My Suggestions for the Game

[Silas1066]

in order for the game to have mass-appeal and really be a success, I would do the following

Critical needs:
1. Sound effects: rolling dice, roaring monsters, creeking doors, etc.
2. A lower price tag: I'm having a hard time convicing people to pay $20-30 for a virtual table-top. They would rather go buy Neverwinter Nights.
3. Stability: there are a number of bugs that still need to be worked out.
4. More default tokens & portraits.

Optional enhancements
1. Voice conferencing.
2. A 1st or 2nd edition D&D ruleset included with the purchase. There are many hard-core gamers out there who dislike d20 because of its "video-game" like qualities.
3. The ability for one player to play more than 1 character.

Unless the critical needs are met, I don't see the game or the site surviving, which is a shame, because I think it is a pretty good product.

[Jozan]

Seems to me that is already a big hit!:D
The price IMO is great.
It is easy to import your own tokens and portraits.
You can have voice conferencing by using a seperate program such as Team Speak or Ventrillo.
You can create your own rulesets or find someone that has already done so and is willing to share.

[Ablefish]

It's just my opinion, but only number 3 could ever be considered a "critical" thing, and even then only if the program was so buggy to be unusable. Which isn't the case.

Teamspeak is soooo easy to use, and if you're worried about crashing - having the voice communication tied into the program would only make them harder to resolve. Thanks, but I'd rather keep it completely seperate. That's not to say it wouldn't be nice to be able to send some sound effects, but that's bells and whistles, not critical.

The price thing has probably been talked to death on the boards, but to be able to play online with friends you wouldn't otherwise be able to - well, to me that's worth much more than 20-30 bucks (the price of a new dvd or 4 trips to mcdonalds or a flat of beer...)

[Silas1066]

the price thing wasn't an issue for me -I figure I'll get plenty of cheap fun out of the game. I just found that gamers tend to be cheap, and many of them are young.

An AD&D/Classic D&D rulset would appeal to an older crowd -the original gamers who have money (like me). Sure, you can get a ruleset from another player (I did), but how much trouble do people want to go through? Most people don't program XML, etc. and can't make rulesets -nor do they want to potentially ruin the program.

A question about Teamspeak: is one user a "server", and do the other users connect to him? If this is the case, I then get worried about bandwidth. If I have 4 players connected to my machine for FG, how much is it going to slow down the game to have them also connected to me via VoIP?

We are using Yahoo chat with voice right now, and it works o.k., but sometimes it is flakey -it's still beta.

[richvalle]

We used team speak for about a year with no major issues. We've just switched to Skype because it works better (for us).

[Jozan]

My group uses Teamspeak. The same person who hosts the FG server also Hosts the Teamspeak and we have had no bandwidth problems. It really is one of the easiest to use VoiP programs.

[richvalle]

Ok... lets see if I can spend more time on this:

1. Sound. This issue has come up a bunch of times and people seem pretty well divided on it. For me, I'm in the 'don't need it' group. I don't play sounds in my face to face games and have never been to a game where the DM did. I'd probably use it a little bit if it was there but I don't miss that it is not.

2. I think this is priced ok. Its cheaper then a computer game and I've gotten more use (hours played) out of it then I have for 99% of my games. Plus, FG has allowed us to play again with a friend that moved out of time. That, as they say, is priceless.

3. We have about 0 stability issues. I have had a few client disconnects when I drop a token on a map (still, this one has been around for a long time) but when the client reconnects things are well.

4. I find a bunch of portrats for my players and they pick one. I make a token from the portrat and most my monster portraits from the WoTC monster web page. I also just bought one of the Fiery Dragon's counter collections and am looking forward to using the tokens from it.

1. Covered already.

2. This has already been created by a user. Why should the devs go back and recreate it? User created content is one of the best things going with games like this and should only get better when 2.0 comes out with scripting. Maybe if the creater of the ruleset gave SmiteWorks permision to bundle it with their default install...?

3. Ahhh... this one I 100% agree on. I THINK this will happen in 2.0. I know it was something the devs said they were working on.

Good gaming!!

rv

[Silas1066]

o.k. I set up a Teamspeak server, modified my firewall, and had a friend connect. I see him in the client, but I have no idea how to talk to him.

I set up my audio device, so I know that isn't it.

anyone want to help me. I've searched through the manuals and they didn't help.

