New Player / GM Advice

[JemAs666]

Hello Everyone. First let me state that I have never played a tabletop RPG in my life (Age 42 :o ). I have been playing graphical MMOs since they became mainstream with Ultima Online and every major game since. I have also played my fair share of text based and single player RPGs on the computer as well. All of that being said, I am tired of the path that MMOs have been traveling and frankly bored with no interest in playing. Dungeons and Dragons (primarily), but also bought the beginner boxes for D&D and Pathfinder, has been an interest of mine since after all it did lead to the original concepts of the modern MMO. I recently purchased all the base books / boxes for D&D Essentials and have started reading. It is tough to get friends to have enough time these days to sit down in front of each other to play, so I have been researching virtual tabletops. If I am to get my friends, who are interested in D&D, to play I will need to be the GM, they are too lazy :D , and the driving force to get them together. They have not lost their interests in MMOs to the degree I have.

I have decided that Fantasy Grounds from everything I have seen, and the research on the Internet, is my best choice for our virtual tabletop. There is a lot of information to learn and someone new to this really feels overwhelmed to say the least. The group will originally start with 1GM and 3-4 players and the ruleset will most likely be D&D/4e, but Pathfinder and nWoD do intrigue my interests too. The friends I will be playing with have been friends for 10 to 22 years so if I am not the greatest GM at the start isn't a concern. They will understand.

As I sit in front of the interface, I am clueless to even know where to start. I have looked at and started playing with all the community created tools to import information into Fantasy Grounds. I am a DDI subscriber and have access to those tools as well. The way I thought in my mind it would work is I would enter all the information from my bought D&D campaigns right from the book for starters. This seems to me the easiest place to start instead of trying to dream up everything right from the start since the story for the most part is done for me. I planned on using this method until I got comfortable with the concepts more of actually playing a tabletop RPG as well as the whole DM concept.

With most of the background out of the way. I am completely new, and the only run campaigns I have seen are from Youtube. I have read in the forums there is a way to observe, fly on the wall, someones game with Fantasy Grounds.

1. How open are other GMs (DMs) in letting people watch their gameplay to learn how things are setup in Fantasy Grounds as well as watching actual play? I pretty much learn best by watching instead of asking questions every step of the way so I wouldn't be an interruption to the game.

2. Any advice would be appreciated on where to get started for someone that has literally never played a tabletop RPG in their 42 years on planet Earth. I am sure I missed a lot of questions I don't even know to ask yet, but I thank everyone that took the time to read.

Regards - JemAs

[Griogre]

Hi JemAs and welcome to the forums. Observers don't bother most GM's if they aren't disruptive and you can learn a lot by observing.

On inputting a module that is also a good way to learn a great deal about FG but honestly these days I rarely input anymore than the minimum I need and if you use VoIP then you only need maps, monsters and encounters. As you have a DDI account I would suggest you just input a short adventure from Dungeon like Stick in the Mud out of Dungeon 171 a short 4 encounter 1st level module. It's easier to copy and paste from a PDF.

I run several 4E games and won't mind if you sat in on a session, however all the games I am running now are all paragon level. Paragon level games have many more effects than heroic 1-10 level games so it might give you the wrong impression on how hard it is to run. Normally you would build up to a paragon level champaign (11-20) as a new DM. You might find the video tutorials on the download page useful to watch as well: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/downloads/

I run a game on Friday Night my time and two on Sunday.

[Magnatude]

Hmm... this would make an interesting video.
Converting a PDF module into Fantasy Grounds.

I've a temp layoff from work and oodles of time... methinks I'll try this.

JemAs, good post and its something to address.


First... gather up all your images. Make them JPG's and manage their sizes... make sure they wont be HUGE downloads for your players.
Second, Create a new Campaign with your ruleset.

Load your images/maps into Application Data folder... campaigns... "your campaign".... images folder.

Next...
Lets say for example you have one main overview map of all the rooms/coridoors (which I always recommend doing) and several close-up zoomed in versions of each room/section of your map.

Open up your overview map and "PIN" enable your shortcuts layer...
Right click on your map image and go to layers... enable shortcuts.
Drag-Drop your close-up maps onto the main map. (Creates a Pin)

Now in each of your close-up maps, you can do the same by drag-dropping Notes into your shortcuts layer.

