Have not seen any of the new releases from Chaosium show up on FGU... is COC still being supported?
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Have not seen any of the new releases from Chaosium show up on FGU... is COC still being supported?
I think only if someone in the CoC user community makes the module for Smiteworks.
Is there somethin specific you would like to see?
I think I'd like to see complete rules at minimum. I could live without new adventures, because it's easy to add my own handouts, but there are a few very important rulebooks missing:
- the bestiary - like... imagine trying to play D&D without the Monster Manual. Can't explain why it's not in store if CoC is supposed to be officially supported game. Sole reason I'm not playing CoC online. It's the resorce where you find most important info about the monsters, gods and different adventure ideas.
- cults - book explaining how to create adversaries for the players.
- through the ages - small book with rules for different settings.
- investigator's guide for gaslight - with the equipment for playing in the 1800s
It seems to me that Chaosium has given up on fgu. No more talks about Runequest, nothing Pendragon and nothing about our beloved Cthulhu mythos since Gateway to terror I think. Don't get me wrong there is a lot of CoC adventures and ressources for fgu. But this silence is worrisome, particularly because Chaosium is now on Foundry. What about Regency Cthulhu, Arkham, the Order of Stone, Harlem Unbound, a Time to Harvest, Cthulhu by Gaslight...
I would start with the CoC Starter Set with a new theme and dices to encourage new players to discover this wonderful and exciting rpg.
I don't know about giving up on Chaosium's part. They posted about Fantasy Grounds on their blog this month, and they are present on every major VTT. Maybe there's lack of communication between the companies or maybe not enough people to make modules for FGU? Either way, something should be done on SmiteWorks part to clarify the situation: are they planning on releasing anything more, or is CoC development stopped?
Negative feedback loop, I would think; it's hard for somebody who mostly plays CoC to justify buying FGU (it's not a terribly crunchy ruleset that seems to need high-end automation, and FGU hasn't been keeping up with more recent first-party titles from Chaosium at all) and without that player base it's hard to justify developers working to convert CoC content for FGU.
The users of FGU are probably mostly Americans. They play D&D and a little bit of Pathfinder. Here in France CoC is n°1, D&D second, in Japan they mostly play CoC.
The great force of a vtt like Foundry is, and we don't speak of it sufficiently imho, is that it translate most of the contents automatically.
So there is no incentive for Smithworks to convert rpg's that are not played a lot in USA. And they convert things that are only played in USA like GI Joe... From a foreigner eye it seems so strange!
Well, Fantasy Grounds is an online business and when you check the report that roll20 used to publish, D&D is most popular with more than 50% of people playing it, and CoC is second most popular RPG online with 11.9%, third is Pathfinder 1&2 with 4.6% (data from 2021, but I imagine it didn't change much). I don't know how popular it is with FGU users, but there's a lot of potential customers if CoC gets actual support.
As mentioned in the second post above it's reliant on someone in the Community to develop the modules. Having said that there's only 1 title for CoC on the developer list out of a total of 555 products looking for a developer.
COC sells fairly well for individual modules, but it has declined somewhat in the last 2 years. It has mostly been a community developer led effort to support the system. Sometimes community devs wax and wane in interest and enthusiasm in converting new material. In order to maintain enthusiasm within a community, it requires players and GMs in that community to be active as well. Let the community devs know what you are currently playing, what new stuff you really want to see, and maybe consider becoming a community dev yourself if you enjoy that aspect of the hobby.
If you want to join the community dev program, you can earn a 15% commission on conversion work. You can reach out to [email protected] and provide your username, background in FG, and a list of what game systems and/or specific products you would be interested in. Initially, we ask people to convert something they already have a PDF for, but once you are a proven resource, we can even request PDFs and raw source files for you to use in conversions.
Dough, could you share your opinion on the impossibility of translating FGU content on the fly? As a non-native English speaker, I can see the advantage for your competitors to translate English on the fly. But I can also see that this may not be legal. That said the competition doesn't seem to mind. In fact I think it's Google that does the translation, and it doesn't always work (the character sheets are translated, but not all the texts for example). So is it something that could be implemented in the futur for our beloved FGU?
