Interested in FG; a few questions

[Lithl]

My friends and I often play oWoD and Exalted games together, but we're starting to drift apart geographically. The times of the year when we're in the same (or nearby) cities in order to game together are getting shorter and less frequent. On friend has become active on Destiny's Forge, an Exalted chat, and another friend has become employed at PMTE Productions to help produce their Lucid system, and the tabletop games using it. But we still get lees opportunity to play together than we'd like.

Someone elsewhere in the bowels of the Internet pointed me to Fantas Grounds, and it sounded like a great solution to my problem. I've been playing around with the Demo version for about 8 hours (non-consecutive) now, as well as reading over the User Guide and Ruleset Modification Guide, and I haven't yet been dissuaded by the thought of creating oWoD/Exalted rulesets for our gaming group. (I've seen an nWoD ruleset, but we don't particularly like nWoD; I've seen an Exalted ruleset, but responses seemed to imply that it didn't function, at least not fully)

I do have extensive experience using XML (in conjunction with X/HTML, data storage, program serialization, and game save files), so that's not really any concern. I've never previously used Lua, but I am a well-versed programmer in several languages, so learning Lua should be fairly trivial.

But before I buy and spend hours on hours of this beautiful summer working on a self-imposed project like this, I'd like to ask a few questions that haven't been immediately and obviously answered by reading over the materials available to me:

Can a ruleset omit certain dice? oWoD and Exalted use nothing but d10s, and the extra dice would just be a distraction to accidentally click on
How reliable are the connections between clients? I've so far only tested on a local machine and between two machines on a LAN, however during one of my tests on a single machine, the connecting player lost the ability to send messages to the GM application instance, though still received info from the GM. It could have been something I hit on accident, but I haven't been able to reproduce the error.
For those who have done it before, approximately how long does it take to create an entirely new ruleset? White Wolf's storytelling system can't exactly be based on d20, so a rough estimation could help me know how much time I need to invest in addition to learning Lua and the FG specifications.
Is 30 a hard maximum on the number of dice you can roll? Or can that be modified in the ruleset/Lua script? While rolling more than 30 dice for a single action is uncommon, Exalted always has things like the Godspear, or the Solar Circle Sorcery Gaia's Rebuke (200 damage dice), older Exalted or other supernatural beings could conceivably roll over 30 dice, and even a fairly young Exalt could do it with the right charms and a bit of luck. With a hard limit of 30, some rolls would have to be broken up.
Is there a way to tie rolls for specific actions directly to character stats, or must the ST/player manipulate the sheet manually whenever it's needed? For example, damaging the target, regaining Essence off of a stunt, regaining Willpower through a daily Conviction roll, etc.
What about the converse? Must modifiers to a roll (eg: Willpower = +1 success) be made on both the roll and the character sheet, or can the change be done in only one place?
Regarding the Combat Tracker, can its function be modified? Specifically, would it be overly difficult to change it to something mirroring Exalted 2e's battle time system of ticks and speed? (Each combatant is assigned a tick based on initiative, actions have a speed with sets when the combatant's next action may take place, and time progresses linearly through the ticks) Rather than cycling through the characters with the Next Actor button, I'd like to be able to cycle through the ticks, which can allow particularly speedy character to act much more frequently than slow ones.

[Tenian]

Let me say I know nothing about WOD..well nothing mechanical. I can answer some of your questions.



Can a ruleset omit certain dice? oWoD and Exalted use nothing but d10s, and the extra dice would just be a distraction to accidentally click on

No you can't remove dice. However you can build a ruleset to the point where you never actually need to pick up and use the dice on the desktop.


How reliable are the connections between clients? I've so far only tested on a local machine and between two machines on a LAN, however during one of my tests on a single machine, the connecting player lost the ability to send messages to the GM application instance, though still received info from the GM. It could have been something I hit on accident, but I haven't been able to reproduce the error.

This sounds like the "DirectX focus" problem, not an actual network issue. When running in full screen, FGII does not regain focus correctly unless you use alt-tab to switch to it. I personally recommend running in windowed mode and just making the window the size of your desktop...this allows better application switching.



