A few question in module building in 5E

[poobah_1]

Hello all,

So after put down D&D for 25+ years I am getting back into it and I just love the FG product. Truly super job!

A few questions as far as module development.

1) What is considered best practice when it comes to the use of Story Entries vs. Quest Entries.

I will clarify. I am building a campaign setting based on greyhawk in the CY 620. Roughly 50 years after S-4, basic plot is Drelzna is still alive and plotting revenge. So I have about 10 plot/path specific events/quests that would need to happen before a final re-assault on Tsojcanth against the combined forces of Lerrek, Drelzna, and Iggwilv. Right now I have each of these 10 adventure sub-quests as a the Quest Entry. Then each quest entry would have about 5-45 encounters. The main quest has its own map and the encounters a specific battle map. What is considered best practice for the entry of each of these encounters. Should they entered as Story Entries, or Quest Entries. I am wary of nesting down than nesting up if you can follow.

So if I have a Quest Entry for Gnome Vale, and then 4 areas (lets call them GV#1, GV#2, etc) that need to be explored within the Vale. Each of those areas have there own battle map , plus specific NPC's encounters, perhaps several encounters. Should each of the GV1 entries be a story entry or a quest entry. The game mechanics have Quest Entries nested as a button within the Story Entry dialog box. That is what has me flummoxed. What is considered Best Practice in this situation?

2) Item Creation - There are lots and lots of items I need to create. The Item tab I see right now is not that robust. Will that change with the release of the DMG. I have seen references in the forums to an Item Forge. Is what is loaded in the vanilla D&D 5e ruleset the Item Forge, or is it a separate module that was community created?

3) General Question as to copyright. So I have an original AD&D set of S-1,-S-4 as well as quite a bit of other stuff from that time period. I never worried as I was always running a home based table top based game. But I am concerned about creating original content based on Copyrighted material then having that material used as the bases for a FG campaign that will exist on-line as well. I am sure other persons here have ported and parsed old D&D modules and run them in FG, what are the ground rules?


Thanks and great job Devs!!

PooBah

[Trenloe]

1) Use story entries for storing all of your information, areas, links to other areas, links to maps, items, parcels, encounters, NPCs, etc.. Story entries should be the main building blocks of your campaign. Quest entries are really just for summarising a key goal in the adventures and for allocating experience through the party sheet. e.g. 1000 xp for freeing the princess from the evil sorcerer's grasp. Commercial adventures sometimes summarise these are the end of each chapter - additional XP for doing certain tasks/achieving a goal.

Some additional info on module making here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?26925-Test-Release-v3-1-5 It's more aligned to Pathfinder, but the first few sections are relevant to any FG ruleset.

2) The item forge will come with the next release of the base 5E ruleset. If you want to see what it does you can run the current test version - more info on that and the item forge here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?26925-Test-Release-v3-1-5

3) As long as you are just using the material for personal use, i.e. within your own game only, you are OK. FG encrypts the data sent to players, so even if you share copyright material in a session, the players won't have that material on their computer in a usable format. Don't publicly distribute copyright protected material, e.g. posting modules/maps/NPCs etc. on the forums is not allowed.

[Zacchaeus]

2 Item Creation - you may want to have a look at the item creation guide (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/wiki/index.php/5E_Item_Sheet) on the wiki before you plunge in.

[poobah_1]

Thanks for the responses

Just small follow up.

So after I have created the magic weapon and the correct NPC, how do I have the NPC "wield" this magic weapon? Is this a matter of creating an action that contains the correct bonus's and so forth? I specifically powerful sword, oh like the +4 intelligent Bastard Sword Drelnza wielded has loads of innate spells and such, if I used the Forge to create the item to my satisfaction, would the NPC be able to simply carry this weapon and then have those actions available, or do I need to create identical action items in the NPC as well?

Am I making sense?

Thanks again.

PooBah

[Zacchaeus]

After you have created your sword drag it into the player's inventory and it will also appear in his actions tab under the weapons section. Any plusses to hit and damage as well as the damage itself should be visible and correct in the weapons tab. If it has additional properties then that might well need you to add some effects to the actions tab depending on what those properties are. Not everything can be automated. You can get some ideas about effects form the effects (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/wiki/index.php/5E_Effects) section of the Wiki. As for spells then those will need to be added to the action tab by drag/dropping.

Now, one more thing, if this is an intelligent weapon you might want to create a PC sheet for it - just a thought.

And welcome to the forums and the community.

[Trenloe]

...would the NPC be able to simply carry this weapon and then have those actions available, or do I need to create identical action items in the NPC as well?
You'd need to create the action for the NPC, you currently can't drag items to an NPC and have it populate the actions etc..

[Zacchaeus]

You'd need to create the action for the NPC, you currently can't drag items to an NPC and have it populate the actions etc..

Yes, sorry. Forget what I said. You were talking about NPCs not PCs.

The answer you seek is what Trenloe said.