Community input required for Big Iron Vault article on FG and Tero Parvinen

[bigironvault]

Hello everyone,

To those that may not be aware, Big Iron Vault (https://www.bigironvault.com)is a gaming magazine dedicated to the people that play RPGs. In other words, its a 'gaming lifestyle' magazine that was recently started in Jan '09. Since then we've gotten some great industry support and contribution and always looking to get the latest pulse of gaming.

In our next issue of BIV, we will be interviewing Tero Parvinen of Smite Works fame about Fantasy Grounds. But in order to really get a grassroots understanding of the community and what FG means to you, I wish to ask the community a few questions. The answers will help formulate my thoughts on FG:

1. Please state your name/nick and experience in RPGs.
2. Why did you choose FG as your primary tool for RPing?
3. What is the community like as a whole? i.e. How much help is available for new users? Lots of community made material, it's alive and well - it's slowing down?
4. In what ways is FG better/worse than pen & paper RPing?
5. Other comments

Please look forward to the FG article in BIV #3 due out Jan '10.

[bigironvault]

ps. Would love to quote whomever is interested as well. Looking to write a good article to support FG.

[osarusan]

Did you want us to post here, PM you, or how should we respond?

[bigironvault]

Posting here is good! Thanks. - the more responses the better = the larger the article = more exposure for FG!

[Veldehar]

Lee Rice/Veldehar

I've selected FG primarily for the purpose of playing Rolemaster games with the old time gaming crew of 15-20 years ago, who have spread across the country. D&D would've been okay, but once I saw that Rolemaster was on its way, there was no doubt I had to have Fantasy Grounds. On top of that, my play testing with the program proved to me that it was a very slick program that would undoubtedly give some feel of pen and paper while streamlining the Rolemaster process. Stacked on top of that, the ability to customize for house rules made my day.

The community thus far has been awesome, and from the pile of information one can sift through on the boards, it appears to have been that way for some time. My Rolemaster questions have been answered well and promptly by folks who worked on the ruleset, so I certainly have to say I am impressed. New users seem to be well tolerated, which is always a great sign!

The strength of Fantasy Grounds, in particular with the Rolemaster ruleset, is speeding up the gameplay. In that it is certainly superior to pen and paper. Aside from missing the feel of the dice in hand, and perhaps the camaraderie of sitting around a table, the typical Fantasy Grounds session isn't much inferior. The only thing I might say, as a GM, is that it makes it a little trickier to just wing it in some instances, as everybody will get used to nice maps and such, so if the characters go where you aren't prepared, it could be a tad trickier.

Final comments: once the Mac version exists, and some more utilitarian aspects are added to the Rolemaster ruleset, there really wouldn't be anything for me to complain about.

[Phystus]

Walt/Phystus. I've been playing RPG's since 1979.

I checked out several VTT's at Gencon a few years back, and FG had by far the best look and feel. I was impressed by the number of rulesets available, and the modest system requirements. But mostly, I loved the rolling dice, and I knew my players would too. I was able to reunite my old college gaming group and resurrect our old campaign, and we've had a blast.

The community here is awesome. They're very tolerant of newbies, and answers to questions usually come quickly. There's tons of user-created material, and no sign of that slowing down, as well as commercial products, which also continue to be produced.

FG is really strong in areas where computers are strong. For example, FG makes tracking encumberance nearly effortless. Many rulesets have automated rolling dice and adding modifiers for attacks, skill rolls, and the like, which makes play a lot easier. The Rolemaster developers even managed to automate the combat table lookups. Depending on the licensing rules for a particular game, it's sometimes possible to have searchable libraries of rules, monsters, etc. in game, reducing the need to refer to books constantly. And of course, the greatest advantage of all is that it lets you game with people you couldn't have gamed with otherwise.

The only real loss I've noticed over paper and pencil gaming on a real tabletop is the loss of nonverbal feedback. That isn't really the fault of FG, though, it's just the nature of a virtual tabletop.

~P

[Casimir]

1. Mike / Casimir. I've been playing RPG's since the original boxed DnD set in 1978.

2. I can say that for me, I chose FGII primarily due to the fact that being older with a family and small children it makes breaking away for several hours at a time rather difficult. With FGII, I have the ability to schedule games when the times suit me - usually later in the evening. Furthermore, having checked out several other Virtual Table Top projects over the years, FGII was the first one I encountered that was a polished and professional looking - and frankly, was the only one available that included actual dice (which is a big deal actually). It also has great mod capabilities, and the differing rulesets offer a plethora of advancements that make running games actually much easier.