This is one way.
Sometimes I start a new Story... and then work that way, but normally I get more kicks out of starting with my maps first.

[JemAs666]

Awesome! Thank you Griogre. Being so new to the DDI subscription I didn't even realize to look at the magazine for some adventures. :D This is great. I appreciate the great tip. I have downloaded the PDF and going through it now. Time to learn FG and enter information :) Now I know these exist I can just sort on adventures from other articles. I agree this looks way less daunting than an entire 50 page adventure book to enter on my first try. Thanks again for all the info, and I agree if someone running low level 4/e adventures wouldn't mind me observing that would be great, but jumping right to Paragon like you run might be pretty confusing for someone so new like me =)

Regards - JemAs

[JemAs666]

Perfect thank you Magnatude!! I don't know how common of a person I am to the genre with never playing a single pen/paper RPG for 42 years, then all of a sudden extremely fascinated. I am not new to RPG (MMORPGs / Computer RPGs) as I stated, but I seem to be fairly unique in my situation. You have really given me a great overview of where to start. I ran across an app called Masterplan and watching the videos loved the idea of the main map then a click spot to open up to an encounter. I was so pleased and one of the features that made me decide to purchase FG was the "PIN" that you just confirmed works like the encounter button in Masterplan. Yeah to be honest I never thought of any other thing to do in FG, but to use already made D&D PDF / Books I own into modules in FG for my group to play. I guess making up my own story seems a bit over zealous for my stage in the game =) Thank you again for all the great tips.

[JohnD]

Welcome... good advice so far. :)

[Magnatude]

Heh, no problem.
Personally I don't use ready made pdf adventures, but it would make a great primer for a first time user of FG, for a person who wants to DM a game.
If I end up doing this video, I'll use one of my own PDF's (one that I made up of my own adventures). I love doing my own mapping and artwork, part of my fun is creating adventures for my buds online.

Yeah a map that overviews the area is great to use... I even unmask it for my players as they play so they can see the overview of where they have explored.

BTW: Traps and pits and stuff like that... I never put on my map artwork, What I do is create tokens of pits and traps and attach them to monster/npc sheets and put them into the combat tracker to drop in (set invisible) and size/place them directly on the map... I then expose them if they get triggered.

[Trenloe]

There's some quick info here on the beginnings of taking a PDF and putting it into Fantasy Grounds: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17108

It's aimed at Pathfinder but a lot of the info is generic.

[damned]

welcome JemAs.
age-wise you probably right at the average age :)
there are many things in FG interface that are not intuitive until you get used to right click and a few other quirks - then they are nice and easy.
plenty of dms will let you sit in and watch a game and some will even let you pick up a character and run for a one off session.
what timezone are you in?

btw - there is lots to learn - both d&d and fg - but you dont have to know it all or even most of it. as dm you get to decide what does and doesnt happen - rules be damned.

[JemAs666]

Thanks for the great info on traps / hidden encounters Magnatude.

Trenloe that is an awesome write up and some good information for working with scenario PDFs and FG. Once I get home this evening I am going to start working on my first PDF scenario to FG.

Thanks damned for the welcome and encouragement! The 3 other players I am going to be playing with actually know more about D&D than I do, but they are too lazy to DM so they will have put up with me. We have all been friends a long time so it isn't a big deal. I live in Texas, Central Timezone.

[Griogre]

You will probably find it easier to use Dr_Zuess' 4E Module Workshop to input anything larger than a short adventure into FG because of the annoying newlines at the end of each line of most PDFs. But I want to stress again that once you understand the parts of FG I don't think you should be inputting any text for a non commercial module since you can just narrate the text out of the adventure by reading it aloud over VoIP.

By the way the module Workshop says its for 4E but I use it for text input for any ruleset from a PDF. Eugenez did some video tutorials here on how to use the tool: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showpost.php?p=98969&postcount=18

And you can download the Workshop from Dr_Z's site here: https://www.drzeuss.co.uk but you will have to register for the site.

[Magnatude]

Definitely use a voice chat!!!!

I've been in a "Fast and Furious" Savage Darwins World via Texting GM.... 4hours later we got our characters out of the starting town +2hours for a simple melee session (5 player characters vs 2 robots)....

