You can lead a horse to water, but...

[dj-wedge]

I have a group that is largely "all about them crits!" I need to essentially lead them from one tactical situation to the next. They just want to keep testing themselves against whatever I throw at them. It tends to feel like the game has turned a little adversarial between player and DM. If I didn't know these guys since we were teenagers...

And the odd thing is, we had played together for many years at the table top. But after we all moved away, our gaming turned more MMO and online. Now that I've introduced them to FG, D&D is back! And we couldn't be happier!

Except things are different. I remember long nights of being around the table, each of us holding or wearing some sort of dorky prop. The acting was the best part. Not one Rule Monger among them. The combat was great, but often times theater of the mind was just fine. The figurines were all there, but often they would just sit in front of the character sheet, unused. Some nights nobody even picked up their dice.

There is a downside to FG play. It's subtle and it took me months to put my finger on it. There's no visual experience. There's little or no emotional interaction. The game is entirely focused around two mediums - the map and your voice.

Last night we were "in the tavern" after a long story arch where they saved an entire city from being captured and used as sacrifices in some demonic ritual to open a permanent gateway to some level of hell or another. The entire city was celebrating! The Lord of the Keep that protects the city and surrounding farmlands brought out the "Special" bottle of wine (this was a precursor to another adventure - where did that special wine come from?).

I thought I'd do a sort of "Hangover" experience. They all toasted to the success and continued carousing - they got into it - there was descriptions of the bard jumping up on the table and kicking off a rousing song of their exploits.

"Your vision begins to narrow and your head swims quite a bit more than you expect it to. Curiously you focus on the label on the Magnum sized bottle of wine Lord Llane brought out." ... insert some detailed description of the label here - some clues and foreshadowing in the imagery.

"Then you wake up"

And I had descriptions queued up for each of them. Text that describes their individual experiences with waking up.

The gnome bard was sleeping in a pig sty with two sows snuggled under his arms - and he was wearing a dress approximately his size - His clothes all missing.

The dwarf tank was sleeping in the city square fountain, water splashing all around. The very rough beginnings of a sculpture depicting the party members replacing the previous carving. And he had an Orc Chieftain propped up against him, snoring. And each of them had the other ones battle standard tattooed on their shoulders.

The Elf wizard "came to" running for his life with his clothes in his arms heading toward the town - a mob of screaming/adoring women chasing after him (who happened to be orc and half-orc).

The human Eldritch Knight woke up in a harem tent - with really rough looking women. It's hard to tell in the dark.

The dwarf paladin and dwarf cleric wake up with a human countess (from an estate across the bay) all sleeping in a somewhat compromising "condition".

How did they get there? And why is there an Orc army camped in the south fields (not attacking)? Why are there several high ranking Orcs also passed out around town? Why does this Orc Chieftain think the dwarf tank is his new best friend? What was in that bottle? and how did the Countess get here?

I though it sounded like a fun setup for a night of role playing and laughter.

But the first words I hear are "Is there a map? I want to see where I'm laying."

Alas, I had to resolve their situations fairly quickly and find something for them to kill. The Orc army was not supposed to be hostile (It's actually a displaced clan on the run from a certain group of nasty demons familiar to the group that had forced them out of their home for nefarious reasons).

Luckily they did piece together the "Orc's aren't here to kill you" angle. And then the remainder of the night was spent trying to figure out how to spend the loot from the latest adventure now that their home town was finally populated again. "Let's boost the economy!"

So I did not have to use the tactical map - but I remember the group from when we were younger. That setup would have led to gales of laughter and hours of role playing.

I miss that group.

Wedgie

[epithet]

One of the things I've noticed with VTT gaming is there is a strong temptation to use highly detailed battlemaps. They look great, and you put your top-down tokens on it and feel like you're watching a scene unfold. That can change the way people think about the game.

If your players are getting to video-gamey with your D&D sessions, try taking down the level of detail as far as possible. Reduce your battlemaps to the equivalent of a sketch on graph paper, and start using basic tokens--even simple letter tokens--to represent monsters and NPCs. The more you make the players engage their imaginations to fill in the missing details, the more they'll begin (hopefully) to engage with the world and its characters like they did around a table. Once your players are more accustomed to flexing their imaginations, you can ease back into the higher-detail assets.

Aside from that, you'll inevitably need to accept that the dynamic in the group has to find a new equilibrium. Not only is the infrastructure of the game session different, but the players are older, and (if your group is anything like mine) significantly more sober. I know my group has really begun to celebrate the instant death kill, and can't gracefully handle theatre-of-the-mind combat (must have flanking!) on the VTT, but we still have a great time and manage to make everyone laugh on a pretty regular basis.

[Nylanfs]

Have you tried it with everyone having a video feed?

[dj-wedge]

@ Nylanfs - I did try the video feed during a prematurely aborted attempt to use FG a few years back with 4th edition. But I think a combination of learning that the D&D did not "feel" quite right and very shy people doing everything they can to avoid the camera (it wasn't *this* group of guys) doomed it to failure.

