RuneLords Hook Mountain Massacre

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Paradox
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RuneLords Hook Mountain Massacre

Post by Paradox »

At long last, I actually restarted my face to face campaign using MapTools, just last night. I emphasize the 'at long last' because I have haunted these boards for a long time without actually running a game.

Not being a programmer, I was daunted for a long time, believing that advanced programming skills were necessary. I received the (good) suggestion to start small and simple and just build up my familiarity with MapTools. However, I didn't take that advice in the strictest sense. For me, I needed a certain amount of functionality, or it just wouldn't seem like a proper game to me. The compromise that I arrived at was learning a campaign framework and being happy with the level of automation that it provided, and know and understand where I had to do things the 'old fashined way'.

So how did it go?

It went great. Not without some problems, but overall it went just fine.

The big problem actually had nothing to do with MapTools. One player could just not get Ventrilo to work on his Desktop. He could hear everyone else, but either his microphone was bad, or there was a software conflict between his soundcard and Ventrilo (he was getting errors that reported a problem with CaptureBuffering in the inbound (whatever the hell that means). Basically he could hear all of us just fine, but could not speak. We played anyway, and he relied on the chat window so that his character could speak and communicate his actions. Again, from a design and development perspective, this was not MapTools' problem.

The players took to the interface pretty quickly, and were impressed with everything that MapTools core could do, as well as what lmarkus001's 3.5/PF framework could do. They're a little unclear where the boundry between MT and lmarkus' work begins and ends (like who to praise for what feature).. but that doesn't really matter.

The one major technical issue we had was that we had one player arrive late. He got on Vent, but could not find the MapTools server on the list. He hit refresh, and it did not appear. I had him verify that he was looking on the right tab. Finally, I dsconnected the server, restarted it. Once I did, my server reappeared on the list and everyone could then see it again and log back in.

As far as performance, it went smoothly. lmarkus001 got a glimpse at my campaign file, made some notes on how to improve performance by cutting back on unnecessary VBL (and by using an 'X' for VBL on tree trunks), and making sure I wasn't using images that were too large. I implemented those tweaks, and every maps seem to run well.

They loved the VBL. That went over big.

There were expectations I had to knock down a little. Lmarkus001's framework (or most frameworks for that matter, except maybe Veggie's) don't support targeting. I had to let them know that somethings we still have to do the traditional way. Like comparing the die roll to the AC, and announcing whether they got a hit or not.

One thing that I had to remember is
1.) You can move it off the Hidden Layer
2.) But you still have to make sure it's visible to the PCs

Fortunately I caught that really fast, and have corrected it for later. Having read enough posts asking about that, it was ingrained in me to check for that as the very first step.

WHAT WAS EASY ABOUT THE PROCESS
1.) Campaign Repositories and Port Forwarding: Yeah. Odd as it might sound, there are some really long threads about this.. but I read those threads, read Azhrei's guide, read the pages on Portforwarding.com and this portion of the process came together really easily. Phergus's posts were likewise really illustrative and instructive. So much so that it sort of surprised me.
2.) VBL and Fog of War: After some tinkering and a little experimentation, I have to say that this also fell into the catagory of "no big deal".

WHAT WAS MORE CHALLENGING
1.) Campaign Frameworks: I'm not going to rip on lamrkus001 at all, I owe him too much of a debt for making my game possible. Likewise, I think this is a general comment, as I have started to experiment with Deviantnull, Veggiesama, and Rumble's frameworks. None of them are difficult, but really mastering them seems to require (me) just experimenting till I figure them out. That's not difficult at all, but it can be time consuming. The counter to that is that each framework I figure out, makes the next one that much easier to get the hang of quickly.
2.) The number of settings that provide flexibility but also complexity: MapTools has an amazing number of settings, which lend themselves to a great deal of flexibility. But with that some a large number of things to verify and 'diagnose' should something not be working right.

CONCLUSIONS
The players had fun, and I had fun. We're playing again next Monday, and half the session won't be 'teaching and training' the campaign framework (which was fine that we did, but I'm glad we're past it). I have my campaign back even though I'm 2000 miles away from players. I'm a happy guy.

*With special thanks to lmarkus001 and Azhrei, who have helped me directly quite a bit.

*I have disagreed with Brad about something once, but to deny that his videos weren't absolutely instrumental to getting me here would be unfair and a lie, so my thanks to him.

