Campaign Type/Design and FG's Strengths

[Von Stalhein]

I need to start drafting two new campaigns. One of which will be an "introductory" game for some new people to the hobby, and one of which will be for some well-experienced hands. In both cases, it will have been the first game I've run in FG for some time. So! I am hoping the community can help me a little.

The question for me is: what is FG best at?

Now, I mean this in two respects. 1) Which systems does it run best? 2) What kind of campaign does it run best? (Or conversely, what is harder to run?) I'm not asking for a definitive answer to these questions (there is none I am sure) but rather am reaching out for the experience of other GMs more practised than myself.

Best,

-- Von Stalhein

[Trenloe]

1) Which systems does it run best?
Any of the ones that are supported (3.5e and 4e come with Fantasy Grounds and are good rulesets) and the majority of rulesets available in the store. Additionally, there are community produced rulesets available in the library, some are more complete than others: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/library/

What kind of game are you looking to run? Fantasy? SciFi? Horror? Old School? Rules light?

Quite a few of the rulesets have a number of additional products available in the store - scenarios, settings, themes, library modules, etc.. Some rulesets also have good community support in terms of modules and extensions.


2) What kind of campaign does it run best? (Or conversely, what is harder to run?)
As FG requires a bit of GM prep beforehand, I'd say that truly sandbox style games are more difficult to run than more structured campaigns. However, if you use voice for your communications (there is a free to use community TeamSpeak server: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?17071-Voicechat!-Community-TeamSpeak3-Server) then the up-front GM prep is reduced somewhat as you don't need to have descriptions/story entries ready to go, you can wing-it as you go along or read "box-text" from a PDF/book you are running from.

There is always the question of maps/images though - if you are running a game that relies on maps, then is it a bit more difficult to prepare for a sandbox style game where the players could literally go anywhere. Fantasy Grounds does have basic on-the-fly mapping, but it is basically lines on a map - not that great, but you can get by. You can, however, mitigate a lot of the sandbox style game issues by putting together (or buying) a few map modules that have commonly used encounter maps so that you can quickly produce a map that matches your needs. There are plenty of maps freely available both on these forums and on the Internet so a little work could easily put together a few good map modules at no cost.

Having NPC modules ready to go will help you to run things on the fly. The Pathfinder ruleset has a lot of the bestiaries converted to FG modules and so these are ready to use. Other rulesets have NPC/Bestiary modules as well. Some rulesets, however, do not have that much in terms of support modules and so you'd have to do these yourself or learn to quickly put NPCs together when you need to.

[Mgrancey]

It does Savage Worlds quite well, and once you get to know SW its easy to create NPCs on the fly without having to fully create a NPC. Minimum you need is Parry (Defense), Toughness (resistance to taking damage), Fighting/Shooting/Throwing (Combat skills), Spellcasting skill, edges/hinderances (only a few unless more a powerful NPC), and damage which has a pretty steady scaling.

One key issue that can help when setting up maps and stories, is that you can setup shortcuts on maps that will take you straight to whatever story (and library entry as well I believe). So you can setup a city map, with information on different sections.

Anyway its late, so I might post more tomorrow as I am going to crash now.

[Griogre]

To respond to you in the most generic way, FG does character sheet-centric games the best. If a game at a table would mostly be looking at the character sheet and rolling dice that's the type of RPG FG does best with the least preparation. The 4E, 3.5/Pathfinder, Savage Worlds and Rolemaster Rulesets are now the most fully featured rulesets. Those features come with a cost in complexity and user learning curve - this would be fine for you "old hands" group but you might want to consider something simpler for the newcomers.

[Trenloe]

Another options is the Castles & Crusades ruleset which is having a major makeover for the upcoming Fantasy Grounds v3.0 implementation (free upgrade from the current FG 2.9.4). Castles and Crusades is an "old school" ruleset and so is simpler to get into for players than the 3.5/Pathfinder or 4e rulesets.

[damned]

+1

Another options is the Castles & Crusades ruleset which is having a major makeover for the upcoming Fantasy Grounds v3.0 implementation (free upgrade from the current FG 2.9.4). Castles and Crusades is an "old school" ruleset and so is simpler to get into for players than the 3.5/Pathfinder or 4e rulesets.

I would suggest that Pathfinder is the best supported ruleset because of its licensing firstly and because of the number of active users of the ruleset.
Then I think that the other Core rulesets 3.5E and 4E although 4E has no content - but the content is easy to obtain from DDI.
Then Castles&Crusades but that requires an additional $10 license cost (well worth it).
Then the other good commercial rulesets like SavageWorlds and RMC.

When I bought FG I also grabbed C&C despite having never played it before because it was the best supported/featured Old School ruleset - and it is definitely easy to learn and run and play.
So if you want an option that is easy for everyone my vote is for Castles&Crusades - but everyone who wants access to the Players Handbook needs to buy a $10/license (small price to pay).

To the second part - definitely run a voice game - you can still use chat for flavour, background and other bits but voice enables your game to flow faster and be more flexible.

[Trenloe]

but everyone who wants access to the Players Handbook needs to buy a $10/license (small price to pay).
Is this going to be the case with 3.0 and the changes M_W has made to how modules are handled? I think I saw a post from M_W mentioning the 3.0 changes would remove this restriction? Can't find it in a quick search...

Also, Castles and Crusades has very good product support for Fantasy Grounds - there are currently 24 Castles and Crusades products in the store.

[Moon Wizard]

With v3.0, the players will be able to access ANY modules that the GM shares during the game, but only during the game.

Cheers,
JPG

[damned]

Including Castles&Crusades?

[Moon Wizard]

It's a system wide change. We're removing the delineation of host/client/common modules (for the most part). Modules with db.xml files only will be automatically set to "do not share" mode, and thus will not be visible on player side. Any module on the GM machine can be shared to players during the session by choosing the "allow" or "autoload" modes in the module activation window.

Regards,
JPG

[damned]

Woot!
That is fantastic news for my players. As an aside I got 1 of my 2 who didnt have a lite license to upgrade and Im working on the last - the discount helps :)

[Von Stalhein]

Thanks for all of the helpful replies everyone. Lots of useful insight here. I like running Savage Worlds as a GM, but in some ways I think that, for people brand new to RPGs, it's actually a slightly complex system (lots of different mechanics for different things). Also, I'm afraid I'm not a huge fan of (any!) of the available Savage Worlds skins in FG - at least, not for the games I'll be running (I'm sure they're great for the right game). I no longer subscribe to DDI, so that brings it down to between Pathfinder and Castles & Crusades. I'm quite tempted to run a low-/no-magic C&C game, maybe with "artefacts" that allow one-use shots of spells, to make the system really simple for them. On the other hand, Pathfinder is great fun. I've only played in one Pathfinder campaign. How easy is it to DM?

[Mgrancey]

Depends on how much you've played 3.5 and 4e, pretty much mechanically the same as 3.5 with some minor modifications, my biggest problem is keeping straight which applies to which system anymore. With all the support for Pathfinder on here, and the numerous amount of DnD content out there, there's tons of stuff to support GM's.'