Two groups, same campaign. Save and Restore Combat Tracker State?

[HywelPhillips]

Hi Everyone,

Does anyone know of an extension (compatible with SWADE since that's what I'll be running) that allows you to save and restore the combat tracker state?

Here's my use case.

I'm running a shared campaign for my two weekly groups. One group is a thieves' guild, the other is a journalists running a scandal newsheet. The two groups activities will interact with each other frequently, and there will be cross-over events with characters from one group guest-starring in adventures with the other group. I often makes story notes on the fly during sessions and those will probably be needed for both groups.


It's SWADE, thank goodness, not D&D or something slower to resolve, but I still wonder how I am going to handle cases where a fight breaks out and does not get resolved by the end of the session. I'd love to be able to preserve things like effects, wounds, counting down power durations, etc.. (And ideally positions of tokens on maps etc.)

Then I will want to run a session for the next group the next night, and clear the state of the combat tracker, put on the other party, etc. etc.

Next week I will want to go back to the fight in media res and restore things as they were.

Is there an extension that can handle this gracefully?


Otherwise I think I will branch the campaign with the fight in media res by copying the campaign after the game, using that one for the group next week, and try to remember not to add stuff that should be permanent to that campaign.

I thought about the idea of a development campaign which I copy EVERY week to two group-specific campaigns but that feels like it's asking for trouble because ANY stuff I add on the fly to one of the two group games is going to get lost, which sounds very tedious to manage. Doing the branch only when necessary feels like less work.

Does anyone have any experience of running two groups in the same campaign like this? How did you handle combats that didn't finish by end of session?

Cheers, Hywel

[LordEntrails]

No extension that I know of or could find, but I certainly do not keep on top of all of the ones out there. I seem to remember long ago talk of an extension that would save the combat tracker, but can't find it.

I see a ton of problems having 2 groups in one campaign (sharing records, combat tracker, party sheet items/xp/etc).

My approach would be to have 3 campaigns, 1 development and 2 play campaigns. Export the Dev campaign to a module (don't copy the whole campaign file) and load the module in both play campaigns. The biggest thing would then be when you have guest characters from one group join the other, but this is easy enough with import characters. Yes you would also have to manage anything you added to one campaign during play, but that should be minimal enough that you can manually add it to the development campaign as needed.

[srbongo]

I think Chillhelm's 4c (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?71997-Extension-C4-Chilhelm-s-Chase-amp-Combat-Collection) ext has a save state and restore - but I have no idea how well it's working right now, still it maybe what you're looking for.

[Jiminimonka]

Hi Everyone,

Does anyone know of an extension (compatible with SWADE since that's what I'll be running) that allows you to save and restore the combat tracker state?

Here's my use case.

I'm running a shared campaign for my two weekly groups. One group is a thieves' guild, the other is a journalists running a scandal newsheet. The two groups activities will interact with each other frequently, and there will be cross-over events with characters from one group guest-starring in adventures with the other group. I often makes story notes on the fly during sessions and those will probably be needed for both groups.


It's SWADE, thank goodness, not D&D or something slower to resolve, but I still wonder how I am going to handle cases where a fight breaks out and does not get resolved by the end of the session. I'd love to be able to preserve things like effects, wounds, counting down power durations, etc.. (And ideally positions of tokens on maps etc.)

Then I will want to run a session for the next group the next night, and clear the state of the combat tracker, put on the other party, etc. etc.

Next week I will want to go back to the fight in media res and restore things as they were.

Is there an extension that can handle this gracefully?


Otherwise I think I will branch the campaign with the fight in media res by copying the campaign after the game, using that one for the group next week, and try to remember not to add stuff that should be permanent to that campaign.

I thought about the idea of a development campaign which I copy EVERY week to two group-specific campaigns but that feels like it's asking for trouble because ANY stuff I add on the fly to one of the two group games is going to get lost, which sounds very tedious to manage. Doing the branch only when necessary feels like less work.

Does anyone have any experience of running two groups in the same campaign like this? How did you handle combats that didn't finish by end of session?

Cheers, Hywel

Chillhelms Extension 4C lets you save Encounters (and therefore the CT state) and reload them at a later date. It is on the Forge.

[HywelPhillips]

Brilliant sounds like the 4C extension does exactly what I need, I will check it out, thanks everyone!

Hywel