MrNone
February 3rd, 2021, 01:21
Hi All!
I'm new to the table top roleplaying and gaming systems in general (played and finished Icewind Dale, Baldur's Gate, PST and a few other back in the day and loved them, but pretty much kited and save scammed my way through them without much regard for the underlying rules systems). Tried FG and am intrigued by the versatility and the flexible game style which it allows for. At this point I'm mostly interested in solo gaming (solitaire RPGing, if you will) where I can learn and experiment with the rules mechanics within loosely coupled narratives or adventure stories. I was actually inspired to try FG while reading some LitRPG novels which contained descriptions of battles and encounters, and I think FG could supplement such books wonderfully.
So after having done my research, I installed FG and for a few days now have been reading online materials, watching tutorials on how the game (D&D 5e) could be conducted. Alas, it feels like either due to my general lack of experience with table tops, game rule systems and the role of the DM in games, my expectations for FG are not correct or are too excessive, perhaps. Below I am listing some points (all of which are IMHO, btw), in hopes that perhaps you could advise me and guide me in the right direction in my approach to FG.
Unnecessary and incapacitating restrictions of functionality:
Party member portraits are not displayed in the top left corner. This is a conventional UI element, and while I understand that only connected players’ characters are displayed in this fashion I don't understand why it has to be this way. I feel that all characters on the party roster should be displayed there, both for consistency of the interface layout and also for immersion (where connected players would not may realize that some of their party members are controlled by the DM, for example).
Character movement distance arrows not shown to DM on the battle map. I can see how not seeing it may add value during pre-combat placement, but not during a creature’s regular turn movement.
Unregulated freedom by a DM to change everything and anything, often in wrong places:
On the character screen, AC magnifying glass - I was able to toggle Armor Proficiency On or Off for a fighter character. So which is it? Under Abilities/Proficiencies it still said "Proficient in all types of armor", yet on the Main tab it now said Not proficient in armor.
Was able to enter custom weight for individual items equipped by a character. Why? Arguably a DM could come up with a justification for why suddenly items carried in the backpack felt less heavy to the character, but even that could be done within the scope of current rules as to preserve the integrity of the rules, e.g. by boosting the character's Strength ability score.
There's a million other instances where a value can just be arbitrarily altered by a DM. Ability scores, Skill modifiers (Acrobatics, change from Dex to Int for a warrior, no problem). Why not restrict manual editing of the ability scores to a level increase mode or to by having the DM grant a character a corresponding trait or a feat? That would still give the DM power to affect anything in the game but would be done in a cohesive way within the scope of current game rules.
I almost feel that, in order to make the system friendlier to new players and DMs and particularly to solo players such as myself, there should be multiple DM administrator levels, such that at the lowest level a DM would be permitted to advance the story and to control characters and NPCs, without being able to edit different values in the most unexpected places, wondering whether it's something they're expected to change or to edit manually or something that shouldn't be touched under normal game conditions.
Not following common conventions for CRPGs (workflows and UI layout):
No character ragdoll in the character Inventory screen. There's an icon indicating whether an item is equipped or is carried in the backpack, which is a hit or miss to use. There's a bug, as in Tutorial campaign, from the beginning all items in character inventories are marked as if they're in the backpack, while in reality some like armor and weapons, are equipped)
Case in point, I'm looking at the stats of one of the characters from the tutorial campaign, Ravina, Wiz lvl 4, and her AC is 15. Base 10 + Armor 3 + Full Dex modifier 2 = 15. The problem is she's not wearing any armor (not that can be seen in the inventory panel, anyway), so I am not able to tell where the Armor modifier 3 is coming from, perhaps I accidentally entered it myself.
No quick slots for usable items. From some video tutorials I learned how to add custom actions emulating e.g. a potion of healing. Well perhaps adding such an action, or power, should create a potion of healing in the character's inventory? Or perhaps inventory itself should be made less convoluted and more similar to other video games which have been implementing inventories in more or less similar fashion? So that there would be a clear distinction between actions derived from character's abilities as opposed to from consumable items? I understand that FG's primary purpose is to emulate a live table top session, but it is also undoubtedly a computer game and so certain elements should be taken advantage of rather than being a hindrance, especially if there's no reason for why they can't be. Now, creating such custom power may be akin to creating a shortcut to using said potion, or an equivalent of an item placed in a quick slot. Shouldn’t the game validate whether the character actually possesses the potion in their inventory? This kind of accounting and mundane record keeping hardly adds to the enjoyment of playing a game.
Projectile ammo. Again, as of now there’s too much work involved in keeping track of something that should be doable with a single key stroke. If there's a stack of arrows in the inventory I should be able to equip it and use it until it's expended, instead of having to manually enter the number on the character's Attack ability, then remember to remove the arrows from their inventory, etc. This can turn into a nightmare when using multiple characters and different ammo types later on.
CRPGs have been using weapon sets forever. Surprisingly, I don't see it in FG which implements similar mechanics of parcels and encounters for items and NPCs. What about two-handed weapons, or dual wielding? With weapon sets the player could define two sets, one for handling such weapon with one hand, and one for handling the same with two-hands, per their preference.
Combat is a combat, it has the logical order of rounds. Strangely I am able to change the number of the current round arbitrarily but I don't understand why and can't tell what overall effect it may have. Some enemies have Recharge timers (e.g. hell hound's Fire breath) which don’t seem to be affected by advancing the combat round this way. And what about dialing the round number back? One would think it would (as it should) function similar to Undo command in editing applications, so all actions and effects for players and NPCs would get reverted back to the specified round, but it doesn’t work that way, and I don’t know what it does.
