Virtual Sessions

[Jeremy44]

I'd be down for a virtual session some time. IF we can organize it on a weekly basis (like a raid night).

I wouldn't want it to replace our monthly get togethers. And setting up the infrastructure for it wouldn't be worth the time if we didn't use it often enough.

I'd suggest pick one night a week and play 7pm-11pm. A solid four hour session, played online on a regular basis.

I'd setup a chat tool (I'd suggest a Google hangout) and a game tool with a virtual table top/dice rolling. Or we could try the tool Paul recommended - http://roll20.net/ - that does both.

I would need to build the adventures differently though (especially for using Paul's tool), so again we'd have to have at least a semi-strong commitment to a regular schedule. I think I could do weekly from a DM perspective, but it's really going to depend on the schedules for everyone to meet. I know it's hard (especially for the ones that have kids). But one night a week shouldn't be too hard to swing. I mean most guys have a bowling night, or a poker night, or just a night out with the guys. Heck in most of the blogs I read on Pathfinder the parties are in their 30's and 40's with families and they still get together once a week on the weekends.

I'm cool with staying with the once a month schedule, but would always be down for playing more if we can manage it.

Let me know what you guys think and I'll start playing with the tools to see what's possible.


-JW

[Hoofin]

I'd be down for the occasional virtual session, but don't think I wanna commit to weekly "raids" again. If its not worth doing we can revisit another alternative.

[Jeremy44]

I'm checking on the level of effort doing some tutorials on the site. The main thing is that I'd have to create the adventures in the virtual world. I can do that, but not in the virtual world and real world both. It's just too much prep time to do both.

I'm going to see how well the virtual one works. If it's really good, I could pull one of the TV's off the wall or get a ceiling projector for the game table and we could still use the virtual setup, just in person. We'll see. Testing.


-JW

[Hoofin]

Cool! Don't do anything crazy or elaborate! All up to u bud, if its too much work don't worry about it. I think we all prefer live sessions anyway

We could beta test it with a simple fight or something one day.

[Jeremy44]

Okay I played in a game to see how it runs.

The tool was okay, the dorks on the internet on friday night were a bit frightening....

Pros
- Clean, easy to use interface that works right in the browser
- Good functionality for RPGs (dice rolling, macros for your attacks, background music)
- Automatic initiative tracking
- A lot of pre-created tokens for figurines and you can upload additional tokens
- Snap grids over maps makes it easy to move around properly on the map with your tokens
- Player tools are nice, rulers, white board drawing, etc

Cons
- Lighting/fog of war seems very complex (the DM was really struggling with light sources for the party)
- Dorks made the game go really slowly (really looks like a video game, but plays like a board game - a slow board game)
- Voice/video chat worked fine for a while but then it lagged for no apparent reason (we could use mumble though, since I still have a mumble server)
- If you give the players control of their characters they get a lot of leeway, have to trust them not to abuse it and move out of turn and stuff
- Did I mention the dorks?


I'll see if I can work on something to setup for you guys to test it out. I'm not sure how long I can leave a campaign open for. But if I can I'll just leave the campaign page up so you can sign in whenever and check it out.


-JW

[Hoofin]

Sounds promising. We can wait and hold off and maybe go through a live session and also demo a little of the virtual at the same time 2 work out the kinks?

[Jeremy44]

Yeah, I'll setup an encounter to demo with. Image shots of your character sheets so you can play with your normal characters.

Can we try to schedule it for a weeknight next week? It wouldn't take long, maybe to 8pm-10pm just to make sure we have enough time to work through an encounter. How about Wednesday night? Or is another night better?


One other thing I forgot to mention is that the pace is slow but it's nice to be able to do something else at the same time. Like watching TV or reading in a web browser or playing farmville, possibly even watching your kid.


-JW

[Jeremy44]

https://app.roll20.net/join/71481/q0e2zA


Okay see if you can view it. I just setup a simple encounter to test. Fog of war is on so you shouldn't be able to see much.

