FFG Convert

[Talley Darkstar]

I had plans to watch Table Top Gaming's video on Roll20, but after watching Fantasy Grounds Tutorial Series "What Is Fantasy Grounds And What Does It Have To Offer?" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwiO7HJEBbg&list=PL8Ehkjt5Jl7CSkQ5XMxj4VQgb2_OJWo4u) and Let's Compare Roll20 & Fantasy Grounds "What Do Both Of These Virtual TableTops Have To Offer?" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb-d3Zcznj4&list=PL8Ehkjt5Jl7CSkQ5XMxj4VQgb2_OJWo4u) I didn't have to watch his video on Roll20, I was converted. Along with UNPLUGGED: Computer Assisted RPGS (https://www.gamerdad.com/blog/2015/05/07/unplugged-computer-assisted-rpgs/), I have always had FG in my mind as a potential VTT to use. Thanks for this great product! While time is limited between work, fiancee's health and planning a wedding, my time is a little limited, but I'm going to be attempting to get a little more active in the community. Hopefully I can carve out some time to find a great GM, game and fellow players to see this product in action. It's one thing to watch a video of someone playing, but it's another to actually be in the action. Thumbs up to all the developers, contributors and helpful forum posters who's help convert me to this great tool.

[dulux-oz]

HI Talley, and Welcome!

If you haven't done so already then I strongly recommend having a look at the excellent Tutorial Videos available form the FG Wiki. Damned's are good, as are Xorn's, and people seem to like mine as well (mine are also available from the links in my sig, below). Start with the ones on the CoreRPG, because the CoreRPG form the foundation of just about all of the RPGs we play with FG, and so by learning how to use FG with the CoreRPG you'll learn about 80% of what you'll need to know to play any RPG with FG.

And feel free to ask lots of questions - we're a pretty friendly buch around here :)

Cheers

[Talley Darkstar]

Thanks Dulux,

I definitely will be watching more tutorials. I've got a lot to catch up on to just be able to use FG, but I have been playing around with it. Through Trenloe's FFG Star Wars ruleset, I have managed to pick up a few things, but nothing is second nature yet. But, as we know the more practice and use, the more it will be. Thanks for the welcome and I will probably be asking a lot of questions soon!

[David32780]

I had plans to watch Table Top Gaming's video on Roll20, but after watching Fantasy Grounds Tutorial Series "What Is Fantasy Grounds And What Does It Have To Offer?" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwiO7HJEBbg&list=PL8Ehkjt5Jl7CSkQ5XMxj4VQgb2_OJWo4u) and Let's Compare Roll20 & Fantasy Grounds "What Do Both Of These Virtual TableTops Have To Offer?" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb-d3Zcznj4&list=PL8Ehkjt5Jl7CSkQ5XMxj4VQgb2_OJWo4u) I didn't have to watch his video on Roll20, I was converted. Along with UNPLUGGED: Computer Assisted RPGS (https://www.gamerdad.com/blog/2015/05/07/unplugged-computer-assisted-rpgs/), I have always had FG in my mind as a potential VTT to use. Thanks for this great product! While time is limited between work, fiancee's health and planning a wedding, my time is a little limited, but I'm going to be attempting to get a little more active in the community. Hopefully I can carve out some time to find a great GM, game and fellow players to see this product in action. It's one thing to watch a video of someone playing, but it's another to actually be in the action. Thumbs up to all the developers, contributors and helpful forum posters who's help convert me to this great tool.

Welcome to Fantasy Grounds!

[Ken L]

From someone who has used each of the 'big three' they each have their respective strengths.

Roll20 - Ease of connection, free, large user base.
Fantasy Grounds - Full automation, large number of systems supported, new 3d VTT in the works.
D20Pro - Easier automation for 'core' rulesets, new 3d VTT in the works.

And weaknesses

Roll20 - Unreliable framework, running a game under peak hours has issues
Fantasy Grounds - Large amount of prep involved, lack of dungeon drawing tools
D20pro - only 3.5, PF and 4e supported. Small user base.

[Andraax]

Fantasy Grounds - Large amount of prep involved, lack of dungeon drawing tools

I don't spend any more time in prep than I do for face-to-face games; indeed, I usually spend *less* time doing prep, since my previous work is all saved...

[JohnD]

Yeah I don't see how there's this massive amount of prep work required, especially against needing to enter absolutely everything yourself across the street. No more than usual anyways, especially if you use voice in your game instead of chat.

