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DarkSpartan45
January 9th, 2005, 15:05
I played in the Burning Plague game last night and want to offer my feedback.

First of all, I wanna give credit to MSD for the fine job he did in DM'ing last night's session. It's obvious he prepared well and was very familiar with the app before we started. Great Job Matt!

Now, on to Fantasy Grounds. Awesome! The only issue that we encountered (in my opinion) is that playing D&D in this fashion is a little bit slower than face-to-face. It could benefit from voice chat, but the addition of this would take away from the campaign log that's created, as people would be talking and not typing. As I said, a little bit slower in game play, but certainly faster that PBP or play by email.

Can't recommend this enough to anyone that either can't find a group or wants to try online gaming. One of the great things I see about Fantasy Grounds is that it allows the group to game for anywhere from minutes to hours on end. This is EXTREMELY beneficial to those of us whose time to game is limited by the constraints of life.

Great job gang. Love the program and can't wait to see what else you do with it.

msd
January 9th, 2005, 20:34
I'll throw in a bit of review about a couple of things that I really thought shined.

Weather controls: I have to be honest and admit that when I first saw these I thought "cool but useless feature that won't get any use..." Lo and behold, the party found itself approaching the northern borders of the province when dusk began to set in...what the heck...I'll turn it on and it'll either get a laugh from the guys or it'll work and help set the scene a little more.

I really think it works...I admit that I wouldn't have thought so, but I definitely like the feature and will try to be mindful to work it in as a regular piece of the online experience.

/id: This probably isn't a great mystery or surprise, but this got the most use from me and I definitely think it is one of the strongest features. Essentially (and I am sure everyone's DM style is different), I see the DM as having three roles - 1) The Story's narrator - this is always done with /action 2) Referee - mechanics and really only mechanics (and other OOC chat) is done with normal chat and 3) playing the roles of the NPCs - this is always done with the /id.

I really thought that some of the NPCs started to stand up on their own once they had their own voice, they could communicate with other NPCs, etc and it all *looks* as if it is happening independently of the DM.

Pacing: Personally, I found the pacing to be pretty good...its a little bit slower than f2f play, but (and maybe this is just reflective of my experiences), I didn't think it was that drastically different.

I honestly think pacing is what is gonna sell this app...I haven't heard anyone say anything other than that they love the features they find in FG. If they have any apprehensions, it is about online play in general and not FG specifically. I think that the more and more features that help keep the pacing moving along, the better FG will be in building a viable community of users (all IMHO of course).

Again, I personally was happy with our pacing. We played a little over two hours and got a good amount done. You can check out the log here is you are interested (https://www.msnusers.com/FantasticAdventures/Documents/Chat%20Logs/The%20Burning%20Plague/chatlog%2Ehtml).

Interested in other peoples' experiences,
Matt