I haven't assigned control of your characters because you need to be logged in to do that. I'll check during the day this week and if I see you logged in, I'll give you control of your character so you can move him around and edit and stuff.

There are some tricks you can do with dynamic lighting to auto-turn off fog of war when you move your character around, but you have to have paid features to do that and I haven't purchased anything yet. Just playing with the free stuff.

But this is basically it. I put Paul's level 1 character sheet in the Handout tab (upper right). I'd do this with image files of each of your character sheets and make them viewable by only that player (or everyone so you guys can do some cross auditing). The tokens themselves have places for keeping track of HP and imitative. The only tricky thing I've found is no good place to track spells - handouts can be editable, but I've only seen image files there and that'd be a pain. Might be able to just track those in a separate window on your desktop.

One other thing to test is the mobile interface. It's just out of beta I think, so I'm not sure how well it works, but that might be interesting later on down the road. For now though I just want to see if the tool has basic functionality.

Make an account on the site. Follow the link. Let me know when you're one and I'll jump in to grant you some permissions so you can play around.


-JW

[Jeremy44]

Okay the more I play around with it the more tempted I am to buy the premier features....

Now I'm looking for a good way to play in person that would use the Roll20 system. The two idea I had are getting a projector and putting it over head shining down on the table top.

OR taking one of my flat screen TV's off the wall and laying it flat on the table and playing on top of it. I have to check to see if the TV will do that though.


Probably getting a head of myself though, we need to test it online first and see if it works well enough for folks to be worth the time putting content in. I've got enough content in it to run a mini-session if you guys want to try sometime during the week (or next weekend).



-JW

[Jeremy44]

Okay I've started putting the next adventure into Roll20. Here's the link:

https://app.roll20.net/join/73973/n_h0Vg


If you go there right now, it'll just be the page of the goblin raid you guys foiled last time we played online. However, I need to test dynamic lighting out. If you get a chance log in and tell me how it looks from the character point of view, move around the map and see if the lighting works.

-JW

[gravime]

The lighting works well from the outside but I think we'd be able to see farther ( I could only see like 3 squares in) unless it is dark inside and our darkvision doesn't help. Also, the 2 horizontal lines on top above the stairs wouldnt light up unless I was in one of those lines but then the part below the stairs would disappear. Is there a way to keep it lighted once we've passed through that part already and not become dark again?

[Jeremy44]

Thanks for testing it Ray. I'll keep working on it.

Right now I have your vision set to 30ft for testing. When we play it'll be at 60ft.

It's all dynamic with your character so it doesn't keep where you've been revealed. However, I've got a little "light" token that I can put in rooms you've been in so they stay on the map. As you explore I'll drop them in, that way the places you've been will stay.

I'm mostly interested in seeing how the light is stopped by the walls. I can also want to test doorways. For example the door into the house right now is closed on the top part but open on the bottom. So you should just see some light going through. If you open it then I can mark that on the map and you'll be able to see in more.

I also am looking for a way to do dynamic "darkness" so I can have paul travel around in a 20' circle of black at all times with his drow ability

This may bring a nice element to sessions.

-JW

[Hoofin]

Doesn't work for me at work. I'll try it out at home tonight.

[Jeremy44]

Hmmm....what's not working Paul? Is the whole screen dark? Does it not update when you move your character?

The lighting is only active on the new link, not the old one. Your vision is only set to 30 feet for testing, so move your character around and see if it updates. If it's updating slowly there is a setting I can try.


-JW

[Hoofin]

No, roll20 is locked out at work lol. I'll try at home.

[Jeremy44]

Okay.

Also mobile support is working now. It's not sized for an iphone but it should work nicely on a tablet. It does work on my iphone but the screen is just too small. Give it a try when you have a chance. Tablets would be a lot more convenient than a laptop at the game table.


