Free-hand drawing tools

I don't know about everyone else, but I'd kill for some free-drawing tools.

Currently the drawing tools are mainly centered around tile images and a token support for drawing.

I'd strongly advocate for some medium of drawing on the map as a canvas. Initially I thought its exclusion was limited to the grid knots due to the nature of the data-structure, but the FOW has knot snapping as an option compared to the drawing tool so it shouldn't be a huge leap.

I'd imagine a freehand tool, and a polygon tool along with a basic rectangle/ellipse tool as the bare basics for drawing encounters were needed.

Reason 1: Allows Randomness : It's extremely difficult to run random encounters that are not planned in advance unless you have a large stock of maps at your disposal, or pre-selected random maps.

Reason 2: Aids Immersion : TTRPGs have always been imaginative in nature, and GMs/DMs tended to doodle the encounter on the spot; adding details as needed. "Where's the pot located.. the pile of bones is here right?" And you'd doodle a crude representation to aid in their planning. I'm sure this can still be done, but it requires having a large amount of images at your disposal, ready for use. This greatly supports d20pro in allowing DMs/GMs to 'wing it' as was done in the olden days.

Reason 3: Saves Time : Many older TTRPGers are used to drawing simple things on a map. "Where's the log, ok, I brace and ready an action when he charges past.." The phenomenon of map tiles and 3d terrain is a relatively new development, and often done only by those who can afford to expend the prep time necessary. With today's busy world (especially in the US) where we're working long hours, it's hard to justify spending even more time to prepare a map when you're used to simply drawing on a grid where needed, and telling a story. If you've seen the TTRPG streaming development on twitch, a majority of the streamers opt for simple drawings as opposed to graphics, even if they have them at their disposal as a time saving measure.

 

No problem, I see you're moving threads so that's probably the better route.

Out of all the 'new' features, this is probably the biggest one for me, the others are conveniences that would make identifying things easier. Here's another illustration on another platform that I've pretty much just ran my last session on.



Here my players jumped into a hatch, and I had to illustrate the situation which was the following:

1. The trapped floor rising to crush the ceiling.
2. The latch door they found.
3. The height they needed to overcome if they wanted to close the trap door since the 'floor' was still rising above them.
4. The disjointed stairway going down and the space between the trapped door and the stair way down.

(I bet you can guess which module it is)

The uses aren't limited to drawing maps, but so much more.

 

Raise dead-ing topic for bit:

Annotation sounds excellent. I'm curious if there will ever be a 'layer' system so I can seperate not only image tiles, but my drawings. That way, if I want to move the sword that was dropped by the fighter 3 squares without selecting my crudely drawn table, it'd be a snap.

This is of coarse assuming the annotations are vector based as opposed to image based. Saves space too if all you're storing/sending are arrays of coordinates.