Redelia's GM school (Inactive)

Game Master Redelia

Alrighty! Here are the links to the two threads I've created for the Exoguardians! Is this correct?

Gameplay
Discussion

And here's the list of items I believe I'll need for the Exoguardians faction. Doesn't seem like a lot...have I missed anything?

Box text/"read or paraphrase" text and whether it's pasted or not is up to you guys. I'd say I just copy it and reformat it a little about 80% of the time. If I have extra time or I'm not happy with the way it was written, I modify it. Only a handful of times have I completely omitted it and wrote something from scratch.

Our work as play-by-post GMs already requires a lot of on-the-fly exposition, so I see box text as a big help.

Everything looks good, Bigboom, and done exactly according to directions. I have dotted in so that I can easily find all your campaigns, I will send everyone else to dot in later.

Step by step instructions for creating your campaign, when you don't need a recruitment thread:

(these directions start on this very page)
Go up to the top of the page, to where it says Paizo/Messageboards/Online Campaigns. Right click on Online Campaigns, and select Open in New Tab.

Click on the new tab that just opened. Scroll down to where it says Play by Post Online Campaigns as a section title, and click on the words Play by Post.

Now find the words Add New thread near but not at the top and click on them. This will create a new gameplay thread. Put in the title I indicated earlier, and include some text. Then hit submit. DO NOT DELETE THIS FIRST POST!

The website will ask if you want to create a campaign, and tell it yes. You can then put in the title for the campaign I gave you.

Now click on the discussion tab, and it will give you a chance to create a new discussion thread. Again, put in some text, give it the name I told you to use, and click submit.

Let me know if you need any questions answered or further instructions on any part of this.

Like Big Red anything that can help reduce the time it takes to make a post helps. Especially when you have mutliple things pulling you in all directions.

1) Rather than copy directly into the Paizo forms I tend to copy all the red text for a given scenario into a Google Doc so I can edit on the fly and also post easier as well. I tend to copy everything before I even make my first GM post. I will change some of the red box text here and there if it will fit better for the party makeup or conect the players to specific parts of the scenario to bring the further into the fold.

2) For me if the enemy MOBs are not shown where they start i tend to read through the stat blocks and the accompanying GM text boxes to see if they give a hint like the approach from the opposite direction form the PCs. Sometimes as a GM in real life I will lets the PCs place themselves on the map first then place the enemy's after for instance when there is an ambush like encounter. I will kinda do the same for PbP too but tend to place the PCs on the map myself and the Enemys after.

3) Obstacles drawn on the map for me depend on the situation. I tend to use them if I think a particular encounter might benefit from some obstacles.

I made my campaign. Here are the threads:

Gameplay
Discussion

Thanks to everyone who has chimed in with advice, it's nice to get a few different perspectives.

Looks great, Elinnea.

I agree about the different perspectives; that's why I brought in several good sources of them.

Here's my character, can someone look it over? I've never played Starfinder and I want to be sure I've not missed anything. I slowly shifted from Skill Monkey to Stealth Master now that Rogues are actually a good class.

Here she is!

However, I do have on weird issue. In my skill section, after Acrobatics I have

Acrobatics* +14 (1 Rank)

However, what I actually have typed in there is

Acrobatics* +14 (ooc)(smaller)(1 Rank)(/ooc)(/smaller)

But with brackets in place of parenthesis.

Acrobatics* +14 [ooc](1 Rank)

This is what it looks like when I copy the text out from editing my profile.

Here is a screenshot, so you can see how bizarre this is. In my first typing of Acrobatics, I have no closing brackets, or typing of smaller, yet it thinks there is. On the bottom, I do have closing details, but it thinks there isn't.

Unfortunately it's hard for me to explain my issue, as in my first row I only typed in Acrobatics* +14 (ooc)1 Rank, but with brackets, and it somehow filled in everything missing. I hope the image makes it easier to understand.

Here is the link to my campaign. Hope I’ve done this right...

Gameplay

Discussion

Voice of Mag might I suggest you swap the ending Brackets for example

Acrobatics* +14 (ooc)(smaller)(1 Rank)(/ooc)(/smaller)

to

Acrobatics* +14 (ooc)(smaller)(1 Rank)(/smaller)(/ooc)

See if that resolves the issue. I have noticed when formatting if you don't create a tight hug or layer with each arm of the bracket or it will commonly error out.

Then you should get

Acrobatics* +14 (1 Rank)

looks good, Darren.

Here we go, campaign is initialized!

Wayfinders Gameplay!

Wayfinders Dicussion!

I tried your suggestion Publano, but no dice. Incredibly frustrating, it's all I'm going to see when I look at my sheet.

Once Voice of Mag posts a link to a campaign, we're done for today, although you guys are certainly welcome to ask questions and keep working on or discussing your characters.

edit: oops, ninja'ed.

