Hide part of the map with fog of war

GM onlyFog covers the map for your players while you keep seeing all of it.

Cover a scene in fog, then reveal it as the party explores.

Fog of war covers a scene so your players cannot see what they have not explored yet. You always see through it, so you can plan ahead while they are still finding their way.

#Before you start

You need to be the game master of the world. Players cannot see or change fog.
Fog belongs to a sceneGlossaryOne map, with its own tokens, lighting, and fog. A world holds many scenes, and swapping the active one moves the whole table somewhere new., not to the world. Painting one map leaves the others untouched.
Nothing here is permanent. You can cover and uncover as many times as you like, mid session.

#Cover the map

Open the scene you want to hide

Fog applies to one scene at a time, so switch to the map you are about to run.

Turn fog on

Open SceneFog of war and switch it on. The whole map goes dark for your players straight away. Nothing changes for you beyond a slight tint showing which parts are still hidden.

The Scene menu open, with Fog of war selected and the fog tool active in the tool rail — FigThe fog controls, with the whole map still covered.

Start with everything hidden

It is easier to uncover a corridor than to remember which rooms you meant to hide.

#Reveal as they explore

Use the reveal tool to paint over the fog. Anything you paint becomes visible to everyone and stays visible.

To take a revealed area back, hide it again with the same tool. Hiding is not destructive: you can reveal and hide the same area as often as you like.

Tokens with vision uncover fog themselves

If a token carries a light source, the fog ahead of it opens up as it moves, so you do not have to paint every corridor by hand.

#Reveal to one player only

You can reveal an area to a single player rather than the whole table. This is useful for a scout who has gone ahead, or for something only one character would notice.

#What your players see

Your view and theirs differ on purpose. You see the whole map with hidden areas tinted; they see only what has been revealed, and the rest is solid.

A partly revealed map as the GM sees it, with hidden areas dimmed behind a dashed edge — FigDimmed, with a dashed edge you can paint against.

The same map as a player sees it, with unrevealed areas solid and hidden tokens absent — FigA hard edge. No hint of the room behind it, and no hidden tokens.

Who	Sees	Edge of the fog
You, the GM	The whole map, hidden parts dimmed	A dashed line you can paint against
Your players	Only what has been revealed	A hard edge, with no hint of the room behind it

Hiding is not the same as clearing

Hiding an area puts the fog back and keeps everything else as it was. Clearing all fog reveals the entire scene at once, and there is no undo for it once your players have seen the map.

#Fog and vision are not the same thing

Fog is about exploration and it is permanent once revealed. Vision is about line of sight right now, and it moves with the token. A corridor can be revealed by fog but still dark because nobody is carrying a light. Both can be on at once, and usually should be.

Why they are separate

Most tabletops fold these together. Aether keeps them apart because they answer different questions: fog is what the party has explored, vision is what a character can see from where it stands. Keeping them separate is what lets a scout reveal a corridor that stays dark.

Running a gameWorlds, scenes, and what players can see.A tour of the interfaceWhere the panels live and how to rearrange them.

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