RQG Starter Set -- Digital Assets?

[g33k]

So with the Starter-Set imminent, I'm hoping Chaosium can spill some beans.

Will there be "digital assets" (VTT / online content) that comes with the Starter Set ?  Tokens, active character-sheets, maps prepped for dynamic-lighting / fog-of-war effects, etc etc etc?  Is that sort of thing "coming soon, not quite ready"?  Not currently planned? Or...?

Thanks for any insights/details/timelines!

[Beoferret]

The Glass Canon live play sure made it seem like something had been put together. The third episode (with all the combat) in particular: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9L7mjprAiU

 

[Runeblogger]

Yes, Chaosium is integrating the Starter Set into Fantasy Grounds.

 

Edited October 9, 2021 by Runeblogger

[RandomNumber]

11 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Huzzah!

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.

Edited October 10, 2021 by RandomNumber

[Bill the barbarian]

The Huzzah was for integration into a VTT... I know Foundry so that had advantages for me, I have put a lot of work into roll20 which I have problems with but I do not know FG, ergo I can not comment on it well...

Thus, I will still give my same comment but simply for integration into something 21st century.

Huzzah!

[RandomNumber]

4 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Thus, I will still give my same comment

Ditto. Some insight to the strategy would be welcome, recognising that it is intention, not commitment.

[Joerg]

I wonder how much such upgrades to VTT would be applicable for a computer-aided pen-and-paper face-to-face game.

Drivethrough (and thereby Jonstown Compendium) uses pdf as the primary format, but does supplying bonus material in addition to the main pdf have to follow that format?

[Marc]

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

[Rick Meints]

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.

[Nick Brooke]

@Joerg, as per the Jonstown Compendium FAQ the only VTT platform supported by DriveThruRPG is the Astral Tabletop, https://www.astraltabletop.com/

Quote

Q: Can I develop Gloranthan content for Virtual Tabletops?

A: Astral is the Virtual Tabletop Partner for OneBookShelf, which owns DriveThruRPG. Astral VTT content is permitted on the Jonstown Compendium. This can include fully prepared adventure scenarios with maps, tokens, dynamic lighting, handouts and so on. Creators get the same share of royalties from Astral products as for other community content (50%) (there is a different split of revenue between Chaosium, Astral and OBS at the back end, but that doesn’t affect us creators).

If you are interested, a number of free pre-packaged scenarios for other systems are available on Astral now: you can see these by creating a free account there and going to the Home page. (They are free to access for all accounts, so no pay wall or anything)

You cannot distribute applications or software for other VTT platforms via the Jonstown Compendium, including modules for Foundry, Roll20, etc.

You can certainly create content for the Astral VTT, or bundle Astral VTT content with your PDF downloads, or do what Dario Corallo does and create a PDF "wrapper" to hold the Jonstown Compendium legalese plus a whole bunch of art assets that aren't PDFs. Just be very clear about what you're selling, so your customers don't get disappointed when they inadvertently buy stuff in a format they can't use.

But you can't sell content created for other VTT platforms via our DriveThruRPG community content store: Astral is DriveThruRPG's VTT partner, and DriveThru makes the rules. To the extent you're creating platform-independent assets (maps, tokens, etc.) that could work on any normal VTT, knock yourself out! (Dario does!)

[g33k]

3 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.

You are chicken-and-egg'ed, it seems.  Cannot hatch new VTT products to feed your flock, for lack of egg-laying entities... errr... or something like that.

I suspect (and I suspect you do, too (unless you know it for a fact)) that their "priorities" are heavily based upon their own internal marketing / game-share analyses -- CoC was reliably a top-10 game on Roll20 for years, and recently been showing top-3.

***

I think your likely route is via freelancers...  I believe there are "community content" providers for some/all of those VTT platforms, where "digital assets" are created by independents and sold on those platforms.  Not everyone who can create dynamic-lighting maps and cool tokens and sheets work at the VTT companies.

