I think I may have purchased in error -or- help me work this.

[Kotagg]

What I was looking for when I purchased FG was a program with which to run combat efficiently. I have a Dragonlance campaign in which I have 7 PCs (SEVEN!) and combat is a serious task. When I have 7 PCs and anywhere from 4-20 enemy combatants on the map at once, it's far too tedious to keep track of where everyone is in relativity to who has how many HP, status effects, and etc.

So. I get the program, and after tooling around with it, I see a problem. There are only lettered tokens and five color dots to use in combat? How am I supposed to really know who is who? Can I somehow upload my own images and use those? And if so, am I expected to have the ability to use Photoshop or comparable programs? Do I buy tokens somewhere, or something?

Please help a beleaguered GM out.

[Stuart]

You can name the tokens you place by either: dragging the character names from an open character sheet (right click the character's portrait to open up the sheet) OR you can name the token by dragging the name from the Combat Tracker. Placing pc's and monsters onto the combat tracker is achieved by dragging the portrait of the player onto the open combat tracker - you will note that name and hit points will appear. Monsters are placed by dragging the round grey circle next to the monsters name from either the list of monsters OR from the open monster description.

Text in the Combat Tracker can be modified.

A variety of other tokens areavailable at a reasonable price courtesy of FourUglyMonsters: https://www.fouruglymonsters.com/ or from Digital Adventures : https://www.digitaladventures.net/catalog/ The style of token and range is different.

I use these heavily but also have some spell and effect tokens - most made by a good friend of mine called Kalmarjan - if you want these just let me know, I'm sure he won't mind ... I'm also sure he'll let me know if there is a problem !:p

Images of your own - can be popped into FG "on the fly" by placing the jpg or png into the "images" folder of your "campaign" directory. I use Dundjinni, CC2/3 and Paint Shop Pro 9 to create what I use. I have some stuff you are most welcome to grab at: https://qabbal.ihoststudio.com
Just go to the downloads or maps page - apologies for the current look of the site, it is being overhauled. The max size I use is about 700 kb - FUM and Digital Adventures also sell maps, the latter also have rulesets and modules.

A tip for FG and tokens - tokens can be dragged from your token box onto a hot key so that in the middle of a game you are not constantly rifling through a token box. I start off a new session by dragging all the character tokens and monster tokens I am likely to use to a set of hot keys.

I also DM games with 7 players - I tend to speed things up by having up to 2 players go simultaneously if possible.

Hope this helps.

[richvalle]

Tokens are easily created. Just make an image a square and put it into the c:/program files/FG/Tokens directory.

You can put it into the Host or Shared directory. Host is only for you and Shared means all players can see the token as well.

Its a good idea to come up with a scale to work with. i.e I use medum=50 pix. Then when I want to make something Large I make it 100 pix. That way tokens scale correctly.

rv

[heruca]

If you're interested in tokens, you can get 35 free tokens just for attending iCon (https://iconvention.org), an online game convention which is being held on March 24-25. Attendance is free.

You can also get free tokens from https://www.rpgmapshare.com.

[Kotagg]

Thank you very much, guys - this stuff is a great start and I understand now what I need to do to make more. Appreciate it.

[Griogre]

You and also use TokenTool which makes portrait style tokens like the portrait in the top left of FG. TokenTool is a free download that can be found here (https://rptools.net/doku.php?id=tokentool:intro). TokenTool was really made to make tokens for MapTool but the tokens work fine for FG also. There is also a large number of tokens you can find at their site in their "store" which are also free.

There are far more tokens and pictures in that gallery than may appear at first, navigation seems strange. Look under Contributed Art here (https://gallery.rptools.net/v/contrib/). One thing you might not realize at first. You need to pick a "standard" size for your medium sized tokens so you can scale the map to match. IE all Tokens of medium size should be the same diminsion because you can *not* scale tokens on the fly in the current version of FG, though you can in the FG 2.

[Dachannien]

Note that while Griogre is right, and you can't scale tokens individually in FG1, you can scale all tokens en masse along with the map if you right click a token that's in use and pick "lock token scale" (or something like that). That way, when you rescale the map, the tokens will change scale along with it, and any new tokens you add will arrive at the same scale.

