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Fog of war
The host sees everything, the players see what they have uncovered. One screen, two views.
Player view. 0 of 81 uncovered.
The board underneath
This page uses the board from the hex board page, terrain and tokens and all. Paint it there, come back here, and cover it up.
Load a saved board
No saved boards yet. Save one on the hex board page and it appears here.
Touch up the terrain
How far a token sees
A token uncovers everything within 1 of it.
Up to 5. Uncover around the tokens uses this radius from every token on the board at once, which is the usual way to run a party moving together.
Which view is on screen
Going to the host view always goes through the hold screen, so a player glancing over cannot see the whole board by accident. The player view needs no hold, because there is nothing to protect.
In the host view, tapping a cell uncovers it for the players, and tapping an uncovered cell covers it again.
The host view is behind a hold, so nobody sees the map by glancing
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Two views, one device
Exploration games have an awkward requirement: one person has to know what is out there and everybody else must not. On a table that means a screen, a folder, or a map drawn upside down. On one shared device it means the screen has to be able to lie, and then to stop lying for a moment when the host looks at it.
The hold is what makes that honest. Getting to the host view is not a tap, it is a button you have to keep pressed, which means it cannot happen by accident and it cannot happen while the phone is being passed. It is the same mechanism the secret role cards use, for the same reason: an honest system is one where the awkward action takes a deliberate effort.
Uncovering as you go
The quickest way to run this is to move the tokens on the hex board page, come back here and press Uncover around the tokens. Everything within the radius of every token opens at once, which is the party moving together and seeing what is around them. The radius uses proper hex distance, so a two on hexes is a ring rather than a square.
For anything the party specifically looks at, the host view lets you uncover cells one at a time, and cover them again when they leave. A board that gradually opens and occasionally closes behind you is more interesting than one that only ever opens.
One device, no rooms
There is no second screen for the host and there never will be, because there is no server behind this site to join two devices together. What there is instead is one screen that both views live on, with a hold between them, which works with no setup and nothing to go wrong when the wifi does.
Everything stays in this browser: the board, the tokens and every cell that has been uncovered. There is no share link at all on this page, because the whole point of it is what one screen shows and what it does not.
Nothing to install, nothing to sign up for
The tool runs entirely in your browser. There is no account, nothing you make is uploaded, and nothing you type is sent anywhere or put into a link.
The page itself is not silent, though: it carries advertising code and a visit counter that sets no cookie, and the cookie page says exactly what each of those does.
It works on the one device in front of you, passed around or propped where everybody can see it. There are no rooms, no codes and no accounts, because there is no server behind this site for any of that to run through.
This page remembers your settings in your browser under pph.fog.state, pph.hex.boards and pph.hex.current, and nowhere else. Clearing your site data for papercarnival.com removes it.
Questions
- Where does the board come from?
- The hex board page. Paint it there, save it if you want to keep it, then come here and cover it up. The Board tab lists your saved boards and loading one puts the fog straight back.
- How do two views work on one screen?
- The player view is the default and shows only what has been uncovered. Getting to the host view goes through a hold screen, the same one the secret role cards use, so a player glancing at the phone cannot see the whole map by accident. Going back to the player view needs no hold, because there is nothing to protect.
- What does the radius do?
- It decides how much a token uncovers around itself when you press Uncover around the tokens. Nought uncovers only the cell it stands on, which suits a cave; two or three suits open country. It uses proper hex distance, so a radius of two on hexes is a ring of eighteen cells rather than a square.
- Can I cover something up again?
- Yes. In the host view, tapping an uncovered cell covers it again, and the Fog tab has a button that covers the whole board. That is more useful than it sounds: a party that leaves an area and loses track of it is a real thing in a lot of games.
- Does it remember what we found?
- Yes, in this browser, so a session survives a refresh with the fog exactly where it was. There is no share link, because this page is meant to be the one screen everybody is looking at.
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