I also want to let you guys know that although I'm trying to get one lesson in every (US) weekday, Thursday is my very busy day and I might not get one in tomorrow. Even if I don't, I will still pop in and answer questions.

Looks good, Voice of Mag!

Hey Voice of Mag can you copy past your Character Profile in the google doc i linked below, the one with all the BB Code, and I will take a look. I'm like you and if I cannot fix little things like that i tend to obsess over them.

Google Doc

Very nice job on today's assignment, all of you. Unless one of you posts any questions, I'll see you in the morning!

Hey Voice of Mag can you copy past your Character Profile in the google doc i linked below, the one with all the BB Code, and I will take a look. I'm like you and if I cannot fix little things like that i tend to obsess over them.

Google Doc

Thanks so much, I appreciate it. In the Google Doc I left it with as (ooc)(smaller)Acrobatics(/ooc)(/smaller)

In my profile, you can see what it looks like if I tighten the code, and do it as (ooc)(smaller)Acrobatics(/smaller)(/ooc).

You can see that when I tighten the brackets, it only further messes up the Acrobatics Line, and also messes up the Disguise line further down. Ignore that, I actually missed a bracket myself. It actually appears the same, regardless of how I close my brackets. I swapped the ending two and it looks identical.

I think i found the issue. After your (+6 vs Fear Effects) there was no closing brackets. I placed it in bold on the doc.

Try to copy paste from the Google doc and see if it fixes the issue with the Acrobatics.

I have to jet for now i will come back later and check.

That fixed it, thank you!! I wonder why that problem carried over into my forum post in this thread though. Bizarre stuff.

My pleasure ^.^

Box text/"read or paraphrase" text and whether it's pasted or not is up to you guys. I'd say I just copy it and reformat it a little about 80% of the time. If I have extra time or I'm not happy with the way it was written, I modify it. Only a handful of times have I completely omitted it and wrote something from scratch.

Our work as play-by-post GMs already requires a lot of on-the-fly exposition, so I see box text as a big help.

Box text is very helpful. Often I use it. Often I paraphrase to get better wording, or to respond to specific questions. Feel free to shift it to suit your needs.

Hmm

I'm posting your assignment for tomorrow now, because I'm expecting a really busy day tomorrow.

Up in the campaign header, there is a link titled Folder for the Class. This will take you to a google docs folder. In that folder, there is a set of instructions for how to set up your maps. You cannot yet make tokens for the other PCs, so don't worry about that step. Otherwise, please try to follow all those steps, and let me know when you are done so that I can take a peek at your maps. If you have any questions, please post here and someone will help you.

These instructions have been prepared to share with the entire lodge, but they have not been edited quite enough for general sharing yet, so you guys are acting as my 'beta testers.' Please let me know if any part of them is unclear, even if you are able to figure it out.

For step 19, you may put the map link in your campaign header, in your GM alias header, or both.

Extra credit: If you have not yet chosen and posted your character, please continue to work on this if you have extra time.

I've finished putting the Exoguardians items together. Link is in both the campaign header and GM alias header.

However, I have a question regarding step 11: Did the instructions intend to say move the upper left corner of the map to the upper left corner of the white area, rather than the upper right corner of the white area?

Hi there - I’ve had a full on day at work today so won’t be able to do this until first thing tomorrow morning. Hope this is okay. Apologies.

That's fine, Darren; thanks for letting me know.

Map looks good, bigboom. Go ahead and add any pages you want for pictures of NPCs.

How are you doing, Voice of Mag and Elinnea?

Still at work, should have it up like midnight Central Time.

OK, I will check in the morning, Voice of Mag.

I made my map!

I tried to copy the NPC image of Historia-7 as well, but it copied over with a black background instead of a transparent one. Is that something others experience, and is there an easy fix?

Looks good, Elinnea. You might want to go ahead and place your enemies on the map, rather than in the margin.

Yes, the backgrounds will often do that. If you are putting your npc's on an otherwise blank extra slide, it's not a problem.

Ok, I put them on the map, ready to go.

I copied the image back in so you can see what I mean - it looks not very nice to have the outlining when it's clearly meant to be transparent.

Elinnea, to help with that problem, you might first right click the image in the PDF, save it as a JPG, then open the saved image in paint. Select the entire image, copy, and when pasted into Google Slides, the background won't be transparent, but it'll at least be white.

To make it transparent, I sometimes use GIMP with the Color to Alpha function, and can walk you through that if you'd like.

I see what you mean; I can tell you I have seen many NPC images that look like that in PbP games. Poblano, do you have any suggestions? (he's our maps wizard :) )

I often use the snipping tool to just cut an NPC image out of a PDF... Then the background is white.

Red, can you walk all of us through GIMP? (I just keep learning from both Red and Poblano. They are very educational!)

