[Rite Publishing/Fantastic Maps] Breaking of Fostor Nagar (PFRPG/Maptool)

[torstan]

Thanks! We need to hit goal before it goes into production, but that's coming along nicely with patrons signing up to be involved.

[torstan]

Another screenshot, this time showing what happens if a PC is blind:



In this shot you can see that Valeros can only see himself. This is the GM view - so the GM can still see the enemies. However the white line designates the limit of what the player will see.

States are easily tracked in maptool. You can see the clear label showing that Valeros is blind. There are equivalent images that cover all the other states.

Now you'll also see that there's a rather nifty little portrait and stat sheet on the bottom left. This contains all the vital information about Valeros, as well as his portrait. This allows the players or the GM to quickly see important information about a PC, so no more asking the player what his perception skill is before checking if he sees a hidden creature. I'll be showing off a little more of what you can do with this later. The stats here are for Valeros, the iconic fighter from Pathfinder.

Portrait art by Tyler Bartley - our interior artist for this project. Tokens by Devin Night. States by AidyBaby from the RPTools boards. Map and torch by me.

As always, more information on the Rite Publishing web page: The Breaking of Forstor Nagar.

[torstan]

Continuing the series, here the adventurers meet a dragon:



This shot shows how maptool handles the properties. Each player can see their character's vital stats, as can the GM. The GM can decide whether the players can see each other's stats. But importantly, the players can't see the stats of the monsters. Although they do get a close-up of it's ugly mug.

Now who can tell me just how much trouble these adventurers are in?

Tokens by Devin. Kellen's portrait by Tyler Bartley. All other art by me.

[torstan]

Today we look at storing information within objects on the map.



This shows that we can have objects - in this case a runic circle - that contains information for both the players and the GM. If that information is also placed into a macro (as it is here) it can be sent to chat, allowing us to hyperlink the information that the GM needs at their finger tips.

We'll be building that level of reference into the adventure for all areas, allowing for quick reference to rules to minimise time spent flicking through indexes and maximise the fun!

[torstan]

Roll for initiative!



Maptool tracks initiative in fights, so you always know who's next. When you switch to a player, that characters name is shown in chat so everyone know's the order. You can also drag and drop PCs or monsters to different places in the initiative as people ready or delay actions.

[torstan]

Here's another comparative shot of the different virtual tabletops. Here the characters face off agains the dragon in Fantasy Grounds, TTopRPG and maptool respectively.



Click for a larger view. You can see that each tool has a different approach to combat, but each allows the GM to easily track hp, access information, roll attacks and all other tasks that you need to make combat flow smoothly.

Today also sees the first part of an interview with our designer and author - ENnie winning Ben McFarland.

To find out more and sign up visit The Breaking of Forstor Nagar.

[guyanonymous]

This looks like pretty amazing software....if only I still played D&D

[Qwilion]

Guy anonymous, your welcome to play with us online

[shantedracule]

I just want to know how you got moving doors in map tool; that would be awsome to intigrate into my Virtmaps

[torstan]

The door is a separate token that's dropped on top. You can rotate it in the program.

The second part of the interview with Ben McFarland is up.

Now as we enter the final stretch before development begins in earnest with, here's a new screenshot. This time we're looking at the chat functionality and how this works with dice rolling and macros to make combats slick and fast.



Here the combat has taken a turn for the worse for our players. The rogue breached the magic circle and now the dragon is free to full attack.

In this screenshot I've showed what the chat output looks like for the player and the GM. First you can see the Kellen's attack as he swipes (ineffectually) with his flaming longsword. Now one risk of playing online is that a player might decide to just write in their dice roll, rather than rolling the dice. Maptool offers a way to avoid that (other than just being suspicious of any player that rolls 5 20s in a row...). You can mouse over the number and if the roll is legit, a tooltip will pop up. If it's a dice roll it will show what was rolled. If it's a calculation, such as roll + base attack + strength + weapon focus, then it will show all those bonuses too. So you can be safe in the knowledge that your players are behaving themselves, whether they're on the other side of the GM screen, or on the other side of the world.

The dragon's full attack shows the time saving possibilities in maptool. It would take a decent amount of time to roll all the dragon's attacks at the table, find the relevant modifiers and dice, and then roll the damage. Here one click of one button and the GM (and the GM only) gets a full break down of the attack.

Note that our plan is not to have maptool decide whether an attack has hit or not, or automatically apply damage. Pathfinder is inherently based on exceptions. There will often be odd bonuses or penalties imposed in a fight (+ because you got higher ground, -2 because your character has a phobia of dragons). Equally, the GM may have modifiers for the enemies that they don't want the players to know about. Therefore we let the GM see all the attack and damage rolls. They then decide who has hit, and who has missed, and tells people the damage to apply. If you want to fudge a roll, you can. If you just don't want the player's to know that their sword is actually cursed and gives them -4 to hit dragons then that's fine too. And you can do it without worrying about the code giving you away.

These features make combat easy and quick. I now use maptool for face to face games even if the players can't see it. It makes hp tracking, initiative tracking and running monster attacks so much faster than before. It's nice to have combats that run fast again!

The details of how combat is managed within maptool will be a subject that we'll be debating in detail with our patrons. Sign up now at The Breaking of Forstor Nagar!