[David32780]

Agreed, I actually saved a ton of time switching to FG.

[Ken L]

From a tabletop yes it's less prep when you can reuse elements. Compared with the other two systems though, it requires more prep to run with the ruleset, same could be said for D20pro, but D20pro's small user base and system limitations popped more for me.

Roll20 doesn't even have automation so they don't even count. All 3 platforms can let you just roll dice which is pretty much the only thing you get from that platform.

Personally the most prep for me was figuring out how to use all the tools and prepare a session.

[JohnD]

Can you provide some examples of what you mean by more work then? Because I'm close to my 4th year with FG and maybe I don't see it anymore.

[Griogre]

I think he was including learning to use FG in the prep time, which while it *is* a once only prep, is a fair assessment. Once you do know how to use FG, right now, I agree it is no more prep work than prepping for a face to face game - other than finding/making the maps.

[Andraax]

I agree it is no more prep work than prepping for a face to face game - other than finding/making the maps.

You don't make or find maps for your face to face games?

[Griogre]

I don't have to find or make a digital map. I'm pretty old school in face to face - for my own stuff I use graph paper and I can lay out a dungeon on graph paper *much* faster than using digital mapping tools - and I did my time as a level designer. :p Of course if you use a random map generator first, and then do the encounters on the generated map that's faster but you don't have as much control on the number of encounters on the map.

Edit: don't get me wrong, with a tile based mapper you can make a digital map pretty quick though.

[Andraax]

You can do the same thing in FG. Just use your graph paper in front of you when playing (theater of the mind). If you want to show it to your players, just drop it on a scanner and suck it into FG. But I can draw a map in GIMP faster than I can find graph paper and pencils nowadays (I do almost everything digitally now...)

I did this one just now in less than 10 minutes...
12484

Edit: I don't like tile based mappers - I think they actually take longer than just free-handing the shapes and filling them in GIMP.

[pacio49]

Sorry for the wall o'text.

History in FG
I purchased FG a couple of years ago, tried playing 3.5e on it, then my players lost interest in the VTT interface and life intervened. This time around, I've picked FG up again and bought the 5e Monster Manual and PHB packs, which has removed nearly all of my "extra" prep time by having all of the monsters already statted out. Once I buy the DMG extension my last 'time sink' in FG will be removed -- generating items as treasure rewards.

My players this time around are much more impressed with the interface, which is due to the increased support and continual improvements to the platform just in the last couple of years alone. Spending some time on my own to watch a lot of the available videos and tutorials out there added immeasurably to the ease-of-use within FG, so barring some advanced Effects parsing I'd say I've finally gotten over the worst of the learning curve for the program.

My current process
This holiday break I spent a lot of time developing a Module for my campaign (I'll share the maps soon for public consumption) and I sort of fell into a pattern or rhythm of prep work for the Module. Note that the Module in question is designed to run for about 3-4 sessions in the campaign world as a single extended adventure arc with plenty of stopping points along the way). But just for hugs and chuckles, here's the general pattern I ended up falling into for Module prep work.

1- Think up the idea for the adventure Module (remember, about 3-4 sessions worth of game in there).
2- Generate stock encounters per DMG encounter difficulty guidelines (I use a spreadsheet to calculate the 5e method... seems to be spot on for difficulty at least in the lower levels thus far). Usually about three each of Easy, Medium, Med/Hard, and Hard encounters generated, for use across the whole Module.
3- Generate the carried equipment per stock encounter from #2. This generally doesn't include special magic items unless the mobs are going to use them on the characters regularly. I can make a single reused "patrol" from the stock encounters special by adding a magic item separately.
4- Divide up the Module in FG into a skeletal infrastructure of Scenes or Locations (or Segments, since some of them are informational/story driven).
5- For each Scene/Location - Create a master map in Campaign Cartographer, and export the master map as well as battle-map sized slices.
6- Create Story tab entries for each Scene/Location. (Under the general "02- Gnoll Encampment A" you might find "02-01 - Southeast campsite" or "02-05 - Main Tent encounter", so they all line up neatly in the Story Tab when the Module is exported.)
7- For each Scene, link the actual battlemap, drag over a link to the desired Encounter of the right difficulty for pacing purposes, drag over the corresponding link to the carried Treasure, and put in placeholder text that says "Descriptive text here."
8- Finish each Master Scene out, and link up the master map for that location with pins dropped to the individual areas and encounters.
9- Generate a Hoard or major treasure award for the region. This is my time sink, as I don't have DMG yet so I enter all of the magical item info by hand to create these 'Hoards'.
10- Generate the Boss fight(s) encounter(s).
11- Go back through each Scene's sub-entries and replace the "Descriptive text here" notes with any tactics notes, mechanics notes, or actual descriptive text. (I prefer to write out all of the basic descriptions so I can read it via Voice, and then link it into Chat so the players can refer to the actual wording on their own time. If you're confident in your memory you might be able to skip this step.)
12- Repeat each step for the next Scene entry under the Module's overview, until they're all done. (I had about 12 Scenes for the Module I just wrote).
13- Export to a Module for loading into the actual Campaign where the players are running things.
14- Review all of the notes and Story tab entries/encounters/treasure prior to running the game.

