Using FG in face-to-face games

[Hamish]

I have a group of friends that I've been playing D&D with for the last 15 to 20 years or so. We've recently discovered FG, and we can definitely see the great possibilities for playing online. As we are about to start a new campaign in our face-to-face sessions as well, I was wondering if anyone has ever used FG for GMing those?
What are the options? What features can you use when using 1 or 2 laptops on the table. What features are going to give problems? Anyone ever tried this?

P.S. We all have a FG2 license, so there's no problem there.

[Valarian]

I'd imagine using the laptops for displaying maps and images would be the best use. The character sheets and dice throwing ... sorry, rolling ... would be the same as a normal tabletop session. Oh, the beer and munchies stay the same as well.

I'd probably have the two laptops back to back and connected with a crossed-over network cable. The one facing the players running FG2 lite, and the one facing the GM running the full version.

[Hamish]

Thanks for the quick reply. I thought maps would be the biggest advantage....
How about using the combat tracker and spells minisheet? Obviously, the combat tracker is available only on the GM machine, but would he be able to add characters that are not logged in at the moment? Could he open up the spells minisheet of a character other than the one actually logged on at the player machine?

[Valgard]

Player Characters that are entered into the combat tracker will stay even after the player has logged off, so you could populate it that way, not sure if you can put them in otherwise. You can open the character sheets and mini sheets of all the characters on the server, so that wouldn't be a problem.

Ian

[Valarian]

If the player character sheets have been entered in to FG, then the GM has all of that information by going to the characters icon in the top right and selecting the character in the character selection popup. Using the player character with the combat tracker may not be possible, but the GM can keep track of all of the NPCs. You also have the story section for organising your adventure. With the added bonus that you can export the module and run it online sometime.

[Valgard]

And you could always create NPC's to stand in for party members in the combat tracker...

Ian

[Tropico]

I did this the other day to demo SW.. I had the same back-to-back laptops thing, but I had the 'player' laptop connected to an image projector, so the map was nice and big on the projector-screen, and my players were nicely laid out on the couch instead of all scrunched up in front of the laptop.

We used it for nothing but the map and minis, they had their own clipboards for the char sheets (which were actually pretty small and simple, using SW) and a coffeetable in front of the couch for the dice. It was cool.

You can do the same thing with a bigscreen TV and an S-video cable, if your laptop has the output jack; it was very worth it for us.

[Hamish]

What did you do with the minis? I think you can only see those on the GM laptop, right?

Projector or S-Video sounds good. Have to see if I can arrange that.

[Tropico]

Umm, idono, I'm still kinda new to FG2 and all... I just put the tokens for the minis in the 'host' token folder, then inside FG2 I dragged them onto the map image, then I hit 'share sheet' and the whole thing appeared on the player laptop with minis and everything. I was able to move them around , rotate them etc and they updated in real-time on the player laptop. It seemed to work fine.

Projecting is very cool because having the projector right behind the couch the players were on, they could actually lift up their hand into the beam and use their shadow to signal which monster they were targetting, which square they wanted to move on, etc. and I would do it for them. They didn't have to touch or concern themselves with the actual laptops at all. It was like playing tabletop, only.. not ;)

[Griogre]

Obviously, the combat tracker is available only on the GM machine, but would he be able to add characters that are not logged in at the moment?
In FG2 one player can open multiple characters so in the laptop to laptop config you could open all the characters on the one "player" computer so they would all be logged on.

[Hamish]

In FG2 one player can open multiple characters so in the laptop to laptop config you could open all the characters on the one "player" computer so they would all be logged on.

Really? I did not know that.... That gives a LOT more possibilities. I'm going to need a very big screen for that player laptop, possibly more than one. :-)

[Starfleet]

I use FG 2 in every face to face game i run. having the character sheets etc all in the computr with the mapetc spees things up, heck even using the compter (3 lappos and a desktop) speeds u things like comba bcase there not having to numer unch it'sjust a simpl matte of clicking havin the dicerolld and finishig it out.

The other advantages that on a lan you can send big files with out much of a problem.

[Starfleet]

in english now i replaced by keyboard batterys. I use it every game 3 laptops and 1 desktop, speeds up combat etc. even dice rolls are easier because you don't have to do the number crunching (short version of what i tried to type before)