Savage Worlds on Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds podcast

[Mask_of_winter]

There's a podcast aimed at helping potential vtt users which platform is best for them if you want to play Savage Worlds online. It airs tonight. https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/csi33ct5gncvevksmt07rakolb8

[Nylanfs]

15 minutes! can't wait. :)

[ballan4]

Overall, I think we made a good impression. Yes you can do everything with both programs but FG comes ready to use. It's also nice putting a face to the name for Doug aside from the tutorial videos.

[Valarian]

Will this be available to view on YouTube? Due to the time in the UK (middle of the night), I didn't see the live hangout.

[damned]

i caught about 1/2 of it in smaller chunks. it was done quite well. both presenters did a good job.
im pretty sure that hangouts on air become youtube videos post the event...
yep. follow the link above and you can watch it again.

[Nylanfs]

All those macro's in Roll20 seem REALLY insane.

[Valarian]

... and you have to set them up every time you want to run something, each player setting up their own for their characters. Unless you're willing to pay the subscription and you can get the template saver tool/thing. The character sheet implementation may have helped here, I've not checked out my Roll20 account for a while.

[Nylanfs]

No he had a fairly easy way to carry them from campaign to campaign, but it still seemed insane.

[Valarian]

There's a campaign template tool to save a bunch of macros, similar to the Fantasy Grounds export but for the ruleset type stuff as well. I'm fairly sure I don't have access to this on my account, which is a "premium" free account - not a subscriber but have all the kickstarter content. I think this tool becomes available at the $5 subscriber mark.

[Mask_of_winter]

Great job Doug and David!

[ddavison]

Thanks guys. The video is now available to watch on YouTube.

Unfortunately, my demo of the GM section of combat was all hidden since I was still screen-sharing the player view instead, Doh!!!

[Nylanfs]

BTW Doug, in the section of where you were talking about lines of code. I did a quick info search, PCGen has 625k+ lines of code. And that doesn't include the data files.

[ddavison]

BTW Doug, in the section of where you were talking about lines of code. I did a quick info search, PCGen has 625k+ lines of code. And that doesn't include the data files.

Yes, it's a non-trivial amount, for sure. The basic program for FG has so many and then each ruleset has it's own lines of code spread across numerous LUA script files. It would be hard for me to supply even a rough estimate.

[Coanunn]

For those wondering about Savage Daddy's Roll20 macros they take next to no time to write or transfer now but it took him nearly a year to get them into that shape with the help of myself, the roll20 forums, and several other players. Honestly the level of automation he showed off is not indicative of a new player jumping into roll20 but as he shares that information with the community it will become far easier for a Savage World GM to pick up and run a free game with all of those macros.

The biggest strength of Fantasy Grounds got missed and frankly I'm a little upset we consistently avoided the topic, copyright. If Smiteworks goes away tomorrow, I still own my copy, the copy of the rules, and I am still protected to share that with players under the copyright protection built into the software. If on the other hand Roll20 goes away everything that was shown off in that video simply ceases to exist. Also, should Pinnacle ever decide to do so they could easily go after both Savage Daddy and Roll20 for copyright violation as he is reprinting the rules in the form of every handout he creates that are not saved locally but rather saved on the Roll20 server and legally are the property of Roll20.

The other aspect is that in an approximately hour long show with a biased host there was an awful lot missed. Things like the difficulty to run a dramatic task and needing to use either the combat tracker or the chase tracker in order to do so in Fantasy Grounds. Or the near calculus level math required to include all the modifiers, compare to a target number and count raises required in Roll20. A macro I wrote to allow a player to swing their weapon, add strength, subtract wounds and fatigure, compare AP to Armor, add remaining armor to toughness, check for active toughness modifiers, determine if shaken, and return the wounds was 439 characters long on a single line in order to return a "so and so hits so and so with x success and raises". That has to be replicated per weapon, per character. Just to name a couple of the things that both software are capable of or need a work around to accomplish.

Last and certainly not least as a GM, running in Fantasy Grounds is TREMENDOUSLY easier. If suddenly the party goes some place I didn't plan for I can on the fly grab a monster from the bestiary unlike Roll20 where it can take 20 minutes even with a modular template to create an opponent for your players. The drag and drop from the rulebooks and ability to import stat blocks (using Ikael's NPC Maker extension) matches Savage Worlds low prep time design better in my opinion.

[ddavison]

I think we may have swayed him some over the course of the show (and probably from earlier discussions.) The issue is that he has invested a good deal of time and effort getting something set up to run fairly effectively. His setup is actually pretty nice. Anytime someone has that much invested in something, they aren't going to switch lightly -- if at all. The fact that he stated that Fantasy Grounds was the best solution for those people wanting a turn-key setup for Savage Worlds was a pretty big admission. He is exactly the kind of users we love having in our community, so I'm hopeful that with continue improvements and marketing that we'll eventually sway him over to Fantasy Grounds.

On the subject of differences between Roll20 and FG, I'm interested in the soundcloud capabailities. I'm wondering if there is a simple soundcloud sharing plug-in available for Google Hangouts that allows you to use that feature along with your voice and video but then still use Fantasy Grounds. Does anyone know if there is such a thing?

[Coanunn]

On the subject of differences between Roll20 and FG, I'm interested in the soundcloud capabailities. I'm wondering if there is a simple soundcloud sharing plug-in available for Google Hangouts that allows you to use that feature along with your voice and video but then still use Fantasy Grounds. Does anyone know if there is such a thing?