Overall assessment
I spent about 5 days working on the module, between Campaign Cartographer and Fantasy Grounds. Since we game about once a month, those 5 days of work translated into about 4 months worth of gaming, during which I'll spread out the development of the next Module. There might be too much combat, but I can judge the players' patience with all of the encounters with gnolls in the forest and skip one or two here or there. Depends on how the pacing works out at the table. Bored players somehow get fewer grind encounters, funny how that works. I'm still tinkering with my game prep style.

My prep work is considerable, all things considered, but I'm pretty quick at it now, and I freely admit it reflects my personality in wanting to have as many variables prepped and locked down for the party so that the night of the game itself I can just focus on storytelling and facilitation, and keeping the game moving right along with very little downtime between encounters.

[JohnD]

I spent about 5 days working on the module, between Campaign Cartographer and Fantasy Grounds. Since we game about once a month, those 5 days of work translated into about 4 months worth of gaming, during which I'll spread out the development of the next Module.

My prep work is considerable, all things considered, but I'm pretty quick at it now, and I freely admit it reflects my personality in wanting to have as many variables prepped and locked down for the party so that the night of the game itself I can just focus on storytelling and facilitation, and keeping the game moving right along with very little downtime between encounters.
Surely those weren't 8+ hour days though?

Everyone has their own standard as to what "a lot" of prep time is. For me, I knew I was devoting too much time when I made a sewer area in Neverwinter Nights 2 that I sunk 46 hours of development time into, for my players to be done it in 3 hours of play. That's certainly too much most would agree.

Personally I don't see it. As you build, you generate content in the forms of NPCs, items, parcels, encounters, maps, etc... all of this stuff can be re-used instead of re-creating the wheel over and over again.

I'd much rather build NPCs and encounters than find myself entering code to get my VTT to use my ruleset.

[pacio49]

Surely those weren't 8+ hour days though?

Actually, a couple of them were. But it's a labor of love as well as a learning curve to come up to speed (in CC3 at any rate). I suspect that what I term as a Module is a bit bigger than folks might be thinking of, because in looking at the amount of work I did up vs the time I spent doing it, I'm actually thinking I'm flying along. My group plays about 5-6 hours each gaming session once a month, so call it a good 30-40 hours all tolled of prep work for about 24 hours in play time, estimated, with a reusable Module created at the end of things and several reusable Maps of decent quality. The Module is intended to level the group from the beginning of 5th level to the beginning of 7th level when it ends. I've been learning to scale back my maps to save a bit more time.... I'd post them in the Maps forum and link to it here for samples of the scope of what I put together, but I'm at work currently, so it'll have to wait until tonight.

My overall goal is that eventually I'll become proficient enough at this scope of Module generation to begin publishing FG adventures which are decent enough quality to sell. But until the 5e rights are worked out, I may well be looking at picking up another Ruleset and converting old modules to get around the IP infringement issues. (What can I say? If I have the capacity to produce professional quality modules for my gamers, and I do from my graphic design career, I will. FG seems to beg more of me as a GM than my old tabletop style of dry erase marker borders on a vinyl grid mat and minis did. I'm seriously not complaining, I love writing and planning adventures and campaigns, just pointing out for the original poster one FG user's process of development, though it sounds from your reaction that I may still be working a bit on the heavy side.)

As for building things to reuse (besides maps), the structure that I use for my Modules prevents a lot of reuse of Encounters and Items, because those are developed in the Module campaign, and then exported to the "Campaign" campaign. This allows me to turn off adventure Modules once completed and cut down on clutter and load time, but it means that a magic item developed for Module 3 is hard to incorporate into Module 4 without recreating the item entry whole cloth.

