These tabletop emulators have been around for a while. There used to be a service called WebRPG I would hang around on in the 1990s. There's some free ones out there now called OpenRPG and ScreenMonkey (which is by NBOS).

This is a tale of how I settled on FantasyGrounds II and what my experience has been.

In February, I was getting involved with running adventures for the RPGA Xendrik Expeditions campaign. I needed a way to run some of these follow-on slots and DM's Mark adventures for people that I had recently met, but who lived far, far away (in some cases, overseas). In the latest iteration of the campaign standard there was a notice about 'Online Play' being considered fair game.

So there's my chance-- I could do it online.  

So I evaluated a bunch of programs, the free ones, and the trial versions of the not-free ones. FantasyGrounds was interesting because it didn't run in a web browser. Instead, it worked more like a program.

So here are some of the features I liked:
Meeting People
Through the FG website (which has a built in game scheduling calendar)  and a few well-placed ads I had no problems finding players. I have now gamed with people as far away as the UK and Germany! That was very cool.

Mapping:
FG has some neat possibilities like revealable maps and miniatures.. You can lay down any graphics you want and then overlay a grid on it, and do the tactical thing.. and then you could zoom back away from it and show the map from a strategic point of view. It lets players control their own miniature or counter, so it really is like a gaming tabletop. You can also draw or sketch right on the map or on a blank whiteboard type thing, and use that as a map (or just as a sketch). I have a tablet and stylus setup with my laptop so it's pretty easy to just sketch up a battlefield really quick and then throw a grid on it, and drop some miniatures on it.

Pointers and templates:
The grid feature is neat because it works with something called 'pointers'. For example, you can drag and drop areas of effect, cones, lines, and radius effects that highlight squares based on the grid. An example last week was a character casting 'burning hands'; he was able to just say "I cast Burning hands here.."
 and then he clicked and dragged a little area, and everyone was crystal clear which of the bad guys was in the affected area. The use of miniatures were themselves a huge boon to tactical adventure gaming-- but having it so that the squares highlight around them automatically is a very neat feature.  

Which brings me to

Virtual Miniatures:
FG supplies you with some generic counters lettered A-Z, and a few generic pieces like a 'skull' counter. But you can add on, for very cheap- any number of generic counters from third party artists. I bought a collection of Fiery Dragon counters- these are just digitized versions of the counters that were big in the 3.0 days. I now have a collection of characters, monsters, etc.
You can also drag character portraits off of the desktop to serve as counters. That's what we've doing lately.

Shareable Text
FG gives you a notepad that can be used in a variety of ways. Like-- you can store your notes on it (that seems obvious).. but you can also do this:
Prewrite some text- and then drag and drop that into the chat window. I'm not a fan of 'boxed text' but this kind of makes it easy to do. Also, you can take entire pages and share them: in my latest game, we have a shop that supplies a revolving selection of goods. The way I manage it is I edit the 'shop list' and then just share that page when the PCs visit the shop.

Identity Management
This is very cool for me as a DM. You can create any number of 'virtual identities' (for example, NPCs, your 'DM Voice', or even entities like "a mysterious sound".) Click on an identity and type and it seems to be coming from that person in the chat window. You can also hold down 'alt' when you press return and it will show up as 'OOC: (player name)'. You can 'pose' actions using a syntax similar to MU*, and the GM has the option of sending out text with no attribution (called 'story mode'). Related to this: there are a lot of little features in chat that I am still discovering. One of them is voting.
In the game last week, the players had to decide between continuing to explore the first level of the dungeon or heading down a recently discovered ramp. One player typed '/vote and it brought up a little window where everyone can weight in with a yes/no vote.

Drag and Drop Everything
Everything is drag and drop. You get hit by an attack? I roll damage, and just drag and drop it to the combat tracker. Roll initiative, drag and drop to the tracker. At the end of the sessions I even put out XP as drag and drop. The players just drop it on to their character sheets into the right box and it adds up automatically.

The Dice
Here's what ultimately sold Fantasy Grounds to me. In most of the other emulators I tried, you have a button to push for dice. Or maybe it's just a thing you type like "/roll 1d6" or whatever. In FG, you can actually grab a dice (click on it), and toss it on the tabletop, and it actually rolls.  



Anyhow, generally positive report for online gaming using a tabletop like this.


The drawbacks:
It's not perfect! Nope. There's no voice chat, and there's a learning curve to GMing using FG. I've had it crash. I've had other players crash when I was hosting, or suddenly be unable to see my maps.

It's not free. In fact, it's around 40$. That's for the GM-Edition.

If you just want a player client, those aren't free either. Those cost around $20. I see that as a benefit though. If your'e in for $20, I theorize that you may be more prone to treat the gametime with a bit of respect.

If you are hosting, you will have to get very familiar with your firewall and router. You'll need to learn how to log into your router and set up static IPs for the computers and other devices on your home network. You'll have to unblock certain ports and set up port forwarding. This part can be a bit frustrating. I had to take a little crash course in network administration when I first started running games, and in fact my first session totally didn't happen because I didn't set up my network correctly.

What about ruleset?  Is it rules-neutral or is it built around D20?  If the latter, is this the system that recently announced a Savage Worlds module?

Well, the default ruleset is D20, which, as you know, is the only ruleset that matters.

(HAHAHAHA! Snap!)

