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Talen
April 12th, 2015, 16:48
Welcome all!

With the flurry of recent AL interest and the new licensed 5e libraries, Smiteworks has agreed to give the AL community a place to focus on League play in Fantasy Grounds. We will start to flesh things out here shortly (blatantly plagiarizing Trenloe's organizational structure), but this will be a good place for players and DM's to congregate with a focus on FG.

VenomousFiligree
April 12th, 2015, 16:55
Looking forward to GMing and playing!

kennsing
April 12th, 2015, 17:52
Looking forward to playing!

Trenloe
April 12th, 2015, 18:07
Was the game you ran yesterday the first "official" AL game on Fantasy Grounds? That is, one that fully adhered to the WotC requirements.

G4MER
April 12th, 2015, 18:37
Excited to give this a try.

Talen
April 12th, 2015, 21:46
Was the game you ran yesterday the first "official" AL game on Fantasy Grounds? That is, one that fully adhered to the WotC requirements.

It was a "legal" game. The primary requirement for an online game using an Expedition adventure is that it be publicly streamed (for example through Twitch, etc.) Our game was streamed on www. twitch.tv/talwynor. In quick summary, for our FG Expedition games, we must:

1. Stream the game.
2. Have a table of 3-7 Adventure League compliant PC's.
3. Have the players keep an Adventure Log.

Also, with regard to "first" status. I think others may have already been running FG AL games, FSHSchmo being one such DM. There are definitely other sites dedicated to online play generally, like the Official Online Facebook page David Russell has organized. I think the forum here however will bring more attention to it in the FG community.

JohnD
April 12th, 2015, 21:56
Where does one get these "Expedition" adventures?

Talen
April 12th, 2015, 22:01
Where does one get these "Expedition" adventures?

With regard to running a game online - assuming you are not already DM'ing in a store - you would email the Adventurer League organizers and request access to the Adventurer League Expedition and Epic adventures. You will need a WOTC DCI organized play number and you will have to provide the address where you will stream the adventures.

From the Adventurer's League Community Manager: "As long as you're live streaming your games you can get the adventures. Please see our Get Involved page: https://dndadventurersleague.org/get-involved/#where

Here's the relevant text from the website:

Online Play

Online games come in two different types. One is like home play, where you run through the published adventures. Currently Lost Mine of Phandelver, Hoard of the Dragon Queen, Rise of Tiamat, or Princes of the Apocalypse. These game are treated just like Home Play.

The second option is live-streaming. “If you live-stream your online game using any free-to-watch streaming service, such as Google Hangouts On Air or Twitch.tv, you can get the D&D Expeditions adventures to showcase in your game.

You can do this in one of two ways:

1) Contact a store to be your sponsor, it can get you certs and the adventures.

2) Contact Wizards Customer Support and tell them you want to stream D&D Expeditions. They will give you access to the adventures, but not any magic item certificates. In the email make sure you give them the link for your streaming page. You must have a Wizards login and be logged in to fill out the form.

hawkwind
April 17th, 2015, 08:15
is Smiteworks in a position to be a store sponsor and provide magic item certificates?

VenomousFiligree
April 17th, 2015, 08:19
is Smiteworks in a position to be a store sponsor and provide magic item certificates?

That would be great!

Talen
April 17th, 2015, 12:53
is Smiteworks in a position to be a store sponsor and provide magic item certificates?

I've reached out to Doug and Zeus to see if that is a possibility. I like the idea of a store sponsorship as the certifications and player/gm support would be nice. The good news is, while it would enhance, its not required for online games and doesn't limit your character*if you don't have a certificate - even if you subsequently play in a store game. The other thing to keep in mind is that if we run these as a store sponsored game, we will have to report the games. That's not a dealbreaker, but it is another level of administration to factor in.

FWIW, even with the extra tracking requirement, Id like to see it!

*trades of magic items are prohibited without a cert.

metacynical
April 20th, 2015, 23:27
I play regularly at my local store and am a sub dm on occasion when necessary so have access already to the modules. I am new to FG but have been DMing online via roll20 for a while. I am curious, what is the overhead in FG for prepping an Aleague module like? Has anyone fully configured one yet? Just curious on the time required etc.

Talen
April 21st, 2015, 00:46
I play regularly at my local store and am a sub dm on occasion when necessary so have access already to the modules. I am new to FG but have been DMing online via roll20 for a while. I am curious, what is the overhead in FG for prepping an Aleague module like? Has anyone fully configured one yet? Just curious on the time required etc.

The conversion of a module varies. It generally takes me a couple hours per adventure - I'm sure there are others doing it faster and slower. The licensed player and monster modules makes the conversion process MUCH faster. If you check out Xorn's video tutorials, (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/wiki/index.php?title=Videos) he does a great job of walking people through the process. If you have an specific questions, let us know.

metacynical
April 21st, 2015, 02:05
The conversion of a module varies. It generally takes me a couple hours per adventure - I'm sure there are others doing it faster and slower. The licensed player and monster modules makes the conversion process MUCH faster. If you check out Xorn's video tutorials, (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/wiki/index.php?title=Videos) he does a great job of walking people through the process. If you have an specific questions, let us know.

