It was great to see Fantasy Grounds at GenCon!

[Matchstick]

I hope it was a great GenCon for FG! It was great to meet you guys, and to learn about the licensing for GUMSHOE. While there were other VTT's at the con I think FG was far and above all the rest. I was sorry to miss doswelk though, with so many people there it was very difficult to just happen to catch someone, and I couldn't get there for the noon meet-up.

I hope the next year is a great one for FG and its community!

Thanks!

[MeepoSose]

Thanks for stopping by. It was great to see everyone and talk with new potential users as well, but it felt like my voice was about to go towards the end there.

[Matchstick]

I would think it would be hard on the voice! Did you guys get to do any fun stuff or was it all just manning the booth?

[MeepoSose]

Time was mostly spent manning the booth. I did get to walk around and visit with several publishers and then moon got in a game of Warhammer Fantasy Battle one evening and then he and I played in a Savage Worlds game Saturday night as well.

[ddavison]

I just realized I posted under my old forum account. ;)

Next year, we will probably look at getting some other people to help us run the booth so we can mix in a few more fun items too.

[Zeus]

Hey I'm glad to hear GenCon went well for you guys, I'm sad that I wasn't able to join you, it would have been nice to have met you all and put faces to avatars :)

Every year at the start of the year I say to myself that I am going to go this year but something has always come up that gets in the way. Thats particularly frustrating given I have been playing RPGs since I was 8, I'm 37 now :( thats over 20 conferences I have missed out on :(

I vow to make an even bigger effort next year to make it to Indianapolis.

On another note, did anyone grab any pics from the event, I heard on the grapevine that WoTC new Magic Tactics video game went down very well. What did I miss out on, any exciting new announcements?

Also, did anyone get a glimpse of the forthcoming 4E GAMMA World from WotC, I am so looking forward to it.

[Moon Wizard]

I really enjoyed meeting everyone at the show. We had a very good turnout at the booth, and the only time we didn't have people constantly at the booth was during the costume contest.

It was so much busier than I originally expected, which is great for FG (both the community and our company, Smiteworks). I think that we will have some great new community members join us, as well as bring some of the previous community back to the table.

Cheers,
JPG

[adminwheel3]

Did you all breath a little easier when WoTC failed to announce anything about their VTT efforts?

[Zeus]

Did you all breath a little easier when WoTC failed to announce anything about their VTT efforts?

Did you genuinely believe an announcement might be forthcoming :) I for one have given up the ghost on the D&D Game Table ever appearing.

Besides, one of the greatest values that FGII offers, is that it supports a whole lot more than just D&D.

[Moon Wizard]

From everything I can tell, their tabletop is in perpetual limbo. They fired the consulting firm they hired to write the tabletop in the first place, and then all of the employees focused on managing any electronic relationships all left the company. I actually was talking with them about getting involved with their tabletop prior to joining Smiteworks. Wizards has been silent on the tabletop issue, but I haven't even heard any rumors.

Cheers,
JPG

[Matchstick]

I've not been concerned with the WotC tabletop either, and not just because I've had FG for so long. For our group it works much better to have something that's compatible with a wide range of systems, but also I don't want to pay a monthly fee for a VTT. I'd be surprised if a WotC one ever comes out at this point.

I saw the Magic Tactics game, it looked OK, but I didn't play it. Nothing Gamma World either and I think the WotC setting for 2011 is going to be Ravenloft.

I was very happy to read that FG has a license for GUMSHOE and immediately walked over to their booth and bought the Esoterrorists book. And I talked to Simon, the publisher, and told him that FG was the reason I was buying the book. I know the license is no guarantee, don't worry, but I want publishers to know that there are people out there like me, that are making decisions based on availability in VTT format.

I talked FG with the guys in the Reality Blurs booth as well. The guy I talked to there said he really wants to do a lot more with digital versions of their stuff.

Man, I really wanted to go to Savage Saturday night! How did that go?

[ddavison]

We had good talks with many publishers, including Wizards of the Coast and Paizo. Hopefully we will have some news we can share on this later this year.

Savage Saturday was a blast. We were in a game with a good group of guys and a great GM named Tim. I am kicking myself for not getting his last name. I definitely wanted to give him public props for doing a great job. We ran a session from Twelve to Midnight where we had a group of U.S. soldiers tasked with tracking a terrorist and WMDs in a remote part of Iraq where a communications and satellite black-out was going on. The game lived up to its logo and ran very fast and furious. It was a lot of fun and had a mix of the supernatural/sci-fi mixed in to great effect.

[ddavison]

I also met Rob and Wiggy at Triple Ace Games and they gave me a free copy of All for One: Regime Diabolique to review. It uses the Ubiquity system and is set in an alternate history with musketeers and horror thrown in together. Both the system and the setting look like a lot of fun.

Other highlights for me were meeting with one of the owners of Kenzer and Company, the President of Green Ronin, Matt Clark from Reaper minis, PC Gen's Paul Grosse and a host of bloggers and podcast guys. Moon's flight in got cancelled but he ended up driving in with a bunch of the guys from Privateer Press.

