Well, for 4, I can't give much advice, besides trying to scour the internet for maps, since if you've found you dislike most of the map creators you've found, you're probably not going to find much better ones out there, without putting down money, and even then, it's somewhat hit or miss.
But as for 5, the easy thing to do is just go with Fiat leveling, which cuts the need to track XP, and is just a better system in general, in my optinion. As for money, that's trickier. You can't exactly do away with it, since it's so bound in the game mechanics, through WBL, and even if you could, it'd really lose something. I've played (usually point buy) Fantasy games where there's no mechanics to cover money, and it really loses the Fantasy RPG feel.
One possibility for managing money is to have a running Google Doc of all incomes and expenses, where players can refer back, but that has problems too.
Obsidian Portal can help with #5, have each player create a character for your campaign. And then after every session create a note on the character what was gained/lost from that session. And then the players can make a note on what they are increasing with each level gained.
My campaign features people in 4 different time zones.
Roll20 for the tabletop
Ventrillo for conversations (having to Push-to-talk cuts down on random tangents SIGNIFICANTLY
Obsidian Portal to keep track of journal entries and treasure awarded.
and HeroLab to create easily check-able character sheets.
All of this helps immensely.
Very Respectfully,
--Bacon
Dotting
We've been using Minecraft as our virtual tabletop. It works better than I thought it would.
I use Excel w/macros for determining initiative each combat. I built in buttons that allow for quickly starting combats, adding in surprise enemies, etc.
I use a separate Excel sheet with all of the skill rolls that I have to make for the players. One click on the button and I know what they rolled for the various skills.
I also use Excel for creating maps at times (though I still hand-draw some of them.)
Keeping track of gold & exp is in another Excel spreadsheet.
So I guess overall, Excel.
We've been using Minecraft as our virtual tabletop. It works better than I thought it would.
Interesting. I'd like to hear more.
I use Excel w/macros for determining initiative each combat. I built in buttons that allow for quickly starting combats, adding in surprise enemies, etc.
I use a separate Excel sheet with all of the skill rolls that I have to make for the players. One click on the button and I know what they rolled for the various skills.
I also use Excel for creating maps at times (though I still hand-draw some of them.)
Keeping track of gold & exp is in another Excel spreadsheet.
So I guess overall, Excel.
We've been using Minecraft as our virtual tabletop. It works better than I thought it would.Interesting. I'd like to hear more.
The GM basically builds a rough approximation of the world with 2 x 2 x 2 Minecraft voxels equaling a 5 foot Pathfinder cube. He then uses a script to overlay/remove carpets from the surrounding surfaces whenever a tactical encounter takes place; this gives us a grid to work with.
The MC avatars do not represent the characters directly; instead, we all place blocks to represent characters (including mounts and such). An assortment of ad hoc scripts support tasks such as die rolling, and WorldEdit and other server mods allow rapid placement and movement of preconstructed objects (like Huge monsters) and other quick terrain modifications (like a secret door opening, or a room flooding with magical darkness). Skype serves for voice chat, and the rest is
The nice thing about it is that it's very extensible. Minecraft scripting is pretty easy if you've ever scripted or programmed at all, so if we find ourselves getting bogged down by something, the GM (or a player) can write a script to facilitate it. Meanwhile, we can concentrate on gaming.
It also gives a bit of a first-person perspective when exploring; we can wander freely, then stop when we see a marker or interesting feature so that the GM can detail what's there.
It isn't perfect, but it works, and it's allowed us to play from opposite sides of the country in an environment we're all familiar with.
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My table top group had to go partly virtual a few years ago when one of us had to go to Spain for a while. Since with people moving, and others who had moved, we now are completely virtual using Google Hangout and Roll20.
We use a google sites sheet to record most of the information about the game, including party loot, important NPCs, session journals, etc. The important thing we found was to assign people to keep track of these things. Also people have a virtual character sheet to update as needed.
For me, keeping track of HP is used with Roll20. We each have edit ability on our token, and I keep track of resources there. For example, on my gunslinger I use the red bar for health and blue for grit. If we change maps, I record the information on my HP block on my sheet.
As far as my sheet, it's a google doc spreadsheet template I found while online. I linked it directly into the google site, so I only have to update my sheet and it updates the website. Being a gunslinger, I simply actively tick off ammo after my turn, using a piece of scratch paper to keep it going. Same goes for consumables and gold. The important thing to remember in my opinion is to update after your turn in combat or it becomes easy to forget.
Buffs we often make a note on the map itself on which buffs are active, but being someone who easily forgets I have an open excel page where I note what buffs I have active. Too often I forget the easy ones (particularly point blank shot).
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I use Roll20 with my players, even when we're in the same room.
My group is very interested in the roleplay side and social encounters; Roll20 allows me to do all the heavy lifting (map making, stat tracking, dice rolling, distances and movement, areas of effect, images and handouts, and on and on) digitally and with a searchable record so my players can focus on the aspects of play they enjoy (group problem solving and silly character voices).
dot
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I use Excel w/macros for determining initiative each combat. I built in buttons that allow for quickly starting combats, adding in surprise enemies, etc.
I use a separate Excel sheet with all of the skill rolls that I have to make for the players. One click on the button and I know what they rolled for the various skills.
