The Fog of War tool has received quite a workout during the summer.
What started as a fairly straightforward way to cover and reveal parts of a map has gradually become something rather more useful at the gaming table: a lightweight tactical map companion with tokens, initiative, measurements, statuses and, now, a live synchronized player display.
The latest round of changes concentrates on two things: sharing the action with the players and making the GM interface faster during actual play.
Here is the GM map

The Big One: Live Player Display
You can now give the players their own view of the map.

Start a Live Session and Fog of War creates a unique player URL and QR code. Put the player view on a television or second monitor, or let players open it on their phones or tablets.
The player display is deliberately not another GM screen.
Players see fully opaque fog, the parts of the map you have revealed, and only the tokens they are supposed to know about. Hidden tokens and GM-only information are filtered out before the player view receives them.
You can either just share the players screen separately or give them the link of the live players screen.
So the ogre lurking behind the ruined wall remains the GM’s little secret until it is time for the ogre to become everybody’s problem.
The Map Now Moves Live
Originally synchronization was something you explicitly asked Fog of War to do. That is still possible, but Auto Synccan now take care of most of it.
Reveal the map with the brush or lasso and the player display follows while you work, updating roughly every couple of seconds during active revealing.
Move a token and the players see it move. Zoom into the interesting corner of the dungeon and, with Auto Sync enabled, their view follows yours.
Even ruler measurements can be synchronized. If you are explaining that the serpent is 23 metres away rather than “somewhere over there near the pillar”, everybody can see exactly what you mean.
This makes the player display particularly useful on a large television at a physical gaming table. The GM keeps the complete tactical picture on the laptop while the shared screen shows the world as the characters currently understand it.
Players Get Their Own Ruler
The player display is no longer entirely passive.
Once the GM has established the map scale, players can use their own local measurement tool. Click the ruler or press M, then measure distances directly on the player map.
Player measurements appear in yellow and remain local to that player. They do not appear on the GM map or clutter anybody else’s display.
This is a small feature, but a useful one when somebody inevitably asks:
“Can I reach that thing this round?”
Measure it and find out.
Players also now get a more focused version of the Tools From Pavis sidebar, concentrating on things useful during play, such as Combat Flow and the Dice Roll Evaluator. An active Fog of War session can be reopened through the Player View link.
Initiative Has Become Much More Tactical
The initiative list has also received considerable attention.
Initiative values can now be edited directly in the sidebar. Change a number, finish editing, and the list automatically sorts itself into the new order.
You can also right-click a character directly in the initiative list to open its tactical menu. There is no need to find the corresponding token underneath a heap of combatants just because somebody has been knocked prone.
From there you can apply statuses, toggle torches, rename tokens and perform the usual token operations.
The currently active character is much harder to lose track of. It receives a prominent gold border and ▶ marker in the initiative list together with a gold ring around its map token.
The player initiative display follows the same secrecy rules as the map. Hidden opponents remain hidden and their statuses are not quietly leaked through the initiative tracker.
A Faster Interface for Actual Play
The September update reorganizes the interface around a fairly simple idea:
setup and play are different activities.
The sidebar is now divided into four tabs:
Tools | Tokens | Initiative | Session
Things you normally need while running an encounter stay close at hand. Setup operations such as entering a map, aligning its scale and exporting it have moved into Session, where they stop consuming space once swords are out.
Reveal controls are contextual as well. Brush size and softness settings appear when you are actually using the Brush rather than permanently occupying valuable sidebar territory.
The result is considerably less scrolling and more room for the map itself.
Statuses Without the Scrollathon
Mythras combatants have an unfortunate tendency to accumulate conditions.
Prone. Stunned. Bleeding. Unconscious. Dead.
Previously, assigning these meant navigating a fairly long status list. Status selection is now a compact four-column quick grid with recognizable icons, making common combat conditions much faster to apply.
This is especially useful once an encounter has acquired six combatants, three wounds, two people on the floor and somebody who has caught fire.
In other words, somewhere around round three.
Better on Tablets
A considerable amount of less glamorous work has gone into making Fog of War behave like a tactical application rather than a desktop web page squeezed onto another device.
Buttons and inputs now use a minimum 44-pixel touch target, making the interface much easier to operate from an iPad or other tablet.
Labels also maintain a minimum readable font size, so token names do not shrink into archaeological inscriptions when working at unusual zoom levels.
Help and keyboard shortcuts have meanwhile been consolidated into a single accessible help dialog in the header.
Small Things That Remove Clicks
There are several smaller changes intended simply to make running an encounter require less fiddling.
New enemy tokens now face right (90°) by default, while player tokens face left (270°). Drop opposing groups onto the map and they are already looking suspiciously at one another.
The interface remembers more of the tactical state, and the player sidebar provides a direct route back into an active Player View.
There is also now a secure contact form in the Help Hub for bug reports, suggestions and other feedback.
Keeping GM Secrets Secret
The synchronization work also prompted some substantial changes behind the curtain.
Fog of War now follows a more fail-closed approach to player information. If something cannot safely be determined to be visible, the player display should not receive it.
One particularly sneaky bug involved torches attached to hidden tokens. Under the wrong circumstances, their light could reveal fog and thereby announce that something unseen was standing in the darkness carrying a light source.
That has been fixed.
Hidden monsters may once again lurk professionally.
Getting Started
Using the new player display takes only a few steps:
- Open Fog of War at
/fogofwar/. - Load your map and prepare it normally.
- Open Session and enable Live Session.
- Enable Auto Sync if you want the player display to follow changes automatically.
- Show the generated QR code to the players or send them the player link.
- Start revealing the map, moving tokens and tracking initiative.
From there the GM continues working normally. The player display takes care of presenting the appropriate version of events to everybody else.
From Map Veil to Tactical Companion
Fog of War is still deliberately not trying to become a complete virtual tabletop.
There are already excellent applications for that.
The aim is narrower: give a GM the tactical pieces that are useful alongside a physical or online Mythras game without requiring the campaign to move into a VTT ecosystem.
Load a map. Hide what should be hidden. Reveal it as the characters explore. Put combatants on it. Track initiative and conditions. Measure distances. Give the players a clean second-screen view.
And then get back to the game.
That has been the direction of the summer updates: fewer interface gymnastics for the GM, more useful information for the players, and considerably fewer opportunities for the monster behind the door to accidentally announce its presence.
You can find Fog of War at https://www.toolsfrompavis.com












