BUilding A Campaign with a New Game

[Michael Hopcroft]

I'm starting to build a campaign. Not a ruleset, but just a campaign. using CoreRPG Extended, to see how it would work and give me something to experiment on. I'm not ready to run it yet, but I'm laying the groundwork for future play.

The game itself won't be out until the end of the year (although a quickstart is already available). It's called Costume Fairy Adventures, and its an improvisational comedy game about Fairies.

In costumes.

Having adventures.

The system poses some interesting challenges. The most important is that player characters have cards in front of them representing costumes for their Fairy PCs to wear. Costumes endow their wearer with additional abilities (because the faeries aren't smart enough to realize that shouldn't work). Automatied die rolls aren't a good idea because the number of dice rolled is based on the number of traits of farieis and costumes that can be invoked. The die mechanic is that you roll a number of D6 and take the highest single die. If the highest signle die is lower than your stat, you succeed -- the higher the rroll, the most stylish your success. If none of the dice are successes, you failed. If you roll a 6 you get a magic point (used to do certain things, like change costumes) and the GM gets a Trouble Die which he can invoke later to create trouble for your characters. There's no mapping involved for the most part, characters who are "killed" pop back into existence again as soon as the player gets bored with not existing (but all her costumes are gone and she has to draw new ones).

The main functions of the VTT are die rolling, tracking, and secret communications among players. I'd like to be about to deal out the costume cards to the players and let them be able to, if they need a reminder, display the card on the desktop or on their copy of the desktop, but that may be an advanced function.

So I'm starting with character sheets. Where do I begin. And how to I add tokens, cards and other graphics to the system for use in my game?

[Michael Hopcroft]

Tech question: Is there a way to change the thread title? I can't help but feel it would have been a more attractive topic had I actually named the game in the thread title.

[Nickademus]

I believe if you edit the post, you can change the title as well.

[damned]

I dont think so - not for us normal users anyway...

I dont think you got any answers because its not a simple question...

1. It really does look like you want to build a ruleset and not a campaign... and building a ruleset is complex...
2. SW has some card decks - you could look at how they do it (again... complex)
3. You could just share images to all players. In FG3 once shared the players can go back and reopen the images later on. You can share images with individual players if you dont want players see what others have...
4. Players can /w to each other or if using voice can create sub channels
5. Non automated dice rolling is easy left click, right click for additional dice and throw!
6. I dont think there is any ability for players to bring their own images (costumes) or to share them with other players without your help...

Hope that helps in some way

[Michael Hopcroft]

I dont think so - not for us normal users anyway...

I dont think you got any answers because its not a simple question...

1. It really does look like you want to build a ruleset and not a campaign... and building a ruleset is complex...
2. SW has some card decks - you could look at how they do it (again... complex)
3. You could just share images to all players. In FG3 once shared the players can go back and reopen the images later on. You can share images with individual players if you dont want players see what others have...
4. Players can /w to each other or if using voice can create sub channels
5. Non automated dice rolling is easy left click, right click for additional dice and throw!
6. I dont think there is any ability for players to bring their own images (costumes) or to share them with other players without your help...

Hope that helps in some way

It does. To continue the thought-experiment process, let me take these in turn.

1-2. I might want to build a ruleset (certainly all the functionality of a ruleset would help_), but I simply don't have the time or resources (ie knowledge). XML programming is something I'm completely lost in. I have the same problem with Hero Lab -- I want to alter things and create new stuff, but the prospect of trying to figure out how to do it is so daunting I never begin. With help -- substantial help -- I might be able to do something like this, but it's such a niche game that getting such help is unlikely.

3-4: This is somewhat better. The players' "hands" in Costume Fairy Adventures are not secret (a question I specifically asked the publisher in anticipation of such a response). So if sharing images is not a big deal that would be a great boon to this game. I don't yet know where images come from or go in FG. Is there a specific place where one can put graphics so that they can be used in all rulesets and campaigns should the desire present itself? The way I see it, the more pictures the better.