I also use Excel for creating maps at times (though I still hand-draw some of them.)
Keeping track of gold & exp is in another Excel spreadsheet.
So I guess overall, Excel.
We've been using Minecraft as our virtual tabletop. It works better than I thought it would.Interesting. I'd like to hear more.The GM basically builds a rough approximation of the world with 2 x 2 x 2 Minecraft voxels equaling a 5 foot Pathfinder cube. He then uses a script to overlay/remove carpets from the surrounding surfaces whenever a tactical encounter takes place; this gives us a grid to work with.
The MC avatars do not represent the characters directly; instead, we all place blocks to represent characters (including mounts and such). An assortment of ad hoc scripts support tasks such as die rolling, and WorldEdit and other server mods allow rapid placement and movement of preconstructed objects (like Huge monsters) and other quick terrain modifications (like a secret door opening, or a room flooding with magical darkness). Skype serves for voice chat, and the rest is
The nice thing about it is that it's very extensible. Minecraft scripting is pretty easy if you've ever scripted or programmed at all, so if we find ourselves getting bogged down by something, the GM (or a player) can write a script to facilitate it. Meanwhile, we can concentrate on gaming.
It also gives a bit of a first-person perspective when exploring; we can wander freely, then stop when we see a marker or interesting feature so that the GM can detail what's there.
It isn't perfect, but it works, and it's allowed us to play from opposite sides of the...
Wow, this sounds crazy interesting. If you have any recorded sessions or anything, I'd love to see them.
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Wow, this sounds crazy interesting. If you have any recorded sessions or anything, I'd love to see them.
Not at the moment, but I'll ask our GM whether we want to record a "Let's Play" or something. Could be fun. : D
It costs a bit but i use HEROLAB by lonewolf (wolflair.com) does most of what you are wanting in a simpler way but you would still have to come up with something for maps
Wow, my current group pretty much already does most of these.
1- We bought a projector with a ceiling mount that right over the game table, so we point it directly down (mostly down + onboard projector corrections). So we can use all our minis and scale everything perfectly. We usually shine it on a white board laying flat on the table because we're always writing down the current buffing bonuses. We even have a network camera (bandwidth intensive little sucker) mounted on the ceiling to show the board to our players who are out of town.
2- Hero Labs is *the* computer tool for gaming with Pathfinder. Makes character creation and tracking of all abilities much simpler.
3- We use both books and the PRD. Since we have wifi access to the net, checking out Paizo's boards for the odd question avoids a lot of needless arguments.
4- Map creation will always be a time sink... I'm fortunately running an Adventure Path so all the maps already exist. So I import them in my image editor and create different layers for each room that I turn on and off according to the PCs location. Other times, I just use the eraser tool and slowly reveal what they see.
5a- XP, we keep it waaaay simpler. *Everyone* has the same XP. When one levels, everyone levels. No one gets punished for missing a game for X number of reasons. It makes tracking much easier and in the grand scheme of things it had no impact in our gaming pleasure. And we use this rule in other game systems.
5b- Loot is pooled until sold (gold is useless in a dungeon), loot is redistributed regardless of value, rest is sold off and split equally.
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#5: My wife has taken to using GnuCash, a real-life accounting program, to track her character's (and party) wealth. I don't know if double-entry bookkeeping is for everybody, and I don't know if it would be FAST (haven't used it myself), but it keeps very careful track of transactions. (What it's designed for. 8^)
dotting
Gaming night is a work night, so even though my players and I are only an hour or so apart, we've shifted over to using online play.
Dice rolling and tactical movement is handled through Roll20.
Due to various technical glitches in Roll20 and Google+ we use Skype for voice chat.
Character management is done on Hero Lab, with a Drop Box for quick sharing of portfolios.
As the GM, I'm using Realm Works for campaign management, and One Note for notes on the campaign timeline. I do my mapping in Campaign Cartographer 3. Rules through the PRD, and I do tend to keep a selection of books to hand.
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I've been doing a trick with map creation that has worked pretty well, although again it is a time sink:
First I bought Campaign Cartographer. I don't use the program (It's too hard to use), but what I do instead is I simply swiped all the clip art out of it.
Then I went on Flicker and grabbed a bunch of textures, and I surfed around a grabbed a bunch of pictures of trees and bushes from above.
I import all this stuff into PowerPoint, and I use PowerPoint to create my maps. PowerPoint has functions that let me cause roofs to disappear revealing the floor underneath, and other special effects.
I actually took a flat screen TV, and taped a piece of plexiglass to the face of it. The TV is 19'x33' which is a pretty good size.
then I just lay the TV on it's back and use the actual TV as a gaming surface.
In PowerPoint I can create slides that are (logically) 19'x33' so that whatever I put on the slide shows up exactly as it does on my screen. I superimpose a table (with an invisible background) using 1'square cells over the entire thing. This gives me the graph grid.
And that's it. I can create animations, and transitions. I'll even create buttons that "reveal" a room when the party opens a door. It's works great. It is labor intensive, and it took a while for me to learn how to do it all, but I'm really happy with the result. Plus, I can import maps off the internet really easily, so that can cut down work a lot.