jordangreywolf (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jordangreywolf) wrote2017-11-24 08:05 pm
jordangreywolf) wrote2017-11-24 08:05 pm
Entry tags:
[Online RP] Fantasy Grounds - Black Friday
Okay, so I've got the GM package for Fantasy Grounds. Now I have to figure out how to use it ... and what to do with it. Digital_Rampage let me know about a Black Friday sale going on today, and how he was thinking about getting a few more packages for Pathfinder, but decided to hold back, since he has enough for the current campaign and figured he shouldn't get ahead of himself quite yet. And that prompted me to ask about the GM deal and -- why, yes, it turns out there's a sale going on.
The site itself doesn't say how LONG the sale is for. I found a third-party site referencing the sale and claiming that it's until December 2nd, but I decided not to take any chances.
In addition to getting the pricey main package, I got the Savage Worlds rule set, and the Adventure Deck add-on (primarily for the mechanics, as I suppose I'll have to program in my own custom cards).
One snag: When entering a username for an account, I entered a username based on my real-world name. I was told that this was disallowed because it contained a word on a list of words banned by the site administrator. I can make a pretty good guess as to what part of my last name tripped the censor -- this isn't the first time this has happened, but that was YEARS AGO, and I'm a little surprised to still be running into something so stupid today. I was able to sign in an account, but I'm going by "Jordan_Greywolf" there instead.
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For my home campaign, my Iron Kingdoms campaign is getting toward the end, I think. I mean, I COULD stretch it out a good long while, but the longer I stretch it out, the more loose ends there'll be that will want for tying up. With that in mind, since we had almost everybody for the previous game session (last weekend), I decided to bring up the prospect of "what next," with the idea that I had enough material to keep us going until February. (Maybe, MAYBE I could wrap up by the end of the year, but the more I think about it, the less likely that seems unless I have some pressure to do so.)
I confessed that I had no solid plans for what to run next. Why? Well, because my plans HAD been to run a Fallout-based campaign, but two players in my group have voiced their dislike for the setting (SV and Digital_Rampage, in particular), only one player specifically likes the setting (Goober_Chris), and the others (who are less frequent in their attendance anyway, though I didn't call out that factor) have been ambivalent. Therefore, I felt I needed a little more buy-in on whatever I do next. I wasn't expecting an answer/solution right away -- I just wanted to put it out there for people to think about.
Digital_Rampage was immediately interested in PATHFINDER. Goober_Chris suggested that, given the concern that I need some time to prep for the next campaign (and that it doesn't work so well for me to prep for a new campaign while I'm still running an old one), perhaps he could step in and GM for a while. HE could try running Pathfinder, and I could use that time to figure out what to run next and to prep for it.
I thought that was a pretty cool idea, actually. Another bonus is that Goober_Chris is an experienced and talented GM (I've watched some of his games at conventions, and learned a number of things about game prep from him), and I might actually learn something from checking out his GMing style.
I would lean heavily toward running Savage Worlds, simply because I'm familiar with the system, it requires little overhead for me to prep games, and I've got access to a wealth of source material from a number of Savage Worlds settings. Pathfinder would be my second choice only because it's pretty much just d20/3rd edition with a few tweaks, and I've run that before. (I had ISSUES with it, but I think they can be addressed.)
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As for what I might do *online*, that's another matter. First I need to figure out how the system works before I can promise anything. Some care will need to be taken when choosing which computer to install it on: Presently, I don't have a computer all my own. All the computer-purchasing I've been doing for the past decade or so has been for upgrading Gwendel's computer resources, not mine: Presently, we have one working desktop PC, and one laptop, both hers. (I have a laptop I use from work for various things, but of course that's primarily for WORK, and I'm not allowed to install any games on it.) I had an older PC (still running Vista), but it's flaky, to say the least. I don't know if it has enough power to run Fantasy Grounds. It seemed to struggle at times when running MapTools/RPTools for my online Wonderland No More campaign.
