Fatemaster F̶r̶i̶d̶a̶y̶ Sunday - Online Exploits and Hungry Spiders

[Kimberly]

Heya Breachers!

NOTE: Sorry for the late post, I got a little overzealous with yard work and have been out of commission for a couple days. Battling Waldgeist is not for the faint of heart or weak of body!

This week, I look at our newest Augment, and begin a short series called “Online Exploits” to look more into online playing platforms and how to use them for Through the Breach. First, let’s look at the newest Augment, the Spelleater!

This Augment was posted for Waldo’s Weekly, and the redacted parts make it full of mystery. Take a look here!

The Spelleater is a strong support to any group of Witch Hunters, or could act alone to hunt down magical miscreants. The players may find one willing to aid the Fated, or perhaps the Spelleater is chasing them for some reason.

This Augment’s abilities wonderfully support its attack action, and the (0) action Siphon Power also allows Captured Sorcery to become even stronger. I’m excited about the redacted text, and what do you theorize the Augment is hiding under those black lines?

Now onto our Online Exploits, which this week covers Roll20. Community member Doug Broman created a sheet for Through the Breach, and making a game is relatively simple. You’ll start a game, and make it with the TTB Sheet like so:

Once in the game, you’ll add your fate decks, which can be as fancy or basic as you want, by heading to the “Collections” tab and adding the decks. The main deck will be 54 for cards, and you’ll make the twist decks based on each Fated’s Sheet.

From there, operate like any other Roll20 game. See? Easy peasy! 

Have you tried Roll20 for your online games? What are some good stories from your virtual games?
 

[Reynastus]

So on the discussion of roll20, I’ve used it, not for TTB but for DND 5e and I have to say I’m not impressed by it. 
 

firstly it’s reasonably expensive when you take into account all the things. Give me a second on this one though and consider the following, I’m Australian our dollar is pretty crap and our internet connection is far from desirable. Sure I could use the free version of roll20 but then you miss out on all those fantastic features that you get for subbing. So when I used it I subbed for like 2 years at 10usd/month. I used it weekly to monthly depending on the time and used it for published adventures (of which I purchased both as the book and again on roll20 at similar costs each, 60aud for the books and I can’t remember the cost for the roll20 modules but it was a similar cost). The end result was a product that I still had to spend a while prepping for pre written modules that had all the scenarios put in but was just an almost unfinished state (npcs not having statted tokens etc), the fog of war seemed to never work the way I wanted and I had more issues with that and the LOS implementation than is worth mentioning. Then the want to use purchased modules over custom made backgrounds etc, all in all I was just not all that wrapped in the overall package when you consider other VTTs out there. 
 

so I moved on and found fantasy grounds which has its own set of things and while it has one off purchasing available and storage space is only limited by what you have on your own pc. One of my biggest issues however is that you need to be running a PC to access it and all your players have to have the program. In the classic version there’s no LOS implementation, there is in the unity version but it’s rudimentary at best, and databases are all slow and clunky and the program (even unity) feels slow and sluggish to use even on the GM side of things. It’s one off cost and is about 150ish usd so it’s not a cheap purchase and there’s no free upgrade from the classic to the unity version and so I’d be up for another (cheaper than if I didn’t own the classic version) licence fee for it there which is still running around the 80ish usd last time I checked. Modules then cost to purchase as well which I have done so when I made the switch. Now to be clear on this I purchased the ultimate licence for fantasy grounds and did so because I wanted to be able to use the software with people who don’t have jobs or are on limited incomes (students as an example).

so still not an ideal solution for me which is where I’ve moved to Vassal for running my TTB games. And I gotta say it’s not bad. It had a really good implementation for the fate deck and twist decks and the artwork for those is superb and it’s free, the mapping part of the software is limited but has the ability to generate a scene on the fly complete with a cool selection of themed terrain objects (even a train) that you just drop in. What it lacks is the LOS features of Roll20 (if they work right) and the scale of the mapping thing is bigger than you think with the player tokens being really small compared to the terrain objects. Barrels are easily twice the size of a person and the barbed wire fence could keep a herd of elephants in. Another thing I’m not a huge fan of with vassal is the inability to prep for a game map wise. Have more than one encounter prepared for the game... better plan to take 5-10 mins mid game drawing out the map... also you can do things that my group does and just have the train randomly driving through the map ... it’s hilarious. 
 

