Quick Unplanned combat question

[wyndhydra]

Hi all, I have very recently picked up FG and am trying to get a feel for how to run with it for my savage campaign now that I can't meet with people in person do to the Corona thing.

As a bit of background, I generally GM in a combo of light maps or theater of the mind and rarely if ever do I tend to plan ahead, in front of our game time, save a rough scribble on a paper. My question is there a way in FG to quickly do combats that are basically thought up on the fly?

I have watched the @doswelk video on combat and it looks like there was effectively a good deal of setup prior to running that, which I would never do in practice.
-Does anyone know of any videos demonstrating a quick adlib fight?
-Will this kind of game play be possible with FG?
Any help would be great! Thanks.

[kronovan]

If you have SWADE, IMO the way to handle them best is by using the new Quick Encounters feature (PDF pg. 135); I'm guessing that's what's detailed in the @doswelk video you mention. For those encounters you just describe what the players are up against and let them decide what skills they're going to bring to the table; for combat related it's usually fighting, shooting or an arcane skill. You don't typically pay attention to turn order unless it's an important factor, as the encounters are often just a single round where players and GM roll only once and narrate what they did. More complicated situations can be handled by what are staged encounters, when events or activities might be unfolding that necessitate another set of rolls. The results for failures are dependent upon the type of encounter, but for combat it's usually acquiring a wound and possibly d4 wounds if the player crit failed.

[The High Druid]

Probably worth having a few maps ready in advance, nothing fancy, just like generic grassland, forest, town street, or even just an empty white square you can draw a grid on - things that you can reuse in different situations. You can put terrain on the maps (if you need it) by dropping tokens (T for Tree), scribbling with the drawing tool (not terribly useful on dark maps) or using pointers (as long as a line, square, circle, or cone will do)

[wyndhydra]

Thanks @kronovan, I am familiar with those rules but am a bit more asking specifically to generally how my combats occur while I GM. Generally, given that I have limited prep and I change the story on the fly to any ideas that come up by the players I will just throw something quickly down on a table on a map drawn hastily in about 10 seconds. I am trying to figure out if FG can do similar, while still getting the benefits of the combat tracker and the like.

[wyndhydra]

Thanks @The High Druid. Those sound up my alley. Can you still make quick use of the combat tracker, to achieve some of the book keeping, if you go this route?

[StoryWeaver]

You can use as much of the automation or as little as you'd like. It's quite possible to run games directly from the books and leaving dice rolling as the only thing that you do with FG.
On the other hand, if you do put a little extra work into it by adding maps, images, NPCs etc. FG runs SWADE wonderfully.

I'd like to suggest this extension for you, it enables you to copy in stat blocks from books into the chat. The extension then creates a NPC entry for your from that in FG.
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?20807-SW-NPC-Maker

[The High Druid]

Can you still make quick use of the combat tracker, to achieve some of the book keeping, if you go this route?

You certainly can in D&D 5E, I'm not so familiar with Savage Worlds, but I can't imagine it's terribly different. As long as you have a selection of NPC's/Monsters you can pull from ahead of time, in 5E you just drag them from the monster list to the combat tracker, and then from the tracker to the map, only takes a few moments to drop half a dozen goblins around a player.

[Doswelk]

Hi all, I have very recently picked up FG and am trying to get a feel for how to run with it for my savage campaign now that I can't meet with people in person do to the Corona thing.

As a bit of background, I generally GM in a combo of light maps or theater of the mind and rarely if ever do I tend to plan ahead, in front of our game time, save a rough scribble on a paper. My question is there a way in FG to quickly do combats that are basically thought up on the fly?

I have watched the @doswelk video on combat and it looks like there was effectively a good deal of setup prior to running that, which I would never do in practice.
-Does anyone know of any videos demonstrating a quick adlib fight?
-Will this kind of game play be possible with FG?
Any help would be great! Thanks.
Feel free to PM and we have a live chat to get you up and running :)

[mac40k]

You can always quickly drag NPCs to the combat tracker for ad hoc combats, and run them with or without a map. If you prefer to use maps, it helps to have a few "generic" ones pre-loaded, but you can always grab any map and drag it to your images folder on the fly as well. You don't even need a pretty picture and can just right click on the Images dialog box, create new to get a plain virtual sheet of paper, put a grid on it, then use the freehand drawing tool to quickly sketch out something for that old school dry/wet erase mat feel.