Marc

I tend to think that @KungFuFenrisis right, but I wish someone from Chaosium( @Jeff, @MOB??? ) would confirm either way.  I really enjoyed the sessions, and felt like I was getting a good example of how to run a good game.  On the other hand, I can totally understand why the group might not want to continue with a streamed campaign.

Any word on if there will be a season 3?

I've just updated the help file I created for the Roll20 character sheet.  You can get it in the downloads section, here. Feedback is appreciated

I was looking at the Land Events table( p. 112 in Weapons & Equipment ), and it doesn't really make sense to me.

There's a 10% chance of something good happening, 40% chance of nothing interesting, and 50% chance of something bad happening.  That's all fine.  My question is regarding the modifiers to the roll, specifically the +5% for each additional hide.  The text says:

Quote

For each hide of land owned over the first,
add +5 to the roll. The more land one holds, the greater
the chance something is going to occur on one’s holdings

And it makes sense that the more land you have, the more likely something unusual will happen.  However, that is not the effect of the modifier.  In the table, 11-50 is "Calm: No major events. No effect".  And 1-10 is something good.  So, if you have 2 hides, NOTHING good will ever happen.  In fact the ONLY event that is more likely with this modifier is a Chaos incursion, since that happens on a 100+. So, a noble, with 5 hides of land( say, the Thane of Apple lane ), has a 21% chance of a Chaos incursion every year! That seems a bit unreasonable to me.  I'm thinking that I'm going to make it 2 rolls, one to see if there is an event, and a separate roll to see what the event is.

Looking at it some more, I'm sure someone will point out that each L in extra tithes to the Earth temple, or local spirits, gets you a -1 to the roll.  Which is true.  It doesn't change the issue which is that having more land really means a greater chance of something really bad happening, not a greater chance of something happening
 

p. 112.  In the first paragraph of Land Events it states(emphasis mine):

Quote

During Sacred Time, after Family Rolls are made (RuneQuest,
page 426), the gamemaster should roll on the Land Events
table (following) for each adventurer that owns land.

However, near the top of the next column, it states:

Quote

This roll should be made before the Omens roll in
Sacred Time (RuneQuest, page 421). Many of these rolls
can spur adventures or inspire heroquesting to stop them.
The gamemaster may wish to make this roll secretly at
the start of the year or pick a desired result, and let the
adventurers spend one or more seasons dealing with the
determined event.
 

So, I'm thinking that if you roll after Family Rolls, it's for the next year, and the party may be able to avoid negative events, or boost positive ones. If you roll before Omens, it's for the current year, and you take what you get.  If that's the case, the wording could be better

There is an apparent conflict between this book and the Well of Daliath with regard to variable sprint magic spell training.  On p.116, the book shows:

Quote

Example: Learning the Bladesharp spirit magic spell
costs 50 L per point. Learning Bladesharp 1 costs 50 L.
Learning Bladesharp 2 costs an additional 100 L (2×50
L). Increasing Bladesharp 2 to 3 costs 150 L (3×50 L).
Trying to go from not knowing the Bladesharp spell at
all to knowing Bladesharp 3 takes three weeks and costs
a grand total of 300 L (50+100+150).

Yet on the Well of Daliath (Learning Spirit Magic) it says:

Quote

 

Do the variable Spirit Magic Spells have to be learned one point at a time? Say, if you have no Bladesharp, and want to learn Bladesharp 4, does it take four weeks or only one?

One week.

Learning Bladesharp 1 alone takes one week…

Learning Bladesharp 1, and 2, and 3, and 4, and 5, and 6 takes…. one week…

Yes.

 

The Well of Daliath explanation made sense to me, since you could learn the 4 point Lightwall spell in one week, it seemed logical to me that you could learn a Bladesharp 4, from scratch, in one week.  And, if you could do that, it would extend to other levels of Bladesharp, and other variable spells

15 hours ago, g33k said:

And if you have a PDF editor, you can chop the Broken Tower off the end of it; thus making it easier for you to run the BT scenario for your players.

You don't really need a PDF editor for that.  Just a way to Print to PDF( included in Windows 10, probably others ).  Then just print the pages before the BT stuff starts to a new PDF

53 minutes ago, RandomNumber said:

That's a good point.

For example, the new 'Korolstead - Secrets of the Smoking Ruin' on JC has a map pack with 80 jpgs (40 for GM and 40 unannotated) that drop straight into a VTT - no dev required and no dependency on a VTT platform's pipeline. For campaign maps I screen-grab whatever PDF I'm using and import that.

That's a really good point. Having GM and player versions is very helpful. As far as .jpg or .PNG files, player versions are more important

21 hours ago, Rick Meints said:

Chaosium very much wants to get VTT content onto Astral, Roll20, Fantasy Grounds, and the Foundry.

The problem is simple to state, yet hard to solve: Each platform's VTT content has to be created specifically for that platform. We can't just create the content once and then upload it to all of these platforms. We have some in house developers, but many of these VTT platforms mainly use their own developers. Those companies decide what content to prioritize, and while CoC is a fairly high priority item for them, RQ (and any of our other lines) are much lower priority.