We are all using PTT in Ventrilo, though. I often find that I am repeating my own off-the-cuff comments after I fail to hear laughter and remember to push the button first. Maybe we all need to switch to voice activated. It'll add a bit of spontaneity back in. And it sometimes feels weird pushing the button just so people hear you laughing. It could very well be that level of feedback is missing. Just adding constant voice might help.

@epithet I have gone several routes. I've used the really detailed maps. I've used essentially sketch drawings. I've even just used blank grids and the drawing tool with a few tokens. And many different stages in between. One thing I did learn here is that taking a moderately detailed dungeon and "filling in the blanks" with tokens can get really distracting. My group does not tend to enjoy the "permission to move, sir!" thing. So I let them move their tokens at will. But this means that I get to see my chairs/beds/chests/statues/etc. twirl and move distractingly at times. Then there's the annoying "I tried to hide behind this statue and now I can't move!" or the famous "Why can't I target that wyvern?" when tokens accidentally stack or get too close. I'm constantly reminding people to be in exact squares and don't straddle the lines.

Then there's the manual mask reveal... I cannot WAIT for dynamic "fog of war" effects for each client. I thought I read somewhere that is future thing.

Wait... what were we talking about?

[dj-wedge]

I just had a thought. maybe each "encounter" should include some "token mobs" that are basically invulnerable furniture that are placed using the encounter functionality before hand. The players can't move those. And yet you can still have the dynamic effect of opening/closing doors or destroyed furniture etc. I can build a module of super high HP "Monsters" that have zero CR and zero XP using tokens like Chest, Door, Portcullis, Rock, Chair, Table.

Then add what I need to the encounter when I'm "stocking the dungeon".

Hrmmm....

They'd clutter the CT, though.

Brilliant idea - dead too soon.

[TASagent]

People do use tokens to that effect. There are extensions that add multiple token layers, so you can build a dungeon out of dungeon tiles withing FG. Doing that, you can swap out door tokens on the proper layer, etc. Though it generally sounds like a bit much work to me. On one hand, the detail could be evocative, but I expect it would mostly make a group (which from your admission already focuses too much on just the details on the battlemap) focus even more on just the battlemap.

[WhtZombie]

Wow, almost a total 180° experience from my group. We use RazerComms for voice and for the most part do not use PTT. Using the layer extension helps with placing furniture items and what not. That extension does require a bit more DM work when switching to the different layers creating something on the fly. LMoP is a great example of a typical DnD session, overland maps, encounter maps, and lots of places for "theater of the mind". Open mic is great there and with Razercomm they open a separate channel for use to type among themselves, keeping me from metagaming the session. Not everyone in my group has a cam so no video during the session but, maybe one day. I can empathize with your situation and I really have no solution since I have not encounter this. I just wanted to put my two cents in for use of PTT and point out the layer extension https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?20231-Enhanced-Images-(layers)-for-FG-3-0-CoreRPG-(and-rulesets-based-on-CoreRPG) I will admit nothing beats sitting around a table with good friends throwing dice and yucking it up but, FG sure comes close for me and my group.

[epithet]

We use Skype, open channel. It's not an issue with only a few of us in the conversation.

The one exception, one of our number had to be asked to enable the PTT because his kids were raising all kinds of hell in the background, and I couldn't even hear myself, let alone anyone else.

[damned]

a number of people are really enjoying using Fantasy Grounds AND Roll20! They use Roll20 to manage the video and you can also label/name the video heads to help remind everyone whose voice belongs to whose character and you get all the goodness of Fantasy Grounds game tools.
try and engineer a couple of situations that combat wont resolve - only problem solving and persuasion will work...?

[WhtZombie]

Might I suggest Teamviewer for the video https://meeting.teamviewer.com/en/features/. Check the 'Meeting' option and avoid the need for another account on... what was it Roll something?

[epithet]

Yeah, I'll pass on the whole video thing. I'd rather keep playing in my bathrobe, thanks.

[Xorn]

My last two sessions (four hours of play) has had a single combat, in the last 15 minutes of the last session against three sea trolls (which the party of five level 8s took apart, expectedly). No maps (other than the Sword Coast and an X token where they were), not even for the combat. I just used 13th Age range descriptions; engaged = adjacent/base-to-base, nearby = within 1 move range, far = within dash range, very far = beyond dash range. It works out brilliantly, and I have so many more questions asked about where things are, and "can I do this/that?". I could have just grabbed a big ice texture and slapped a grid on it--but they wouldn't have asked anything then.

I also agree that the more detailed your map is, the more focused players get on the map. For the next map I use I'll probably go with Griogre's method of keeping the map masked and drawing/tracing the walls onto the mask as we go--keeping it an abstract representation instead of a hyper-detailed map. (Though most of the maps I use are just blow-ups of the maps in the book, so they are pretty pixelated anyway, so it's mostly just a shape.)

[Griogre]

Interestingly, when I let the player's map Undermountain themselves it was a similar experience to the tracing. I made some wall tokens in 5, 10, 20, and 30 foot sections horizontally and vertically. The players seem to be neutral to positive on the "old school" feel of the map/dungeon.

https://i105.photobucket.com/albums/m222/Griogre/DrawingScreenshot_zps251a9dc3.png

[dj-wedge]

I love that idea - with the prefab walls and such. I have an ultimate goal of making enough little tools and utilities to enable "winging it". While I do try and prepare adventures for the party, I never have any luck getting them to follow script. So I have adopted skills to keep the story moving while secretly letting them run the show instead of me. Slowly inserting small tidbits to try and get them back on the originally planned storyline.

