Savage Worlds Ruleset, tokens and grid

[VenomousFiligree]

Tokens no longer appear to snap to the grid in the Savage Worlds ruleset. Is this something that got broke in the latest update?

[Doswelk]

Tokens no longer appear to snap to the grid in the Savage Worlds ruleset. Is this something that got broke in the latest update?

This broke a while back...

It was when the option to snap to grid was made selectable (in a ruleset that supported it!).

I do know that it is on the list of Bugs I have been reporting to ASilva who according to this thread is doing the updates:

Savage Worlds Ruleset v3.1 (in progress by ASilva) - From the

[Invain63]

Just in case the devs are reading...

I observed a few map/token/combat tracker issues last night related to the grouping option in the combat tracker. Regular non-grouped entries can have their tokens highlighted on the map when it is their turn, have an attacker's icon show up in the combat tracker entry when targeted, and benefit from the auto-numbering optional feature. Combat Tracker entries that are part of a group don't benefit from any of these features.

Imagine how frustrating that is when dealing with 30 zombies!

-Kevin McD

[Doswelk]

Yes you are right...

I dug out the old SWDev (V2.5) edition I was testing for over a year and this indeed did not have this issue, somewhere along the line to V3 this must have been broken.

I've sent a copy of this to the poor chap that keeps plugging away at the code to make it work (I keep finding him more bugs!)

[phloog]

So it's been broken for a while, and am I to assume it's going to STAY broken? If it was already broken for a long time as of January, and it hasn't been fixed...has this company (or the one who did that ruleset) decided to abandon this product?

I've been using Klooge instead of FG for a while, but when they came out with the TAG - Daring Tales for FG I decided to try going back to FG with the SW ruleset...I think that was probably a mistake.

Here's what I've got...

1) No snapping to grids, apparently

2) No measurement of distance when I move a token, while Klooge (and other products) give me a readout of distances as I move about

3) No maps - -granted, this is one of my pet peeves with the DToA already - they want to be abstract, but I want at least some way of showing where people are. So the adventures rarely have any maps...BUT...I'd hoped when I bought the 'ready to play' FG version they'd have added maps...nope. So it's built for a remote play product, but apparently we're supposed to just chat it out.

4) So I built my own images to use as maps, and I started adding links in the module - - no go...you can add them, but as soon as you close and return, the links are broken - so I link my map of the lair, then when I leave, come back, and click on the link, I get the image file of the character sheet for one of the PCs...which brings me to the next problem....

So I decide that maybe I'll just keep using Klooge for my maps since it actually allows snapping and measurement, and I'll just use FG for the characters...BUT then...

5) Am I missing something, or did they release a whole set of modules that are primarily designed for a pre-generated set of characters, and they only provided IMAGES of the character sheets, so you can't even assign them out as PCs/tokens and you can do nothing with the stats unless you type them in yourself?

What am I missing here?

So here are the ten or so personalities/NPCs involved, and you can use them and click on their stats, but if you use the pre-gens you get to manually type them all in....

underwhelming, but I would like to know if they've dropped support for this product so I can try to figure out which product to go with.

[Griogre]

1) The next release of the SW ruleset should fix the snapping to grid. The SW ruleset was originally made by DA which was bought out by Smiteworks USA so the Ruleset is still supported and in development.

2) If you turn on Lock tokens then when the players lay out a path the distance will be measured. This does not work for the GM. If you hold down both mouse buttons and drag a pointer it will show distance for either the player or GM if you have overlay-ed a grid on the map with FG. There are fundamental differences between Klooge and FG and one of them is in their mission goals. FG goal is to mimic the the table top in a face to face game. Klooges is to simulate a roleplaying game. Thus because you don't usually have a string behind you figure as you move it on the battle map FG does not place a high priority on automatic counting. Neither approach is wrong and you should use the VTT that fits your style best. FG does have a much lower learning curve though because it does mimic the game table so most new users pick up how to use it faster. Klooge on the other hand has much more automation and once you know how it works it can do almost anything for you.

3) That is not possible in a license product. License products must mirror the released product *exactly* unless the publisher agrees and like you said they are not likely to do that because they believe the lack of maps is a "feature." You don't have to "chat" it out - you are suppose to either make the maps of the fly as needed, or spend the time ahead of time making a map - just like you would in a face to face game.