In a 2 hour voice chat, you can accomplish at least 2 complex combat sessions and cover a ton of vocal roleplay.

And your welcome for the advice, been in your shoes once.

[damned]

100% for Voice.
It will make the game much faster - however many people do enjoy role playing by text as it removes a few inhibitions :)
It also changes how much prep work you need to do for each session.

[JohnD]

Yes, voice is King. You will appreciate spending your time actually playing and talking instead of entering 100s of lines of text... and then typing for 4 hours straight in game. It is true that for some people voice seems a little unnatural at first, but you quickly get over it.

[JemAs666]

Wow! Thanks everyone for suggestions. I worked late yesterday, but I did come home and start a campaign. It is going slow until I understand the interface completely, but I am learning each time I start over :)

Hopefully in a few days I'll have a small campaign ready to run with my friends!

Thanks Again, such a great community!

JemAs

[dr_venture]

Let me just put in a vote for text chatting: I love it. The pace is definitely much slower, but the immersion is much deeper. I can totally see why people like to cover more ground in voice games, but for me, I'm happy to cover less material but in a more immersive fashion. Also, as damned pointed out, it there is much less prep time required for the GM - I couldn't run 2 campaigns using voice. Finally, I enjoy having the sessions all recorded in text, which can be posted to the Net for reference.

Some people have mentioned playing with a hybrid of text and voice - something like running the voice chat for everything other than the game itself... so all character and NPC actions and speech are done through FG chat, but all organizing, answering of questions, plotting, joking, etc. is done via voice... which sounds like a good trade off.

[Trenloe]

Also, as damned pointed out, it there is much less prep time required for the GM - I couldn't run 2 campaigns using voice.
Actually, I think damned means there is more prep time if using text rather than voice. With text you more than likely have to prepare more location descriptions/story entries within FG than you do with voice.

Or, perhaps, as text based games go slower there is less ground covered on a session by session basis and so general adventure prep time for each session is lower from that aspect.

[dr_venture]

Or, perhaps, as text based games go slower there is less ground covered on a session by session basis and so general adventure prep time for each session is lower from that aspect.

That is what I have found to be the case. There is definitely more typing prep for new locations, but coming up with nice-looking maps is a far more time-consuming process for me. If I had to barf out maps at a voice chat rate, well, I suppose I'd have to change the way I make maps :)

[damned]

i can see both sides but i did intend to suggest that voice requires less prep.
you will cover more ground but you can talk a lot faster than you can type - and even if that is not true for a specific person - it will be doubly true when you count players.
in our session last fortnight there were around 10 rooms entered in the current level of the mines, 4 fixed encounters that resulted in combat + 2 random combat encounters and a chunk of time interrogating prisoner(s). and we had 5 players + gm online.

[bennis1980]

Welcome to FG / roleplaying JemAs. Hope you love it as we do.

Try get involved as a player (check out the game calendar), you will learn alot on how to GM that way

[dr_venture]

Oh heck, I forgot the best advice to beginners: open a campaign as GM, then open a 2nd copy of FG and join the campaign as a player - that will let you see exactly how both players and the GM see the game progressing. Load up a character or two, create a simple battlemat, and run through a couple combats as both player and GM... it'll do *tons* to help you understand how everything clicks together.

[JemAs666]

Thanks dr_venture. Will one of the sample ones work that come with FG2 or would it be better to use the one I have started? Mine is pretty limited at the moment :p I assume I can open up a second copy and connect to my server to test my campaign out as I am building it?

[Trenloe]

Thanks dr_venture. Will one of the sample ones work that come with FG2 or would it be better to use the one I have started? Mine is pretty limited at the moment :p I assume I can open up a second copy and connect to my server to test my campaign out as I am building it?
You start up the 2nd instance of FG on the same computer as the GM instance - when joining the game as a player put localhost as the server address and this will allow the player instance to join.

Run any campaign you want - the example one, your own, or a module. The Well Met in Kithtak'haros adventure module for the 3.5E ruleset is installed for free as well - start a new 3.5E campaign, activate the module in the library and there will be additional coloured tabs containing data at the bottom of story, maps & images, personalities, etc..