Honestly, I think that just getting maps and tokens, with an obvious scale on the map, would be a big help, and all that is needed for that would be jpg or png files.  With a scale on the map, of course. 

11 hours ago, RandomNumber said:

Errr... not so fast. 

Your quote of @Runeblogger post says Foundry VTT - that would be great. But his/her edited post now says Fantasy Grounds.  So... not Foundry, not Roll20 but Fantasy Grounds (FG). Chaosium sells CoC content on FG (and Roll20) and AFAICT not at all on Foundry so I'd surmise that Chaosium is starting with FG based on Runeblogger's post.

Without committing dates it would be helpful at least to get some insight from Chaosium on its VTT strategy. Should Roll20 users be patient and wait for RQG content there or is that not on the roadmap? I'd rather not fork out $40-150 for an FG license to run RQG if Roll20 or even Foundry support are intended (even if not committed). That said, Roll20 might be the biggest (?) but it seems far from being the best. The newer VTT's like Foundry (and FG Unity?) seem to offer better integration. The WFRP/Foundry integration is exceptional.

Yes, please!  I'm currently running a game, and playing in a game, on Roll20.  I'd really like to know if( not when, I realize there are too many moving parts to give out anything on that ) Roll20 is included in their plans

On 10/2/2021 at 4:14 PM, jajagappa said:

Well, I guess I know what I'll be looking at running after the Smoking Ruins!  (Assuming they get out of there alive first, of course...)

Well nuts! The group in my Roll20 campaign should be finishing up Duel at Dangerford tonight, and I was looking at this as the next step. Guess I'll just have to demonstrate good roleplaying skills, and make sure Harmast only acts on what HE knows, and not what I know.  On the other hand, PbF goes slowly enough, that maybe my group can get through it fast enough that my aging brain cells will forget the details before you start.

1 hour ago, Bill the barbarian said:

I was thinking of making life easy for my players and take all the common spells and make handouts of them. There are only 12 after all. To be neat I put them all in a folder. So I open them up, and all is good, but if I should close one, the only way to reopen it is to exit the game and the re-launch. Is this normal and is there a way to avoid this or can one just not close a handout. 

The players have not arrived yet, so it is all made out to me.

 

 

Hmm.  I've never had that problem, and couldn't recreate it, so no idea of how to help with that. 

I can offer some PDF files I created for running one-shots.  I've got a Discord server that I use for those, and I uploaded PDFs with the character handouts from the rules, descriptions of the spirit magic and cult specific spells each character has, descriptions of the 12 common Rune magic spells, and descriptions of the Runes.  If you like, I'll send you an invite link to it.  All the pinned files are in the #characterinfo text channel.  Or, if you want to be able to edit them, I can zip up the Word documents for the description files and send them to you.

2 hours ago, dvdmacateer said:

I changed the script for multiple turn order entries so api script so that it is invoked by using   !multisr rather than !ff4init.  try this out on a test game first. 
https://github.com/Lockbox313/R20-Scripts/blob/main/RTT/multisr.js
 

I assume all of those require a Pro subscription.  I'd thought about that awhile, but have decided not to go with it for now.  Thanks for the suggestions, if I do end up with a Pro subscription, I'll look into them

On 7/18/2021 at 7:55 AM, dvdmacateer said:

A couple of useful macros based on new roll templates.  Both of these require a token to be selected.

This macro will popup a dialog asking for a strike rank and will add the token to the end of the turn order.  As far as I am aware there is no way of sorting the turn order with a macro. 

&{template:turnOrder} {{name=@{selected|token_name}}} {{sr=[[?{SR|0} &{tracker}]]}} {{sr2=?{SR|0}}} 

 

I tried this, and it works great, with one exception.  If you try to add a second entry on the Turn Order for a token, it just replaced the one that was already there.  An example where this would be used is a character that can shoot a bow  multiple times in a round.  Is there any way to add multiple entries for a single token?

12 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

So let’s turn to my original question then, Marc. Any new players to RQ before the change? How did the new folk fare? After you got rid of the CF and made it one player at a time how long did it take you to roll ‘em up, was it better for the newcomers... ?

So there was an original question here... enquiring minds and all. Some great thoughts  and tips have made there way to this thread so keep it up but...

 

Cheers

So, back to that original question.  There were several players new to RQ, both in that initial group, and since then.  In general, they did fairly well.  One major benefit with the one-on-one sessions was that I could go into more detail for the new players on some of the consequences of various occupation and cult choices.  For example, one person was considering Chalana Arroy, so I made sure he understood the requirement for the oath to never harm an intelligent creature, or needlessly cause pain to any living thing.  He ended up making a different choice. 