I did a quick search and found this: https://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/letslisten-unveils-google-hangouts-and-soundcloud-integration/. That said if I had my ideal it would be something built into Fantasy Grounds that lets me share a sound file that as the GM I have locally similar to images is currently. This is because I like to use soundtracks I own or have purchased rather than having to find something in the sound cloud library that fits what I'm trying to convey.

[damned]

if the audio could be loaded at GM end, pre shared and then played based on a GM instruction would be good. The pre-loading would be very important for a lot of FG GMs who dont have fast upload speeds. In AUS uploads of more than 1mbps are rare in the home environment.

[VenomousFiligree]

The pre-loading would be very important for a lot of FG GMs who dont have fast upload speeds.

There would appear to be an issue with map uploading (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?22060-Preloading), so I guess that would be preloading in general.

[damned]

yeah - as that has been reported im hoping/assuming that it will get fixed in 3.0.8 or 3.1...

[phantomwhale]

I was very happy with the overall debate as well, and thought it was done really well.

And it really drove home the point I think get's missed a lot in comparison. Whilst it's true there is a bigger speed bump getting into FG development - we provide less mid-level macros, but more powerful yet lower-level programatic controls - I think 80% or more of users just want to play the game in a semi-flexible environment, which means neither writing custom macros nor LUA code.

And that's what our ruleset products offer; sure you get the copyright material in FG format, which you've probably already paid for, but your also paying for countless hours of previous developers, my time, and lots and lots of Aki's time putting together the best practice, most cohesive set of pre-built functionality and game helpers we can. $15 to buy a copy of a book you already own sounds bad. $15 to buy hundreds of hours of effort on game controls is a steal - I'm sure Jerrod could sell his macro set up for a similar amount on Roll20 marketplace too - except as noted, the copyright issue is the big hurdle to cross there.

So I was glad that this became the focus - if you just want to sit down and play Savage Worlds, Fantasy Grounds provides the best support to do that. And either way, your going to pay (no freebies here) for these tools. I wonder if there is more that can be done with the subscription model, perhaps being able to offer a ruleset on the subscription plan as well - paying $15 for a ruleset when you're on a $10/month trial plan is probably not too appealing if your 50/50 that you'll stay with the product after the month is up. Or maybe a bundle deal (3 months of FGII and 1 ruleset for some amount ?)

Thanks again to all on the video cast - I think it was a valuable comparison of the two most relevant VTTs on the market around my favorite gaming system, and may provide a good steering point for other people interested in the subject in months to come.

[damned]

I wonder if there is more that can be done with the subscription model, perhaps being able to offer a ruleset on the subscription plan as well - paying $15 for a ruleset when you're on a $10/month trial plan is probably not too appealing if your 50/50 that you'll stay with the product after the month is up. Or maybe a bundle deal (3 months of FGII and 1 ruleset for some amount ?)

yes. and NO. dont cheapen your work. the product is worth paying for. you already earn cents/hour of effort - i know thats not why you do it - but if you dont value your work others might not either!

[Trenloe]

yes. and NO. dont cheapen your work. the product is worth paying for. you already earn cents/hour of effort - i know thats not why you do it - but if you dont value your work others might not either!
Well, if the GM stumps up $11/month (for example) for an ultimate subscription and 1 ruleset there'd be additional revenue for the ruleset and it wouldn't be cheapening the work. Then, if after a couple of months the GM and their players love it and decide to buy licenses the GM would have to purchase the ruleset - so it's actually giving double revenue. If they stay on the subscription then it's providing recurring revenue to the ruleset developer...

I know the ultimate subscription is new, so there is still room for refinement/additional options, but I like the additional license option now available. But, as phantomwhale mentions, if people want to "try" one of the commercial rulesets then they have to fork out the full amount, even if they only ever pay for 1 month of the ultimate subscription.

[Coanunn]

Well, if the GM stumps up $11/month (for example) for an ultimate subscription and 1 ruleset there'd be additional revenue for the ruleset and it wouldn't be cheapening the work. Then, if after a couple of months the GM and their players love it and decide to buy licenses the GM would have to purchase the ruleset - so it's actually giving double revenue. If they stay on the subscription then it's providing recurring revenue to the ruleset developer...

I know the ultimate subscription is new, so there is still room for refinement/additional options, but I like the additional license option now available. But, as phantomwhale mentions, if people want to "try" one of the commercial rulesets then they have to fork out the full amount, even if they only ever pay for 1 month of the ultimate subscription.

I'll be honest, a one time cost is almost always better for the consumer than a subscription while for the publisher the subscription is almost always better. That said I honestly think the rulesets could be broken down further than they are currently. You could sell a "framework" for each system which has the mechanics, the recordsheet, etc and sell the rule books separate from that, and that would certainly make it easier for a brand new user to jump in and try it out. If I drop $9 for the sub and $4 for the framework and decide yeah this is for me I can then buy the ruleset upgrade pack or the full ruleset.

For me to try Fantasy Grounds out for a month it cost me $25 for a month. $9 for the sub and then an additional $14.99 for Savage Worlds. That is a lot to have to pay for a "trial". I might even go so far as to say offer a 10 day free trial version where any one ruleset can be activated for free for 10 days to let them have a "taste". Anything that eases that start-up hump is going to really help ease the person into realizing the software is completely worth the cost for their group or is horrible for their group.

[Nylanfs]

Or perhaps offer (1) DLC system for free with the subscription (Changeable every 60 days maybe?).