GM-Only ("Storytelling") mode?

[Sleestak]

A couple guys in my group are interested in something like Fantasy Grounds. From what we see on the website and screenshots, the product looks, ahem, FREAKIN' AWESOME!!!! :cool:

However ... we really prefer (actually, not just prefer, we require) a playing style where game mechanics are kept to the GM only. I.e. players know all the stats of their individual characters, but during play, only the GM deals with dice rolls and such. The interaction between the GM and players, and between players, is 100% role-playing and 0% roll-playing.

So, we have a few questions about Fantasy Grounds:


Can it hide dice rolls and skill checks from players? We want only the GM to see this stuff.
Does the text chat allow a "private mode" between the GM and an individual player? This will come up a lot.
Does the text chat support sending different private messages to different players simultaneously, where it appears to be a party-wide message to the players? This is critical when different players should percieve things differently -- e.g. some see through an illusion while others don't, some are sharp enough to see or hear something while others aren't, etc. The players should not always realize that they are privy to the information they are receiving -- for all they know, everyone else sees or hears what they do. This forces role playing to get everyone on the same page (that is, if a player wants to share information if he realizes he alone knows it ...)If Fantasy Grounds can handle these things (it shouldn't be too hard to modify it to work this way if it can't already), then we're sold ... :D

[Ram Tyr]

Sleestak,

In order:

1. If the DM rolls the dice, then nobody has to see it but the DM. The DM has the ability to share the rolls.
2. FG supports "whispers" between the GM and individual players, both ways. Players cannot whisper to players directly.
3. Party wide text appears differently from whispered text. Players will be able to see that they have received a whisper or a party wide text. To accomplish your goals you could whisper everything to everyone so that they have to determine what may or may not have been shared with the others, and then determine whether they want to share what they believe to be information that they alone possess.

Try out the demo with one of your friends before making a final decision. Players whisper by typing "/w (TEXT OF MESSAGE TO DM)" The DM whispers by typing "/w NAME (TEXT OF MESSAGE TO NAME)" Where NAME is replaced by the name of the character. (Actually, it only requires enough letters to be able to uniquely identify the character...so if all characters have names that begin with a different letter, then only one letter of the name is required.)

You should test it out just to play with the dice.

Later.
Ramza

[Griogre]

So, we have a few questions about Fantasy Grounds:


Can it hide dice rolls and skill checks from players? We want only the GM to see this stuff.
By default all the DM's rolls are hidden from the player(s).


Does the text chat allow a "private mode" between the GM and an individual player? This will come up a lot.
Yes. Also private maps and images. Though this is somewhat awkward.


Does the text chat support sending different private messages to different players simultaneously, where it appears to be a party-wide message to the players? This is critical when different players should percieve things differently -- e.g. some see through an illusion while others don't, some are sharp enough to see or hear something while others aren't, etc. The players should not always realize that they are privy to the information they are receiving -- for all they know, everyone else sees or hears what they do. This forces role playing to get everyone on the same page (that is, if a player wants to share information if he realizes he alone knows it ...)
No it does not allow simultaneously sending of messages. You would have to send them one after the other. I should point out if you are whispering to others because, usually the players are not next to each other it is not necesarily obvious you are sending something to others, you could be doing something else from their prespective. This is especially true if you are not using voice.


If Fantasy Grounds can handle these things (it shouldn't be too hard to modify it to work this way if it can't already), then we're sold ... :D
Whispers between the DM and players work fairly well. Players can not whisper to each other. The map and image to different players is not as smooth, you need to drag the image/map shortcut on to the player's portrait.

I strongly suggest you run the demo to see the differences between the DM and player views. You can run two copies of the demo on one machine and have them connect to each other. The demo can also have two players connect to the gamemaster's machine so you can try a sample run. Note nothing saves in the demo so don't waste alot of time changing anything.

Edit: beat by a minute, LOL.

[Sleestak]

Perhaps I should clarify about the dice rolling -- we want the GM to roll ALL the dice. I.e. when a combat starts, we do not want a player to roll dice for his character's to-hit, damage, skill checks, etc. We want players to simply state their actions to the GM, and the GM will perform the game mechanics. We do not want players to perform or see any dice rolls.