5: Throwing dice (once I figured it out) was a lot of fun last night.

6: BYOI is not a problem for me. The costumes come in a deck of cards (36 in the quickstart, 108 or so in the final game due out at the end of the year) that the GM deals out to the players. Each player gets three, among which they can switch back and forth as the situation requires. The costumes give them special powers (the fairies aren't smart enough to know it shouldn't work that way). The only graphic likely to come from a player is a portrait/token.

So it sounds like the campaign itself is quite doable, even if a ruleset would be a bit much. I'm in the process of building one (the very start -- all it is right now is the placeholder in CoreExtended). I'm starting right at the beginning with character sheets, which should require little to no automation.

[damned]

It does. To continue the thought-experiment process, let me take these in turn.

1-2. I might want to build a ruleset (certainly all the functionality of a ruleset would help_), but I simply don't have the time or resources (ie knowledge). XML programming is something I'm completely lost in. I have the same problem with Hero Lab -- I want to alter things and create new stuff, but the prospect of trying to figure out how to do it is so daunting I never begin. With help -- substantial help -- I might be able to do something like this, but it's such a niche game that getting such help is unlikely.

3-4: This is somewhat better. The players' "hands" in Costume Fairy Adventures are not secret (a question I specifically asked the publisher in anticipation of such a response). So if sharing images is not a big deal that would be a great boon to this game. I don't yet know where images come from or go in FG. Is there a specific place where one can put graphics so that they can be used in all rulesets and campaigns should the desire present itself? The way I see it, the more pictures the better.

5: Throwing dice (once I figured it out) was a lot of fun last night.

6: BYOI is not a problem for me. The costumes come in a deck of cards (36 in the quickstart, 108 or so in the final game due out at the end of the year) that the GM deals out to the players. Each player gets three, among which they can switch back and forth as the situation requires. The costumes give them special powers (the fairies aren't smart enough to know it shouldn't work that way). The only graphic likely to come from a player is a portrait/token.

So it sounds like the campaign itself is quite doable, even if a ruleset would be a bit much. I'm in the process of building one (the very start -- all it is right now is the placeholder in CoreExtended). I'm starting right at the beginning with character sheets, which should require little to no automation.

Sharing images is not a big deal - super easy and a basic feature of FG.
When making your images - consider the size of the images. You have 36 cards - I would aim for them to be saved in a format with a size of 200kb or less. They only need to be uploaded to the players once but that initial upload does take some time. Depending on many factors - uploading a campaign of 10mb in size to 4 players could take even as much as an hour the first time. Remember that when getting people connected up...

Have you made the 20 spin yet?

Players can load their own portraits... in fact you cant load them for the players unless you login as the player!

If you have used Psicodelixs extension - you could always bust that open and work out what needs to be changed to add just a few extra fields. Dont do it in the same extension - make them into a new extension otherwise if Psicodelix updates his your changes will get lost. You can have more than one extension loaded at a time.

[Trenloe]

Players can load their own portraits... in fact you cant load them for the players unless you login as the player!

In FG 3.0 the GM can now add portraits to player characters.

I forgot about this and have recently responded to a different thread saying you needed to login as a player - DOH!

[damned]

ooops - link to extension is here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...l=1#post166221 - and another ooops - its an actual ruleset not extension... but it contains only a small number of new features.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Well, I just downloaded an old edition of XML Notepad from Microsoft. Now if only I knew what I was looking at or where to find what I am looking for.

[Trenloe]

Well, I just downloaded an old edition of XML Notepad from Microsoft. Now if only I knew what I was looking at or where to find what I am looking for.

It's time to read some documentation! :-o

Have a look at the Ruleset modification guide: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/modguide/ particularly the "windows and controls" section - controls are the GUI elements of Fantasy Grounds.

More information about each control can be found in the Ruleset reference guide in the "elements" section: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/refdoc/