Hi,
Has anyone managed to run a Pathfinder campaign online? How'd you manage it? What was your experience with doing it?
Thanks.
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Hi,
Has anyone managed to run a Pathfinder campaign online? How'd you manage it? What was your experience with doing it?
Thanks.
My girlfriend and I are running several adventures on a play by post site. We are doing Curse of the Crimson Throne, Counsel of Thieves, Crypt of the Everflame, and Vault of Souls. They are running pretty good. You end up having to build up things more than you do on the tabletop. For instance, I have had to create new NPCs on the fly in responce to creative players. The best thing is you can run side adventures concurrently if time passes and they want to do something during that time. They can have their own thread with that time, while also running the current adventure with the whole party in another thread.
One thing you may run into is players vanishing. I started Curse of the Crimson Throne with 10 players, but had 2 have personal stuff and had to drop and one just vanished without a word. I still have 7 so it's still well over the minimum.One final thing I notice is that more people one be players. There is a shortage of people willing to GM. I prefer to be a player but am helping fill the GM void.
Hi,
Has anyone managed to run a Pathfinder campaign online? How'd you manage it? What was your experience with doing it?
Thanks.
Right now, I'm running Rise of the Runelords via Maptool & Skype. Here's some observations:
1) It's a huge amount of work upfront in setting up. Maybe there's a community of folks out there on the boards somewhere that share their maptool files with all the character tokens, portraits, macros, etc, and if it does exist, I sure wish I could find it. I'm taking every image, including maps, out of the books and transferring them to Maptool, and it's frankly a little tedious, especially given that I'm not doing anything that a thousand other people haven't already done before.
2) Playing online via a VTT like Maptool is really sweet. I love the dynamic lighting, vision, and fog of war. Plus, each token has its own vision. Maptool has a lot of really cool whistles & bells, and if you can use the Pathfinder macro framework, it should speed combat up dramatically.
3) Player turnover may be a problem ... by my 3rd session, I lost half my original players. But, since then, my players have stuck with it and they all seem enthusiastic about the story that's unfolding.
4) I also have a blog going to keep players updated in between sessions with any developments in their hometown, rules interpretations, etc. It's sort of a play-by-post when we're offline. That way, when we're online, we can spend more time adventuring and exploring versus shopping for supplies or totaling XP.
5) It's important to communicate as clearly and plainly as possible. You're losing non-verbal cues, like body language, when you play online and that's a big deal. It takes effort and even some repetition to avoid any confusion on your players' behalf.
Right now, I'm running Rise of the Runelords via Maptool & Skype. Here's some observations:
1) It's a huge amount of work upfront in setting up. Maybe there's a community of folks out there on the boards somewhere that share their maptool files with all the character tokens, portraits, macros, etc, and if it does exist, I sure wish I could find it. I'm taking every image, including maps, out of the books and transferring them to Maptool, and it's frankly a little tedious, especially given that I'm not doing anything that a thousand other people haven't already done before.
2) Playing online via a VTT like Maptool is really sweet. I love the dynamic lighting, vision, and fog of war. Plus, each token has its own vision. Maptool has a lot of really cool whistles & bells, and if you can use the Pathfinder macro framework, it should speed combat up dramatically.
3) Player turnover may be a problem ... by my 3rd session, I lost half my original players. But, since then, my players have stuck with it and they all seem enthusiastic about the story that's unfolding.
4) I also have a blog going to keep players updated in between sessions with any developments in their hometown, rules interpretations, etc. It's sort of a play-by-post when we're offline. That way, when we're online, we can spend more time adventuring and exploring versus shopping for supplies or totaling XP.
5) It's important to communicate as clearly and plainly as possible. You're losing non-verbal cues, like body language, when you play online and that's a big deal. It takes effort and even some repetition to avoid any confusion on your players' behalf.
I do this as well. Down to every detail that Ziltmilt describes. So much so that I'm not going to repeat what he said because its practically my experience verbatim.
However, it is a labor of love and it keeps me GMing while living an area that is low on available players. I moved from my face to face game and have used this to keep it going. Thus I haven't had the issues with player turnaround. You might be stuck with whoever you can recruit, but definitely advertise for players looking for a regular game and are willing to commit.
I will say the more you've done it, the easier and faster it gets. I've done all of Chapter 3 and 4 like this. Like anything you improve with practice. You'll make tokens faster and handle information quicker after it becomes routine.