*And thanks to jfrazierjr and Rumble for encouragement.. and wiki guides, which I do read.

*Lastly thanks to Trevor for MapTools. And Phergus for making Campaign Repositories easy to understand and implement.
I no longer believe that MapTools is usuable or intended just for programmers. MapTools is for everyone.

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lmarkus001
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Re: RuneLords Hook Mountain Massacre

Post by lmarkus001 »

Woot, sounds like you had a decent first outing!

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Paradox
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Re: RuneLords Hook Mountain Massacre

Post by Paradox »

Yes.. and now I'll report on the second session.

It went just as well as the first session. We jumped right into the game.

The player who had a problem with Ventrilo fixed it by simply buying a new headphone/mic headset. So this session everyone could talk freely. We had been experiencing some audio strange feedback, and discovered one player was not using headphones, but his laptop speakers and a mike. I hated to lower the boom, but myself and the other players collectively told him to go pony up a few bucks and buy himself an inexpensive pair.

I told them about iTabletop. Recently I invested in a lifetime membership like Full Bleed. And FB is correct, the actual mapping component of iTT is way behind MapTools, but long term I was looking at Audio/Sound File/Video and fast Document storage. Recently events over at iTT show promise that they're stepping beyond their initial model of 'map with Audio/Video conferencing' and are working towards proper tools like MT has now. But that is some ways in the future right now. ANYWAY.. I discussed moving over to iTT just for Audio and Document Storage.. and one of them floored me by saying "I like Vent and MapTools just the way they are now." I thought that would make this community smile.

Gameplay was sweet.. we were all more comfortable with lmarkus001's framework this time. Players reported that they liked playing online, and this was comparable to playing face-to-face, so the old campaign appears to be saved. Yay!

FEW LESSONS I LEARNED
1.) I had a giant spider and for the life of me I could not rotate the sucker. It was on the token layer, and I wanted to physically make the top down token turn, so that the head and mandibles were pointing at the PC it was biting. I found out afterwards that CNTRL-SHIFT only rotates a token on a layer other than the token layer. On the token layer it uses those yellow facing arrows. This being a top-down token, I wanted to actually turn it.

2.) VBL and Map Speed and Map Design/Preparation. I thought my maps were great, but I didn't realize that the VBL wasn't going to slow them down until after 'Day' and especially 'Night' settings were actually turned on. I mean- saying that sounds stupid, and it makes common sense that it would and I should have realized it. However I constructed my map with the lighting turned off just so that I could draw the maps up efficiently. So all that time I thought the maps were performing fine. But I turn on the appropriate light settings and I could feel it slow down. It's not unmanageable, but it's something to be aware of next time when I prepare new maps.

Related to that.. The map in question is a monster infested farm. I created the clearing and put the Barn and the first floor of the Farmhouse on the same map, in the appropriate distance apart from each other. Then covered them with roof tops (which I then moved off and moved to the hidden layer). That sounds fine, but then net effect is that when the tokens move, the program is factoring the VBL and lighting for "two levels" on the same map. But they're only on "one level" at any given time, eben if they're across from each other and not above or below. Does that make sense? I would have been smarter to create the outside farm land and show a representations of famhouse and the barn. When the PCs actually entered either of those structures, then move them to a new map which was exclusively the inside. Again, the PCs won't be spending too much more time in this area, but I learned something about economic map design.

All in all a good time, and they're pretty eager to play next Monday. Three sessions in three weeks, so we're getting our old face-to-face momentum back.
I no longer believe that MapTools is usuable or intended just for programmers. MapTools is for everyone.

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Full Bleed
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Re: RuneLords Hook Mountain Massacre

Post by Full Bleed »

Sounds like things are going pretty well for you and your group. Looks like some of the normal kinds of first time use issues... and as you play, things will definitely smooth out and get into a groove.
Paradox wrote:ANYWAY.. I discussed moving over to iTT just for Audio and Document Storage.. and one of them floored me by saying "I like Vent and MapTools just the way they are now." I thought that would make this community smile.
Keep in mind, for my group iTT didn't replace Maptool, it replaced Oovoo. iTT replacing Vent when you're only using audio... that's a tougher switch to argue for. Vent is a better voice-only ap in the same way that Maptool is a better VTT. Now if you want to launch some audio/video files, share PDF's/webpage links in tabs, or (the big one) use video... moving to iTT starts to make more sense.