3. So far, the community has been great. I haven't been a member for long, but most of my questions have been answered quickly. The only issue I have had so far is finding games - but then due to my rather strict availability that's to be expected somewhat.

4. I don't have the experience of an actual game to draw from at the moment - but I can say that with all the testing I've done as a long time DM the possibilities are great. FGII makes communicating things to individual players much more quickly and "behind the scenes" - whereas before I would have to take a player in another room or write a note, with FGII I simply PM the player and no one is the wiser. Further more, as noted above, the ability to have rulesets that do a lot of the math and other functions automatically greatly enhances the DM's time to actually play rather than constantly scanning tables or hunting through books.

5. I can say that with the amount of tweaking and small modifications to some test rulesets and looking through the available ones - both commercial and free - that I will be a FGII user for a long time to come. It really provides the perfect platform for my role play gaming needs, and most likely will for the forseeable future.

[Ukki]

1. Jussi / Ukki. I've been playing since 1987, started with MERP and after that... perhaps hundred different rpg systems.

2. I played few times with IRC only... then via IRC and Skype + html-pages with maps. It was always slow and annoying process. FG also allows me to structure games differently - for example I have always hated "dungeons" where it is awful to keep track players without miniatyres. And our games are also meetings with people we rarely see, thus 80% or more of our sessions are gossiping and offgame chatting. With FG we limit our bs to skype / MSN voice and players "act" via FG chat. Wonderful! As a gm I also use some voice chat to describe places and to clarify rules. As a result chat logs are "only game".

In Call of Cthulhu it creates such a wonderful setting.. "You feel light of your mind dimming..."

FG also makes quick sessions possible - no time to setup anything; we play few hours during weekdays and those few hours are active gaming.

3. My experience with community is superb: not much questioning to do as almost everything is already answered. Also fan made Warhammer rules are my most used ruleset beside commercial Call of Cthulhu. Well, perhaps more rulesets are needed (unfortunately I don't have enough time to make those).

4. Rolemaster, as others pointed out, is too numerate to enjoy in P&P style, but I quite liked it in FG. As I stated in question 2, it allows to structure games in different levels (chat / voice), also it helps to keep EVERYTHING in one place (I have wrote most of the tables / charts / maps to my FG: most of time I don't need paper books at all during the gaming) and searching for the description "of that particular career... was it in Realm of the Ice Queen or Career compendium or or" is breeze.

5. Me and most of my players all use FG with Wine in Mac :) It is kind of expensive for me to keep multiple licenses (I buy them for players also) but then again... rpg books cost 40+ euros so <20 euros per license is not that much.

[Leonal]

1. Thomas / Leonal. I think I played one time at a friend's house with the old blue and red D&D books in early 90s, but it didn't catch my interest then as I couldn't kill the gold dragon single handedly...;)
Then, in 2003 I got together with some friends during my undergrad studies and played D&D 3.5 rather often. Dipped into Vampire, but that didn't last. With everyone going abroad we turned to VTTs/FG last year.

2. When we were searching for how to play online we stumbled upon the list of VTTs on the Battlegrounds website. Then after checking the various programs and weighing pricing and look and feel we ended up with four full FG licences. :)

3. The community is great and very helpful with people from almost all time zones available to help. Community made material is really great and some times I learn something too.

4. It's better because it's easier to keep track of things and info, faster rolling, far more and easily available options for maps and images. And you don't kill any trees in the process.

It's worse because you can't doodle on your character sheet.^~ And if we didn't use Skype to talk, it'd be painfully slow to type everything out. (I know many groups swear to text in FG, and I can see some RP and record keeping benefits or if you often play with people you don't know, but wouldn't work for our group. There's no need for inbuilt voice chat though.)

It's also worse because, while the 3d dice are cool and superior to any other VTT to get a table top feel, you don't get to roll your own dice. A usb dice rolling box that registers correctly manual throws and was compatible with FG would be awesome.

5. I wish the means of transferring data within FG would be more optimized. If info could be relayed between players if there was a bad connection between one player and the GM for example that would be great.

[Spyke]

A usb dice rolling box that registers correctly manual throws and was compatible with FG would be awesome.
That's got to be the best idea for a niche market input device I've ever seen!

