Masks of Nyarlathotep Module

[eleran]

I recently purchased the Masks module and opened it for the first time and the chapters and everything else seems to be out of order. I opened it in the 7e ruleset.

Am I doing something wrong?

[damned]

I dont have it. Its possible it wasnt created with leading numbers and its in alphabetical sort maybe?

[Moon Wizard]

Yeah, it was one of the first CoC modules created (and before I joined SmiteWorks), so the interface was probably quite different then.

I'll bring it up with Doug, and see what we might be able to do.

Regards,
JPG

[spite]

I've just opened it, the only one that seems out of order for me is the Chapter 3 which has a space aafter the asterisk which pushes it higher than the others.
https://puu.sh/tscnV/be4b5eccb6.jpg

Otherwise it's all fine for me?

[Hector Trelane]

I recently purchased the Masks module and opened it for the first time and the chapters and everything else seems to be out of order. I opened it in the 7e ruleset.

Am I doing something wrong?

If you ever run that venerable epic, please let us know :D

[eleran]

I am running it now. Not on FG but I am using FG for prep and to organize things during my live game. We have a table with a large monitor built in that I use for displaying handouts and pics and maps from within FG.

[Hector Trelane]

I am running it now. Not on FG but I am using FG for prep and to organize things during my live game. We have a table with a large monitor built in that I use for displaying handouts and pics and maps from within FG.

That is great to hear about. People refer to that use of FG but I haven't tried it myself nor heard that many dispatches from the front about it.

[eleran]

That is great to hear about. People refer to that use of FG but I haven't tried it myself nor heard that many dispatches from the front about it.

Going well so far. We only meet once a month. We just did session 3 last week, which mostly wrapped up the NY chapter. My players have very little CoC experience so it is interesting trying to get them to drop the D&D mindset. They are about to board the Mauretania to head to London, but they do not realize that Mukunga and a few of his cultists will be aboard.

Session 4 will be fun

[eleran]

It was only chapter 3 and the fix was to edit the chapter title and remove an extra <space>. The littlest things. Thanx all

[dstuffle]

If I were to buy this campaign, how hard is it to convert it to 7th Ed?

[Trenloe]

If I were to buy this campaign, how hard is it to convert it to 7th Ed?

Most of it will be done automatically when opened in a FG campaign using the CoC 7E ruleset.

The rest you can easily wing - there's really very little difference in the stats you what you need to run scenarios.

[dstuffle]

Awesome. Thanks for the reply.

[damned]

Hey dstuffle 95% of it (at least) should convert automatically over to 7e. ianmward has bulit a conversion tool into the ruleset and when it detects 6e stuff being imported it translates it to the 7e stats.

[Steel_Wind]

We have Session 0 (character creation) scheduled for Wed Feb 8
and the following Wed Feb 15, 2017 is Session 1 - The God of Mitnal (begins at 9:30 PM EST). Campaign is weekly at the same night and time.

We will be going with the prelude adventure to MoN as suggested in the MoN Companion. The God of Mitnal is primarily a means of introducing Jackson Elias to the party. As it will also be an introduction to CoC ver 7 for the group, I'll be using God of Mitnal to introduce some key system aspects (brawling, combat maneuvers, firearms and even Tommy Guns and grenades). It will be a great deal more pulpy than many might prefer = but that's why.

We'll be streaming it on our Twitch channel at https://www.twitch.tv/grumpygm as we do with all of our games. MoN will be the only FG game we stream. We use Cameras and minis for Way of the Wicked(adapted for 5E) and Iron Gods (PF), and D20Pro for Musketeers of the Crimson Throne (PF).

I must say, FG has me a little spooked when it comes to map size and image resolution. D20Pro may have a bit of a clunkly looking interface, but its maps and tiling systems are far more advanced than FG's. Hopefully I can manage all of this custom art to display and work well in FG.

With MoN, I will be using the full color custom maps for all areas which were developed for use by a fellow Keeper on YSDC as well as all of the enhanced full color handouts. I am also replacing the black and white art and tokens included in the MoN module packaged for FG with my own color art.

Under the hood though, it's the same epic campaign we've come to know and love - Masks of Narly is 33 years old this year!