But you can change it a bit. FantasyGrounds is XML-driven, so you can go in and change out the ruleset, and replace the character sheets with ones that are more to your liking. You'll need to be fairly savvy in order to do this- you'll have to create some of your own graphics and framesets, and you'll need to learn a bit of XML. It wasn't too hard. I . The process is similar to creating your own 'skin' for an application. I saw one for a Star Wars campaign that was very impressive.

Their website also sells a Savage Worlds core rules addon.

If only they had a Mac version

Quote from: Abyssal MawWell, the default ruleset is D20, which, as you know, is the only ruleset that matters.

(HAHAHAHA! Snap!)

Nice one.  

Quote from: Abyssal MawBut you can change it a bit. FantasyGrounds is XML-driven, so you can go in and change out the ruleset, and replace the character sheets with ones that are more to your liking. You'll need to be fairly savvy in order to do this- you'll have to create some of your own graphics and framesets, and you'll need to learn a bit of XML. It wasn't too hard. I . The process is similar to creating your own 'skin' for an application. I saw one for a Star Wars campaign that was very impressive.

Is the system built-in only at the character sheet level or is it also the mechanics?  Does it take the info in your character sheet and calculate bonuses and target numbers automatically for you?  I can probably handle a bit of XML.

Quote from: SosthenesIf only they had a Mac version

Ack.  Once again, the dominant mediocre system limits my playing opportunities.     Though I guess I could run this bad boy through Bootstrap or whatever that program is called that lets you run Windows on the new Intel macs.  They really should start coding these things for all three major platforms.  It's just bad form at this point.

I jsut found the tabletop felt constrained.  At least the version I demoed sometime back was very limited in resolution, locked into something like 800x600 or somesuch, with no option to change it that I could find, so it just all felt cramped.

By and large I'm not super huge on online play in general, though with my present local I'm looking to do more of it soon.

The crampedness of it is a real concern.

I can expand the newer version to maximize the entire screen, but it is still a bit cramped sometimes. You have to (especially as the GM) get used to minimizing stuff (sort of juggling it) in order to jump between the maps and the chat sreen and any other material you have open-- like the combat tracker. I tend to make it worse because I am running an old fashioned dungeon and I keep the key to the maps in a second browser window which I have to alt-tab to look at.

Quote from: walkerpWhat about ruleset?  Is it rules-neutral or is it built around D20?  If the latter, is this the system that recently announced a Savage Worlds module?

Ultimately Fantasy Grounds II is neutral because you have near infinite customization with the XML and Lua scripts. But... they only ship a D20 ruleset, there is a little documentation on creating a rule set, and all of your FGI rule sets are not compatible.  

I still feel that FG is better than the competition, FG2 is an improvement in stability and ultimately the ruleset issues will be resolved. Currently I am using it to run my GURPS game.

Rob Conley

Quote from: walkerpNice one.  
Is the system built-in only at the character sheet level or is it also the mechanics?  Does it take the info in your character sheet and calculate bonuses and target numbers automatically for you?  I can probably handle a bit of XML.

They use Lua scripting extensively as well as XML. It an order of magnitude more customizable than the original version.

I've been giving these programs serious consideration (or, as an alternative, group IM gaming).

My local player group is really starting to fizzle during the summer months with excuses like "baseball practice, karate lessons, maybe in the fall...".

I got a little burned out on RPGs (especially GMing) and took a break for about 6 months. Now that my batteries are recharged and I'm dying to jump back into the mix, my players are wimping out. Sigh.

Fantasy Grounds looked like it was the best supported of the group of VTTs, but seemed a little steep price-wise. With Screen Monkey, only the GM has to pay, and that seemed an attractive selling point, but the demo version left me unimpressed. I don't mind spending money on the software, but getting everyone in the group to pony up may be tricky.

I may just end up doing some IM/IRC game sessions if I can find a group.

Quote from: GoOrangeI've been giving these programs serious consideration (or, as an alternative, group IM gaming).

My local player group is really starting to fizzle during the summer months with excuses like "baseball practice, karate lessons, maybe in the fall...".

I got a little burned out on RPGs (especially GMing) and took a break for about 6 months. Now that my batteries are recharged and I'm dying to jump back into the mix, my players are wimping out. Sigh.

Fantasy Grounds looked like it was the best supported of the group of VTTs, but seemed a little steep price-wise. With Screen Monkey, only the GM has to pay, and that seemed an attractive selling point, but the demo version left me unimpressed. I don't mind spending money on the software, but getting everyone in the group to pony up may be tricky.

I may just end up doing some IM/IRC game sessions if I can find a group.

Well, here's what I did:

I just bought the server edition for myself, and then I recruited from amongst the pool of users that already owned the client, as well as the geographically dispersed pool of RPGA users. But I also showed it off to some of my friends locally, and a couple people were impressed enough to try it out as well. I would really like more people to run RPGA stuff on it, because I kinda want to level up my alternate LG character before GenCon.

The idea of Savage Worlds rules add-on has me intrigued. A Fast! Fun! Furious! game like that would be ideal for internet play, and (since I don't really have any battlemats or minis) the mapping features would gel nicely with the minis focus that combat has.

Hmm. Something to think about.

If only this was an affordable option.
Surface Interface

Once it is commonly available, the face of gaming will certainly change.
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