Potential buyer questions

[TheSoulCollector]

Hey everyone,
I've been looking at FG as a fantastic way to game with my friends for a long time now. Harassing the power of a computer, done right, can make gaming in a wonderful and dangerous drug. The release of FGII might be what finally gets us all to pick up licenses but I have a question.

Is it possible to reveal NPC's, monsters, and map areas selectively? Thus, let's say the rogue sneaks off and scouts far ahead and spots the group of orcs lying in wait. Can I reveal these orcs to the rogue while leaving the party that stayed behind in the dark? Essentially, is there a fog of war for each player?

Thank you for your help.

[Oberoten]

Hey everyone,
I've been looking at FG as a fantastic way to game with my friends for a long time now. Harassing the power of a computer, done right, can make gaming in a wonderful and dangerous drug. The release of FGII might be what finally gets us all to pick up licenses but I have a question.

Is it possible to reveal NPC's, monsters, and map areas selectively? Thus, let's say the rogue sneaks off and scouts far ahead and spots the group of orcs lying in wait. Can I reveal these orcs to the rogue while leaving the party that stayed behind in the dark? Essentially, is there a fog of war for each player?

Thank you for your help.

It should be possibly if you make individual copies of the map for each player.

Share them by dragging the link from the list to the player et Voila... you have a map that only that player sees.

[jthm0138]

Oh thats awesome.... I had never thought of trying that...
FYI it works like a charm. Thanks for the idea.

[TheSoulCollector]

Thanks for the reply!
A follow up on my question is how far could you take this? For example, if my players are exploring a dungeon and each split up to explore different sections of it, will FG2 hide what say player 1 sees from all other players? By using your method, would that be gravely compounding the work as I've laid it out in this scenario?

Thus, let's say that once my players split up, they rejoin into a group again and head on to another room, from which appears an orc who charges them. With each player having their own map, would I have to move that orc on each and every map?

[Griogre]

Thanks for the reply!
A follow up on my question is how far could you take this? For example, if my players are exploring a dungeon and each split up to explore different sections of it, will FG2 hide what say player 1 sees from all other players? By using your method, would that be gravely compounding the work as I've laid it out in this scenario?
I don't know about gravely compounding, but it will be more work. FG is a tabletop simulator. If people split up in a face to face game you usually have more work too. The only differance is you don't need to take them into seperate rooms with FG because they are already *in* seperate rooms. :p


Thus, let's say that once my players split up, they rejoin into a group again and head on to another room, from which appears an orc who charges them. With each player having their own map, would I have to move that orc on each and every map?
Yes you will. You really do want to avoid having everyone on a seprate map. A rogue scouting is fine, but seperate maps for everyone is a little much, IMHO.

[TheSoulCollector]

Thanks for your input Griogre. I guess I need to ask the devs for a Fog of War system. :)

[Foen]

Another possible method is running two instances of the host session, but that would need two licences and possibly two machines. I think it was mentioned in another thread though.

[Doswelk]

Thanks for your input Griogre. I guess I need to ask the devs for a Fog of War system. :)
Out of interest how do you do this when sitting around a table?

If it were me I would pass a note to the rogue stating what he sees, thus in FGII I would whisper to him...

Or (on the table) I would just draw the section on the battle mat and place the figures, again in FGII you delete the mask of that area to reveal the tokens...

FGII recreates (for me) the feel of sitting round the table, I do not have F.O.W. on my chessex battle mat so I do not miss it here....

Now I know in computer games FOW is cool, but if the party is mapping then the fact they can "see" the dungeon does not matter, also you can make tokens stay invisible thus I can do something in FGII I cannot do on the battle mat and that is move tokens in the revealed sections of the map, thus allowing me to accuratley track movements....

[TheSoulCollector]

Well obviously, I'm unable to implement a FOW system when I play with my friends around the table. My friends and I live nearby so it's not a problem for us to meet face to face. However, I'm not looking for simply a method to get friends to meet up for a game. I want to add another dimension to my games that only a computer can accomplish.
I play with long standing veteran D&D players so usually metagaming isn't a problem but no matter what, characters will always react differently when they can see the whole picture. However, a software with a sophisticated FOW system and chat/whisper system brings a player one step closer to truly standing in the shoes of his character.
Imagine, out in the middle of the woods, your character hears the scream of his friend many hundreds of feet away and has no idea at what could have happened.
Imagine, a well hidden sniper 300 feet away up in the canopy of a forest is peppering the party with arrows and only the rogue can spot him. So much hinges on how that rogue can communicate to the party the location of their attacker.
The DM is able to better control elements such as suspense, surprise, and reward unique party abilities. These are the thoughts that get my blood pumping and I believe have the potential to revolutionize the game that I love so dearly.

[joshuha]

Features like that are planned due to feedback from the userbase. But realize when Fantasy Grounds first came out it was designed to be a tabletop replacement and a lot of the look and feel and functions were designed around that.

Things like dynamic fog of war, line of sight, light sources, vision, etc. are all things we are looking at but are tricky to add and get right. Once you start trying to implement multiples types of these things its important to try and keep it usable. But rest assured a revamp of the drawing tools/mapping is part of the future roadmap of the software.

[TheSoulCollector]

Hey Joshuha,
Thank you for the response. Having a programming background and having rolled out sophisticated software, I can imagine the difficulties these features entail.
Best of luck.

[Griogre]

TheSoulCollector I also agree that FG seems to "to closely" simulate the tabletop environment sometimes too closely especially when it could take better advantage of the computer we all know the software is running on. However, I have to say that I do believe much of the success of Fantasy Grounds is *actually* due to the fact that anyone who has played in a face to face game can sit down learn to use the software very very fast.

I use to run an open table game where anyone could play each week and I got a lot of brand new FG players and I can tell you by sticking to a very close approximation of the tabletop in a face to face game they really flattened the learning curve of the software. Once you explained hotkeys, die codes, drag and drop and rolling the mouse wheel - most players were good to go. I think sticking to the KISS priciple has given them alot of success especially with the interface.