[damned]

hey Steel_Wind be aware that FG doesnt do images over 2000x2000px very well.
if you do use large images be aware of this upfront and maybe do a few pre-game tests.
images are uploaded from the GM computer to each player computer so a 5mb map sharing to 5 players is a 25mb upload.
if you do this mid-game for the first time its going to slow things down.

it sounds like you have a fun crew - have a great time!

[Steel_Wind]

Thanks for the map size info. Yeah, I've been working with most of my maps, well, routinely between 4x and 16x times that size. I'm definitely not a fan of that tech limit on image size.

There are other aspects of FG that are interesting though. so we'll try to give it a go. If we bail and fall back to D20Pro, that will be why.

[damned]

its not a hard limit - but I can almost guarantee you will have issues on 16x that size.

[Trenloe]

Try to keep all images/maps below 2048x2048 pixels, and store them as JPG with a compression/quality of 50-75 and try to keep their file size below 1MB. Reasons being: Image resolution (pixels) affects the amount of memory FG uses, image file size will effect sharing time with players.

FG is a 32-bit, single threaded application - so it's memory resources are limited (even if you have lots and lots of GB available) and it's network sharing process is not efficient for large file sizes. So limiting image resolution and file size is very important to ensure you have a fast and efficient gaming experience.

It sounds like you have some awesome handouts arranged, but most people's screen resolutions are a lot less than 2048x2048, so for the majority of your handouts you can reduce the resolution so that they will fit on most people's monitors - which is a height of around 1000 pixels (if using a 1080p monitor). If you have a massive map that you want to share and then zoom in for details, I'd recommend doing a high-level map that doesn't have the detail, then link in a number of map images that cover smaller areas in more detail. This has been discussed recently here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?36330-Player-s-FG-folder-and-pre-download-images&p=317064&viewfull=1#post317064

[Steel_Wind]

Thanks for the heads up.

All my players are on high-bandwidth pipes and we don't let anyone play with a Wi-Fi connection. Between Skype, VTT and Twitch there is a lot happening all at once. I run my games on a 3x27" triple monitor display and have Twitch on my wall mounted 55" (4 monitors total). All of my players are on multi-monitor setups (though I'm the only one using 4).

That said, when we use D20Pro, we are using it for map / Token display & Spell AOE only and I track damage using D20Pro as well. Combat is by rolling bones and I just use the combat tracker in Herolab for initiative order.

There's a reason for this and its worthwhile that you understand the issue. D20Pro's map handling is pretty good (and its tile system allows for a LOT of very snazzy effects). That's all good. But actually using the system to moderate combat is not something any of us have ever liked. Most of all, its die-roller is terrible. It feels like a computer game, not like gaming. This is not a small point.

Why this is so is purely psychological. After all, does it really matter how you generate a random number? You can drop a piece of plastic, click roll in D20 Pro or roll the dice as you do in FG. In every case, you are getting a number and you do something with it. Big Deal, right?

Wrong. The difference is purely a psychological impression and I am not saying that it makes rational sense. But the act of rolling dice in FG feels more like rolling dice in a face-to-face game than does D20 Pro. So in that regard, the auto-moderation of combat is less objectionable - less computer gamey, more like "real gaming" (because of course, it is real gaming!).

Anyway, that's the only reason why I am somewhat encouraged to go with the Full Monty approach to CoC 7e using FG. Otherwise, we'd just fall back to using D20Pro to display maps and tokens and run the game with roilling bones and reporting our results over Skype as we always do (we don't really care about "cheating" in our group; it does happen but it's restrained).

[Trenloe]

Sounds great, and I get where you're coming from. Just please heed damned and my advice regarding image file size and resolution - FG in it's current form has finite resources and big images (pixel resolution) are the main thing that will cause those resources to be used quickly, and you don't get much warning if FG is running out of memory: strange things begin to happen, lots of lag and then FG will probably crash (around 3.5GB memory use is when things will start misbehaving).

Don't get me wrong, I think you can do the majority of what you want to do - and you'll have an amazing experience playing MoN in FG. Just a little image prep beforehand and you'll be golden!

Note: when FG moves to unity we all expect (hope?) these memory/single threaded, 32-bit, 10 year old architecture issues will be a thing of the past.

[eleran]

If I were to buy this campaign, how hard is it to convert it to 7th Ed?

If you buy the module and the 7th ed ruleset for Fg it will automagically be converted for you.

[Trenloe]

If you buy the module and the 7th ed ruleset for Fg it will automagically be converted for you.
Yes, see post #11 above.