Rant ON-->

Heh, if I let two of my players make the call as to what tools we use, they'd say Oovoo only. ;) It was a loooong road to find a VC ap priced as well as Oovoo that gave us the quality and reliable experience we were looking for. As for a VTT in particular, those two don't like to even have to look at it very much when we play, it "takes them out of the game." These were the guys that were pretty comfortable letting others move their tokens around a battlemap when we played f2f while they just described what they were doing. I had to convince another how it was helpful for me to see his character status on his MT token when I started adopting some basic MT macro use. That went over like a brick with a 4th player, because they didn't want to keep their traditional character sheet synced up with their MT character sheet. Half wanted to roll real dice for everything, no mater how much more convenient some macros would have been (the only one that didn't care about this was the guy who no longer had dice and was too lazy to go buy some.) We compromised and they rolled dice for everything but initiative because I argued that it was faster and much easier for me to sort things out in our round-by-round system using MT's init tracker (the init tracker was my favorite MT feature from last year, hands down! :))

Eventually, I got them to adopt some custom Excel character sheets (the stubborn one still had to have a traditional pencil sheet as primary for comfort), MT initiative/damage/token location tracking, and Oovoo for voice and video. I let them roll their own dice as if we were around a table for most everything. And each one that adopted a second monitor thanked me for it later. Every "battle" to streamline the online versus f2f experience made our games better, and if I let any one player make the call it would have been simultaneously harder for me and a lesser experience over-all.

We're on hiatus now, but when I contacted them and said, "Hey, Oovoo's raising its price (we shared the cost), but I've got a program to replace it that will add comparable voice/video support plus some other audio/document capabilities with a onetime fee" we put together a test session and put iTabletop through its paces. Everyone agreed it was a good addition to our game.

That's not how things would have gone in the early stages of getting the "old" group together, but experience breeds ease with the technology and how we can bend it to suit our individual desires. They've come to trust that the technology isn't always an enemy to the cause and change can, and usually is, good (successive changes in MT were always good!)

Of course, that said, someone on this forum is going to come along and say:

--Why use Excel when you could use Open Office?

--Why use Oovoo/iTT when you could use Stickam... or Skype (wait, make that Vent, Skype is "evil")... or only chat? Heck, everyone got matches? Smoke signals work perfectly for us!

--And why-o-why use a pencil when you can use a quill and an ink-well?

<--Rant OFF.
Maptool is the Millennium Falcon of VTT's -- "She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts."

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Paradox
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Re: RuneLords Hook Mountain Massacre

Post by Paradox »

Full Bleed wrote:
Keep in mind, for my group iTT didn't replace Maptool, it replaced Oovoo. iTT replacing Vent when you're only using audio... that's a tougher switch to argue for. Vent is a better voice-only ap in the same way that Maptool is a better VTT. Now if you want to launch some audio/video files, share PDF's/webpage links in tabs, or (the big one) use video... moving to iTT starts to make more sense.
That was my intent, I love the idea of being able to share PDF book sources during the game without actually literally gving away all my watermarked PDFs. That ability to turn to a PDF page at point people at a certain rule is great.

Another plus is being able to post and share their 'proper' character sheet. Some context here: they're not up to full token management yet, and part of me cringes at the thought of it actually. Two of them can't get their traditional old fashioned character sheets right, let alone manage a token. I reckoned it would be handy to be able to have fast access to their character sheets online and say, "This is what I based your token on." If there was a discrepancy we could then address it. Likewise, if there was something not covered by a macro, both players and GM could see what needed to be rolled or handled through the dice roller

Unfortunately, the guy that said he doesn't need that, is also the guy who always has his character sheet 100% right.

Anyway.. there's no need for quick conversion at the moment, I can be patient. Eventually the vent server bill will come due, and iTT will be in its next phase.

Like you, I don't see changing the actual VTT any time too soon. I'm optimistic that it will get closer to MT someday though, if the hand-wringers worried about too much automation don't drown it out.
I no longer believe that MapTools is usuable or intended just for programmers. MapTools is for everyone.

