Last night was the first session of my first ever attempt to run an online RPG session. As I mentioned some weeks back, the plan was to do this via the Society of Extraordinary Gamers using Fantasy Grounds and Teamspeak.
In short, the game was good and broadly a success.
Here’s the skinny on how I found GMing with Fantasy Grounds.
Prep
I started about two weeks ago. At first, the program seemed very daunting… but, in all truth, taking the time to watch the videos posted on the Fantasy Grounds Wiki was worth every minute. Personally, I found the videos by Dulux Oz to be the most helpful (despite his overly soft-spoken tones). Within a day or so, I was confident enough to start prep.
In short, the task is to input the information you need. Using the very spartan D&D 5e module, which comes free with the software, I was able to get going very easily. One of the most powerful tools is the ability to create links to other content, allowing you to cross-reference your notes and build a coherent set of prep that suits your own style.
Three prep sessions, each around 1-2 hours, was all it took to prepare material enough for probably 3-4 sessions. Not bad at all.
And, dude, leverage the power of the cut-and-paste wherever you can.
Connecting
The system for hosting a game is very straight-forward. You set-up a campaign and remote users log in via the internet. Although one player had some technical difficulties, it was very painless from my perspective – just provide the players with an “alias” and let them connect.
Fantasy Grounds can be a little slow on first connection, especially if you’ve set things up to “push” a lot of data to the players at load… but, to be fair, it was faster than I expected. 1-2 minutes is fine.
Playing
I found it fairly easy to run the session… although I was on a constant learning curve as I discovered more and more features of the software. In short, as I played, I became more impressed hour by hour.
Characters were created by the players. This took about an hour… four players at first, two joined us later. They were able to independently get on with the task, freeing me up to monitor and (where needed) helpfully tweak details. As GM, it’s great to be able to see all the character sheets in a “live” format, and to be able to edit them. I wish I could do that at the face-to-face table… especially without the player knowing I’m checking.
I discovered the Party Sheet first. Then I remembered about the Combat Tracker. These two tools are excellent – the former lets you see a summary of the characters in the party, while the latter essentially manages the combat sequences. Players actually do a lot of the management tasks, leveraging features of the software, and I found it easier to be focused on the action and my own decision-making than if I was at a face-to-face session.
Key to exploration and combat are maps. I found the system in Fantasy Grounds reasonable too. I certainly had some teething problems with the “mask” (the layer that hides the areas of the map the players can’t see), but otherwise it was fine. If I had one wish, it’d be to have dynamic lighting effects, such as torch radii… but, honestly, that’s greedy.
How’d It Feel?
It felt good.
Actually, the hardest thing was adapting to GMing with only voices and no faces. I am so used to reading body language around the table; just having voices makes it harder to “read” the happiness of the players… but, in truth, I just asked – “are we having fun yet?”
Other than this slight distance, the game ran very much like a tabletop session. In fact, if anything, the computer provided some things that are hard to emulate face-to-face: the dice tower to allow players to roll their dice but not see the results (useful for Perception-type stuff); the combat tracker automating the player’s initiative order; the ability to automate the damage records; the use of any image for a “board” with “miniatures”… the list is much longer than you’d have patience to read.
It felt good. I quickly got a sense of how to control the new interface and, once I felt in control, it flowed more and more as the session progressed.
What’s Next?
Having woken up excited to prep the next session, I realised that I can simply edit all of the locations in the adventure based on what happened last night. What I mean is that, unlike with a paper-and-pen set of notes, I can edit the notes very simply and easily. What’s next for me is to take the time to alter the details of how things look in response to the player’s actions. It’s easy and really makes the adventure much more dynamic… and all without scribbled pencil notes on scrappy papers.
Finally, I can just keep prepping. I can do as much as I want and it’s all there waiting for the players to discover it. Now that I’ve got the hang, I find that prep is quicker and easier with Fantasy Grounds: I can type faster than I can write; the links and dynamic nature of the software means that it’s actually easier to stitch together a game than I ever found offline.
Yes, I’m a convert. I just wonder if there’s a way that I can use Fantasy Grounds at the regular face-to-face table too.
Game on!
It did feel a lot like a tabletop RPG. Not seeing the players for body language and other visual clues was disconcerting but once we got going it became less so. I think it will make the Roleplaying part of the game both more demanding and more deliberate while making the technical details and mechanical aspects of the game more precise and intuitive. There are a great many powerful, useful, and accessible tools in this particular bag. Looks like its a great step forward.
My group uses fantasy grounds at the table. we all have out laptops, the ease of the automation speeds up the game so much that it allows us to do more in a given time than we would without it. , and when Fantasy grounds 3 finally comes out with dynamic lighting and tablets support it will even be better yet.
You can use a projector to project the player side of the client onto a table. Take a look at the Tavern section of the FG forums. There’s been a few thoughts on this lately.
I use FG with 3.5 and it’s even more impressive, because the rulebooks and monsters are included in the program. I love this program, it would actually be hard to go back to face to face tabletop.