Considering Fantasy Grounds

[LauraW]

Friends of our are moving away and we want to continue gaming. So I started looking into virtual tabletops. I like the looks of Fantasy Grounds the best but I need a system that will easily support World of Darkness, Savage Worlds and Fudge/Fate (Spirit of the Century). I believe we can do the first two easily on Fantasy Grounds but concerned about the last.

While I am fine with the computer, I am new to virtual tabletops. My friends are not computer literate and I will need to set this up for them before they move so not a lot of time to decide.

I want something rather simple for them. I also like to put pretty things in my game (a girl thing I suppose) including maps and props (such as letters, tickets, etc.)

I guess I would be sold on this if I could find a way to graphically support the fudge dice. Battlegrounds has this ability in the demo although it doesn't add the -'s and +'s which is fine. I know we could use 6 sided dice but I really like the visuals of the -'s and +'s.

Is there some sort of way to plug-in a mod for the Fudge dice? I can't test this in the demo so have to take your word for it...something that does concern me. :o

Anyway, thanks for any advice you might give me.

[Foen]

Welcome to the forums LauraW. I'm not familiar with the other VTTs out there, so I'll leave it to more knowledgeable folks to comment on their relative merits.

I think it should be possible to build a plug-in (extension) for custom dice which would show 1s and -1s for successes and fails. Do your fudge dice us 1-2=fail,3-4=neither,5-6=success?

Cheers

Foen

[LauraW]

Thank you, Foen.

Yes, the values should be exactly as you stated. However, one must see each dice because the number of 'shifts' between the difficulty of the task and the number of successes/failures is important to the game. So if one rolls 0 -'s, 1 blank, and 5 +,s this could change the outcome. I hope that makes sense. Its a very easy system but difficult to explain. :)

Unfortunately, I am not skilled enough to create a plug-in myself. I certainly am envious of those who are.

[Foen]

I'll try to create an extension which does this, but you should be aware that it will probably not be able to sort the dice results, so throws of 5,3,6,1,1,4 will be shown as 1,0,1,-1,-1,0 and not -1,-1,0,0,1,1.

To sort dice results requires a closer programming link to the underlying program and I think you'd need a custom ruleset to do it. You might want to go down this route in the longer term, however, as it would allow you to have customised character sheets etc.

Foen


Foen

[Griogre]

I believe there is an extension for Fate dice for Fudge at the FG Wiki. Found it - I have not personally used it but here's the link: https://oberoten.dyndns.org/fgwiki/index.php/Fate_Dice_For_Fudge

Edit: I just downloaded and tried it. The dice are shown as 0, -1, +1. The extention allows you to roll the die using a die code /die 4dF and there is a custom die added on the d6.

[icedcrow]

Welcome to the community and I hope that you find your stay here pleasurable!

[Valarian]

As Griogre has already stated, there's an extension available for FUDGE / FATE dice available on the Wiki. I'm responsible for this one, by the way, so if there are any problems send me a PM.

Waldo Pepper has done a Spirit of the Century ruleset, but was having problems with the die rolling from the chat buffer (the /die parsing). I'm planning on doing a FATE ruleset when the Dresden Files game comes out.

[LauraW]

Thanks, everyone!

Foen, I don't care if they are sorted. :) The dice are not sorted when you roll them on the table. But since there is one already prepared, I will try that one.

Today I will play with the demo and maybe pay for the GM one. If I can't use it, it won't be so bad.

You are right about the character sheets! I never thought of that. Is it extremely difficult to do? I created my own in Word so can do that sort of thing but scripting is beyond me. If Waldo has done a ruleset maybe I can use the character sheets from there. Honestly I don't mind if the dice are counted or sorted at all...I think my players are smart enough to read them exactly how they would do in a live game.

Dresden Files is the reason I would like the dice as well. I figured we could use the tabletop as simply a place to play and not worry about all the rulesets. Its such a simple system and we could have physical books for our reference. Am I making this too simple?

