Hosting a Game with One Player in the Demo

[mattcolville]

Hola!

Looking at FG as a solution for the many D&D hungry friends I have all over the country who keep bugging me to run a game.

Got my friend to act as a guinea pig to test it all out before I buy.

We both download the trial.

I host a game.

A: The IP address listed is my local IP address. Well, that doesn't seem to do a whole lot of good, as he can't connect using my local network ID, obviously.

B: There doesn't seem to be any other way to identify myself to him. Can't use the alias. No other way of indicating to him what my IP is.

What is the expected behavior here?

Thanks for any help!

[VenomousFiligree]

Try https://whatismyipaddress.com/ this is the IP address he'll have to use.

[mattcolville]

Yeah we tried that. No dice.

When you tried it, did the GM just send the player his IP address and it worked?

[VenomousFiligree]

When you have the Demo open see if port 1802 is open using https://www.canyouseeme.org/

[drahkar]

Make sure that you have Port 1802 setup to pass through your firewall as the application requires that.

EDIT: Hah. Beat me to the punch, Murgh. :)

[VenomousFiligree]

*blows smoke away from the end of his revolver* :)

[mattcolville]

Urg. Ok, I'll give it a shot. Generally speaking, my tolerance for monkeying with stuff to get it to work stops when I have to start opening ports and messing with my Firewall.

[VenomousFiligree]

Urg. Ok, I'll give it a shot. Generally speaking, my tolerance for monkeying with stuff to get it to work stops when I have to start opening ports and messing with my Firewall.
Might as well stop now then, as you will need to do it if you want to host a game.

[mattcolville]

Might as well stop now then, as you will need to do it if you want to host a game.

I'm keen to understand why some programs, like Skype to pick a random example, works fine without me needing to worry about ports, but a program like this requires me to monkey with my router. I'm sure there's a reason, I presume its not arbitrary.

It's not critical to whether I use this or not, but it's certainly a factor. I got MapTool to work by just checking UPnP.

[Sorcerer]

i'm no expert on these things, so this is either over simplified or just plain wrong [standing by for hundreds of correction posts :) ]

but I have always pictured the difference as this.

With a FG Host you are setting up a file server, that means you are letting people have access files/databases
that are on your computer.

In the normal scheme of this firewalls are programmed to block this type of traffic, because this is just the same type of
thing that would happen if someone was attacking your computer.

So you need to tell your firewall, hey as long as this progam is open and running, all traffic on this port is OK.

with something like skype you might be sending and receiving data, but you are not sharing data so there is no problem.

only the host needs to worry about port settings, players don't have do anything special.

[Sigurd]

Goes with the territory - sorta like driving on the proper side of the road. The server needs a port to listen on. Port 80 (the web port) already has a lot of stuff on it.
Having its own port improves performance and simplifies programming.

It only affects the DM. What you get in return is a potentially independent application that you can run anywhere without needing to pay smiteworks every month.

[drahkar]

i'm no expert on these things, so this is either over simplified or just plain wrong [standing by for hundreds of correction posts :) ]

but I have always pictured the difference as this.

With a FG Host you are setting up a file server, that means you are letting people have access files/databases
that are on your computer.

In the normal scheme of this firewalls are programmed to block this type of traffic, because this is just the same type of
thing that would happen if someone was attacking your computer.

So you need to tell your firewall, hey as long as this progam is open and running, all traffic on this port is OK.

with something like skype you might be sending and receiving data, but you are not sharing data so there is no problem.

only the host needs to worry about port settings, players don't have do anything special.

You pretty much hit it in one Sorcerer. The reason things like Skype doesn't require any port setups is because you aren't actually hosting the connection yourself. Its hosted on a server maintained by Skype. You are merely a client plugged into that server that some traffic is sent to using existing connection you made outbound to the external Skype servers. You can't do that when you are actually the server. People have to be able to create new connections.

[mattcolville]

Well, that makes sense. I understand the distinction between being serving files and everyone being a client plugging into a central server.

I've opened the port...I think...so once my guinea pig gets home, we'll see if it worked.

Thanks for the help!