Always alone ... :)

[Alejo68]

Hi all,
I´m working on a solo version of the rpg game Call of Cthulhu from chaosium. The game master is replaced by the use of tables and cards which add random events to a story. The story itself follows the line of events stated in a text taken from a lovecraft story. The rest remains just as stated by the chaosium rules.

The question is could this software plus the "Call of Cthulhu Ruleset for Fantasy Grounds" be used only as an offline interface (basically a boardgame and all the stuff needed for playing)? Could all the data be saved and used again offline?

Ty.

[Sigurd]

License concerns and build philosophy have made the interface more graphical dice friendly than automation friendly. This software is great at mimicking pen, paper and dice online. It has a rich graphical environment where you can look up rules, roll dice and share maps.

For your use I'd consider:

1. The player would need the dm interface and everything would necessarily be exposed.
2. Basically if you could do it with a book, a character sheet, and a couple of dice you can do it in Fantasy Grounds.

I think this software is great (not just good) at helping people play pen and paper games across the internet. That doesn't make it super for solo play however. For all of the automation benefits you get you might do just as well using a real set of dice and paper.


Sigurd

[Alejo68]

Thanks for your answer,

... my intention is to change the appearance of the game to a traditional solitaire play boardgame, somehow away from paper and pen. Basically a sort of "Arkham horror" game, with the rules used in the Call of Cthulhu rpg from Chaosium.
Because of that I would need a complete interface which would allow me to create many maps. For example I would need a frozen land from Antarctica to recreate a scenario from "Beyond the Mountains of Madness", a map from an abandoned ancient city, counters representing the monsters found there (shogoths and Elder Things), character counters and their proper paper sheets, etc.
I really don´t know if the "Call of Cthulhu Ruleset for Fantasy Grounds" are just rules or if they also include images in the soft to allow me achieve that what I stated before.
Does anybody have it?
If able to do this, I would buy both, the DM license and the Call of Cthulhu Ruleset.
I would appreciate any info.
Thanks a lot in advance.

[Spyke]

Fantasy Grounds allows you to use maps created elsewhere in your games, but has only very rudimentary line drawing functions.

To create maps you should look at a program such as Campaign Cartographer or Dundjinni. For stock images to use in your own games you can simply browse the web. Google Images is a great source.

RPTool's TokenTool is useful for making tokens out of images you find.

Fantasy Grounds is then the tool for putting all that together, along with dice rolls and adventure notes, for running the game.

If you download the demo you'll be able to try out the capabilities of the software. The fact that it's d20 and not CoC is irrelevant to testing the features.

If you're thinking of distributing this solo game, of course, you need to consider copyright restrictions on any images, maps or rules material that you incorporate.

Spyke

[Spyke]

OK, I've just bought the Call of Cthulhu ruleset; I've been meaning to for some time.

It's nicely put together with a full library of the CoC rules and four short adventures. You get a big bestiary with the stats for over a 100 creatures, many with thumbnail pictures, but you don't get tokens for these. Instead each creature is linked to the relevant standard 'letter' token, e.g. 'G' for a Ghoul. You'd need to make specific tokens for your game if you didn't want to use the letters. However, this may not be too much of an issue, as it would always have been possible that the tokens provided wouldn't suit you anyway (e.g. top down when you prefer portrait).

Spyke

[Answulf]

Hi Alejo68,

The best place for you to start is watching the video tutorials - they will give a good feel for what Fantasy Grounds is and can do:

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/downloads/

Watching them will probably answer most of your questions. Then play around with the demo. It's hard to tell exactly what you are after, but it sounds like you basically just talking about playing solo with house rules - so it should be doable.

(https://www.vassalengine.org/)

[Spyke]

My reading of what Alejo68 is proposing is a PC-driven solo game along the lines of the old Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, and the comment about saving the data to use again suggests that he is considering distributing this in some way, which would need careful consideration of copyright.

Fantasy Grounds does lend itself perfectly to the Fighting Fantasy approach, of course, as the adventure can be written with hyperlinks to the choices at each scene.

Spyke

[Alejo68]

Thanks for the info!
About my intention, is just as Ansbach said, I just want to play a game of the Lovecraft Mythos which could allow me to immers in the story in a more deeper way than Arkham Horror (and all the expansions I have). I don't want to say it is not a good game (in fact it is), but I think you can recreate a scenario of the Mythos just as Lovecraft wrote them only using the Chaosium rule set.
I'm not planing to distribute it. Just adapt the rules for its "solo" use.
I downloaded the demo, but the image is distorted and the words are hardly readable (as if they were in a very low definition). I'm using the soft in a notebook which has a SIS M760GX video card. I have the latest DX9 drivers and tried using all resolution screens (from 800x600 to 1280x800) but the problem still persist.
Any idea about this?
I'll try tomorrow in my other pc and see what happens.

The soft is actually just as you said, excellent. It is a pity that I dont get an adecuate resolution of it.
S!

[Spyke]

The poor display performance is almost certainly due to your integrated SIS M760GX graphics card. FG quotes a minimum of 32 Mb RAM on the graphics card, but is happier with a better specified board.

I suspect if you try a full laptop or a desktop rather than a notebook you'll get a proper display.

Also, check that your notebook isn't scaling the display in any way, as that might affect the text resolution. (e.g. running some 'magnifier' or 'zoom' utility, perhaps to fit a larger resolution display onto the smaller notebook screen). If you set your display settings to anything other than the native resolution of a LCD display you will lose resolution, particularly with text.

Spyke