In some ways combat is definitely faster as players simply roll to hit and roll their damage with a click.
To poor Ziltmilt, my apologies. I don't often save my campaign files, and I'm not sure why that is. Perhaps its because I've ran RotRL FTF once before and this is my second time through. I love it, but I'm little tired of it now.. in the respect that I want to run a new AP. I'm really looking forward to Kingmaker.
I thought I remembered something about some program people used specifically to play online. That it was made specifically for it.
I admit, I don't have any experience with maptool or skype. In the meantime, I'll check 'em out and see how they work.
Thanks!
Two Words... Google Wave. Ok maybe a few more. Fighty, an extension that lets me make and drop maps into my wave, and anyone in the wave to move markers on said map, and dicey, which lets everyone roll dice similar to the way you can do it on this BBS. That coupled with some up-front work is pretty all I need to do now. And it works beautifully.
Two Words... Google Wave. Ok maybe a few more. Fighty, an extension that lets me make and drop maps into my wave, and anyone in the wave to move markers on said map, and dicey, which lets everyone roll dice similar to the way you can do it on this BBS. That coupled with some up-front work is pretty all I need to do now. And it works beautifully.
I'm not familiar with Google Wave. I checked it out, and it said something about needing to be invited onto it? Is that right?
Of course, I've never used Skype either.
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We've successfully kept two ongoing campaigns alive through a tool called Fantasy Grounds II. While there is a cost associated with it, we've found the tool to be more sophisticated than the for free alternatives. Most of the benefit comes from the GM perspective, although the players also benefit. We combine this with either a Ventrilo server (courtesy of my former WoW guild) or Skype works fine as well.
This even works fine with someone on a dial-up connection, although I would suggest the DM not be on dial-up as they need to upload information to other players. Otherwise it works fine (even with ventrilo and the program running there seems to be enough bandwidth).
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TTopRPG is another nice little program for running games online and it was created by a forum regular, Pygon. He's always up for answering questions.
He visits Lilith's chatroom regularly. Chat Room Link
I am a maptool user with the same concerns as Ziltmilt and Watcher.
Considering that a compiled campaign file is something people are willing to pay for, but it requires the original documentation to use, I should hope Paizo considers letting Rite Publishing or similar release campaign files for the APs.
The majority of the heavy lifting will already be done for their patronage project.
I find it disappointing that Paizo offers the best modules for converting to VTT (PDF in layers FTW) but with only a little more work they could offer a great tool that would sell AP volumes.
Because of the art-dependent nature of the files in question, there is absolutely no way to distribute my campaign files without breaking the CUP. Until a compromise is reached, Maptool users are doomed to repeat a bunch of tedious work in order to (rightfully) preserve Paizo's intellectual property rights.
It's a shame, because I think there's money waiting to be spent on this problem.
This is still in the works, but the owner of Fantasy Grounds is currently working on trying to get an official channel to sell modules/APs as premade files.
Yeah. Fantasy Grounds.
Even if I could run it on a Mac, I would be paying for less functionality than I get out of (cross platform) Maptool for free.
I have nothing personal against the other VTTs (the UI parts actually look a lot more polished than Maptool) but I just couldn't bring myself to pay more for less.
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This is still in the works, but the owner of Fantasy Grounds is currently working on trying to get an official channel to sell modules/APs as premade files.Yeah. Fantasy Grounds.
Even if I could run it on a Mac, I would be paying for less functionality than I get out of (cross platform) Maptool for free.
I have nothing personal against the other VTTs (the UI parts actually look a lot more polished than Maptool) but I just couldn't bring myself to pay more for less.
Each to his own. I personally play on a mac and find the interface to be the biggest differentiator for us as many of my friends find it easier to use than the free programs. With prior campaigns they all fell flat because of the awkward interface. As a one-time fee of $20 for a player or $40 for a GM we found that the cost being less than many conventions and lasting (for now) over two years to be completely worth it.
I just finished up the Rise of the Runelords: Burnt Offerings adventure and am now working on the second.
I use MapTools and Skype. I'm sure I'll be making someone with legal responsibilities cringe when I say this, but I can share my campaign file that is now completed for the first adventure. The downsides to it are that the players have run through it, so it is littered with dead monsters, but they are all there and can simply be removed and added in fresh.
Of course I'm not claiming ownership of anything, just the presentation of the fantastic material Paizo has already produced.