4) This should not happen unless you are trying to make links into a library module which should not happen or you are making links into an adventure module and then re-exporting the module. Can you give a step by step walk though of this problem?

5) I don't have the module so I can't answer that.

[phloog]

1) Is there an expected date for the next release?

2) I guess I get the mission goals, but I don't get this piece of it. I'd rather not have such a complete replication of my gaming table that it periodically emits gas due to the soda and snack foods (as my friends might)...it seems to me that providing measurements as you move is - while admittedly not something you can do instantly at the table - sufficiently unobtrusive as to be a valuable feature.

When I use Klooge, I use none of the automation, just the (extremely powerful) mapping bits.

3) I guess that I would dispute that - - wouldn't the license itself be the determining factor? Meaning: Couldn't/Shouldn't they have sought to make the license so that a map could be added for this product? And of course even if the license was 'just the things in there now', I'm not getting why none of the PCs were included as actual FG data instead of images, when all the NPCs were. To me failure to integrate the pre-gen PCs is a break with this exact replication idea. (which is point #5)

4) The process I used may be wrong, but then it seems like FG needs to work perhaps differently. What I did was open the module for the DToA adventure, then opened the STORY window, and selected one of the chapters. When I found that this chapter had no map, I added an image to the proper directory, then EDITed the chapter, created text that just said MAP, then highlighted/clicked that and added a LINK to the map image. I went out of edit mode, and clicked it and it worked...but closing and reopening resulted in any links bringing up a different image.

So...even if you can't do what I'm doing..shouldn't it have given me an error or warning, instead of letting me do it and then giving me the wrong image?

If it's impossible to add links to the story entries in a published module, then I'd call this a need in FG. This isn't a killer, since I guess I can just leave them unlinked and open them from the IMAGE pane directly, it just seems to be a flawed behavior to allow a link but then corrupt it.

[ddavison]

Hello phloog,

You bring up several really good points and questions. We currently have a freelance dev working on a Deadlands extension for Savage Worlds and I have asked him to address several of these known issues with the SWv3 ruleset as part of that release. Work began on this in December I believe but it has not been submitted for me to review it yet.

Regarding some of the modules which do not include maps, I agree this is less than ideal. Since our license is specific to the conversion of the printed product, we try to remain as faithful as possible to the original adventure. We would like to include the pre-generated PCs as selectable characters as well but the FG engine does not currently allow character sheets for PCs to be exported with the module and re-used. It kind of does but it was too buggy to include at this stage. We hope to have that feature in the future. For that reason, we have included the images that can be shared with the players as a reference when they fill out their own character sheets.

What you tried to do with the map was exactly what I had envisioned people would do and I am surprised to see that it wasn't working. We were expecting the same results as in the map modules available here from 0one Games, where you can open the linked story element and add your own detail. Those details are remembered when you open the campaign again later. You can drag NPCs and images over to the same tab as your module to keep them grouped together.

The problem is that the linking is currently getting broken. I didn't notice this previously but it sounds related to an issue JPG is currently tracking down for the next release of FG2. Essentially, the images, npcs or other database elements are getting assigned the next "id #" in the list. In this case, the id value of your image is conflicting with an id value already assigned within the module. When you click the link, it finds and returns the first matching record -- which happens to be the first pre-gen character sheet. I will check with John to see how close he is to resolving that issue, since it has a pretty big impact on the use and expandability of modules.

-Doug

[Invain63]

The biggest issue I have with the maps in the one Savage World adventure I have (Zombie Run) is that they have a grid already on the graphic. When I overlay my grid, it looks terrible, so I have to use a paint program to erase the existing grid from the map. This is the sort of thing that I would expect the publisher to be flexible about when porting from a static print format to a flexible electronic one.

Thanks for all the hard work of the FG staff!

-Kevin McD

[ddavison]

That is one thing we try to handle on newer conversions. If the images are resized so that they match a specific grid size, we then include that info so that the FG grids can easily be overlaid on the image. The new map packs include links to maps with 50 pixels per square grids and normally several other sizes as well.