The main issue for me has been that when I picked 50px for a 5x5' square token, it resulted in maps that were close to 2000px on a side. FG1 has some, er, issues with large maps, especially when one of the dimensions exceeds 2048px. However, I decided that you can't see crap on a 25px token, so 50px it is ;)

[kalmarjan]

You could always make your map follow the 25p=1x5' square , and still have your tokens follow the 50 px dimension. Simply use the scale tool when you place your first token on the map, and when you place the rest, they will be dropped at the same scale.

I think even 50 px is too little for tokens. I use 70px=5' for tokens.

Kalmarjan

[Griogre]

Personally I use 32x32 pixels for med tokens for the reasons Dachiannien mentioned. As I use portrait style tokens of just the head the quality is acceptible to me. This allows me to keep my map size (in pixels) smaller.

Most people here do use 50 pixels or larger for medium creatures. This does mean that Colossal Creatures are then 300x300 pixels and have a threatened area of about 18x18 squares or about 900x900 pixels which would be treatened - which is most the map shown normally.

The main trade off you are looking at is how nice do you want your tokens to look vs. how much of the map do you want to show at once? There is another trade off in that the bigger the scale the the more data you need to transfer and the more likely something is to get hosed in the transfer. You can make the map smaller and zoom in the tokens but if you are always zooming the tokens you are losing the detail anyway.

[kalmarjan]

Personally I use 32x32 pixels for med tokens for the reasons Dachiannien mentioned. As I use portrait style tokens of just the head the quality is acceptible to me. This allows me to keep my map size (in pixels) smaller.

I try to keep the pixel sizes in even numbers. It makes the math easier. (Unless you are like me, and a computer geek and have no problem figuring out multiples of 8. Remember when 32 MB of Ram was enough. LOL)


Most people here do use 50 pixels or larger for medium creatures. This does mean that Colossal Creatures are then 300x300 pixels and have a threatened area of about 18x18 squares or about 900x900 pixels which would be treatened - which is most the map shown normally.

This is only true if you use the same ratio for maps. Keeping a 50px resolution for your tokens enables you to have the detail you would like, and having a 25px ratio for your maps gives you the reach that you would need. In the case above, the reach is 18x18 squares, but now is only taking up 450x450px.


The main trade off you are looking at is how nice do you want your tokens to look vs. how much of the map do you want to show at once? There is another trade off in that the bigger the scale the the more data you need to transfer and the more likely something is to get hosed in the transfer. You can make the map smaller and zoom in the tokens but if you are always zooming the tokens you are losing the detail anyway.

This is true about maps. I try to keep the map filesize down to at the max 900Kb. I have found that there is less of a chance that things go haywire. Also, save your map in JPG format at the lowest quality setting you can stand. Basically, FG is nothing more than a web page. So following the usual web page image standards will help you out a lot. You would not put a 2MB PNG as a graphic on your website unless there was call for it.

Also, keep in mind that when you use the scaling function on the tokens, they maintain their resolution. This means that even if you scale your map to where you can only see the token as a blip on your screen, when you zoom back to your token, it will still be at the resolution as before.

This holds true with JPG images as well. You are not editing the image, so therefore you lose no quality. Something to think on.

So in short - Maps are low filesize, saved as JPG, with as low settings as you can stand. I use a 25px=5' scale. Try for about 500-600kb.

Tokens can be saved at a larger resolution. I use 70px=5' for mine. Try to keep the filesizes on these as well. If you can do without the transparency, place a border around them, and you can save them off as JPG as well.

Hope that helps,

Sandeman

[Griogre]

I try to keep the pixel sizes in even numbers. It makes the math easier. (Unless you are like me, and a computer geek and have no problem figuring out multiples of 8. Remember when 32 MB of Ram was enough. LOL)

I am such a computer geek - you can tell by the powers of 2, eh? :o I remember my mighty apple ][ E with it's whopping 64k of RAM and only because I had a "massive" 32k addon card. ;) I ended up with 32 pixels because the size of portraits is 63x63 which I typically round to 64x64 and then half the portraits to get tokens. :p

Somewhat back on topic, like Sandleman, I do typically make maps with a scale of about half that of tokens, typically with grids of 24, 16 or 8 pixels even (ooh two more numbers that are powers of 2 and a close relative :) ) depending on the style of the map.