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Re: RuneLords Hook Mountain Massacre

Post by Rumble »

FEW LESSONS I LEARNED
1.) I had a giant spider and for the life of me I could not rotate the sucker. It was on the token layer, and I wanted to physically make the top down token turn, so that the head and mandibles were pointing at the PC it was biting. I found out afterwards that CNTRL-SHIFT only rotates a token on a layer other than the token layer. On the token layer it uses those yellow facing arrows. This being a top-down token, I wanted to actually turn it.
If you have a mousewheel, holding down shift and rotating the wheel will rotate the selected token, assuming it's set to top-down in the Config tab. I don't know about Ctrl-Shift (that's a new on on me!).

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Paradox
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Re: RuneLords Hook Mountain Massacre

Post by Paradox »

Rumble wrote:If you have a mousewheel, holding down shift and rotating the wheel will rotate the selected token, assuming it's set to top-down in the Config tab. I don't know about Ctrl-Shift (that's a new on on me!).
I just did some checking and some testing.

The Spider was on Circle, not top-down, and that explains that. Lesson learned.

However, Cntrl-Shift Mousewheel does work! The difference between 'Shift Mousewheel' and 'Cntrl-Shft Mousewheel' is that the former moves the top-down token from side to corner to side.. while the later rotates it in small increments.
I no longer believe that MapTools is usuable or intended just for programmers. MapTools is for everyone.

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Re: RuneLords Hook Mountain Massacre

Post by Full Bleed »

Paradox wrote:The Spider was on Circle, not top-down, and that explains that. Lesson learned.
MT actually does a pretty good job of guessing whether a token is top-down or portrait... but when a top down token is kinda round (like your spider probably was), it'll often tag it as a pog/portrait type and you'll run into that problem.
Maptool is the Millennium Falcon of VTT's -- "She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts."

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lmarkus001
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Re: RuneLords Hook Mountain Massacre

Post by lmarkus001 »

If you have the hardware to host it, the 8 user version of Ventrillo is free.

Oh and yeah, I have many of the same social/inertia issues.

For example, I have one player that mostly avoids updating their token, so I just keep it updated in the background. That person is often surprised when I declare a hit and tell them to assign damage as they thought their armor class was other than I claimed it was. But then I would make them do the math and they would see that what I claimed was correct. Then I would point at their token and say, looky there, your AC is listed plain as day :-)

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trevor
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Re: RuneLords Hook Mountain Massacre

Post by trevor »

Paradox wrote: They're a little unclear where the boundry between MT and lmarkus' work begins and ends

This is my favorite part :)
Dreaming of a 1.3 release

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Re: RuneLords Hook Mountain Massacre

Post by Paradox »

The 3rd session..

We seemed to take a step backwards from the second session unfortunately, with some technical issues.

First, I was really excited about Plothos' spell manager. And it did and continues to work fine on my computer. However, it was not working at all for the players. I'm not sure what happened, but I don't have an error message to point to.. it seemed like 'memory suck' though. Please see his thread for more details, as I finally coughed up a bug report. But after about 30 minutes we set it aside and just got to playing without it.

Then Ventrilo really let me down, which was a disappointment after the second session it worked just great. It might have been the internet connection of two players (who are roommates). We use push to talk, and we'd hear the start of their sentence and then it blank out, and we'd hear the last thing they were saying. We muddled through but it got really frustrating after a while.

EDIT: Ironically.. While writing this post I got a call from players saying that they think found the problem.. and we're talking on Vent right now and it seems to be all cleared up now.

The actual game went pretty smoothly. Lmarkus001's new universal handouts went over smoothly and were well received.

One thing I was pleased about is that the adventure seemed to be the perfect challenge in ratio to the duration. That is, most of the spellcasters used their spells and everybody got beat up.. but everyone lived too. Good golly, the fighter got swallowed whole by the tendriculos, got paralyzed, and was really going through the hitpoints before they rescued her.

I did manage to have them end up on different maps during combat (one fell through a pit in the floor to the level below right into an enemy occupied room). However I was able to juggle it all without having to start a seperate instance; they dimension doored down quickly to join the lost player.. and I just had them lose a round in the ongoing fight.

All that aside, everyone is still enthused and eager to play next time. If we can just get past the Vent Tech issues.
I no longer believe that MapTools is usuable or intended just for programmers. MapTools is for everyone.

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Re: RuneLords Hook Mountain Massacre

Post by lmarkus001 »

Yeah when the audio goes weak you quickly see how weak MapTools chat capabilities are (no channels, no multiple windows). Hopefully 1.4 will address the chat needs, and hopefully you will get your audio sorted.

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