"Four Ugly Monsters"

[gurney9999]

Four Ugly Monsters - “Fulfilling all your Fantasy Grounds Needs!”

Fantasy Grounds has allowed us to take our tabletop gaming online, capturing the spirit of pen and paper narrative gaming with a style unrivaled by any other virtual gaming table product.
The FG community is expanding, and the needs of this community are growing as well. As we all know Fantasy Grounds is not simply about dragging text into a chat window and rolling dice. The whole reason for having a virtual gaming table is to provide an interactive experience for the players involved. GMs need maps, images and tokens to make their adventures soar!



“Four Ugly Monsters” (F.U.M.) will address these FG needs. Our focus will be on the creative aspects of FG. Our primary goal is to build and release content packs for use by Fantasy Grounds GMs.
Our first major content pack will focus on a specific location (a town and surrounding areas) and will contain:

• Maps
• Tokens
• Personalities (NPCs, custom monsters)
• Images
• Shortcuts
• Story Hooks

The objective will be to create a living breathing location that you can immediately use as a central area for your campaign.
But we will also make it easy to pull out information to use with your own campaign:

• You need a map of a town, an inn, a temple? Find it, yank it out and use it in your own module!
• You need NPCs with stats and images for your campaign? You got 'em
• You want monster tokens that will redefine token use with FG? Yep. Your players won't know what hit them.
• You need a full blown town or region to build some stories around? You got it right here.
• You want some story hooks to get you started? No problem... here you go.

But that’s not all. It will take several months to complete our first ‘Content Pack.’ While this work takes place, we will be creating additional commercial products to introduce you to our company, including:

• Targeted Token Packs
• Modules

But we’re not done yet. Four Ugly Monsters is more than a commercial venture for the individuals involved. We love FG and will do our best to support the FG community in every way possible. This will include:

Community Website – Currently under construction, the Four Ugly Monsters website will hopefully serve as the community-run ‘base of operations’ for Fantasy Grounds Players and GMs:
Freebies – F.U.M. will release free content every week or two. Some ideas that are floating around in our ugly heads:

• “Monster Monday” – Custom monsters with Personality .xml code, image, and token.
• “Token Tuesday” – for example, a set of three bandit tokens (holding different weapons and in different poses).
• “NPC Friday” – Personality .xml code, image and/or token.
• “Map … Day!” - Ok, Monday was taken. I mean, come on… you can’t tie maps to a single day of the week, can you?

Tutorials – The video tutorials on The Land of Caern site will be given a facelift and housed on the F.U.M. website. New tutorials created for the FUM site will cover topics such as “Story Creation”, “DM Tips and Tricks”, “Creating Custom Rulesets”, etc.
Forums – Geared to support all FG users, especially GMs with campaigns. We'll set up sub-forums for you and your players. You want the public to see how much fun you're having? Sure thing. You want to keep your game private so you can run the same campaign for a second group of adventurers? We got you covered.
Game Scheduler – With the release of Smite Works’s own Game Calendar, a determination will be made with the help of our future forum members if we want to pursue this feature on our site.



So who are these Four Ugly Monsters?
Devinnight - Artist, Map Maker, Token Expert - https://www.immortalnights.com
Gurney9999 - Writer, creator of the FG Visual FAQs - https://www.landofcaern.com/visualfaqs.htm
Ilwan - Mapping Expert; creator of the "Oath of Kortis" d20 module (and FG conversion), released through his Mapventures website - https://www.mapventures.com
Snikle – World Builder, Mapping Expert, jack of all trades - https://www.sylnae.net

And our long term goals?

Each of our releases, commercial or free, will be interconnected in some manner. Our custom content (items, monsters, spells, etc.) will not only be usable in any of your d20 settings, but will tie in with our own ‘campaign level’ point of view. Our ‘locale’ content packs will be connected to each other in various ways, creating an eventual ‘world’ that we will continue to expand upon until we have a viable campaign setting.

All four of us ‘ugly monsters’ have our own campaign settings, years of stories and ideas that we will bring to the table through this effort. Through this exploration and assimilation of different ideas, we will hopefully create something new and worthwhile.

Our plans are grand. Hopefully it will be a great ride. Look for more announcements once our website opens.

[Kimian]

This is very exciting! I love the look of your maps and tokens. I'm sure I'll be hanging out with the 4 Uglies on a regular basis.

[Crusader]

Yeah, the graphics look stunning. I wish you all luck.

[Snikle]

Thank you, our new forum is just about ready for people to start coming and visiting. Keep an eye out too, because on opening day we may just have a freebie to hand out to all those fellow ugly guys out there!

[kalmarjan]

Sounds good. If you want me to contribute, just ask. I'd love to!


Sandeman

[ijason]

Looks excellent, and I'm brand-new to FG, so should be an educational blast!

[Snikle]

Our forums are up, but we are still finalizing everything, but our first freebie will be up later this evening.

[Snikle]

First freebie is up, grab it while it is hot!

[dLANbandit]

Awesome. I wish you great luck with your new endeavor. I'm a Devinnight token/map fan. His style has the perfect amount of realism vs. animation, and no one makes tokens like his. I'm certain his cohorts are just as skilled which will make this a great success.

[devinnight]

<tears>
Thanks dLAN, once i get some stuff out of the way I plan on cranking out the monster token packs.
Hope to see you over on the FUM site too.
-D