All the maps exist with lighting and vision.
I would personally love to see pre-packaged campaigns/tokens for these programs. Imagine using a projector with MapTools or any other tool and seeing the beautiful maps, pictures, handouts, and monster images without pausing to pass books around.
I will say that I'm new to DMing, but I really enjoy what MapTools gives me in terms of tools. Its great to have players actually not be able to see the Sinspawn hiding in the dark corner. They get creeped out by things like that, and it's exactly the way it should be.
I'm not saying everything is great and perfect, some things don't translate well. For instance, I don't use any of the Magic tools that come with it because they aren't very intuitive and my players prefer to do it themselves. Some players I trust to use their own dice instead of the built-in roller.
I think it does give you all the flexibility you need to run an extremely effective game. We've been able to keep our sessions down to 4 hours a piece and it took them 7 to get through Burnt Offerings. I think I can chalk a lot of that success up to Maptools streamlining a lot of the combat process through tokens and macros.
To make my life easier I give my players bonus experience for making their own tokens and sending them to me. That way I can just drop them in.
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Please me... francesco_berti2008@libero.it
I just finished up the Rise of the Runelords: Burnt Offerings adventure and am now working on the second.
I use MapTools and Skype. I'm sure I'll be making someone with legal responsibilities cringe when I say this, but I can share my campaign file that is now completed for the first adventure. The downsides to it are that the players have run through it, so it is littered with dead monsters, but they are all there and can simply be removed and added in fresh.
Of course I'm not claiming ownership of anything, just the presentation of the fantastic material Paizo has already produced.
All the maps exist with lighting and vision.
You know, I'm starting to work on the 2nd adventure myself. We should split up the work. Interested?
Hey guys —
What you should try doing is removing all of the images that came from the PDF, and putting "placeholder images" in. Even just colored squares in place of map assets. That way, anyone who has an image directory from the PDF can just drop the images back in, and you don't make the Paizo Community Use Policy cry.
Of course, this will not work for Pathfinder #1, since that was not a layered PDF and everyone will have a different approach to harvesting images.
Could we get Paizo involved here? Surely there is a way to make a fully functional campaign file that still requires the original adventure. Placeholder images really don't work for maps, because of the need to mask areas to get the lighting to work.
I think they are involved, passively, which is where they ought to be. As a community, let's see how Rite Publishing's campaign file sells, that will tell us a good deal about the viability of marketing such products.
We should also focus on creating an OGL maptool framework that could serve as a standard for Maptool-Pathfinder play, which is a conversation I have tried to start here. Once we make it easy for Maptool users to play Pathfinder and vice-versa, I think the market for such products would grow.
Placeholder images CAN work for maps, as long as the original resource is sized correctly. That might take some doing. You'd basically need a resource guide from whoever created the original campaign file, which lists the images and the dimensions that were used. Ideally, paizo could actually distribute such a directory of watermarked images, but they probably don't see a profit in that.
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Please save me days of work Recursive.faults! I just became a Maptools covert and am done printing pdf maps to scale. I'm midway through Burnt Offerings with my PC's and any work you have done would be greatly appreciated!
cuthulas@hotmail.com
As much as I would like to just send out the work I've done, it is pretty clearly a violation for me to do so. I've contacted Paizo to see what they'll be happy with me doing. Keep your fingers crossed.
In the meantime, there is a great Pathfinder macro library available for Maptools. It by itself is worth it's weight in gold.
As much as I would like to just send out the work I've done, it is pretty clearly a violation for me to do so. I've contacted Paizo to see what they'll be happy with me doing. Keep your fingers crossed.
In the meantime, there is a great Pathfinder macro library available for Maptools. It by itself is worth it's weight in gold.
We've gotta find a solution to this, r.f.
Heck ... even if the content was password zipped with a clue contained in the published materials one would have to have on hand. i.e. Paragraph 3, Page 10, First word ... etc.
It's a shame that none of the major developers have fully integrated electronics into their tabletop games. It's only a matter of time and we'll have amazing stuff like this:
A friend of mine sent this link today with the subject heading "DO WANT". Lol ...
A friend of mine sent this link today with the subject heading "DO WANT". Lol ...
Am I the only one who is wholly unimpressed by that demo? Obviously the hardware has potential, but that isn't half the functionality Maptool has. (animation good. animated dice rolling: shoot me.)