Preparing map and tokens ahead of time

[Ken L]

Hello,

I was wondering if there's a way in FG to:

1: Tie NPCs to Tokens, add directly to the tabletop as opposed to adding to combat tracker, then to tabletop.
2: Leave prepared tokens on the tabletop as hidden so the GM can reveal them as they're encountered, select the token, and add to combat tracker with their tied NPC entry data.

[damned]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx7CtPsdNbA&index=6&list=PLsgd1zJLdiKUrEd85Dqr6UcaaLvD7YlJd
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjtnAhWkaSQ&index=5&list=PLsgd1zJLdiKUrEd85Dqr6UcaaLvD7YlJd
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-PqBEJ8BRM&index=8&list=PLsgd1zJLdiKUrEd85Dqr6UcaaLvD7YlJd

Same same but not same.

[Ken L]

Interesting, they seem to be be very discretely placed. I tend to take the 'living dungeon' approach where if monster X hears what's occurring in room A, he might investigate, and perhaps this monster was part of another 'encounter' set, so we don't want to merge them.

How would I accommodate for this? For one I think I could just drag into the combat tracker from the the NPC tab. But now I need to do extra work in terms of modifying the other encounter and say removing an orc since I added it to the the current combat situation, or perhaps even an empty room with no encounter occurring.

[Griogre]

It's really easy to mod encounters. If one needs to be mod open it and before you place in the combat tracker, unlock the encounter, hold down Cntrl and roll the mouse wheel on the number of monster and you can roll the number up or down.

Say you want to take an orc off one encounter and add it to one ongoing. You would open the encounter with the orc. Drag and drop the monster short cut on the end of the encounter line onto the combat tracker to add an orc to the existing fight and then roll the number of the orc down one.

I'll often do "living" organized or semi-organized dungeons but typically rather than doing that much with the set encounters I will use random encounters to make the dungeon "live". You basically roll for an random (or not so random) encounter at the start of a fight, towards the end of a fight or when the party makes a lot of noise. It mostly does the same thing but means you don't have to play book keeper with you room encounters.

[Ken L]

I suppose I'll have to do the round-a-bush way to add tokens each encounter and mentally track if they've migrated rooms.

[damned]

Ken L I think you will find that Encounters work exactly as you have described in your original question - except for not adding them to the CT first. If you dont add actors to the CT then they cant be interacted with.

You have an npc or a number of npcs.
You create an encounter - this is just a DB entry at this stage.
You add one or more npc objects to the encounter - now the db contains some links to statted NPCs
You can then vary the number of each of those NPCs

Now you can drag that encounter to the map and it will be a pin. You can move that pin around at any time if you want. Or you can leave the encounter in the encounters window. Doesnt matter. When you open the Encounter Window there is an arow at the bottom of the encounter that adds these actors to the CT. Before you do that you can increase or decrease the numbers therein. Adding to CT will populate teh CT with all those actors that you had left specified in the encounter. They will all appear in the CT and be visible only to the GM. Drag onto map and make them visible when you are ready to reveal them to the player. Dont do this step miles ahead of time. Its unnecessary and clutters your CT.
If you decided to have some of the encounter actors appear early - the hobgoblin chief hears the commotion in the next room and sends 3 guards to investigate - you open the encounter - adjust the numbers down and submit to CT. Bang 3 guards are ready for your use. Players defeat and move into the next room. Damn the players did that too easy. Open teh Encounter again - INCREASE the numbers. Add to CT.

But if you have an encounter thats always going to happen in location X prep it ahead of time - place the tokens in prep mode and with a single click its all revealed when you need it.

[Ken L]

I see what you're saying Damned, I was just wondering if there was a free-form pattern I could use as opposed to a parcel/encounter approach.

That's akin to hiding your minis+3d terrain on the board and revealing them by pulling the cover away as the players explore. I could just select the token, move it to visible then adding it to the CT through some command. That would allow free-form mixing of the set of enemies on the map without worrying about what enemies are in what encounters and that I need to remember to modify Z encounter since I moved the Vampire from his war table due to a certain event that would draw him to possibly encounter the party at room U. Perhaps even scattering the enemies in room U (maybe the clerics must return to their devotions, and the warriors to the training yard essentially taking apart the arranged encounter parcel).

In the imagined scenario, I'd simply move around the hidden tokens to different rooms and dust my hands of the matter grouping them not by parcels but by the space occupied on the map geometrically.

I think a single encounter for the entire dungeon along with a pad of notes would suffice, but I believe if you add an encounter to the CT it adds everything.

I'm guessing there's really no 'free form' unless I drag them from the NPC list to the CT, so I need to record the layout out of FG as opposed to pre-positioning.

[Trenloe]

I know this isn't *exactly* what you're looking for - but use freeform/unlinked tokens (hidden) on the map to keep track of creatures moving around. When the PCs encounter said creatures then place the full NPC records via the combat tracker and add their tokens to the map.

You could use a single token to represent a group of creatures if you're working on a large/strategic map.

This will allow you to track positions/movement without overloading the combat tracker. Yes, it's additional work, but not that much. :)

Note: You can have tokens that aren't linked to the NPC data (just drag them from the token bag or the token slot in the top right of the NPC sheet) or some that are linked to NPC in the combat tracker (the token was dragged from the combat tracker to the map).

For full linking to the combat tracker (to allow targeting, damage, etc. to work) you need to add the token to the map via the combat tracker (or automatically via an encounter entry). But for base position/movement tracking (as suggested above) you can use tokens added directly to the map. I frequently use the letter tokens provided with FG for this purpose (open the Letter Token module to access these tokens).