Do I have time/skills for this?

[Meliora]

Hi all,

I have been looking for an online RPG tool for a bit of time, and I guess it was only a matter of time before I found Fantasy Grounds. Now I’m here, have tried the demo and check a little bit around on the forum and related sites. But, I’m still a bit from actually clicking buy. My issues are that I mainly want to play/DM, not getting into XMLs coding, and the game I want to use, I cannot find a rule set for. So I wonder how hard and time consuming is it to make a new rule set, based on D20, but with quite a few changes. I have no experience with XML, so please go lite on me :).

I will use a few examples on what I know I want to change. Please, describe it in newbish steps. There is no need for adding specific codes, more like, “Go into the following file and change one/a few/many lines”.

Alright, to my specific question:

No Longer relevant, after richvalle gave this noob some good answers. But if you still want to help me (please ;) ), his answers lead to others, plus there was a few unanswered. Please, just down to my next post.


I will need a new character sheet. If I have a physical sheet and a scanner, how would I bring it into the game, and can you give an example on how to make two new abilities add and subtract their bonuses automatically to a Dodge Stat on the sheet?
I want to change the background and font to another style that is more fitting for my campaign. How hard would that be and can you describe in simple steps how I would do such?
Very related to question two, but I also have a handful of tokens I want to use instead of the ones in Fantasy Grounds II. How many steps would that take?
I want to add a feat that gives a user + 2 in Dodge when flat-footed. How much work is that?
This is probably the hard one I assume, but I want to remove the whole HP system, and instead use a condition system (as in Mutants and Masterminds 1st edition), meaning that instead of weapons dealing damage on HP, the victim first have to make a save against this damage, and depending on success or how much he fails on, he will receive either a Bruised or Injured hit, which will be noted on the sheet in a box with either an X (for injured) or / (for bruised). Not only that, for each X and/or /, he will get a subtraction on his next damage save. How hard is that? How many files and lines of codes (one/ a few/ a lot/ a ton is good enough indicators) would you estimate I would have to do and play around with?
Last and probably the most important, how helpful is this community when it comes to noob questions. My experience on different forums has often been that people just refer the newbie to a tutorial. Now assuming that this noob (which will soon be me), actually checked documents and tutorials and ask for an even more “take me by my hand and lead me through it step by step”, is this community known for helping out (assuming the newbie is not returning daily with new things)?


I know it is a lot of questions. Just want to be absolutely certain, that I don’t buy something, I don’t have the time to learn.
Really appreciate any questions answered.

[richvalle]

1. Someone else will have to answer

2. I think this is easy... just replacing one image with another.

3. Easy, just add the tokens to the token folder and ta-da!

4. Nothing in FG is scripted by default. The feats area is an open text area where you can type in anything. To do a +2 Dodge bonus you add the feat to the text then adjust your AC by 2. Ok, I take that back. You can't just modify the flatfooted ac. Umm, I guess the player would have to remember his ac is +2 when flatfooted for now.

5. Yeah, thats going to be hard. Savage Worlds does something like this now. Not sure how much work it would be.

6. I like to think we are very helpfull. :) There are people here who have created whole new rulesets and are good about answering questions.

Good luck!

rv

[Meliora]

Thanks...that was quick :) . Really appreciate it.

Of course it adds other questions and is still looking to get some of the others answerd ;) . So a small updated list:

1) I will need a new character sheet. If I have a physical sheet and a scanner, how would I bring it into the game, and can you give an example on how to make two new abilities add and subtract their bonuses automatically to a Dodge Stat on the sheet (as Strength value controls Strength Modifer)?

2) To add a new map/image to the gaming table, I assume I just copy my image file to a specific library. Will that map, get the file name as the title within the game, when I open my map book or how does this work (probably don't make any sense)?

3) I want to add a feat that gives a user + 2 in a stat/skill. After a little bit a look in the demo, I could imagine I would do it as following: Add another tab to the players' character sheet called feat. On that page, I will add all the feats I wish to use in my game, and just left for each feat I will add a checkbox. If a player check that box (as if he picked that feat), is it possible to run a script, that would add too a stat/skill like the Dex modifer add to AC? How much work is that?

4) This is probably the hard one I assume, but I want to remove the whole HP system, and instead use a condition system (as in Mutants and Masterminds 1st edition), meaning that instead of weapons dealing damage on HP, the victim first have to make a save against this damage, and depending on success or how much he fails on, he will receive either a Bruised or Injured hit, which will be noted together in two seperate boxes (as if it was HPs). For each point in Bruised and/or Injured, he will get a subtraction in his damage save. How hard is that? How many files and lines of codes (one/ a few/ a lot/ a ton is good enough indicators) would you estimate I would have to do and play around with?

Again thanks for any answers given. Really want to get started, but don't want to get something I'm not able to use.

[Foen]

Hi Meliora and welcome to FG!

My thoughts on your questions (but don't take my views as gospel!):

1. I think that the effort to write an import-from-scan program would be more than it's worth. Unless you were importing thousands of sheets, you might just as well resign yourself to some manual re-keying.

2. You can drag image files in Windows Explorer to the campaign/images directory and they will appear in the game (with a GM name equal to the file name, spaces are allowed).

3. As Richvalle said, most feats are handled through text (so players manually update their stats to reflect feats, items etc). If you want to script a certain type of feat, the method you describe is do-able. It falls into your 'many' lines category though.

4. There is an M&M ruleset being created: I'm not familiar enough to know the version (not having come across M&M before), but you might want to talk to decfeeney to compare ideas.

Cheers

Stuart

[Meliora]

Thanks a lot, Stuart.

I think I'm convinced :). Will sleep upon it and is guessing tomorrow I will go visit the store here.

See you all around

[Meliora]

Ok, my sleep didn't help, since I did a little bit more searching on the net, and stumbled over anoter RPG tool, that actually seem very useful as well, which is called KloOge.

When I compare these two products, based upon playing the Demos and checking the sites, Fantasy Grounds seem like the Lamborghini and KloOge as the Humvee.

Fantasy Grounds runs fast, smooth and looks good, but if you move away from what it is build for, it starting to get hard to control, where KloOge is the opposite. Is that a fair comparation?
What else do Fantasy Grounds have in features that are better than KloOge?

[Sorontar]

https://iconvention.org/vgtcomp.php

[Meliora]

Perfect and again thank you.

[Griogre]

The big differance with Klooge is it has auto resolution of attacks and things. This sounds great until you realize you have to set everything up before you can run a game. That was too much input for me. I just wanted to be able to sit down with a module next to the keyboard and run if I wanted to and FG can do that out of the box.

Kooge and FG are exactly opposite on the question you asked earlier:

3) I want to add a feat that gives a user + 2 in a stat/skill. After a little bit a look in the demo, I could imagine I would do it as following: Add another tab to the players' character sheet called feat. On that page, I will add all the feats I wish to use in my game, and just left for each feat I will add a checkbox. If a player check that box (as if he picked that feat), is it possible to run a script, that would add too a stat/skill like the Dex modifer add to AC? How much work is that?
You would need to script this in Klooge.

I would like to point out you could almost certainly start playing tomorrow using Toadwart's Generic Character Sheet. Which is just a two sheet character sheet of lines and few boxes where you could type in anything. You still may be close enough that the base d20 sheet might work better for you though.