-JW

[Wrex]

I do not get the full cone, only half of it. The top half seems to not function properly for lighting.

[Jeremy44]

The door is only half open (the lower half is open), so it should be blocking half the door. I moved you into the room, so you should see more now, but still places that are blocked by walls, should block your vision. There is a light in the lower level of the house.

-JW

[Hoofin]

Lighting seems to fully be functioning for me. Works well on ipad too.

[Jeremy44]

Nice! Playing on ipad around the game table would be sweet! Hmm... Maybe I'll get an ipad....


-JW

[VitoOracle]

Dynamic lighting works just fine for me.

[Jeremy44]

Excellent. We should be good to go for tonight then. I'll be online in Roll20 and on mumble at 8pm.

Make sure you've read the post with the lead up for this session - https://hoofin.rpg-board.net/t18-the-goblin-raid-1-24-13

We'll pick up from there.

I posted the fill-able PDF character sheet on the Google Share - https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0B-xC_olSxqH8bzhnd2hmdm9qR0E/edit

But I haven't converted the characters yet. Not sure if I'll have time today or not. Worst case though, we still have the image sheets.


-JW

[Jeremy44]

Character sheets have been converted and posted. There are some anomalies on the sheets though, so check them over. Some of the stuff auto-adds and some of the math on the original character sheets was not correct, so the fillable ones corrected it.

Also the fields for Weapon Attacks are just weapon specific in addition to the base attack melee/range number. Likewise some of the damage numbers were off, so make sure you check them thoroughly. Doing the sheets was like a full party audit and I found all kinds of stuff going on

Ray, your spells are not on your sheet. I'd recommend you uses a different tool to track your spell books and memorized spells. Like this http://www.trovetokens.com/spellmaster.html (or one of the other tools like it online). Paul might also have some old spell sheets you could use as a base to develop your own.

If you modify the character sheet make sure you upload it back to the Google site so I have a copy of it as well.


-JW

[Jeremy44]

Hold off on creating new macros for Roll20.

I found some new functionality for doing macros that should be really good (using character sheets and variables). Each character can have an in game "Character Sheet" (located in the Journal section with the handouts). That character sheet can be used to give attributes to your character and store macro sets of abilities.

These character attributes can be linked to the bubbles on your token on the map. So one of your bubbles can be "Bonus to attack" and then if you link it through your character you click your "Attack" Ability and your character attacks using that bonus in the roll. I'm not sure how well it'll work for some abilities, but basic things like Perception checks and Initiative it works really well.

I'll play around with it some and have the "characters" linked to your tokens for the next virtual session. If you want to test it out go to the campaign session (https://app.roll20.net/join/73973/n_h0Vg) and check in your Journal.


-JW

[Jeremy44]

Good Virtual Session last night guys. We actually got through a ton of stuff. Almost the entire fort. And not the quick "minimal fighting" way either. But rather that "kill anything that moves" method. I think Roll20 is really helping us get through combats faster. I know it's a big help for me to have the enemy macro's preset for encounters. Only real issue is casters. The macro's don't work as well with them. But we'll see.

Not much too this part of the adventure if you want to try and finish it off with a virtual session next week. Maybe tuesday night if folks are around. Otherwise we should get a live session scheduled for April.

Paul - Can you put up the schedule survey for April?
Ray - Use spells first, wands second since you get your spell supply back every day.
Simon - I'll stop hiding subtle clues in your RP stories so you don't have to make so many sense motive checks.
Mike - Hope your voice is okay, you ended up doing a lot of the talking last night anyway.

Some RP info. Jakardros is completely unsympathetic about the death of Kahvan. Vale and Nualia are visably angry about it. There are now only three Black Arrows left.

In addition to being betrayed though you noticed that the Ogres used the information tactically to setup ambushed. They did the same when taking the fort. Tactics are not usually an Ogre's strong suit. Lucrecia was obviously working with the Ogres but also clearly wasn't their leader, just an ally.



-JW

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