able to upload 2 versions of a map that work together, DM map and player map. When I start a session showing Map A, I see the DM version of Map A and Players see the player version of Map A.  This would still suffer the issue of needing to pre-create a DM version of a map with all the annotations just written on there, not easily adjustable if added as a custom map.

Please help me understand. From what I remember reading and hearing is that the future of the VTT is no longer going in the intended direction and is in fact going to be done away with. So, if that’s the case, why is all this time effort and resources being put into something that isn’t going to exist later this year? Why not put the time nd resources into developing new material for 2026? If I am wrong, someone please correct me.

There are actually two VTT`s. The big 3D one that is essentially dead at this point and the 2D Maps one which is now having more resources put in it.

dynamic lighting, using torches and night vision opens up map istead of fog war.  More stickers way way add spells effect? liking it so far

Thanks for the update! Absolute top of my wishlist for Maps is custom tokens and stickers. It would be a massive quality-of-life upgrade, as it's so hard to populate a group of NPCs, animals, or props in the current Maps iteration.

I know I'm a bit late to the party, but here are a few things that would really help (and this is from my table specifically, so take that for what you will. Every table is going to be different)

1 - dynamic lighting. It's been said time, and time again. But it really would help a lot. I have a mix of players that have dark vision and no dark vision (and then I have a ranger that can cast Darkvison for 150ft). I do not want to be constantly thinking about "What can X see versus Y see?". I have YET to be able to find a smooth way to do anything like this except with using grouped overlays to PC tokens to represent light/visibility, but then I get complaints about the map visibility, or ease of selecting tokens when they overlap. My players enjoy the roleplay aspect of being able to go "hey guys...? I think we should turn around" and hear "why? I want to see the area first before I decide". It just takes away from the emersion. I also feel there are other VTT that allow for this, which also means that it would take away from using this website alone to run the game.

2 - spell casting for Monsters. We have the ability to say a monster can cast a spell, but then we can't roll the spell from the map? I have to go pull up the spell and figure it out on the fly. It's time consuming and inconvenient, and quite frankly takes away from the emersion again. 

3 - condition rings. I have gone through and assigned meaning to each color, but the ones we don't use often get forgotten. Pink for critical heath and Red for death saving throws works wonders, but having more visibility on conditions of all kinds would be huge.  

4 - Rolling from character sheet ON THE ACTUAL MAP. DMs now have the ability to roll monster attacks from the map. Why can't the player do the same? Let them have like a "most used" option for character sheets and that show up on the Map when they select their token so they can see a "player stat block" kind of thing. If my Monk knows he's gonna use Scimitar, Fury of Blows and Ki points, let that be what he sees on the map so he doesn't have to keep flipping back and forth. The DMs have it. Can't the player's have it too?

Thank you for listening to my more than likely broken record suggestions. 

 1) Status rings with labels (if I can be really greedy - a quick tooltip for players on what the status entails for them)

2) Get those 3D Dice going!  I know it's on the road map - I'm excited about it

3) Custom Tokens/assests

4) Be able to add a grid for a map that doesn't have one

5) Accessing character sheets within the Maps VTT so people do need to have two pages open

What are the chances of adding the Tactical Maps Revisited to the VTT?

The 2D maps has been super intuitive to pick up, and as an old player but a new DM I love it! My players live far away so we have to play virtually, and so far it's been great. But I can think of two things that would make it a lot easier to use. You shouldn't need a master subscription to upload your own maps. Making your own maps is an integral part of D&D for many players and DMs, and blocking it behind a paywall will only put people off using your otherwise very good platform. You don't need to have a custom map maker built in, just let us upload our own PDFs or JPGs with the free accounts. Sorry if this has already come up and I didn't see it in another comment.

The other thing that would help is if the encounter builder had a little more customisability. For example, letting us change the AC of monsters or such. Not a huge issue since we can just make a note of differences on paper, but it would be convenient. Other things like in-game music would be nice, but definitely not as big of a priority for my players. Thank you!

I saw that! The copy paste especially can be a massive time saver and the search is definitely far improved and more flexible.  It seems to find anything even if it not all the letters overlap, for example searching for "shelf" still brings up the "Coffin Shell", but at least it DOES now find the bookshelf!  The only "smaller" feature I'm really looking for at this point I think is a way to put DM notes on the map for me to see. Something like a stickynote, or an icon to click that brings up a text area.  As for bigger features, a map builder would be great so I don't need to go back to my map builder if I realize something needs to change.