If there's an easy way to take items from one module's FG campaign and copy them into another module under development I'd appreciate the time saver, at least until I can invest in the DMG.

Thanks!

[Andraax]

If you're working on module B, and need an item or monster from module A, just open module A and drag / drop the item or monster into module B.

[Ken L]

Can you provide some examples of what you mean by more work then? Because I'm close to my 4th year with FG and maybe I don't see it anymore.

Sure, for the session to session prep:
- Assignment of creatures to encounters, no way to leave minis on map and hide them, difficult to transfer creatures between encounters for roaming. I can drag from the library, yes, but if I have hundreds of creatures, leaving those that I need on the map is far more preferable compared to the encounter system.
- No way of using tiled map assets within, I need to create the map out of the program. Sometimes if I have tiled assets, I like to build an encounter off camera while my players are say having a bar RP scene.
- Preparing custom creatures for the ruleset takes more time compared to d20pro as FG uses textual parsing and d20pro is list chosen so if there's an error it's difficult to tell until an ability or score isn't working as it should.
- I can't draw maps on the fly for narrative based play, I always need to perform some kind of map prep. Drawing tools leave much to be desired.

Then there's the learning FG curve which from my experience; is the steepest among the three. Roll20 is the easiest, but also the most featureless.


Either way, FG is a great platform, welcome Tally. I guess I trailed off topic by putting in my 2 cents.

[Mask_of_winter]

- No way of using tiled map assets within, I need to create the map out of the program. Sometimes if I have tiled assets, I like to build an encounter off camera while my players are say having a bar RP scene.
If you use the Layer extension you can use tiled assets to create maps pretty easily. They'll even snap to the grid.

[Hand]

I am only 16 hours into using FG and I am astonished at the amount of time it saves me. I used Roll20 for about 2 months and it sucked up tons of my time entering Lost Mines of Phandelver (which I have run as a Pen and Paper game in the past). Here I dropped 15 dollars, it was completely done.

My new set of players got further in just 4.5 hours, then the Roll20 group did in their first 15 hours. I am not counting the time it took to put the Module in to Roll20 or the fact that I had another experienced DM helping me with run the Roll20 game. The FG game I ran solo out of the gate just 5 hours after buying it.

Both the players and I were new to each of the VTTs when we started LMoP, but FG has proven to be much easier to use. Both VTTs have a steep learning curve, but after watching a few videos on each, to me, FG has won hands down.

My players who were very skeptical at first, now love it and are working on entering their own modules to host games for me. Right now I couldn't be more pleased.

Hand

[Talley Darkstar]

Prep takes time regardless. Especially if you're writing your own adventures. I've spent over a year working on my campaign that'll last a whopping month and a half of actual play time. Crafting the story to fit each piece of the other. Making sure that I integrate enough of each players background for the story to make sense and to keep what the player wants his character to have happened to him or her.

I actually like both FG and Roll20. I like the fact that if I wanted to play face to face with a few of my friends and play remotely with others at the same time, I can just log in anywhere. A long time friend of mine owns a LAN Center and there have been times that I've logged into one of the computers and sat down to work on my campaign without having to worry about if a file has transferred or not. Whereas FG I have to download the program, make sure I have my subscription key handy, I can just log in and I'm done, along with integrated video and voice chat. But, on the other hand, FG I can import stuff from HL, I don't have to worry if the web site goes down. All of these I took into consideration before making a choice on which platform to support. But despite all that Roll20 has over FG, FG has a lot more compatibility over Roll20. And I'm still happy with my choice now that two days have gone by and my brain hasn't even flinched with my decision as it does with other choices I've had to make.

[Diceman]

If you use the Layer extension you can use tiled assets to create maps pretty easily. They'll even snap to the grid.

Layer extension? Can you elaborate on how it works? As a newer user myself I have yet to download or install extensions.

[Mask_of_winter]

That extension gives you 3 layers on an image. You create your tiled assets as tokens. You lay them out on the bottom layer however you want them. You switch to the top layer and put your monster and pc tokens on it and then play like you normally would. The players can't fumble around with the tiles because they're on a separate layer.

[dulux-oz]

As a newer user myself I have yet to download or install extensions.

You do want to look into them - there are Extension that do a whole bunch of things, from changing the language of the interface (the LPak Community Project/Program), changing the graphics and "Theme" of the FG, and (Shameless(TM) Self-Plug time) providing a fully detailed Weather System, and system for recording information in a structured way around Places, a system from organizing Organisations, a tool to record Alignment, and many, many others.