Translating in FGU would need t be a manual process, since it's not web based and can't hook into web tools such as Google. It would mean that modules would need to be available in several languages taking up a lot more server space. I think you are also correct in that publishing modules in another language would require fresh licensing from the publishers. I'm assuming that Foundry have such permission but probably not since they have a fairly lax attitude to IP. Maybe also they don't need it if it's being done on the fly and not actually published in that language.Quote:
Originally Posted by Egheal
There are indeed licensing restrictions that come into play. Some publishers license out the rights to their IP to only specific companies to do translation services for them. You might be able to skirt around this with some sort of on-demand translation. I'm not sure.
For mechanics and UI translation, that stuff can be translated because game rules themselves are not copyrightable. Check out the link below for the community project for translating the UI.
LanguagePak (LPak) Community Project/Program
Most of our rulesets have been moved out of the vault so you can access the strings folder and the .xml there with the translations.
Thanks for your insights on this matter guys.
Do we think Chaosium would be open to the ruleset and the equivalent of the quick start content being made available for free? Much in the same way PRD and SRD content is provided. That would certainly make it more enticing for people to try.
I love the fact that the ruleset isn't in the vault any more, I lack time though to dig into it. I hope we do get some more content. I'd love to see vehicles fixed and the ability to put in dice roller style codes for random values. I get that the fact the it's Cores implementation of vehicles thats a fundamental issue thouhh. FGU implementation is still my favourite of this ruleset.
This thread reminds me that I really should get back to working on the conversion I was on before life got in the way. I do have some time off coming up, so will try to get back to it.
Also, I will second that request for the bestiary/Malleus Monstorum. I thought someone was working on that at one point. Otherwise I'd be tempted to give it a crack, but that might well be one where access to the raw resources would be required, since presumably players would want it to play nicely with all the first person gubbins that exists nowadays, and individually cutting out the images would destroy my sanity...
I did make a start on Malleus Monstorum for myself. The issue I hit was there wasn't a way to enter the random NPC states as laid out in the books. Essentially your tied to a x5 modifier being applied, so unless there was a mod to all the equivalent of dice roller expressions you'll never make it work.
I think the books have some interesting material but I certainly don't think they're necessary. What I would much prefer to see is more of the adventure modules. My time is hugely limited currently, gaming has very much taken a back seat. So I have less time to prep games. I'd also love to see CoC content from other publishers on here, like Stygian Fox or Critical Hit.
I'd be very surprised if Chaosium would sign off on a free version of the ruleset considering that they only thing they've put under ORC is the (updated) BRP Universal Game Engine. I don't believe that they've updated the licensing of related games like Call of Cthulhu or RuneQuest, nor was there any pre-ORC open license for such as far as I can tell.
I really wish there were more Cthulhu content available on FGU. Also, doesn't seem like the ruleset is getting updates either.
I know, I'm really disappointed that one of the main players in TTRPGs is seemingly being abandoned on Fantasy Grounds. I feels like a real mark of no confidence in the platform going forward. I'm always shocked that the support of such iconic games systems and publishers (also see Free League's games) is left to the good will of the community. I really wish Smite Works had the capacity to support these games themselves with their own resources.
Agreed. I don't understand what "official support" means anymore. How does a company support anything, when there's not one person working on it, is beyond me. I much prefer the approach of the competition, where there aren't that many officially supported games on Roll20 and Foundry, but they are developed and published in-house over there.
Let's use Roll20 as the example. They started just recently and already have all the rulebooks integrated into their compendium system and if you encounter a bug, you don't write about on some forum and pray a random dev sees it, but rather create a ticket in their help center, where you know for sure that a professional dev working for the company will sooner or later fix the issue. They also manage to publish new material as soon as it's available in print.
And here we can't even get a monster book that was published 5 years ago.
I want to start a campaign in CoC after my current 5e game concludes and I don't think I will move on to a program that has actual support for the game that I want to play.
im planning to submit a module to Smiteworks in the near future so hopefully it will be out by springAttachment 66474
If its well received I may well do another or two
Looking forward to it!! Looks great!Quote:
Originally Posted by hawkwind
Fantastic!Quote:
Originally Posted by hawkwind
Excellent news! Can't wait to try it!Quote:
Originally Posted by hawkwind
Cheers,
Simon
Thanks! i will wait for it to be in the CoC Bundle, then I will buy it.
I just added it to the bundle. Thanks for spotting that.