Thanks, Talen, for the info. And for the direction to Xorn's tutorials -- I will check them out. I own the phb/mmanual and a personal license as well as phandelver. I wanted to get an idea of effort level before investing in a universal license but it sounds like the effort isn't too bad at all... Once I start converting some modules (after proper education ;) ), I will give my debriefing! And then I will figure out how to arrange with the community for some public play sessions!.

metacynical
April 21st, 2015, 04:47
OK great, thanks Talen. Will try watching the vids. I went ahead with the ultimate license and am seeing about converting my Sunday AM game with local friends to FG (it's phandelver, so hopefully it's easy...). I will start working on converting a few of the expeditions modules and see how they turn out. Hopefully I can get an expedition game up and available for participants in a few weeks.

viresanimi
April 21st, 2015, 11:33
Just remember that the first few attempts at organizing an adventure and/or module takes a while longer, but once you get into how the system really works and know all the ins and outs of FG, it really is a breeze. I made short dungeon adventure for 5e, complete with a new map, story, notes for traps etc., treasure parcels, monsters, inventory tokens placed, with everything pinned to the map in about an hour yesterday. I love the new 5E modules. It has gotten my friends and me back into D&D.

Vires Animi

Nylanfs
April 21st, 2015, 17:00
Yep, I'm working on getting the Return to Temple of Elemental Evil 35e into FG and adjusting it for a Pathfinder game. I've probably spent about 6 hours total, a lot of that is OCR scan issues, figuring out if I need to adjust for version differences, finding maps, creating NPC's (and then converting to Pathfinder), and re-organizing my campaign module. But this is a MASSIVE module to do that with.

VenomousFiligree
April 25th, 2015, 14:43
I've reached out to Doug and Zeus to see if that is a possibility. I like the idea of a store sponsorship as the certifications and player/gm support would be nice. The good news is, while it would enhance, its not required for online games and doesn't limit your character*if you don't have a certificate - even if you subsequently play in a store game. The other thing to keep in mind is that if we run these as a store sponsored game, we will have to report the games. That's not a dealbreaker, but it is another level of administration to factor in.

FWIW, even with the extra tracking requirement, Id like to see it!

*trades of magic items are prohibited without a cert.

Did they get back to you?

Talen
April 25th, 2015, 15:00
They did and they have reached out to Wizards to discuss various issues regarding Adventure League support under their license. Their contact at Wizards was on vacation last week so they were waiting to hear back. No word from the Wizards camp yet.

In addition, I reached out to Robert Adducci, the Adventure League Community Manager at Wizards. He indicated that the extent of online support is currently being discussed, but did not have any details to share with me at this time.

JeffKnight
April 25th, 2015, 23:59
I have made some CC3+ maps for the ones I've started to add in. I'm no expert map-maker, but it does add a little extra flair over the hand-drawn ones in the DDEXs. It'd be nice to know the extent of the online support WotC is going to give us.

VenomousFiligree
April 26th, 2015, 08:45
JeffKnight, if you're open to sharing your maps, I'd be open to receiving them! ;)

Fynious
April 28th, 2015, 21:57
From the point of view of a FG Noob, and new to Adventure League where is a good place to get me started? (Signing up, etc..)

Thanks
Fyn.

Talen
April 29th, 2015, 00:08
From the point of view of a FG Noob, and new to Adventure League where is a good place to get me started? (Signing up, etc..)

Thanks
Fyn.

Hi Fyn! As a player, this is what I would recommend:


Read the Adventurers League Players Guide https://media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/dnd/DDALPG_EEv1.pdf. This has the character creation and campaign rules.
Keep a player log. There's a form at https://media.wizards.com/downloads/dnd/DnDAdvLgLogsheet.pdf but there are others.
Watch some Fantasy Ground and 5e tutorial videos. There are many examples on Youtube as well as here at https://www.fantasygrounds.com/wiki/index.php?title=Videos#Game_System_Tutorials
Create your character in either pdf or Fantasy Ground format to send to your DM.
Join a game! Adventurers League game announcements are found at https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?23765-Game-Announcements


If you have any questions after all that -just ask. But really, the easiest way to get into the swing of things is to join a game.

JohnD
May 1st, 2015, 15:04
What is the time commitment per game?

Is it like PFS where the adventure is designed for ~ 3-4 hours but really takes 5-6?

Talen
May 1st, 2015, 16:52
I'm still trying to get a feel for the time commitment myself. The wotc website says expedition sessions are typically 2-4 hours. Keep in mind however that an expedition can be broken up over multiple sessions. My sense is that completing an entire expedition takes around 5 hrs.

soulcat
May 6th, 2015, 05:47
I have my DCI number setup, and I just contacted Wizards about getting Access to the Expeditions, and I have my twitch Stream Setup. Hopefully I'll be set to run an expedition soon,

Talen
May 6th, 2015, 11:16
Thats great! Give a shout if you need a hand with anything. The games have been alot of fun to run and the new players I've met have all been great too.

Irondrake
June 28th, 2015, 04:29
Games that are streamed, are they required to use voice chat? We've always been a "text-only" group but my players have asked about more Adventurer's League play options.

Talen
June 28th, 2015, 13:43
No, voicechat is not required - text games only can be AL Legal if streamed. #AL_LC.