Revealing Your World

Everything you author as DM starts private. Maps, photos, clues: all of it sits in your Atlas unseen until you hand it over. There is no master switch and no way to reveal a whole section at once. You reveal one thing, on purpose, at the moment it matters.

This is a DM chapter. Players do not reveal anything; they receive. The short version of their side is at the end.

The four reveal verbs

There are exactly four ways to put something in front of the table.

Place on Play tab, for maps. Long-press a map tile in the Atlas Maps sub-tab (right-click on a Mac or Windows machine) and pick Place on Play tab. The map becomes the table's current map. If it was unrevealed, this reveals it in the same action. You can also do it from the map's detail screen: tap the tile to open it, then tap the cell-tower button in the top bar. It turns green and names the map you are broadcasting.

Drag a photo or clue onto the map. On the exploration map, arm the Photo tool or the Clue tool in the toolbar, and a shelf of your assets slides up. Press and hold one, drag it onto the map, and let go. The drop is the reveal: the moment the pin lands, the asset is revealed and its image is on its way to every connected player. Chapter 11, Photos, Clues, and Portraits, covers making the assets.

Display on Play tab, for a full-screen handout. Long-press an asset tile in the Atlas Assets sub-tab and pick Display on Play tab. The image fills every player's Play tab, revealing the asset first if it was still private. This is the verb for "everyone look at this now", and the only one that takes over the whole screen.

Place a map link. Arm the Navigation tool on the exploration map, tap where the passage leads, pick the destination map, and place the target marker on it. Creating the link reveals both maps at once, since a link nobody can follow is not worth drawing. Chapter 19, Map Links and Door Pins, has the mechanics.

Two things about link reveals:

• It reveals both endpoints and stops. If the destination map links onward to a third map, that third map stays hidden. Reveals never travel down a chain.
• Players see a link only when the map on the far end is already revealed to them. A link pointing at something they have not been shown is invisible on their device, not grayed out.

What tapping a pin does, and does not do

Tapping a placed photo or clue pin opens a small card with the label, a thumbnail, and a View button. View opens the image full-screen on that device only. Nobody else sees it, and the same is true when a player taps a pin on their own copy.

Tapping a pin is private looking. The verb that puts an image in front of the whole table is Display on Play tab.

Knowing what the table has seen

Your Atlas tells you at a glance. An unrevealed map or asset shows dimmed with an UNREVEALED badge. The Assets sub-tab also has filter buttons for Revealed and Unrevealed, the fastest way to check what is still in reserve before a session.

On the player's device there is no dimming, because there is nothing there. Unrevealed content is absent, and a section holding nothing revealed does not appear either. An empty-looking player Atlas early in a campaign is the app working correctly.

Treat every reveal as permanent. There is no un-reveal control, and once a player's device has the image it keeps it, browsable later with no session running. Chapter 30, Browse Offline: the Player's Atlas, covers that.

Pacing: one thing at a time

The app is built around a single reveal at a time. Play with that rather than against it.

• Reveal the map when the party arrives, not while they are still travelling.
• Drop a clue pin at the moment someone searches the room.
• Save Display on Play tab for the handout you want read aloud.

You can prepare all of this with no session running. A reveal made offline flips the flag locally and travels to players when they next join, so you can stage an evening's reveal order in advance.

The player's side

You never reveal anything. When the DM places a map, it appears on your Play tab. When a clue lands, its pin appears on your map. When the DM displays an asset, it fills your screen. Tapping any pin opens the image on your device alone.

The one thing you can place yourself is a Note pin, and only during a live session. Notes are shared the instant they land, by design. Chapter 17, The Play Tab and the Exploration Map, covers them.