Map Parcel Extension [Fantasy Grounds Unity]

[Serbaayuu]

Found this extension while I was looking for a way to give my fresh party control over their newly bought beast of burden & cart where they can store a bunch of their stuff on the road.

Before I throw $25 at the two extensions, I just want to make sure it does what I'm looking for -- can I make a "Cart" NPC or page for them, and the players will be allowed free access to open that panel and drag-and-drop various inventory items between it and themselves? It sounds like I need both Map Parcel and Polymorphism to do that.

Lots of the other listed features are cool, but the players being able to manage an inventory that's separate from their personal sheet is the most vital for me here.

[SilentRuin]

Found this extension while I was looking for a way to give my fresh party control over their newly bought beast of burden & cart where they can store a bunch of their stuff on the road.

Before I throw $25 at the two extensions, I just want to make sure it does what I'm looking for -- can I make a "Cart" NPC or page for them, and the players will be allowed free access to open that panel and drag-and-drop various inventory items between it and themselves? It sounds like I need both Map Parcel and Polymorphism to do that.

Lots of the other listed features are cool, but the players being able to manage an inventory that's separate from their personal sheet is the most vital for me here.

Never waste money on extensions - always write your own like I do! And if you can't then look for a free one that does what you want. And only if you can't find one that is free, and you feel like taking a HUGE RISK (EXTENSIONS = RISK) then... and only then... Think again.

And if your still committed to wasting your money on extension go ahead knowing they will be broken from time to time by FG updates and drive you nuts.

But yes, it will do what you want as far as I understand you. Plus Grim Press puts these things on sale, sales are the bane of me right up there with users!

Plus, if I have not YET convinced you buying an extension is crazy, Grim press puts out videos on my extensions including this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag8Z...LW_CGrWunn074z

[MrDDT]

Found this extension while I was looking for a way to give my fresh party control over their newly bought beast of burden & cart where they can store a bunch of their stuff on the road.

Before I throw $25 at the two extensions, I just want to make sure it does what I'm looking for -- can I make a "Cart" NPC or page for them, and the players will be allowed free access to open that panel and drag-and-drop various inventory items between it and themselves? It sounds like I need both Map Parcel and Polymorphism to do that.

Lots of the other listed features are cool, but the players being able to manage an inventory that's separate from their personal sheet is the most vital for me here.

I don't know what SR is saying, I'm pretty sure he doesn't know what he is saying.

You need both Map Parcel and GM Assistant to give the options for a player to fully move stuff to the NPC and back to the PC.

Map Parcel gives the NPC inventory.
GM Assistant allows the player to control it fully (like a GM). By dragging the creature onto the PC portrait in the top left.

Polymorphism doesn't do anything with this unless they are changing into that creature and that's a whole new animal (pun intended).




EDIT:

So after talking to SR, seems like he was giving the option on how to make it work without needing any other exts other than MP. You wouldn't create an NPC, you would make a parcel giving players access to it, then putting an image token of a cart on the map that is linked on the parcel.

The players can move that token around on the map and move items in an out of the parcel (if they have access by dragging it and dropping it on the players or making it public).

This would not be an "NPC" per say as it would not be in the CT, nor would it have the options that a CT creature can have (like effects tracking, HP etc).

[Serbaayuu]

Thank you both for the advice, making my own is always a thought, but I spent an entire 5-6 hours just adding some extra proficiency-bubbles to the Languages tab of the character sheet the other day for a little table rule of mine, so an entire working inventory management system might be beyond me lol.

By the way, the reason I mentioned Polymorphism is because on the Map Parcel Forge page it says:

Polymorphism Integration: If using the Polymorphism extension, players can access NPC inventories—perfect for sidekicks and companions.

But if GM Assistant is what actually does that, I'm glad I asked first.

I realize FG updates things essentially at random so yeah, relying on extensions is not the safest thing in the world. I barely use any though, so this would be the only big one that could cause me any problems in the long run.

SilentRuin, if I did buy Map Parcel (and possibly GM Assistant as MrDDT suggested I may need to do what I like), you as the creator do receive payment for them, right? I've never bought anything on Fantasy Grounds Forge before, so I don't really know how it works.

[MrDDT]

Thank you both for the advice, making my own is always a thought, but I spent an entire 5-6 hours just adding some extra proficiency-bubbles to the Languages tab of the character sheet the other day for a little table rule of mine, so an entire working inventory management system might be beyond me lol.

By the way, the reason I mentioned Polymorphism is because on the Map Parcel Forge page it says:



But if GM Assistant is what actually does that, I'm glad I asked first.

I realize FG updates things essentially at random so yeah, relying on extensions is not the safest thing in the world. I barely use any though, so this would be the only big one that could cause me any problems in the long run.

SilentRuin, if I did buy Map Parcel (and possibly GM Assistant as MrDDT suggested I may need to do what I like), you as the creator do receive payment for them, right? I've never bought anything on Fantasy Grounds Forge before, so I don't really know how it works.