So I'm building such things as random encounter tables, random treasure, etc. Being able to land an encounter map quickly is also key. I've usually fallen prey to "browse through the folder of maps and battle mats until you find something somewhat appropriate." But that bogs things down. Having some prefab things for plunking down walls and such is a fantastic idea!

[Xorn]

https://static.tumblr.com/588a45ffd1f16eb8d5d9450edb38b25a/vin6e7g/gadnm7dc6/tumblr_static_9bvqxbpdf9k4g84ggo4k8sk8c.jpg

Not my image, but I use it. Just save that into your main campaign folder. Anytime there's something unexpected, open it up, set the grid for whatever range you think you'll be dealing with, and enjoy.

[Trenloe]

Having some prefab things for plunking down walls and such is a fantastic idea!
If you spend a bit of time finding some dungeon/town/wilderness tiles you like and resize them to the grid size you prefer, then you can use the layers extension to build up encounter areas pretty much on the fly: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?20231-Enhanced-Images-%28layers%29-for-FG-3-0-CoreRPG-%28and-rulesets-based-on-CoreRPG%29

Here's a quick example I threw together in less than a minute with dungeon tiles sized to 50 pixels per square:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/39085830/Screenshots/Fantasy%20Grounds/Layer%20Extension%20for%20MApping.JPG

I use a blank, coloured image file as the background (you could easily use the cool image Xorn links above) - don't use a new map created through the FG interface, it won't work well. Put a 50 pixel grid on the image. Then I place base mapping tiles on the bottom layer, features (doors, statues, etc.) on the middle layer and the PC and NPC tokens on the top layer. You'll need to turn of automatic token sizing, otherwise even your large tiles will be sized to fit in one square.

Zeus (the original author of the extension) shows how to use it in a video here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?14916-4E-Enhanced-Images&p=114668&viewfull=1#post114668

There are limitations and gotchas with the layer extension, so be sure to read the first two posts in that extension's thread.

[damned]

And another option...

https://www.fg-con.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/quick-mapping.gif

[Larac]

I use the POG they counters, as I find them less Video Gameish.

My maps are simple as I am not a great map maker.

We do not use PTT though and that I think helps.
FYI if you use VENT run it in Admin mode works much better for us.

Your group may have become more Hack and Slash, we tried "Pulling" for D&D but found it not as much fun.
Diving right in doing an odd ball stunt now and then is fun though.

So far they are 2nd had 4 Sessions, 2 Combats so far and 6 hours role play and exploring.
They entered a true Dungeon last session and are 4 rooms in for tonight, they have seen the Small Evil Female that is the main once but have yet to meet her, that happens tonight.

Good luck, the MMOs have changed many players, so you might have to slowly pull them make in.
Ask for more detailed back grounds, and tap on those once a session or so.

Good Luck, if GMing was easy everyone would do it :)

[dj-wedge]

We do not use PTT though and that I think helps.

I'm going to try this - make sure everyone has headphones so we don't get a cascading "Tasha's Uncontrollable Hideous Laughter" effect.


FYI if you use VENT run it in Admin mode works much better for us.

Vent 101 - You gotsta run it in Admin - not just an FG thing.


Your group may have become more Hack and Slash, we tried "Pulling" for D&D but found it not as much fun. Diving right in doing an odd ball stunt now and then is fun though.

They've tried several MMO type tactics - some to various degrees of success. The one that has been working well for them is to strictly adhere to the "tank front, chewy targets in back" configuration - using choke points whenever possible. I find that I am constantly checking monster intelligence/wisdom to make sure the "swarm of rats" isn't try to employ tactics. This is actually something they are CONSTANTLY worried about because in an early dungeon crawl they were attacked by giant spiders descending from webs in the darkness above them. It messed up any pretense of a front line and things went South pretty fast. They are hopelessly paranoid about getting out of position/marching order now. But then - Intelligent foes have exploited that <rubs hands together with evil laughter>


Ask for more detailed back grounds, and tap on those once a session or so.

THIS is a cool idea. I made a huge deal out of getting them to create backgrounds that were interwoven with each other. I glanced through it and just left it at that - hoping they would draw on it themselves for inspiration. I think I might dig in there and look for some adventure hook ideas.

[dj-wedge]

And another option...

<remove fancy imagery>

Do you have a source for some of those floor textures? I can just fire up CC3/DD3 and create some big square open rooms with various types of floor and call it good. But others reading this may not have that luxury.

[damned]

Do you have a source for some of those floor textures? I can just fire up CC3/DD3 and create some big square open rooms with various types of floor and call it good. But others reading this may not have that luxury.

My favourite source for this and for making maps in a hurry is:
https://pyromancers.com/dungeon-painter-online/

Its really quite neat. TBH Im more likely to make a map in the above in 2mins than I am to use the technique i showed. Its just such a cool tool.