For those who have done it before, approximately how long does it take to create an entirely new ruleset? White Wolf's storytelling system can't exactly be based on d20, so a rough estimation could help me know how much time I need to invest in addition to learning Lua and the FG specifications.

That is going to depend on the level of automation you want to add and the underlying system. You could make a character sheet that was nothing more than a place to put numbers/strings and then just pick up and roll dice. Or you could make it so powers/stats/weapons/whatever can be double clicked on, dragged to the combat tracker, dragged onto tokens (in 2.4.0 RC4) etc. Obviously the more you want it to do, the longer it will take.



Is 30 a hard maximum on the number of dice you can roll? Or can that be modified in the ruleset/Lua script? While rolling more than 30 dice for a single action is uncommon, Exalted always has things like the Godspear, or the Solar Circle Sorcery Gaia's Rebuke (200 damage dice), older Exalted or other supernatural beings could conceivably roll over 30 dice, and even a fairly young Exalt could do it with the right charms and a bit of luck. With a hard limit of 30, some rolls would have to be broken up.

I don't honestly know.



Is there a way to tie rolls for specific actions directly to character stats, or must the ST/player manipulate the sheet manually whenever it's needed? For example, damaging the target, regaining Essence off of a stunt, regaining Willpower through a daily Conviction roll, etc.

You can automate rolls so double clicking on a stat/modifier/power/spell/etc rolls dice, adds numbers to the modifier box etc. You could also make it so you can drag them onto the ct/tokens and have them perform actions. It all comes down to the amount of work you want to put into it and the underlying mechanics of the game.



What about the converse? Must modifiers to a roll (eg: Willpower = +1 success) be made on both the roll and the character sheet, or can the change be done in only one place?

See above.



Regarding the Combat Tracker, can its function be modified? Specifically, would it be overly difficult to change it to something mirroring Exalted 2e's battle time system of ticks and speed? (Each combatant is assigned a tick based on initiative, actions have a speed with sets when the combatant's next action may take place, and time progresses linearly through the ticks) Rather than cycling through the characters with the Next Actor button, I'd like to be able to cycle through the ticks, which can allow particularly speedy character to act much more frequently than slow ones.

You could make such a modification. It sounds like it might be a fairly significant undertaking. I think someone was working on a similar system however.
I think you could simulate this by changing the actor's init score after every action and sorting the list to go from low to high:
So if player A acts every 5 ticks and player B acts every 8, the CT would start on player A with an init of 5.
Player A acts, init adjusts to 10
Next actor advances to 8
Player B acts init adjusts to 16
Next actor advances to 10
Player A would act, init adjust to 15.
Next actor would move to 15.
Player A acts, init adjust to 20,
Next actor moves to 16
Player B acts init to 24
..etc etc etc
You'd have to do more work if you need to keep track of the init counts where no one acts...but you get the idea.

[Lithl]

You could make such a modification. It sounds like it might be a fairly significant undertaking. I think someone was working on a similar system however...Hmm... Would it be feasible to dump the Combat Tracker entirely, to create a new Battle Wheel-style window, or do you think the work required for that would be even higher than getting around the shortcomings of the Combat Tracker?

[Tenian]

I don't know what exactly a "battle wheel" is but you don't need to have the combat tracker. You can customize any part of it you want so you can alter it's functionality however you want.

FGII does have some limitations when it comes to manipulating certain types of elements (graphics, tokens, portraits, formattedtext, etc) Depending on what you watn to do methods/properties may or may not exist.

The library link at the top of this page will provide you with access to the "ruleset reference" link. That breaks down all the classes and their properties and methods...you can poke around and see if it sounds like the right methods/properties exist.

[Lithl]

Well, nothing you've said has dissuaded me from liking the program any more than playing with the demo/reading documentation has. I think anything more I learn I'll need to learn from experience. Which means I need to actually buy it :)

Thanks for the help answering my questions; we'll see how well I'm able to make a ruleset :)