Check out the Extensions page on the FG Wiki and the various Forum Threads on each Game System - there's usually a "stickied" Thread called "Community Creations" or something similar with Extensions, etc, listed.

Cheers

[damned]

- Assignment of creatures to encounters, no way to leave minis on map and hide them, difficult to transfer creatures between encounters for roaming. I can drag from the library, yes, but if I have hundreds of creatures, leaving those that I need on the map is far more preferable compared to the encounter system.

I think this is definitely a preference thing - I find the encounters pinned to a map so much simpler to visualise and use than having a map with lots of tokens preplaced. What if i dont want to run an encounter? Or if I want to lighten it or buff it? I think encounters works better for my style. Of course there is always more than one good way to do things :)

[damned]

I am only 16 hours into using FG and I am astonished at the amount of time it saves me. I used Roll20 for about 2 months and it sucked up tons of my time entering Lost Mines of Phandelver (which I have run as a Pen and Paper game in the past). Here I dropped 15 dollars, it was completely done.

My new set of players got further in just 4.5 hours, then the Roll20 group did in their first 15 hours. I am not counting the time it took to put the Module in to Roll20 or the fact that I had another experienced DM helping me with run the Roll20 game. The FG game I ran solo out of the gate just 5 hours after buying it.

Both the players and I were new to each of the VTTs when we started LMoP, but FG has proven to be much easier to use. Both VTTs have a steep learning curve, but after watching a few videos on each, to me, FG has won hands down.

My players who were very skeptical at first, now love it and are working on entering their own modules to host games for me. Right now I couldn't be more pleased.

Hand

I love that it is working for you - but even more - I love that your group is feeling like they can now start thinking about taking a turn as GM - this is sooo good to hear.

[damned]

Prep takes time regardless. Especially if you're writing your own adventures. I've spent over a year working on my campaign that'll last a whopping month and a half of actual play time. Crafting the story to fit each piece of the other. Making sure that I integrate enough of each players background for the story to make sense and to keep what the player wants his character to have happened to him or her.

I actually like both FG and Roll20. I like the fact that if I wanted to play face to face with a few of my friends and play remotely with others at the same time, I can just log in anywhere. A long time friend of mine owns a LAN Center and there have been times that I've logged into one of the computers and sat down to work on my campaign without having to worry about if a file has transferred or not. Whereas FG I have to download the program, make sure I have my subscription key handy, I can just log in and I'm done, along with integrated video and voice chat. But, on the other hand, FG I can import stuff from HL, I don't have to worry if the web site goes down. All of these I took into consideration before making a choice on which platform to support. But despite all that Roll20 has over FG, FG has a lot more compatibility over Roll20. And I'm still happy with my choice now that two days have gone by and my brain hasn't even flinched with my decision as it does with other choices I've had to make.

game prep and game design often blur into one and game design IMO takes sooooo much longer than the prep does. building a good story is art while prepping is so much more mundane!

[Diceman]

You do want to look into them - there are Extension that do a whole bunch of things, from changing the language of the interface (the LPak Community Project/Program), changing the graphics and "Theme" of the FG, and (Shameless(TM) Self-Plug time) providing a fully detailed Weather System, and system for recording information in a structured way around Places, a system from organizing Organisations, a tool to record Alignment, and many, many others.

Check out the Extensions page on the FG Wiki and the various Forum Threads on each Game System - there's usually a "stickied" Thread called "Community Creations" or something similar with Extensions, etc, listed.

Cheers
I will definitely try some of them out. thanks.

[pacio49]

Yes, many thanks to Dulux-Oz for the Weather extension. Now that 5e comes with the spell "Druidcraft" my party Druid is casting that sucker to check the weather forecast every single day. Suddenly, it rains in my world. Go figure. :-)

[dulux-oz]

Suddenly, it rains in my world. Go figure. :-)

Yes, but does the Platemail Armour rust up because of the rain; do the Characters catch the flu because of the cold weather; has anyone passed out due to the heat and humidity - or is that just my Evil GMing Style(TM) :p

[pacio49]

Soon, lol. The campaign just started. They're still getting used to the rain.

[dulux-oz]

I think I may have posted these before, but I can't seem to find them - a little off topic, but fun, never-the-less :)

12515

12516

[Talley Darkstar]

Ha! Almost 2 months later, I realized that the title is wrong. I didn't realize until the new forums.