I have played on astral tabletop which I’m not even going to go into. Suffice it to say I’m not a fan of it either. 
 

Enter Foundry VTT. Now to be clear I am not affiliated with them, I believe it has a long way to go and I’m kicking myself for not being able to code in JavaScript because if I could I’d be all up in there for making modules for the games I play (TTB and Star Wars EotE). Foundry isn’t without it’s faults to be sure but it’s got some of the best implementation of things that I’ve seen in ages, is priced reasonably (one off 50usd), being actively developed, devs that listen to their community, and a nice interface that feels responsive.

Now to go over these a bit more. The implementation of LOS is straight forward and just works and it’s real easy to be able to tell what a player can see just by clicking their token. It has some cool wall options that work really well and you can set sounds to happen based on token placement. Eg, you can make a waterfall sound happen from a waterfall and as the token gets closer to the waterfall the sound increases in volume. You can set playlists. You can do all kinds of things with it and I feel like I’m only just scratching the surface of the application. Oh you can add extra GM accounts. Have a friend that you want to play with? Set them as the GM and they can run the game, such a cool idea. 

As a player you just connect via a web browser.  And it works. I will admit that mobile support is not there yet, I think I saw someone making a module to help with mobile support but at this point it’s a play on your laptop or pc (mac, and Linux as also supported, hell you can even deploy the application to a web host that supports json ... whatever that means).

There is also a lot of support for DnD in there and there are a number of modules that I support on patreon for the development of their chrome extensions that have the ability to import/run characters from dndbeyond and so forth. 

The downside is that there isn’t a TTB module for it. I’d love to see one created but I just don’t know JavaScript and with a new baby on the way I’m not going to be able to learn anytime soon. So in the meantime I’ll settle for using the “simple” game module which is their universal game engine and use the stats in there as a means of tracking the wounds and def/wp of the mobs I’m running. I use Vassal for card though while running online games. 
 

sorry for the long post, just If I see one more “roll20 is so great” style post I think I’m going to have a bit of a meltdown. Just makes me think they are paying people to recommend them more than anything really. 
 

Rey

[Kimberly]

On 4/27/2020 at 12:55 AM, Reynastus said:

So on the discussion of roll20, I’ve used it, not for TTB but for DND 5e and I have to say I’m not impressed by it. 

Rey, lucky for you I'll be covering a variety of platforms. I've started with Roll20 because it's the one a lot of people are familiar with from other games, and Doug made a nice sheet for it! Foundry VTT is definitely on my list, along with less conventional means of playing like through Zoom, Discord, and other functions!

[Kyle]

Every one of these options are fiddly, but I think it's less important to go back and forth about the tools that are used and significantly more important to get to the goal: actually playing the game.

I can understand disliking a platform, but this article wasn't praising it; instead, it was providing solutions for those who may be unaware on how to accomplish putting together a session on undeniably the most popular digital roleplaying platform, while simultaneously highlighting what a community member managed to put together. To me, that felt like something worthwhile to talk about (not to mention it states that there are plans to cover others in the future). 

It sounds like you found a solution that works best for you, and even provided some options for others to explore, which is fantastic. I hope it works out for your group.

For me? Something like Discord or Zoom is enough, especially if the FM/DM/GM is willing to screenshare somewhere. But I'm always interested in exploring new options. 

Take video games: some people like Xbox. Others like Playstation. I like PC games. Ultimately it doesn't matter what platform I use as long as I can enjoy the game I want to play with those I want to play with. 

It's sometimes easy to lose sight of the goal. For gaming, it's fun (and in multiplayer experiences, it's fun with friends). However, I don't see tearing down something that others enjoy as conducive to the conversation.

[Pikciwok]

I play roleplaying games through Discord. I haven't found TTB bot/macro, though.

I'll check that roll20 page, thanks!