Hello All!

Recently I played in a very spirited campaign.  It was in many ways your typical "clear the dungeon" campaign.  All involved were experienced and the characters had been in use off and on for many years.  However this time we played it with Maptool for the first time.  There was a noticeable change in player behavior and completely due to the lack of light which Maptool does an excellent job of representing.

So my question is how do you handle light in dark places?

Traditionally on the table top, the map is revealed in bit and pieces as the characters "See" more, using either torches, lanterns, light spells or whatever.  We more or less took the light for granted and it rarely slowed the pace of the party in exploration or melee. 

However in this weekends play something amazing happened.  The players were, for lack of better word, Timid!  In more then one example the strong fighter type would blitz after a foe and stop.  Thats right STOP at the edge of the light.  I can't recall that ever happening before.  Furthermore our sources of light were limited to certain characters and the other characters tended to bunch up, bathing in the light.  This is new behavior and really added to the fun!  One player (ok it was me) commented at one point, "This is a bit scary, I'm actually nervous for my character."

So I was curious if others have experienced the same thing?

Being a player in the same campaign, I must agree with Ben--it added a good bit of "reality" to our otherwise unreal world.  It would have been very easy to produce light sources for everyone, I just had a mental lapse and forgot!

As DM I was flabbergasted that Minsc didn't charge in as usual!

I enjoyed 'doing' the Maptools, it did add a good bit of realism to the dungeon, and I can see that in future sessions it will actually speed up play, saving the time normally taken up by drawing the map. 

Behaviors of all the players did change dramatically; not knowing what's behind the next corner, or indeed 10' ahead, does make a difference.

Formerly, I just drew the map and allowed players to move as they would inside it and didn't really pay much attention to light.

I was actually half way into writing my next article on this topic.  It was an interesting dynamic to me also, so I researched it and put some thought into it:
Effects of Light

(Its still a draft BTW.)

That article Joe is a good start!

That's amazing how we all saw the same effect, yet did not really comment on it or address it in play.  We are too engaged in not dieing I suppose!