[Nylanfs]

It was great meeting with both of you, gonna miss meeting up with Ville and drinking every year though. Maybe they'll get a chance to come in some time as attendee's and actually get to have fun. :)

And BTW, depending on if PCGen has a booth next year I'll help occasionally in the booth. Well officially instead of unofficially like I did this year. :) I've found that if you have just ONE person in a booth talking people will stop and pay attention. So I got lots of people to stop. :)

[Matchstick]

Apparently they had a TON of people at Savage Saturday night, I wish I'd have been able to go. I really like that ruleset, it's so flexible! I didn't get to meet nearly as many cool insiders of course, but I did get to talk to Clint Black in the SW booth, he's a really nice guy and answers rule questions on the Pinnacle boards.

That's totally true about one person there inciting other people to stop, or at least it seems like it.

[Rienen]

I really enjoyed meeting everyone at the show. We had a very good turnout at the booth, and the only time we didn't have people constantly at the booth was during the costume contest.
<snip>

I'll say. Every time I stopped by, I got to talk to Doug; but you were continuously demoing the software (not that that's a bad thing). I would have hung out to chat, but my 11 year old was enjoying his first GenCon and couldn't stay in one place too long.

Speaking of which, anyone able to chase down someone at AEG to talk to?

[Doswelk]

We had good talks with many publishers, including Wizards of the Coast and Paizo. Hopefully we will have some news we can share on this later this year.

Savage Saturday was a blast. We were in a game with a good group of guys and a great GM named Tim. I am kicking myself for not getting his last name. I definitely wanted to give him public props for doing a great job. We ran a session from Twelve to Midnight where we had a group of U.S. soldiers tasked with tracking a terrorist and WMDs in a remote part of Iraq where a communications and satellite black-out was going on. The game lived up to its logo and ran very fast and furious. It was a lot of fun and had a mix of the supernatural/sci-fi mixed in to great effect.

Sitting one table down playing Shaintar with Sean Patrick Fannon as GM and Wiggy opposite me was a blast!

You seemed to be having a good time!

So tired but soo happy I went!

[Doswelk]

Apparently they had a TON of people at Savage Saturday night, I wish I'd have been able to go. I really like that ruleset, it's so flexible! I didn't get to meet nearly as many cool insiders of course, but I did get to talk to Clint Black in the SW booth, he's a really nice guy and answers rule questions on the Pinnacle boards.

That's totally true about one person there inciting other people to stop, or at least it seems like it.

Indeed Clint mentioned afterwards (when I collared him) they were running 18 games!

We had 16 on our table!

I am so glad I played Savage Saturday as opposed to my scheduled event!

[Matchstick]

Indeed Clint mentioned afterwards (when I collared him) they were running 18 games!

We had 16 on our table!

I am so glad I played Savage Saturday as opposed to my scheduled event!

Grrrr, I wish I'd have gone! Looking at the Pinnacle boards it looks like they had a lot more people than they thought. I know you post up there too.

I was going to try and catch you at GenCon to talk about RunePunk.

Sounds like you had a great trip!

:D

[Doswelk]

...
I was going to try and catch you at GenCon to talk about RunePunk.

Sounds like you had a great trip!

:D

I did indeed!

What was it about Runepunk you wanted to ask?

PM me and I'll be give you my email address to chat...

[ddavison]

<snip>
Speaking of which, anyone able to chase down someone at AEG to talk to?

I completely missed the AEG guys, and I really needed/wanted to catch up with them to discuss a few projects.

[drahkar]

I really was disappointed that I couldn't be there to meet with everyone. However, I was instead able to spend the weekend with my Fianc&#233; whom I hadn't seen in almost two months, so at least it was a good weekend.

It sounds like it was a great time for everyone and some productive meetings, talks and activities were completed. That's fantastic!

[Steel_Wind]

Paizo and Pathfinder? That's what I care about. While I and several members of my face 2 face group already own FG2, we are now looking at going with D20 Pro for Pathfinder. We don't WANT to do this; we would FAR prefer to be able to stick with FG2 as we think your program is the best in the business.

But we want the Core, Bestiary, APG and character tools present in Herolab's software. The whole issue is one that has me more than a little upset at Paizo.

I would LOVE to be able to announce on Chronicles: Pathfinder Podcast that official support for Pathfinder in FG2 is upon us. *sigh*

[ddavison]

Lisa Stevens, CEO of Paizo, sat down with me at Gen Con to conduct a demo. I probably made a mistake in showing her a slightly unpolished beta, but otherwise I think everything was well received. She alluded to the idea that she would like to see Hollow's Last Hope converted to FG2 so she could use that as a way to judge its suitability.

We started on some 3.5E updates and I have been working on a parser to allow the conversion from PDF with minimal interaction.

[tdewitt274]

We started on some 3.5E updates and I have been working on a parser to allow the conversion conversion from PDF with minimal interaction.

Just an FYI, but I find that the Paizo PDFs can be a bit, strange. If you copy/paste the PDF, you end up with Unicode numbers for the stat blocks, not anywhere else. However, if you use something like xPDF, the numbers are not pulled into the export. Then there is also an issue with the spaces occasionally disappearing when using xPDF.

[ddavison]

I also see a lot of garbage I have to skip over from the security piece that embeds my email address/username every so often throughout the file. I shot a note to them to see if I could get an unsecured version of their free adventure to use as a test.

[Rienen]

She alluded to the idea that she would like to see Hollow's Last Hope converted to FG2 so she could use that as a way to judge its suitability.



Funny, that was the first module I converted over to FG.

I still have it somewhere, but I suspect others (JPG and Xorn) could do a MUCH better job, but I'd be happy to send you the file if you like.