Question about using FGII for DMing

[Akayllin]

Here is my scenario: Me and my friends are playing D&D at my house or one of there's in actual tabletop. We would like my cousin to play with us and I am very impressed with the Fantasy Grounds II platform from the videos and screen shots and descriptions and am thinking about getting a few licences for me and my cousin and friends.

My question to you all is this, is it possible to host a game on FGII, with my cousin and me being the only real people there, and I be able to create characters the others playing live made and put their stats and things into FGII. And then whatever they do here I mimic and translate on FGII directly for my cousin. Example, a character at the table moves 6 squares and attacks a goblin for 10 and stuns it. Can I take the cloned character I made and move it 6 squares to the same spot the person at the table did, and then take the goblin (which will also be in the spot it is on the mat) and edit its hit points directly to whatever it should be after damage was applied, and then apply the stun effect to it, and then pass the turn to my cousin where she makes her choices and we use the dice rolls in FGII for her decisions and things.

Like having a copied campaign, one in real life and one in FGII where whatever my cousin does I translate to the real life version for the people at the table and whatever the people at the table do I translate for her on FGII and not have to go through the dice rolls and things. Just edit the stats and move things and give information as necessary and when it's her turn we wait for her to make the choices on FGII and then translate that to the tabletop for everyone.

I'm sorry if things are confusing, this I am not very good at explaining things. This is also my first post. I am hoping this is possible, to just bypass essentially all of the dice rolls and things for everyone but my cousin's character so that she can play with us.

[phantomwhale]

Some, if not all, of this is possible. Whether it will still be a good experience is up to your playing style.

First thing to recommend is to try out the demo version - I believe it's free, and supports up to one client and one server (e.g. you and one friend). Then you can try out some of the controls such as images, tokens and character sheets and see what works and what doesn't.

Someone might be able to give a slightly more focused answer on your question. But otherwise perhaps give the demo a shot if you have time, and maybe post back any questions / thoughts that arise from that ?

[Callum]

Yes, this is certainly possible, but it will add a fair amount of work for you, and take time for you to do - so you should expect the game to slow down quite a bit, particularly when you first start doing it.

I run an online campaign using FG, but we also get together once or twice a year to play face-to-face. When we do, I take my laptop along and run FG on it, and the players have another laptop which they use to log in to mine and see a player's view of things (like the maps, as I reveal them). But we actually run the game in the normal tabletop way, with miniatures and real physical dice and character sheets, and then translate some of that back into FG. So this is quite similar to what you're proposing, and it works quite well. As phantomwhale said, you probably need to do a little experimenting to see if it will work for you.

[Griogre]

As others have said you can probably do what you want. However, if I understand what you want to do - let your cousin play with your face to face group - then you probably don't really want to duplicate your campaign. That would be too much effort. You just want to use the tokens and maps and probably the FG character sheet for her character.

You may find that since you already have you cousin using these parts of FG that you can use FG as your battlemap as well for your face to face group by having an extra monitor or laptop for the use of your players. I'd second trying the demo with your cousin and then coming back with specific questions about what you are trying to do. What game is your group running? The demo is dated and only has D&D 3.5 - but you can still use the tokens and maps to get an idea about the display.

[Nestor]

You could easily run a in person game utilizing FGII.

The DM would need his own pc, and all the players could use another. run a vga cord off of the the players PC and then the whole room could see the map. you could even use real dice, and just have the DM apply damage

[Dakadin]

The current group I am running is setup the way Nestor says. We have one person consistently attach remotely, while the rest of use use a few PC/Laptops locally. Some of the players have to double or triple up on a PC but it runs pretty smoothly. The hardest part was getting Mumble setup with a minimum amount of echo. Each person locally uses headphones to their PC with Y-adapters if needed and we use one conference mic attached to my PC.

[Nestor]

I did not think about voice, whoever is not in the room will be at a disadvantage

[Dakadin]

Exactly. That is why I made sure we had a mic always picking up what was happening at the local table. The remote users were missing most of the interaction which wasn't good. Things are much better now. The only real issue I have now is when someone tries to use a mic with speakers instead of headphones.