[Spyke]

I figured we could use the tabletop as simply a place to play and not worry about all the rulesets. Its such a simple system and we could have physical books for our reference. Am I making this too simple?No, you're giving us a timely reminder that sometimes we make things too complicated! ;)

As long as you can roll the dice you need you can use FG for your game. Everything else is just icing on the cake.

Spyke

[LauraW]

Thanks again!

Now that I think about the character sheets I do think I need them on the computer screen. I don't want players having to switch between a pdf file and the tabletop. Can I somehow import an image of the character sheet into the game? And would it be large enough to read easily or would the print be very small.

Is there a way to easily create a character sheet in the tabletop? I don't mind if it is simply text of the character sheet..in other words, I don't mind if I can't click on it to modify rolls, etc. I just want to be able to see the character's sheets and I want them to be able to see their own sheets without having to toggle the computer screen back and forth or have to look down at sheets on their laps.

I really like this system but the other one has a SotC set already. Decisions, decisions!

[Spyke]

Is there a way to easily create a character sheet in the tabletop? I don't mind if it is simply text of the character sheet..in other words, I don't mind if I can't click on it to modify rolls, etc. I just want to be able to see the character's sheets and I want them to be able to see their own sheets without having to toggle the computer screen back and forth or have to look down at sheets on their laps.Not out the box, but an extension that added a single big text box to the Foundation ruleset would be very easy... one of us would/should do it.

OK, here I go... :)

Spyke

[LauraW]

Wow, that would work well, even better than an image. Could a player or GM use this to take notes during the game as well? In live games, I must have a pencil at all times to take notes as a player. Without that pencil, I feel like I am missing something..even if there are no note-worthy events! :)

[Spyke]

Wow, that would work well, even better than an image. Could a player or GM use this to take notes during the game as well? In live games, I must have a pencil at all times to take notes as a player. Without that pencil, I feel like I am missing something..even if there are no note-worthy events! :)Yes.

I've just created it for myself with a simple text box. The immediate problem is that FG seems to strip the carriage returns when you paste the character in. I'll play with that a bit, but it's not the end of the world if you have to edit them back in.

You can already take notes during a game as both a GM and a player (the GM can use a page in the Story book, the player has a dedicated notebook) but I can add a separate Notes page to the generic character sheet. I'll also add an Inventory page as every character would need this and it would save scrolling during play.

Edit:

I'll also add a similar sheet for creating NPCs, and one for Items. The Story and Images/Maps are already available in Foundation.

Spyke

[Griogre]

It bears repeating there is nothing "wrong" with just having a stack of printed out PCs character sheets besides your keyboard. I was running a game on software that just was a die roller and battlemap before I moved to FG and that's exactly how I did it.

FG's great strength is its "Character Sheet-centric" when compared to MapTool or Battlegrounds - which are "Map-centric". FG's other strength is because it simulates the tabletop so it has a very low learning curve for anyone who has played in a face to face game.

On the other hand, it is not trivial to develop character sheets in FG and the more complicated a character sheet the harder it is. The good news is there are already some rulesets that have done the hard work for you. There is a commercial Savage Worlds ruleset which I think is very good (full disclosure - I have done freelance work for DA who makes that ruleset). Very simple character sheets are not that difficult (as Spyke demonstrated).

[zabulus]

Plus, FG does have out of the box notes functionality in the D20 ruleset.

[Spyke]

I've uploaded a basic text box character sheet extension to this thread (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?p=72580#post72580) in the Armory.

I decided in the end that we didn't need NPC and Item boxes. If you're using this sheet you're probably going to be working with voice and adventure notes printed out. If you are going to enter the adventure into FG, you can just as easily include the NPC and item stats in the relevant story pages.

Spyke

[richvalle]

Plus, FG does have out of the box notes functionality in the D20 ruleset.

Yes, this is all it does support out of the box. 3.5 D20 to be specific.

rv

[PneumaPilot]

Also, don't forget that there is already an World of Darkness ruleset that works very similar to what you have described. The character sheet does not do anything automatically for you; it is just a place to store and share character data. In developing it, I've tried to stay true to the paper tabletop experience as much as possible (i.e. you kind of have to know the rules to play ;) )

The download location of the latest WoD ruleset is in my sig.