Hmm

1. Download GIMP, install.
2. After saving the image to a JPG from the PDF, open it in GIMP.
3. Using the Magic Wand Tool, left click anywhere in the white background to select it.
4. From the Colors Menu, choose Color To Alpha.
5. Click OK on the popup.
6. Your background is now transparent. Cheer wildly, then go to File -> Export As, and name it with a .PNG extension to preserve transparency. Use the default in the popup and click Save.
7. Drag the PNG into your Google Slides. Transparency is preserved!

Hope this helps!

Red, do you mind if I copy your text into the GM documentation I am preparing? (with credit to you for contributing)

Yup, go for it. Glad to be of help!

I plan on heavily leaning on Photoshop to fancy up the slides, is that alright?

Yep, if you know how to do what you want with it, go ahead.

She's fixed!

I actually did it in paint.net, since I already had it installed and prefer it to gimp. But the method was just about the same. One step didn't work for me; I couldn't save the image from the pdf. If I select the image and right-click, the only option I have is "Copy Image". But I was able to copy it into a blank file and could edit from there.

Thanks, it looks much better now.

I actually use a few different methods depending on my time frames for making a slide deck/tokens. In mostly order of time limited to all the time in the world or technology capabilities available.

1.) The quick and messy approach AKA Building from phone
Screenshot the image with my phone and doing what touch up I can with the photo editor on my phone. Doesn't allow for transparencies sadly.

2.)The chromebook/Streambook approach.
If the images I pull from the scenarios/source books have the black around the image I just make the background of my slides black so it blends in. My slide commencement slide deck for example almost every single slide is black and makes for some easier copy pasting into the slide from source materials. Also the black or darker colors of slides is easier on this old man’s eyes. :)
Note: If I’m making a token/marker for a PC/NPC/Baddie I will use the Cropping/Shape tool in Google slides to try and crop out the black background of the pictures.

3.)Streambook & Paint
If you haven’t guessed already I have multiple devices that I GM and build things with. If I am unable to make the background work that came with the image. For instance when I copy an image from a source and the image around the picture is speckled black and white I will copy the image into paint and either “paint” everything black or white or sometimes go crazy and make a weird rainbow gradient effect around the subject in the picture.

4.)Photoshop AKA I have my big computer at home
Much the same as GM Red uses with GIMP I will adjust the image with the magic wand tools and cropping tools to pull just what I want out of the source image and render the transparent borders.

Now here is the extra wonderful thing too. I will pull images directly from google images sometimes and I will look for pictures that already have the transparency set. If your not sure how to tell if an image has it set you can look at the picture on your computer and if it has a blue and white checkerboard pattern around the image you want the transparency is usually there.

@GM Redelia: Thank you! I have never thought of myself as a Wizard I just like to build thing ^.^

@GM HMM: You are not the only one learning new things all the time.

Ok - done I think!

Alright, so I couldn't open your slideshow Redelia, I'm not sure why? I can open all my other GM presentations fine, for some reason every time I try to open the one for this campaign (Folder for the Class) it just hangs forever on the loading circle.

So basically I was flying in the dark. Not sure what I was supposed to do or how much I was supposed to do, or instructions on how to do any of it, but did my best. If there's anything I should add or change, please let me know! Some parts are intentionally covered/left out for lack of spoilers or because I don't have the tokens or character names to add yet.

Voice of Mag, it should be a google docs folder that is linked there. I'm not sure why it's not working for you, but is for others. Your map slide looks wonderful! I did peak under your 'redacted' and everything looks good there, too. I would like you to make one more slide with portraits of the NPCs that are provided in the adventure, such as faction head.

Darren, I can't seem to find a link to your maps. I do need you to either link to it from your campaign header or from your alias header (or both).

Ahh. It’s in the campaign header but I can’t seem to work out how you put it in the header or next to my name :-(

Looks good, Darren. Where you have it is not in the campaign header, though, only in the campaign info tab. Go over to campaign info, then edit the campaign. You want that link to be in the first box, labelled 'short description'. Thank you for pointing out that this needs to be made more clear in the documentation!

Darren, as for putting the link under your name, click on your name 'Darren Whitehouse' then on the next screen, click 'Edit Profile.'

From there, what you enter into some of the fields will then be displayed under your name. For example, at this moment, you'll see there are three links under to my name. For these three links, I put them in a separate field in the 'GM bigboom' profile:

• Race: The Commencement
  
• Class/Levels: Yesteryear's Truth
  
• Gender: GM 101: Exoguardians

Redelia, might be worth mentioning this in the documentation also...took me a while to figure that out.

Yep. It will be present in player documentation, but it should also be present in the maps stuff.

Thanks Folks. Will sort. Very excited about this opportunity, many thanks!

Done - Except that I changed my name in the profile to GM Darren and it still shows as Darren Whitehouse. No big deal.

Just popping in to say whatever issue was making me have trouble opening the folder last night, it's gone now and I opened it fine.