Support for co-gm and/or support roles?

[Zitchas]

I haven't played using FG yet, but I am looking forward to giving it a try. That being said, one of the biggest questions I have is whether or not it supports our typical gaming style.

Right now, we use roll20, free tier. I do almost all the GMing, but a friend of mine enjoys running support. By that, I mean I give them a list of maps and assets to have in the game, and they make sure they are available. They deal with setting up and clearing fog of war while I'm handling combat. And if the adventurers head off in some totally unplanned for direction or run into something totally unexpected, I send a whisper to them "We need a map of X" or "we need Y and Z creatures" or "Can you find a picture of a V NPC?" and then go on running the game while they dig up the required assets, do whatever edits are necessary, and drop them into the game, typically on the GM layer so that the rest of the players can't see them.

Basically, it boils down to one of us loves running adventures but doesn't have much time to prep stuff (and definitely doesn't want to hit pause on the game while I dig stuff up), and the other is great at doing prep work to get things ready and finding stuff on the fly, but doesn't want to actually run the adventures or keep track of story, plot, NPCs, make decisions about rules, etc. 75% of the in-game time they're just a player, but that 25% when they're doing support stuff they really help keep the game flowing nice and smooth.

Now, from what I gather, the first part about prepping stuff is easy enough. They have access to my computer, so they can just go on there when I'm not on it and set up maps and ensure all the planned-for assets and resources are available. No problems there. It's all the "on the fly" stuff that I'm concerned about. Is this feasible? Is there anyway to designate or allow someone to create, upload, and work on maps, upload assets, etc. while I am running things? Lag's not an issue: They're on the same LAN as me, so no network traffic to interfere. Every once in a while I can get them to run an encounter or a session or something so I can just play, so the more power I can handover temporarily the better. We're not averse to getting two licenses, either. We just don't want to need to zip and transfer a pile of files back and forth; and very much especially don't want to have to walk our players through connecting to their FG instead of mine, since some of them really aren't very technologically savy. It's the same campaign, same people, just a swap in who is taking the lead.


All the reviews I see of FG sound exactly like what I want, especially the local hosting and control. Except every time I search for info about support for co-gm or multiple GMs or the like, it's always a negative response. I don't like subscription models, but haven't seen much indication of co-gm support. Don't really want to sink money into something like roll20 that *might* just up and vanish and take everything I've purchased and worked on with it. (most marketplace stuff can't be downloaded, so if I can't access the site, I can't access the stuff I've paid for)

In my searching I have seen a few threads from years past asking about this sort of thing, and the answer is always no. But haven't seen one this year, so here's hoping...

Thank you for any information you can provide,

Z

[Zacchaeus]

No, Fantasy Grounds doesn't have a Co-op mode. Everything is hosted by the DM. So you would need to have everything at hand before your session starts since no one else can add stuff to the campaign whilst the session is running. As you say anyone who can access your computer can do prep work in the campaign but once the session is up and running all control lies with the host. The reason for this is that it is the hosts' computer that is the server rather than something off line like Roll20.

What I'd suggest you do is to take out a 1 month sub for FGU and have a play around with it to see if it suits your and your groups needs. If it doesn't then cancel the sub before the month is up (not right away since the sub ends the minute you cancel it) and get in touch with support within the 30 days and ask for a refund of the $10. Smiteworks offers a full no questions asked refund within 30 days - so you would lose nothing. If you like what you see then you can then decide to carry on the sub or buy the full license.

[Morenu]

Or take advantage of the 50% off and do the same 30 day trial and decide by day 25-29.

[ju95]

Yeah, the only things I can think of is:
A) you could have them run combat encounters using the Assistant GM Extension from the Forge while you look stuff up
or
B) if you are on a local network and you could try to use file sharing and a secondary FGU instance for building a quick module and then placing it directing in you FGU modules folder and then loading it from there, but I don't know if that would require a reload of the game instance to grab the module or not, but if it does require the reload anyway you could also try
C) have the secondary instance running and just have players hop between the games when needed. But I don't know how difficult juggling the character imports and exports would be.

[Jiminimonka]

Maybe one day Smiteworks will add a way to allow the GM to promote a player connected to their table to Assistant or GM or something and then they can co-GM without any shenanigans. Sorta like Assistant GM but in Core.

[Nyarly Dude]

Remote desktop software, perhaps?

[Griogre]

I think the remote software idea would work. Then make a folder that he has rights to that has shortcuts to the FG asset directory and he could just drop the images on the shortcuts to load them.

That would work with images like NPCs. For maps he would need to get stuff with json files with the LOS (if you needed LOS) but a lot of random map generators or map makers create output that can be exported in general VTT format which FG can use.

[LordEntrails]

FG will not read the contents of the FG Data folder dynamically while FG is running. Not unless the /reload command is run, which reloads the entire session. You would need to make sure to do a /save right before so that nothing is lost during play. And if you have a lot of assets, it could take longer than desired to reload the campaign.

As ju95 suggested, check out the Assistant GM extension. It will allow you to do some things, maybe enough.

[Griogre]

The GM assistant extension seems to mostly deal with helping the GM run combat and control NPCS from what I can tell, I don't use it. The OP's assistant is mostly dealing with maps and art assets.

I was thinking the assistant would drop the image into the campaign image folder, then the GM would open the Asset window and use the "Refresh" button at the bottom of the Asset window on the campaign folder. That would be much less disruptive of the game compared to the high level "/reload".

This would work with 5E and likely most CoreRPG based rulesets, but I'm not sure what game the OP is running.

[SilentRuin]

Yes what the OP is desiring is not what Assistant GM (5E only as all my extensions are - technically) provides. It provides just a way for player to completely own and take ownership of NPCs with their CT showing what host CT shows in managing an NPC (attack icon view). Essentially, my players control a lot of NPCs sometimes and this makes it much easier for me. Or I have one player controlling a bunch of NPCs for me so I can manage the "flow of the game". But in the end, an Assistant GM is a PLAYER not a host and has only access to NPCs they own.

Which is not what OP is asking for.