Once I get that settled, I'll have to familiarize myself with the system. I'm not willing to keep shelling out more and more money for adventure modules when I already have the printed books and PDFs on hand; the prices to get them in Fantasy Grounds format are comparable to getting the adventure in print. So, if I'm going to be customizing things, rather than just running from a "ready-to-go" module, I'll need to figure out the details of importing images as custom tokens, templates, overlays, maps, etc., and to get a handle on the mechanics of rolling the dice, managing player turns, etc.
More of a challenge might be how to tweak the system to account for house rules (alternate uses for Bennies, custom adventure cards, etc.). Some of that, I might be able to "hand-wave" without requiring any actual programming. We'll see.
THEN, perhaps I can settle upon what I could run online, and finding out who'd be available to play (and interested in some setting I'm willing to run). I'd love to get Koogrr involved, but it sounds like he's seriously busy.
Another key factor would be that if I get anyone with MUCK experience, I'm going to have to ask for some retraining on methodology. If TuftEars were to play, I may still use TeamSpeak to help coordinate with most of the group, but the chat box will still be critical for narrative and logging the action. The thing is, for such a setup, I'll have to stick just to people who are comfortable with typing, and I'll have to encourage people to be short and to-the-point when describing character actions, versus trying to write a "story paragraph" that can run on, while the rest of us are waiting to see what'll happen, and not even knowing for sure whether a given player is still typing, or whether he took off AFK to answer the door or whatever. I'd like to think that the Teamspeak channel might offer an alternate channel of communication (GM: "You still typing?" Player with Live Mic: "*tappity-tappity-tap!*" Player #2: "Yep, he's still typing!") but maybe the window-based interface could offer us other channels.
At the very least, once freed of the MUCK interface, if you're typing a small novel-sized "pose" in the Chat window, if the GM pings you, you could let the GM know you're still alive by ... I dunno, rolling a die or hitting a flag button or something that shows some activity ... rather than having to abandon your composition and then have to start over again.
Plus, in combat, with the turn-tracker, and the drag-and-drop interface, there are some things you could do that wouldn't require any narrative composition at ALL. When the flag shows up next to your character icon, you'd move your token on the map (which we can all see as it happens), drag and drop the dice for your skill or attack roll (which we'd also see), and -- in the case of an attack -- drop it on the intended target, then roll any damage dice if applicable, and the system handles the hit points / Shaken status / whatever automatically. Indicate you're done, and *ding* -- on to the next player! And then you can type up a description of what just happened at your leisure in the Chat box.
Basically, I'm hoping that even if we tackle "MUCK-style" RP (albeit a little lighter on the prose), the semi-automated die-rolling and card-pulling interfaces might make it somehow breeze along a little faster.
I have no idea what I'd run. First off, I probably need to run something that DOES NOT involve yet another fantasy-world-becomes-reality scenario. Avatars, Mirari, Wonderland-No-More ... a trend, perhaps? ;) (Okay, so I didn't run Mirari.) As much as Fantasy Grounds might facilitate the combat, I still feel as if more story focus would be better for what I can accomplish online. (But of course more story focus means more typing, right? Argh!)
There's a Kickstarter for a "Flash Gordon" RPG for Savage Worlds right now. It's kind of funny, since there was already "Slipstream" (kind of "Flash Gordon with the serial numbers filed off"), and it would be easy to imagine this game as just being the same thing but with some brand naming, but there are a lot of "storytelling" game elements added in.
In particular, there are new Cliffhanger cards that are something like Adventure Cards, but they focus on the players having some plot control over new "complications" for the plot -- the rocketship suddenly develops problems and goes down to crash-land, a new monster enters the fray, the PCs are all captured and taken to a bad guy's lair and put into some sort of devious deathtrap, etc. It's a way to end a scene in which the PCs might be overwhelmed (or bored?) but is offset by the fact that everyone's Bennies gets reset, and it's usually accompanied by a bit of recuperation on the PCs' part (i.e., a brief moment of being knocked out, and suddenly you wake up, back up to full health, stat-wise). I'm doing a horrible job of describing it, but it sounds like an interesting mechanic.