The new reveal feature is a nice adition, though I wish it was more seemless to use. Alot of times theres a long awkward pause as Im trying to fish up the specific reveal. To give you an example, I'm dm'ing The Crooked Moon and lets say the players are talking to a specific NPC, sometimes all I need to do is type in the NPCs name and I can quickly bring up the reveal but other times I need to manually sift through all of The Crooked Moons reveal images to find the NPC as typing in their name doesnt work. Is this due to how the third party have named their files or is it something you are able to fix? Also is there plans to be able to add our own reveals and stickers in the future?

I love maps, but I've had to switch to other platforms because after so long, managing maps becomes so cumbersome without some form of folder/subfolder system. I would LOVE some form of organization as a DM. I want to use D&D Beyond more, so please give me more reasons to do so. One of my campaigns is with less experienced players, so the integration with DDB would be helpful for them in learning how to manage their character sheets. Having an organizer that would allow me better organize plot points, notes on previous sessions, notes on possibilities, and tie them into some form of GUI would be incredible. Or at least build it into a wiki format or folder/subfolder system alongside the maps related to them.

You might want to take a look at Above VTT.  It's free.  Has great support and access to devs through their Discord server.  Frequently updated.  Integrates with D&D Beyond.

It's a browser extension which needs to be installed.  It works with any Chromium-based browser, so Chrome and Edge, and I'm told Firefox and Vivaldi and probably others.

We started using it in January and my only regret is we didn't start sooner.  I really can't praise it enough.

For notes, I use Notion.  For personal use it's free.  There was a slight learning curve but it is great.  You can even publish selected pages to your players.

Quote from JanuaryJack >>

You might want to take a look at Above VTT.  It's free.  Has great support and access to devs through their Discord server.  Frequently updated.  Integrates with D&D Beyond.

It's a browser extension which needs to be installed.  It works with any Chromium-based browser, so Chrome and Edge, and I'm told Firefox and Vivaldi and probably others.

We started using it in January and my only regret is we didn't start sooner.  I really can't praise it enough.

For notes, I use Notion.  For personal use it's free.  There was a slight learning curve but it is great.  You can even publish selected pages to your players.

 

 I use obsidian portal for overall campaign organization. I'm a personal fan of the wiki formatting, it's got a great "DM only" feature for every page so I can show what the party knows and, for items I haven't published, I can put the different things characters might learn alongside the DC success to reveal certain factors. I can link plot hooks from one page to the next, it's really nice. And then little homebrew things can get their own reference page, like a dueling mechanic I made so that specific (potential) fights that happen in a region in my campaign setting are a bit faster. The page for the rules is mostly so I remember what rolls to call for, but it's nice to have and if a player wants to read it, they have access to the wiki.

Granted, the campaign organization itself I'm not so worried about, it's the maps organization. My list of maps just gets too big to manage as a drop down as a campaign goes on, and sometimes I can't just remove a battle map because the players end up returning to a region and getting into another fight or situation. Reveals are nice, because I can throw the world map and regional maps in there for whenever a player inevitably says "hold on, lemme look at that map again." But I do still end up with a pile of maps that, after a couple of months, push me to roll20 or, recently, I've been looking at legendkeeper. 

I would absolutely love for DDB to be my one stop shop, though. 

The AboveVTT map organization is great.  It calls maps "scenes", and you can make folders and subfolders.

Loading your own map is fast and easy.  You can load your own map through OneDrive or DropBox, the AVTT server, or your own url.  I use Google Drive and it takes me seconds to get the URL from Google Drive and give it to AVTT.

Since it is integrated with DDB, it can load any map from any DDB book you have access to.

I gotta say, it's worth a look.

Please add a snap to grid function PLEASE, Also the ability to resize tokens

Hi Zac,

Something I would like to ask that would make things a lot easier to my group.
We are a group of about 50 players that play adapting the rules of Adventurer´s Leage USA, having about 4-5 games per week and a Monthly Event.
In our Monthly Event tomorrow we would play Descent into the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth using the competitive version, and there will be 3 tables playing together at the same time. The thing is that with how everything works now, we are 2 DM that are building right now the map with tokens and even adding stickers for certain specific points, as we play with our laptop and a external screen that we use as game board.
Other situation that we are experiencing is that when playing a narrative Season there it is frecuent that we play the same adventure twice to let more people play narrative adventures, and most the times the DM changes between games, so that they can´t reuse the map that they´ve build.

We understand that our goup is quite specific, however It would be great if Maps includes an option to save a map so that other DMs can reuse it, or Sharing a Champaing between DMs so that every DM can have their own instances with different players and editing the map without modifying the screen for other DMs.