Is this supported?

[Ged]

Perhaps I should clarify about the dice rolling -- we want the GM to roll ALL the dice. I.e. when a combat starts, we do not want a player to roll dice for his character's to-hit, damage, skill checks, etc. We want players to simply state their actions to the GM, and the GM will perform the game mechanics. We do not want players to perform or see any dice rolls.

Is this supported?

The players don't necessarily have to roll the dice (if they do even if they aren't supposed to, I guess it tells about their passion to do so anyway :D). The software does not enforce utlizing any set of rules but the GM may decide based on rolls, hunches or the position of the moon, what awaits the characters ;).

But speaking of GM dice rolls. If you, the GM, roll the dice in the chat window, the players see shadows of the dice telling them that GM is rolling something - they do not see the results which is indicated by a question mark in the GM's dice result bubble. If GM rolls the dice outside the chat window, the players don't see the results at all, but then the dice remain on the table only a few seconds (i.e. you'll have hard time remembering say the results of 10d20 thrown at once); throws in the chat window remain for your reference and use.

If you'd like to remove the dice altogether from the player's table, it's currently not supported, but again, the players do not have to roll the dice... And yet, should they want to, if they throw the dice outside the chat window, no one else sees the throws but the player her/himself.

[lunatis]

If you whisper a lot to other players, please note that you can abbreviate the players' name to speed things up. Someone on the forum also pointed out that if you want to whisper to multiple people, you can type what you want and then drag that to a players portrait, then hit the arrow up key and the text you just typed will appear again, drag that to the next portrait and so on. You can also make use of the chat buffer: By hitting the Tab key you can alternate between two different descriptions.

[Cantstanzya]

Someone on the forum also pointed out that if you want to whisper to multiple people, you can type what you want and then drag that to a players portrait, then hit the arrow up key and the text you just typed will appear again, drag that to the next portrait and so on.Once you drag the chatline to a portrait the text will no longer appear when you use the up arror key. You might want to try to drag it to a hotkey and then drag from the hotkey to the players portrait. I haven't tried that yet, but I know that once you drag from the chatbox the text is no longer in the buffer and the up arrow key will not bring the text back up.

[bigdruid]

In reference to the sending of messages to multiple players, something that might help is the Hotkey setup that I believe I got free at the FUM site. I have an excel spreadsheet where I have one tab for every town, dungeon, and whatnot and basically just have all the various descriptions for it. That way, when I go to do a description in my game I can go get the pretyped /action You see a 10'x10' room. which HotKeys then lets me paste into the game window. The pasting is something I had not been able to accomplish without HotKey support. (/action for a GM puts it in the Bold, Black storytelling font)

To get to the point here, what you should be able to quckly do is type in the 'You saw the illusion' text and the 'You saw through the illusion' text and put a /w <playerabbreviation> in front of whichever is appropriate and get those multiple messages out pretty quickly.

[Mainframemouse]

This will be the kind of things, I'd like to set up to.

Is there any kind of macro or scripting functions, so you could set up a mass whisper?

[kalmarjan]

Once you drag the chatline to a portrait the text will no longer appear when you use the up arror key. You might want to try to drag it to a hotkey and then drag from the hotkey to the players portrait. I haven't tried that yet, but I know that once you drag from the chatbox the text is no longer in the buffer and the up arrow key will not bring the text back up.

If you press the down key AFTER you drag the text, then the UP key, you will get your text back. :)

Cheers,

Sandeman

[Cantstanzya]

If you press the down key AFTER you drag the text, then the UP key, you will get your text back. :)

Cheers,

SandemanGood to know.... Thanks!

[Azrael Nightstar]

Another option is to put things some are likely to see and some not in a story page. For example, if you know the party is going to encounter an illusion, write up a description of the illusion and one for those who see through it. When the time comes, use the "share sheet" function to show the less-perceptive players the description of the great and powerful Oz while the elite few get a rundown of the man behind the curtain.

You should find that FG is perfect for a setup where the GM does all the management. As Ged said you can't actually disable the player's ability to roll dice, but other than that I can't imagine a better system for this sort of method. And as you can probably tell, the community here is excellent and can help out with any requirements you have but can't figure out on your own.