I'm new to the table top roleplaying and gaming systems in general (played and finished Icewind Dale, Baldur's Gate, PST and a few other back in the day and loved them, but pretty much kited and save scammed my way through them without much regard for the underlying rules systems). Tried FG and am intrigued by the versatility and the flexible game style which it allows for. At this point I'm mostly interested in solo gaming (solitaire RPGing, if you will) where I can learn and experiment with the rules mechanics within loosely coupled narratives or adventure stories. I was actually inspired to try FG while reading some LitRPG novels which contained descriptions of battles and encounters, and I think FG could supplement such books wonderfully.
So after having done my research, I installed FG and for a few days now have been reading online materials, watching tutorials on how the game (D&D 5e) could be conducted. Alas, it feels like either due to my general lack of experience with table tops, game rule systems and the role of the DM in games, my expectations for FG are not correct or are too excessive, perhaps. Below I am listing some points (all of which are IMHO, btw), in hopes that perhaps you could advise me and guide me in the right direction in my approach to FG.
Unnecessary and incapacitating restrictions of functionality:
Party member portraits are not displayed in the top left corner. This is a conventional UI element, and while I understand that only connected players’ characters are displayed in this fashion I don't understand why it has to be this way. I feel that all characters on the party roster should be displayed there, both for consistency of the interface layout and also for immersion (where connected players would not may realize that some of their party members are controlled by the DM, for example).
Character movement distance arrows not shown to DM on the battle map. I can see how not seeing it may add value during pre-combat placement, but not during a creature’s regular turn movement.
Unregulated freedom by a DM to change everything and anything, often in wrong places:
On the character screen, AC magnifying glass - I was able to toggle Armor Proficiency On or Off for a fighter character. So which is it? Under Abilities/Proficiencies it still said "Proficient in all types of armor", yet on the Main tab it now said Not proficient in armor.
Was able to enter custom weight for individual items equipped by a character. Why? Arguably a DM could come up with a justification for why suddenly items carried in the backpack felt less heavy to the character, but even that could be done within the scope of current rules as to preserve the integrity of the rules, e.g. by boosting the character's Strength ability score.
There's a million other instances where a value can just be arbitrarily altered by a DM. Ability scores, Skill modifiers (Acrobatics, change from Dex to Int for a warrior, no problem). Why not restrict manual editing of the ability scores to a level increase mode or to by having the DM grant a character a corresponding trait or a feat? That would still give the DM power to affect anything in the game but would be done in a cohesive way within the scope of current game rules.
I almost feel that, in order to make the system friendlier to new players and DMs and particularly to solo players such as myself, there should be multiple DM administrator levels, such that at the lowest level a DM would be permitted to advance the story and to control characters and NPCs, without being able to edit different values in the most unexpected places, wondering whether it's something they're expected to change or to edit manually or something that shouldn't be touched under normal game conditions.
Not following common conventions for CRPGs (workflows and UI layout):
No character ragdoll in the character Inventory screen. There's an icon indicating whether an item is equipped or is carried in the backpack, which is a hit or miss to use. There's a bug, as in Tutorial campaign, from the beginning all items in character inventories are marked as if they're in the backpack, while in reality some like armor and weapons, are equipped)
Case in point, I'm looking at the stats of one of the characters from the tutorial campaign, Ravina, Wiz lvl 4, and her AC is 15. Base 10 + Armor 3 + Full Dex modifier 2 = 15. The problem is she's not wearing any armor (not that can be seen in the inventory panel, anyway), so I am not able to tell where the Armor modifier 3 is coming from, perhaps I accidentally entered it myself.
No quick slots for usable items. From some video tutorials I learned how to add custom actions emulating e.g. a potion of healing. Well perhaps adding such an action, or power, should create a potion of healing in the character's inventory? Or perhaps inventory itself should be made less convoluted and more similar to other video games which have been implementing inventories in more or less similar fashion? So that there would be a clear distinction between actions derived from character's abilities as opposed to from consumable items? I understand that FG's primary purpose is to emulate a live table top session, but it is also undoubtedly a computer game and so certain elements should be taken advantage of rather than being a hindrance, especially if there's no reason for why they can't be. Now, creating such custom power may be akin to creating a shortcut to using said potion, or an equivalent of an item placed in a quick slot. Shouldn’t the game validate whether the character actually possesses the potion in their inventory? This kind of accounting and mundane record keeping hardly adds to the enjoyment of playing a game.
Projectile ammo. Again, as of now there’s too much work involved in keeping track of something that should be doable with a single key stroke. If there's a stack of arrows in the inventory I should be able to equip it and use it until it's expended, instead of having to manually enter the number on the character's Attack ability, then remember to remove the arrows from their inventory, etc. This can turn into a nightmare when using multiple characters and different ammo types later on.
CRPGs have been using weapon sets forever. Surprisingly, I don't see it in FG which implements similar mechanics of parcels and encounters for items and NPCs. What about two-handed weapons, or dual wielding? With weapon sets the player could define two sets, one for handling such weapon with one hand, and one for handling the same with two-hands, per their preference.
Combat is a combat, it has the logical order of rounds. Strangely I am able to change the number of the current round arbitrarily but I don't understand why and can't tell what overall effect it may have. Some enemies have Recharge timers (e.g. hell hound's Fire breath) which don’t seem to be affected by advancing the combat round this way. And what about dialing the round number back? One would think it would (as it should) function similar to Undo command in editing applications, so all actions and effects for players and NPCs would get reverted back to the specified round, but it doesn’t work that way, and I don’t know what it does.