SR is the creator he does great work. He has published them under Grim Press (which is who I work for as the EXT guy and many other things I do over there).

So the way it works in this exact case would be Smiteworks (They are the ones that made FG) takes their cut, GP takes a cut, and SR gets the rest.
I'm not exactly sure the breakdown of these as a % though.

[SilentRuin]

Thank you both for the advice, making my own is always a thought, but I spent an entire 5-6 hours just adding some extra proficiency-bubbles to the Languages tab of the character sheet the other day for a little table rule of mine, so an entire working inventory management system might be beyond me lol.

By the way, the reason I mentioned Polymorphism is because on the Map Parcel Forge page it says:



But if GM Assistant is what actually does that, I'm glad I asked first.

I realize FG updates things essentially at random so yeah, relying on extensions is not the safest thing in the world. I barely use any though, so this would be the only big one that could cause me any problems in the long run.

SilentRuin, if I did buy Map Parcel (and possibly GM Assistant as MrDDT suggested I may need to do what I like), you as the creator do receive payment for them, right? I've never bought anything on Fantasy Grounds Forge before, so I don't really know how it works.

Yeah that was not written by me - I originally just cut/paste it from Grim Press description - map parcels is what does the inventory. I've removed the polymorphism reference on page 1 thanks for noticing that. Been there forever.

Yes, I get paid a part of the forge proceeds but as anyone who has heard my diatribes in Grim Press discord and other places... I do these extensions for me. My players suggested I sell them here about 5 years or so ago so I did under the assumption users would find bugs before my games did.

Wow was that naive

Users are the worst! Anyway, I put in what I want as a grab bag of things I need as I find them (usually in Generic Actions) so I'm not really governed or driven by user needs - only my own. As MrDDT can attest

[Serbaayuu]

Thank you both! I have a clearer idea of everything now. I will chat about this with my players and consider buying the extensions before our next session. I appreciate someone who makes tools for their own use and shares them, it's always great to see.

[Serbaayuu]

Hey there, updating since I did end up buying those 2 extensions. They work well and I think my players will be happy with them, but I have what is either a bug report or something needing clarification:

It seems like any NPC's Inventory page does not calculate their Encumbrance values until they've been placed into an encounter map. Once placed into a map and the map-specific instance of that NPC token is checked, they have the expected values in their Encumbrance fields - check the screenshot. The Friendly Spider on the left is the sheet for the NPC opened from the NPCs list, while the Friendly Spider on the right is the token/sheet opened by double-clicking the spider's token on the map in the background.

spider weight.png

So, is this a bug with the NPC sheet? I'd expect any NPC with a Strength score to have those fields auto-calculated.

Using an instance of the NPC on a map is OK for monsters, but for something like the party's pack animal or other shared inventory carried over long distances, we'll want to use the NPC from the NPC list rather than having to make a new token in every single map. (Sorry if I'm using FGU terminology about tokens and NPCs wrong - hopefully my meaning is clear.)

[SilentRuin]

Hey there, updating since I did end up buying those 2 extensions. They work well and I think my players will be happy with them, but I have what is either a bug report or something needing clarification:

It seems like any NPC's Inventory page does not calculate their Encumbrance values until they've been placed into an encounter map. Once placed into a map and the map-specific instance of that NPC token is checked, they have the expected values in their Encumbrance fields - check the screenshot. The Friendly Spider on the left is the sheet for the NPC opened from the NPCs list, while the Friendly Spider on the right is the token/sheet opened by double-clicking the spider's token on the map in the background.

spider weight.png

So, is this a bug with the NPC sheet? I'd expect any NPC with a Strength score to have those fields auto-calculated.

Using an instance of the NPC on a map is OK for monsters, but for something like the party's pack animal or other shared inventory carried over long distances, we'll want to use the NPC from the NPC list rather than having to make a new token in every single map. (Sorry if I'm using FGU terminology about tokens and NPCs wrong - hopefully my meaning is clear.)

Encumbrance is triggered by FG code functionality ( for PCs and tricked into working for NPCs) and like many things is only triggered when it is in CT. I’m not sure you are saying it’s required to be on map and Ct or not ever putting things in CT without being on map or not. For sure this will NOT do encumbrance outside of CT. Some data is CT only generated data and I “think” encumbrance is one of those. Not sure what happens if you copy CT entry back into NPC list but the NPC list will not do encumbrance.

[Serbaayuu]

Excellent suggestion on dragging the CT entry back to the NPC list. I just tried that, and for some reason it looks like it saves the encumbrance data (I guess it just needs to generate the sums 1 time). I was then able to drag the copied NPC back onto the combat tracker and use it as I'd normally expect to do.

So, for stuff like this, I will just create an NPC, put them on the combat tracker once, copy them back into the NPC list, and keep that copied one as the final version.

Seems like a silly quirk of the engine but I can live with that.

Thank you again for the help!