[Silas1066]

oops! nevermind, I have it figured out now.

[Jozan]

You have probably found the Voice activation and Push to talk then, I would recommend using the Voice activation.
One thing my group runs into is that sometimes we hear an echoe from someone. It is usually someone with their mic too close to their speakers, but a few times it's been because of somethin different. That is about the only thing I can think of that you could run into.

Hope it works out well for your group!:D

[tdwyer11b]

And I thought I was the only one who thought d20 was too much like playing a console/puter RPG.:D

[sunbeam60]

Unless the critical needs are met, I don't see the game or the site surviving, which is a shame, because I think it is a pretty good product.
That's a pretty harsh judgement to pass on a product that seems to have developed just fine. Reminds me of: "Those who claim it can't be done, shouldn't interrupt those doing it".

The price is a personal matter, really. I think with the bundle deal it's reasonable, though YMMV.

I'll argue, once again, against the inclusion of sound in the core product. Dice rolling effects would be cool to me, but the ability to play sound tracks, door opening sounds and background ambience is something I would never use. I would find it cool, but I just wouldn't use it. The beauty of FG to our group is that it doesn't try to do much more than give us a "table". I don't bring it up to argue against it for everyone, merely to highlight, once again, that we wouldn't use it, and I'd rather development efforts focused on something else.

Stability: I agree. We've now moved away from crashes and are facing "I didn't get the map" or "I can't see the tokens" kind of issues. Not show-stoppers, but annoying.

Default tokens and portraits: Yeah, if the artist isn't too busy doing something else, sure throw some in there. But it only took me half an hour to raid Paizo's website for the map-handout PDFs, which conveniently also contain a bucketload of cool NPC portraits. Cropw, scale down, rinse repeat.

Voice conferencing: A total non-issue for me. Why reinvent TeamSpeak or Skype? Both work perfectly, and have the added benefit that if/when FG crashes, voice is still open to get the game back on track.

Other rulesets: Scripting and the community will solve those things. I think a healthy and well-supported (by scripting API documentation) community is worth infinitely more than more rulesets. As long as the ability is there, I think community developments will implement as needed.

One player, more characters: Yeah, that'd be nice, but not fundamental for us, and certainly not a product-killer.

Bjorn

[Silas1066]

I don't need sound -it isn't th important to me.

Problem is, the guys I play with whine about not having it. After paying for the product they immediately say "that's it? No sound?"

then I get the whining about the portraits, and I have to then spend time sending them files or directing them to websites. I don't think it is too hard for the developers to include 40-50 portraits in the product.

And finally, they start whining about the token problems.

I guess my problem is I'm dealing with the d20/D&D Online crowd who want a video game featuring war forges running around blowing stuff up.

[richvalle]

It works best with everyone having headsets else the mic will pickup the sound of others talking and rebroadcast it.

Good luck!

rv

[dLANbandit]

It seems to me you jumped to a conclusion of a percieved pandemic where it was only your isolated minor complaints from your users. In fact it actually appears you simply are new to the product and are attempting by yourself to run an entire campaign, learn a new product, and teach it to your users.

I think you would have been much better served, and the community as well, if you simply asked for help.

There are ways to solve most of your problems.

Ventrilo has sound queing. You should investigate this software. You can map mp3 files to hot keys in the software which then plays to the entire channel.

Portraits are available all over the net, what you need to do is include them in the proper folder on your server, so you don't have to send them to the users, they would just show up.

Tokens are avialable for purchase or download all over. I recommend fouruglymonsters.com, as me and my friends really like the top down tokens they have created.

Either your friends enjoy modern DnD ROLEPLAYING or they enjoy hack n slash video games more. Personally my friends like both. But I would be understanding if yours only wanted to kill and get loot. I have found that as I and my friends get older we enjoy the roelplaying aspect more and more. But if you aren't opposed to playing with new people, I recommend you join a campaign on the game callendar on this site. You might enjoy yourself, and learn a few things about the game, DMing, and other software people use in tandem with this product.

[sunbeam60]

I guess my problem is I'm dealing with the d20/D&D Online crowd who want a video game featuring war forges running around blowing stuff up.

Got ya, I assumed (stupidly) you were making a personal complaint and expected it to hold true for everyone, when in fact you were merely relaying the grief your (video) gamers gave you.

