Walls & doors

Walls are the skeleton of a playable map. Without them, torchlight floods the whole dungeon, fog of war peels back through solid stone, and the party can stroll through a castle keep. Almost everything on the vision and fog of war pages assumes you’ve drawn walls first.

Open the wall tool from the toolbar (Wall Tool) or press W. GMs only. The WALL TOOL panel appears and can be dragged anywhere on screen.

What walls do

Wall type	Movement	Sight	Cover
Solid	Blocked	Blocked	Gives cover
Terrain	Blocked	You see through one, but not two	One gives cover; two block the shot entirely
Passage	Not blocked	Blocked	Gives cover
Invisible	Blocked	Not blocked	No cover
Door (closed)	Blocked	Blocked	Gives cover
Door (open)	Not blocked	Not blocked	No cover

Cover follows sight exactly: if a wall stops you seeing something, it also gives that thing cover from you. There is one rule behind all three columns, so what you can see, what you can target and what has cover can never disagree.

Solid is the everyday choice — outer walls, interior walls, cliff faces. Reach for the others when you want to break the pairing:

• Passage for a curtained doorway or a bead screen: you can walk through it, but you can’t see through it.
• Invisible for a ledge, a chasm edge or a locked-off area: nobody walks across it, but sightlines and lighting are unaffected.
• Terrain for thin, translucent obstructions like a hedge or a stand of trees, where one layer dims the view and two block it entirely.

Blocking movement can be turned off table-wide from tabletop settings (Block Movement by Walls). When a move would cross a blocking wall, the token stops and you’ll see “Cannot walk through walls”.

Drawing walls

1. Press W and make sure Mode is set to Draw.
2. Pick a Wall Type — Solid, Terrain, Passage, Invisible or Door.
3. Click once on the map to start a wall, then click again to finish it. Keep going to trace a room.

Tip

Walls don’t need to be pretty, they need to be closed. A one-pixel gap at a corner leaks light and fog straight through it. Turn on snap points (below) and finish each wall on the end of the last.

Editing walls

Switch Mode to Edit to select and reshape one wall at a time, or Multi to select several at once by dragging a box around them.

With walls selected you get:

• Change Wall Type — retype the whole selection in one click. Handy for turning a stretch of solid wall into a doorway.
• Toggle Door — appears when any selected wall is a door. Opens a closed door or closes an open one. This is what you click when the party opens the door: sight, light and fog update for everyone immediately.
• Add Walls to Spaces — folds the selected walls into the scene’s spaces, the enclosed regions other tools (such as effect masks) can target.

Opening doors at the table

You don’t have to be in the wall tool to work a door, and you don’t have to be the GM.

• Click the door on the map. A door glows when the person looking at it can actually work it, and the pointer turns into a hand. Click and it swings — sight, light and fog update for everyone immediately.
• Players can open doors too. A player’s door only lights up when one of their own tokens is standing next to it (within one square or hex). A door across the room stays dark, because reaching it would mean reaching through a wall.
• Right-click a door for the same Open Door / Close Door entry in the canvas menu, alongside the GM’s wall-type options.

Locking a door

Right-click a door as GM and choose Lock Door. A locked door wears a small padlock, and a player who clicks it gets a shake and a “this door won’t budge” notice instead of an open door — no amount of clicking will move it. Unlock Door on the same menu gives it back.

You can still open and close a locked door yourself: the lock is a rule for the table, not for you. Use it for the vault the party hasn’t found the key to yet, or the portcullis that only rises when the lever is pulled.

Observers watch, they don't touch

Observers never get the door affordance — they can see doors open, but nothing they click will move one.

Snapping (Advanced)

Expand Advanced in the wall panel:

• Enable Snap Points — new wall ends jump to nearby existing wall ends, so corners actually meet.
• Snap Radius — how close the pointer has to be for that to happen.
• Snap Walls to Grid — locks wall ends to the grid, which keeps long straight runs tidy on gridded maps.

Related

• Vision — what tokens can see through the walls you’ve drawn.
• Fog of war — walls clip how fog is revealed.
• Attacks, saves & cover — how solid walls and closed doors grant cover.
• Tabletop settings — the Block Movement by Walls switch.
• Keeping effects in a space — walled rooms become the spaces that confine rain and smoke.
• Building the map — the rest of the map tools.