Persistent/Dedicated Hosting?

[osarusan]

I know it's been brought up a few times over the past decade, but I was curious if there's ever been a better solution for this beyond running FG on a virtual machine and using remote desktop to access it...

For games with multiple DMs, it would be such a boon to have a dedicated PC running some kind of FG daemon where a DM could log in at any time and work on the campaign, whether it's adding story entries or NPCs or whatever. And where players could log in and roll/input their characters onto the server without the DMing needing to be logged in (but while making them in the host campaign, so a DM could review or see them at a later time).

It's doable using a remote machine or a shared/synched folder, but it's not an ideal solution at all. Sadly as far as I know it's not a priority for the devs either, but I'm just curious if anyone else has some way of doing this that works well.

[LordEntrails]

No. And be aware that allowing multiple GMs to use such under a single license would be a violation of the license agreement. I suspect someday their may be a hosted solution, but as you say, it's not yet a priority.

[osarusan]

Oh we all have Ultimate licenses. It's not an issue of trying to skirt the rules or anything. Just we live in different time zones and want to able to drop in and drop out of the campaign even outside of game times.

[similarly]

I always start up FGU about 2 hours before game time to allow players to log in and fix characters. It's worked well so far.

[LordEntrails]

Oh we all have Ultimate licenses. It's not an issue of trying to skirt the rules or anything. Just we live in different time zones and want to able to drop in and drop out of the campaign even outside of game times.
Didn't mean to imply otherwise. Just pointing out one of the challenges they will have if/when they move in this direction :)

[swbuza]

Would also be hugely beneficial from a bandwidth perspective. Not every DM has 100 Mbps of uplink for players to share.

[Three of Swords]

Are you willing to pay for it? There is a guide somewhere on these forums for how to set it up using AWS (Amazon) to host the game.

[osarusan]

I have my own server PC so I wouldn't need to use AWS or an external host.

I mean, I could technically just leave FG open 24/7 on the server PC, and the players would then be able to log in any time they wanted to add/edit characters. However I as the DM wouldn't be able to log in and edit the content from another PC. That's the one ability that is missing to make this work for me.

It's just one of those things where I might get a cool idea and work and I want to quickly log in on my lunch break and input the story items and things like that directly into the campaign. It would be awesome if I didn't have to wait until I get home, boot up the FG campaign, and input then.

[LordEntrails]

Just RDP or VNC or whatever else your preferred remote desktop application is. Not the same as a headless server, but works similarly.

[swbuza]

I have exactly the same setup osarusan. I've thought about running it on both my pc and the server (not at the same time), pointing to the same datastore. Then I could shut down the server version, start the pc version, and repoint my 8802 PAT in my router. But it seems kludgy. RDP is painfully slow.

[swbuza]

But yeah, I"m with you. No way to login remotely as the GM is a real bummer. The server function and the administrative role are two logically separate things, or at least they should be from a software design perspective; but they seem to be very intertwined on this platform.

[LordEntrails]

But yeah, I"m with you. No way to login remotely as the GM is a real bummer. The server function and the administrative role are two logically separate things, or at least they should be from a software design perspective; but they seem to be very intertwined on this platform.
Yep, but it's a design decision made in 2004 (or before) by devs that are no longer involved with FG. Changing it at this point would not be trivial, but I'm sure it it was added to the wish list and received sufficient community votes, the current devs would carefully consider it.

[osarusan]

I just saw that there's another thread with this same idea posted, and someone made it a suggestion on the FG Idea Informer.

https://fgapp.idea.informer.com/proj/?ia=135371

If we all vote for it, maybe it will get some attention!

[LucaJones]

Has there been any recent advancements or alternatives to running a dedicated pc for hosting games like fg, allowing DMs and players to log in and interact with the campaign independently?

[LordEntrails]

Has there been any recent advancements or alternatives to running a dedicated pc for hosting games like fg, allowing DMs and players to log in and interact with the campaign independently?
No.

You can do this manually if you remote host your own server and use an application such as RDP as the GM. But nothing has changed in the FG architecture to change the requirements.