I still don't think the things you mention are deal-breakers, or product-killers, but they certainly would make the package more attractive for WoW players (no disrespect towards WoW, just not the same game perhaps) and the like.

[Silas1066]

the portrait problem is weird...

The players don't see the portraits on the DM's machine, no matter where I put them.

If we place portraits on the client machines, they can see the first 8, but no one can scroll down to see the others. Normally you can use the wheel on the mouse to flip through a large number of portraits.

doesn't work -and thus I hear lots of whining about "this is buggy!"

[richvalle]

What I do for portraits is this:

I figure out what portrait is going to go with that character. Then I have them login and create their character on the server. When they are done I go into the c:/program files/campaigns/<campaign name>/portraits and put their picture there (note it should be small... 63x63 is what I make mine). Once you put it there rename it to their character name and remove the .jpg (or whatever) extention off the file name. Windows will complain about removing this but just ignore it.

You can check to see if this works by going into the character selection window on the DM side and look at all the characters. You should see the portrait next to their name.

Hope that helps.

rv

[LordTomar]

I don't need sound -it isn't th important to me.

Problem is, the guys I play with whine about not having it. After paying for the product they immediately say "that's it? No sound?"

then I get the whining about the portraits, and I have to then spend time sending them files or directing them to websites. I don't think it is too hard for the developers to include 40-50 portraits in the product.

And finally, they start whining about the token problems.

I guess my problem is I'm dealing with the d20/D&D Online crowd who want a video game featuring war forges running around blowing stuff up.


Having more Default portraits wont help. There could be a hundred default pics and you would still not be able to find a pic that is just right for your char. What you should do is have your chars look online for a portrait (google is a great source for this).

After you have your portrait pic, then you can easily modify it so you can also use it as a token. This is what my group did before we switched over to the Dev tokens.

Also about sound. My group experimented with sound for a session. None of us really saw it as something that brought much to the game and it was quickly dropped.

[Diana]

It's good to hear the tip about sound queuing on Ventrilo. That's handy.

I've only played with the demo version, but I've found the demo program a little buggy and it does not play well with other programs.

It's definitely the most visually pleasing of the three I have tried: OpenRPG, Klooge, and FG. The layout is attractive and the colorful design gives a nice tabletop feel.

My requests for new features:

1. Ability to easily paste text into chat window during the game directly and under aliases of NPCs.
2. More sophisticated die roller and text macros like OpenRPG - These really speed up combat, skill checks, initiative, etc. which can take forever in a on line game.
3. Tree node design of Open RPG and Klooge are faster to access content for GMs in game than layers of FG menus - Maybe this could be an option for future versions?
4. Program should be able to run in windowed mode
5. Program should switch to other programs more smoothly - I like to have the D&D SRD in my web browser and run a DM management program while I play, but the demo seems to resist switching windows, and freezes up momentarily when I do so
6. More and better player portrait icons should be included
7. Documentation of bug work-arounds for frequent tech issues reported on these forums could be better organized, maybe a wiki would help?

If a product that looked this aesthetically attractive could have the power, flexibility, and image capacity of OpenRPG, that would be terrific.

Diana

[richvalle]

1. Should happen with the next version.

4. I run it in window mode...?

5. I keep d20srd up while I play and switch back and forth during the game. FG does get a little flakey unless you alt-tab back to it. Some times it looks like it has 'focus' but some things like mouse-overs don't work.

rv

[Griogre]

5. I keep d20srd up while I play and switch back and forth during the game. FG does get a little flakey unless you alt-tab back to it. Some times it looks like it has 'focus' but some things like mouse-overs don't work.
When I want to use other programs I run FG windowed and use the tabs on the task bar to switch or just click on the different windows.

FG runs by default in a non resizeable window of 1024x768. If you want it windowed it is best to run in a resolution greater than 1024x768. FG does not minimize, and despite the close X at the top right, can't be exited normally except by right clicking on the wooden desktop and selecting exit. They really should get rid of the top right control box because it is non functional.

[Griogre]

3. Tree node design of Open RPG and Klooge are faster to access content for GMs in game than layers of FG menus - Maybe this could be an option for future versions?

I do not entirely disagree with you but using the radial menus can be very fast because it is all one mouse move. Did you know you can hold down the right mouse button, keep it down and drag through all the different menus in one move?

I would dearly like to see a better way of organizing tokens. Moving them from the top level FG directory to individual modules or campaigns would be great.