Other possibilities would be some classic Deadlands (wild west, but with supernatural weirdness), Fallout (retro-futuristic post-apocalyptic), Interface Zero (cyberpunk, though I'd need to make some tweaks for power balance), Necessary Evil (superheroics ... except that you play the SUPERVILLAINS, who are the only ones left to save the world), Weird Wars (WWI, WWII, Vietnam War, etc., but with weird science and supernatural elements), ETU (East Texas University: kind of like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the RPG) ... or a lot more. I suppose I could put together a long list, but I'd probably do better to poll potential players to see what they're aching for, first, and then see if I can meet them midway.
But of course I'm getting ahead of myself. I need to make sure I CAN run something, first. And I definitely need to get through the holiday season. ;)
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Otherwise than that, something science fiction and optimistic might be nice, a Star Trek-like setting maybe, or a First Contact scenario where human (or some other race) explorers are on board a prototype faster-than-light ship. Maybe the ship gets flung across the galaxy and the players have to find their way home, making friends with alien races (or at least trying not to offend them).
For more of a beer-and-pretzel flavor, I wonder how it would go over if you set up a D&D-style game where the player characters are all monsters of the kind that would be encountered in a 1st level dungeon? I.E. kobolds, orcs, wyverns, dragon hatchlings, displacer beast kittens, that sort of thing. Maybe the premise is their dungeon is overpopulated and they're being sent to go find a new dungeon to settle down in. Just a random idea!
Either way, hope your next game is lots of fun for you. ^_^
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That sounds like Slipstream. :) (Or at least one of the possible "entry points" into the setting.) Although that of course would be more "rocketships-and-rayguns" sci-fi, trappings-wise, even if the situations could very well end up very "Star-Trekkie" in execution.
Regarding the last one ... haven't I told you about my Advanced MonsterQuest games? For convention games, I set up a dungeon, and each "MC" (Monster Character) was a different "monster" archetype common in Advanced HeroQuest (with some attempt at balancing), tasked with stopping waves of pesky adventurers from interrupting their Evil Overlord's massive ritual. For the game, I basically had a "script" for when different "hero" groups would enter the dungeon, and how they'd progress, UNTIL such time as they encountered the MCs and were interfered with.
They wouldn't make a straight beeline for the ritual chamber; some would habitually check every room for secret doors -- even if there weren't any to be found most of the time -- some would squabble (loudly!) over treasure after defeating minor NMC (non-monster character?) mooks, and one team would actually *set up* traps in its wake (and re-arm any that had been disarmed previously). Thanks to the Overlord's Magic Crystal Ball (and the tendency of "heroes" to argue loudly and cause other commotion), I had an excuse to make it clear where most of the "hero teams" were at any given moment (though there was a stealthy rogue who'd sneak around and would be harder to detect -- but at least he spent far more time looting and causing mayhem, and was more of a wild card than anything else).
For the most part, lesser mooks might be persuaded by the MCs to follow orders. Snotlings (gremlin-like things, related to goblins but smaller) tended to latch onto any Ork or Goblin character, once discovered, and would attempt to mimic anything their "hero" did (i.e., attack whatever the character attacked, help open doors, and so on) but their scampering and gleeful giggles could hinder sneak attempts. A few beastmen were in the dungeon, and could be bullied or badgered into acting as scouts or decoys. There was also a highly irritable dragon in one room, who would stay there for the duration of the scenario, and woe betide anyone who woke him up.
It played differently each time. Sometimes the MCs would promptly find excuses to turn on each other. Sometimes they'd actually kind-of sort-of work together. But it seemed like a fun deviation from the norm, for a change of pace.
That was just a one-shot, though -- not a whole *campaign*.
