DNH
June 27th, 2009, 13:33
[An almost identical post appeared first on FUM's 4e ruleset group.]
So we finally played 4e with FG2 again last night (as a kind of tribute to Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, we have been playing 'Ghost Tower of Inverness' using OSRIC rules; great fun!). We were using FG2 version 2.4.3 and the 4E_JPG ruleset version 1.5.1. And I have a suggestion/request.
For me as the DM, the drag-drop functionality with this ruleset is a godsend, to be honest. For those of you who have not yet used this ruleset, it allows both players and DMs to resolve attacks simply by dragging them from the Combat Tracker or character sheet and dropping them on the appropriate token on the map. It will even perform the relevant lookup functions and determine the result/apply the damage. It makes things so much quicker and easier and I am very happy with it. My players, some of them at least, are not so convinced.
Their chief gripe is that they struggle with screen real estate (not everyone has the double monitor set-up I see on the forums here!) and having their character sheets and the map, plus the chat window, all available in order to facilitate the drag-drop thing is hard work. They found they were moving windows around all the time (I know *I* do as DM but at least all my NPC attacks come off the CT). One of my players also has problems with RSI and complains that drag-drop is more of a strain than a simple double-click.
So here's my suggestion/request: Cannot the default targetting in FG2 not be put to better use? Is it not possible to use whatever target the player has selected on the map (allow only one - the latest - for simplicity), which is indicated on the CT by that player's token, and calculate attack success and damage based on that? As you already have code to determine which token on the map has been selected, in order to add the player's token to the appropriate entry on the CT, can you not then look up that entry's defences etc and resolve the attack? Essentially, miss out the drag-drop target determination routines and use the character's selected target instead.
I know for a fact that this would make a lot of players happy. An attack would then simply be a case of clicking on a token on the map (you might not even have to if it's the same target as last round) and double-clicking your chosen attack. Same for damage.
Any thoughts?
So we finally played 4e with FG2 again last night (as a kind of tribute to Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, we have been playing 'Ghost Tower of Inverness' using OSRIC rules; great fun!). We were using FG2 version 2.4.3 and the 4E_JPG ruleset version 1.5.1. And I have a suggestion/request.
For me as the DM, the drag-drop functionality with this ruleset is a godsend, to be honest. For those of you who have not yet used this ruleset, it allows both players and DMs to resolve attacks simply by dragging them from the Combat Tracker or character sheet and dropping them on the appropriate token on the map. It will even perform the relevant lookup functions and determine the result/apply the damage. It makes things so much quicker and easier and I am very happy with it. My players, some of them at least, are not so convinced.
Their chief gripe is that they struggle with screen real estate (not everyone has the double monitor set-up I see on the forums here!) and having their character sheets and the map, plus the chat window, all available in order to facilitate the drag-drop thing is hard work. They found they were moving windows around all the time (I know *I* do as DM but at least all my NPC attacks come off the CT). One of my players also has problems with RSI and complains that drag-drop is more of a strain than a simple double-click.
So here's my suggestion/request: Cannot the default targetting in FG2 not be put to better use? Is it not possible to use whatever target the player has selected on the map (allow only one - the latest - for simplicity), which is indicated on the CT by that player's token, and calculate attack success and damage based on that? As you already have code to determine which token on the map has been selected, in order to add the player's token to the appropriate entry on the CT, can you not then look up that entry's defences etc and resolve the attack? Essentially, miss out the drag-drop target determination routines and use the character's selected target instead.
I know for a fact that this would make a lot of players happy. An attack would then simply be a case of clicking on a token on the map (you might not even have to if it's the same target as last round) and double-clicking your chosen attack. Same for damage.
Any thoughts?