In general, the one-on-one sessions took a couple of hours. I definitely think being able to spend the time talking about the rules, and mentioning things that could aid or hinder the advancement of their character was useful for new players.  One thing I think I might have been able to do better at is talk about how the system works.  That would be done via messages before a character generation session.  A couple of examples.  One player was VERY interested in Glorantha.  He'd played the King of Dragon Pass video game, and really liked the setting.  However, he ended up leaving the game because Runequest is too crunchy for him.  I did suggest to him that he look into 13G or HQG, as my impression( I've never actually read the rules ), is that they are less crunchy. Another was the player that never really got the idea of the SoI, and whenever I asked him for his, he would tell me, and start rolling dice.  He ended up leaving as well, but I think part of that was my game style.  He'd created a light infantry spearman, and we'd had 2 or 3 sessions that didn't have any combat.  If I had done a better job, before character generation, of explaining how the system worked, and what my style of play is( not actually sure I HAVE a single style ), they might have figured out sooner that the game( or at least, my version of it ) wasn't for them.  No telling, really.

Hope that helped some.

I will say that, when I started my Roll20 game( 2 1/2 years ago, hard to believe! ) I had 6 players, and did a character generation session with all of them doing it together.  'Cause that's how I did the character generation in my original RQ2 campaign back in the early '80's.  It was awful.  Some of the players had the rules, some didn't.  Of the ones that had the rules, some  interpreted them the same way as I did, some didn't.  I don't remember how long it took, but I do remember it was a chaotic CF! 

Never again.  I now get on with a new( to my game ) player one-on-one, at some time other than the normal game time, and  go through most of the character generation.  I leave as a "homework assignment" spell selection, personal skill bonuses, etc.  So far, that has seemed to work fairly well for me.

21 hours ago, Arcadiagt5 said:

Once you get used to it though… I've found that the player typing in family history events in the Roll20 bio page in edit mode whilst I also have the sheet open at the same time to enter the acquired passions/skills is surprisingly efficient.

 

I hadn't thought of trying that.  I had them enter all that in the Events section of the Family tab.  Since everyone looking at the "sheet" sees the same page, that doesn't allow the passions and skills to be entered at the same time. 

I'm going to try your method of putting the family history in the Bio&Info section next time

I now have enough players.  Thanks for the interest. 

I'm still interested in adding 1 more player to my game. 

Great! Thanks for that idea, I guess I was focused on each character having one token.

1 hour ago, StephenMcG said:

I have played a few times on Roll20 and I never had any issues with doing it like I did when we were all at the table, sorted out the strike ranks, wrote it down on paper and called folk as they were due.

Of course, with bright shiny VTT you want to use it. 🙂 I created a token for each character, first time just a box with character name in it.  I had the strike rank box at the top of the map and allowed players to move their tokens onto the strike ranks they were acting.

If you are using fog of war, then you can pre-explore that bit of the map.  I found fog of war a pain to use most of the time.

 

Stephen

I have a Plus account on Roll20, and make use of the Dynamic Lighting.  Takes a bit of work to set up, and I don't use it for all maps, but for buildings/caves/etc.  it works well, and the players can only see what is in line of sight of their tokens, automatically.  However, it does mean I can't put something like a Strike Rank tracker on the map, because the players won't be able to see it

21 hours ago, Westnovote said:

Yes, I agree.  Multiple actions in a round is a pain, and the one you've given (archers) is the best example of this.

Modifying strike ranks is easy enough, even though it is manual.

I have found sometimes, I change the SR, and it doesn't work.  Or, I add another entry for a player, and it replaces the existing one.  Just a bunch of weird "stuff" that I got tired of dealing with.  More trouble than it's worth, IMHO.

So, part of it may be communication issues with the players.  However, each player has the potential to have to add multiple entries.  It's not unusual for archers to have 2 entries, occationally 3( DEX SR mod 0, weapon already prepared at the beginning of the round ).  I know the sheet will add a weapon attack in, but sometimes you have to modify the strike rank( moving a bit before attacking, casting a Rune Spell, or maybe bladesharp first ).  I just found that getting everyone entered in, correctly, usually required that I do it all( and the GM has enough to do, IMHO ), or the players taking a long time( subjectively ) to get it all in, especially with players new to RuneQuest. which I have had several of.

23 minutes ago, Runeblogger said:

I created this for the game I ran (Trouble at Day's Rest), so you could place a copy of each token next to the SR in which each character acts.

That's interesting, and could be handy.  Unfortunately, I do use dynamic lighting, and in the current situation my players are in, the space that they can "see"  isn't big enough to use it.  It would be nice if Roll20 would allow a second "map" to be open that the players could drop tokens on, but I don't think it does currently. 

I'm definitely going to keep this in mind for future maps, to try to set them up so that it could be used.

1 hour ago, Israeldor said:

I just use discord. You can get dice bots and music if need be. And I just quickly sketch something in paint for battles, upload images from a pdf, or draw it by hand and upload it. It isn't integrated with the mechanical the way a VTT is, but it is simple. I find using VTT overwhelming and it makes more prep figuring out maps.

I have the following channels:

Main text chat

Die rolls

Strike ranks (name and every SR they have an action)

Character sheets (pdf's)

NPC's

2 voice chat channels 

How does the channel for Strike ranks work for you?  I'm running a game on Roll20, and it's Turn Order function just doesn't work for me.  I can see how it would be fine for a game like D&D where the order is the same every round, but with RuneQuest not so much.