Tried out this fog of war way of playing in the guy’s game without thinking it through all the way. It was a hassle, and—adoy—it lets the player see through walls.
I generally don’t like drawing maps for players because A) it destroys some of the mystery, B) it provides handholds for legalistic disputes, and C) it takes up time. However, if there is a space that is physically complex space in a mechanically relevant way, I will draw things out. (I modeled something with cardboard once, but that was a lot of work.) Today’s dungeon had a lot of lava to cross, so I decided to pre-print maps. (Scaling for printing is a hassle, BTW.)
In retrospect, I think I could have just said things like “There’s lava blocking that passage. How are you going to cross that? Or are you going the other way.”
We both got tired today, but I really wanted to wrap up the adventure today. Why? It’s some weird DM thing about not wanting to start the next game with a single adventure-ending battle, which I could have let go. But we were ready to go to sleep by the time we were done.
The guy then said he wants the next adventure to be in space, but not just trying to get home from space, but actually Doing a Quest in space. So, I guess I’ll get on it.
I floated the idea of Dungeon Crawl Classics, but he shot it down. He saw the XP table and is interested in getting to 20th level.