New to virtual tabletops..

[drifter129]

Hi guys - I've been hanging around this site for a week or two now, so i thought i would sign up to the forum and say hi!

I'm in a gaming group that have been getting together less and less frequently the last few years; mainly because we all live in different parts of the UK. I have been really impressed with FG so far and think we are going to bite the bullet and give it a shot at having regular gaming sessions in the virtual world.

This method of gaming is new to us all, and all the features of FG seem a little daunting. Just wandered if anyone had any tips or advice to ease the transition into playing on a virtual tabletop?

[Trenloe]

Watch some of the community videos - links in the downloads page.
Read areas of the 3.5e or 4e user guides - links under the library page. Don't worry if you're not interested in these rules, most of the info is FG generic.
Download the FG demo application and the example campaigs. Load one of the example campaigns and mess around with it.
See if you can join a game to "loiter" and see what's going on.
Find an "Ultimate license" game at the FG-Con convention: https://www.fg-con.com/

The top 2 items are really useful if you follow along while you have a demo copy of Fantasy Grounds open (pause the video, try it out, resume the video, etc.).

[sakmerlin37]

EDIT: Trenloe beat me to it =)

[Trenloe]

EDIT: Trenloe beat me to it =)
:bandit:

:D

Your comment about looking at the pre-made adventures was valid. The example campaign for 3.5e and 4e (A Tale of Dinor) is a good way of seeing how info can be arranged in Fantasy Grounds and linked via staory entries - and is also a good start for checking it out. Also, the "Well Met in Kith’takharos" 3.5e module that comes free with Fantasy Grounds (start a 3.5e campaign and activate the module then you'll see additional green tabs at the bottom of the story, images & maps, NPCs and items lists) is a great freebie from White Haired Man, with the setting PDF available for free here: https://www.whitehairedman.com/kithtakharos-products There are also other Kith'takharos products available for purchase in the store.

With the demo product one player can connect to try out the game. Also, the GM can run another instance of Fantasy Grounds on the same PC and join the game with the host address of localhost This is a very good way of a GM learning what the players see.

[Answulf]

My #1 Tip is to be prepared for the pace to be quite a bit slower than real-life tabletop.

For that reason I think the lighter rulesets work a lot better, but that is personal preference. Slower pace is a blessing in disguise for GMs - you can prepare less material for a session. I think a lot of GMs advance their players faster in VTT campaigns, too.

Also, spending some 'boring' time up front getting to know the program better will pay off dividends in fun down the road. When I'm introducing new to FG players into a campaign, I like to start off with a solo adventure where I can teach them the ropes one-on-one.

[Trenloe]

My #1 Tip is to be prepared for the pace to be quite a bit slower than real-life tabletop.
This brings up a very good point - some games are ran with text communication within the FG app only, some with a mixture of text in the app (for in character stuff) and voice for out-of-character chat and rules questions, and some will use voice for virtually all communication.

Text based games will go a lot slower, but a lot of people find them more immersive and easier for people to communicate in character.

The community has a free-to-use Teamspeak server that can be used for voice communications: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17071

[Invictys]

My experience has been the opposite, my play sessions have a much faster pace than tabletop for 4e which is NOT rules light lol!

Maybe the reason is that my group is made up of very computer literate gamers and we use ventrilo/skype. The chat gets used very little in my sessions as it is all done over voice.

Combat goes significantly faster than tabletop since FG handles most of the bookkeeping. Once we got over the learning curve a typical 4 round fight for 4 characters now takes about 15 minutes or so depending on the complexity of the terrain/hazards/traps. That's a heck of alot faster than a 4 round fight in tabletop 4e!

Also, being able to have complex maps and encounters prepared in advance keeps the session moving smoothly with few awkward pauses for encounter preparation.

[drifter129]

Thanks guys - some really good pointers there. Found some good instructional videos on FG site and from general users on youtube which have been really useful. Didn't know about the teamspeak server - thanks for that!!

[damned]

hi drifter - what games do you play?

[drifter129]

Ad&d 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 3.5, 4th...
Also I have ran an earthdawn campaign and also dabbled in warhammer fantasy.

I intend to run a pathfinder campaign next using FG as i'm not a fan of ad&d 4e..