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The MC scenarios sound fun, like a board game sort of scenario. I guess for a campaign, you'd have to figure out a more overarching kind of plot.
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Nor could I manage a Star Trek game, because it could too readily devolve into a contest of technobabble, or the perfectly reasonable abuse of precedent. (All sorts of shenanigans are possible in a universe riven by temporal anomalies, casual time travel, god-like and capricious entities, matter replicators, transporters, etc., to the point where all too many "problems" are only as a result of a failure of imagination.) Oh, I could throw out IDEAS for scenarios, ad nauseum, but I haven't the confidence in any particular discipline to be a hard-nosed GM who can definitively say, "No, sorry, that's NOT how it works."
(And, IMHO, if you're going to run serious hard sci-fi, rather than heroic pulp, you need a GM who can confidently say "no," because true challenges should withstand a simple barrage of technobabble and sloppy pop science, whereas in pulp sci-fi there's more of an expectation of the "rule of cool.")
...
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But, GM should run what GM feels comfortable running!
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I suppose one thing would be to borrow a few cues from our Iron Kingdoms Unleashed campaign. That was, in a sense, a "MonsterQuest" sort of game (most of us were playing "monster" races), and we were indeed clearing out a ruined castle to turn into our new base/lair. Digital_Rampage turned over to me the job of mapping out the castle (while he'd populate it with monster encounters and a few secret-passage surprises), and of coming up with a system for gathering resources and making improvements to the keep.
Each week, we could generate resources, and if we gathered treasure, that could be translated into more. Hard choices had to be made about whether this week it was more important to patch a big gap in the outer wall, or clean up a room so it could be used for habitation, or build a kiln, or make some doors, etc. -- on up to the point where we'd fancy things up further by making a "battle pit" for training warbeasts, stables to hold mounts, animal pens and crop areas, a dedicated library and map room, etc. I basically made a mini-game out of it.
Some things had obvious in-game benefits, as, in order to utilize certain skills, we needed the appropriate workshop to practice them ... or the presence of a wall might give us a little longer to prepare if enemies lay siege to the base. Others offered minor "quality of life" improvements that would be tallied up, eventually offering other bonuses (more people move in, increasing our output; a specialist comes to join our group; our underlings clean up a few rooms on their OWN, sparing us the trouble; etc.) once we reached certain thresholds.
It was kind of fun putting it together ... but it really didn't seem to interest the group as a whole very much. A lot of the decisions for the group fell to ME, which felt a bit wrong to me, since I was the one who had come up with the system in the first place (albeit with Digital_Rampage's approval). Part of the problem was that IKRPG does a lousy job of defining the "economy" of the game: you get starting money, and there is a price list of equipment, but the pricing is a bit goofy. No guidelines are given as to how much the PCs should get paid for a mission, or how much it would cost to hire a henchman, or how much money is the sort of cash you should be looking at as an opportunity to go retire comfortably in the countryside.
There are orders of magnitude between the cost it takes for a warrior to get fully fitted out with the best equipment available, and what it takes, say, a warcaster to get prepped for battle. And then there are warlocks (with their warbeasts) for whom their most valuable resources (warbeasts!) have no price at all; there's no matter of "shopping" for what sort of warbeast you'll have -- you're wholly dependent upon the GM's generosity and discretion in terms of what critter you might be able to acquire, beyond the one you started the game with.
... so, I guessed wrong. There really was not much "loot" for us to acquire. We would make a lot of NO PROGRESS (or at least very little progress) for a long time, and then suddenly the GM would drop an entire advanced forge in our collective lap. (Okay, bad image. But, really, out of the blue we would just GET stuff, largely thwarting the idea of prioritizing things as we went.)
I think it could have some potential, but it was complex enough that it could have used quite a bit more play-testing.
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Building a base/lair does have its points as a campaign setting goes, but imagine how much anguish the players would be in should adventurers come calling-- no, the pesky adventurers are wrecking all the nice THINGS the players spent so much time building! :)