It must be mine! :D

Spyke

[Casimir]

That's got to be the best idea for a niche market input device I've ever seen!

It must be mine! :D

Spyke

I have to agree. After I read that, I spent several minutes trying to figure out exactly how one would develop a device like that. Of course, a webcam would be a simpler solution... ;)

[mr_h]

1) Jon / Mr_H

2) Sometime after my friends and I had moved away from each other after college, we decieded we wanted to get back into playing RPGs. I scoured the net and found numerous types of virtual table tops, but Fantasy Grounds was the one that gave us the most complete 'this is a table in front of you' feeling. The rolling of the dice had us all giddy, as that is part of RPG's that I don't think we can do without.

3) The community has been wonderful and extremly helpful. They're great for answering questions from newbies to full fledged indepth coding questions.

4) FG Is better then Pen and Paper cause: It allows you to play with anyone, anywhere, anytime, around the world. Old friends and new. Aside from the coding (see below) it is extremly easy to use and the interface doesn't slow down the game at all.

FG is worse then pen and paper cause: Creating a ruleset is difficult for the novice and very time consuming. Also, it works nativly on only windows right now. While there are work arounds for getting it to work on Linux it's still iffy.


5) If I had a wish list for FG:
a) A program to automate/create character sheets. As long as you have sheets for the game, you don't need an entirely customized ruleset.
b) Native Linux and Macintosh binaries. This is the only thing preventing me from running all my game sessions on FG (I have friends who run on linux and the workarounds don't work for them)
c) a ruleset creation program.

Thanks to FG I've been able to play a lot more games then I would otherwise, and it's exposed me to a lot more types as well (not just D&D).

[bigironvault]

This is awesome info everyone. Thanks so much and please keep them coming.

This is really a whole other community that I hadn't seen since MUDs went out of fashion! Fascinating that it is so widely supported and embraced. This makes for good reading material for sure!

[Andugus]

I am part of the White Haired Man team. We produce adventures for use with Fantasy Grounds II. I have found the community to be very helpful and supportive of our efforts. I met the guys from Smiteworks at the 2008 Gen Con and they welcomed me like a friend. They have been supportive in getting our published works distributed and for that I am grateful as well.

As a publisher I find the rulesets work well for how we develop our work. The rulesets are unique to the game they represent. The flavor found at the table in person easily translates to these rulesets in Fantasy Grounds. I often tell others that one of my favorite features is how the software seems to just fade into the background after a few minutes.

There is another thing that Fantasy Grounds software seems to encourage: Roleplaying. I've rarely met a bad roleplayer when using Fantasy Grounds. I think it is the typing. Character actions must be typed out which leads to more thoughtful and in character roleplaying.

Best of luck with your interview. Be sure to say hello from all of us at White Haired Man!

[zabulus]

There is another thing that Fantasy Grounds software seems to encourage: Roleplaying.

I very much agree with this. I had 2 friends and my wife make characters offline, I input those in FG, had them log on, gave them a map of a village with their character icons on them and said: GO.

And to my surprise, I watched a story unfold in front of me. They were talking amongst themselves, emoting, I was steering them here and there (*cough* railroading) and everything just seemed to move out of itself.

Also, having the ability to talk "in character" and "out of character", FG very much gave us the feeling of actually being on a table with eachother. Several times, people have announced a bathroom break and others found themselves checking the door to the room to see if they were returning yet :)

[bigironvault]

Interesting -- one would think that in person RPing would be more indepth. But the point that typing requires effort, its hard to actually "waste" effort and time to type something meaningless.

[MeepoSose]

Interesting -- one would think that in person RPing would be more indepth. But the point that typing requires effort, its hard to actually "waste" effort and time to type something meaningless.

I have seen people come out of their shells and roleplay in character more easily behind a keyboard, whereas they would have difficulty expressing that same level of interaction in person. The "veil of the computer screen" allows people to more easily portray unusual characters or those which differ significantly from their real life image.

[bigironvault]

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to let you guys know that BIV has been lucky enough to get in touch with Doug Davison for an interview on the future of FG. We're starting our write up as we speak.

Thanks to everyone that contributed - please look out for our magazine Big Iron Vault #3, which will be made available on our website www.bigironvault.com and www.rpgnow.com. Print copies available only through local conventions in the Greater Toronto Area (at this time).

Thanks!