Be Ernaldan:  There Is Always Another Way!

If you could identify some likely content-creators, offer them up-front payment (and maybe ALSO royalty-shares as per normal "community content" programs) you might be able to get some traction through them.  It isn't likely to be a terribly-profitable method for the first few years... but then again, CoC also spent years climbing out of the pack before it began showing up reliably in the upper VTT tiers.

Consider it a form of marketing, and expect it to be a sunk cost, at least at first.

RQ -- as I understand it -- needs to demonstrate market-share before the VTT folks will put in their own effort; Chaosium sales-numbers show market-share, but that evidently isn't reflected in VTT-share.  But you can't get as much VTT-share for lack of VTT assets for GMs to offer and players to enjoy.

So Chaosium itself will need to fund those assets; or wait for the market to organically create them (like the existing Roll20 RQG sheet; but much much more!).

***

Depending on what "digital assets" are available for the Starter Set, that may become my own first serious foray into online GM'ing (hence my creating this thread).
 

Edited October 10, 2021 by g33k

[g33k]

13 hours ago, Joerg said:

I wonder how much such upgrades to VTT would be applicable for a computer-aided pen-and-paper face-to-face game.
...

I have seen some groups say online that their folks got so fond of the VTT that they did in fact use VTT for their in-person games.

"Dynamic lighting" & "fog of war" effects on a live map, players & GM's relying on the *same* accounting of MP-spent / HP's / etc.

I admit if I had the mad VTT skillz, I'd find a lot of those ideas/advantages to be tempting, myself...

[RandomNumber]

1 hour ago, g33k said:

I have seen some groups say online that their folks got so fond of the VTT that they did in fact use VTT for their in-person games.

I have a hunch that this is probably the future.

So many aspects of our lives have been digitalised (anyone still using slide rules?), I see no reason why TTRPG should be any different. Many of the crunchier aspects of games can be enabled through technology - no more looking up on tables, tracking of durations etc.  What we mark off with paper and pen (2 damage to my spear that made a parry...) should be accounted for digitally in the future if we wish. If true this is VERY good news for crunchier games like RQG and WFRP as the incremental benefit to the customer is so much greater than it is for a more narrative rules-lite game. A customer (and future customer) pain-point is being mitigated and the addressable market for the game is increased.

Digitalisation of TTPRG can really level the playing field and actually offers a bright future for RQG.  Such innovation is often fan-led - the Foundry mod for WFRP and the Alien and Forbidden Lands Foundry mods for Free League being cases in point. The Chasoium acquisition of the Dholes House is another fine example. Innovative digitalisation of RQG could be very powerful.

 

 

Edited October 10, 2021 by RandomNumber
typo

[Marc]

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. 

[RandomNumber]

7 hours ago, Marc said:

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. 

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.

[Marc]

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

[d(sqrt(-1))]

On 10/10/2021 at 10:39 PM, RandomNumber said:

I have a hunch that this is probably the future.

So many aspects of our lives have been digitalised (anyone still using slide rules?), I see no reason why TTRPG should be any different. Many of the crunchier aspects of games can be enabled through technology - no more looking up on tables, tracking of durations etc.  What we mark off with paper and pen (2 damage to my spear that made a parry...) should be accounted for digitally in the future if we wish. If true this is VERY good news for crunchier games like RQG and WFRP as the incremental benefit to the customer is so much greater than it is for a more narrative rules-lite game. A customer (and future customer) pain-point is being mitigated and the addressable market for the game is increased.

Digitalisation of TTPRG can really level the playing field and actually offers a bright future for RQG.  Such innovation is often fan-led - the Foundry mod for WFRP and the Alien and Forbidden Lands Foundry mods for Free League being cases in point. The Chasoium acquisition of the Dholes House is another fine example. Innovative digitalisation of RQG could be very powerful.

 

 

 

I suspect that you are right - this may well be the way a lot of games go. However it does come with a significant downside in that it removes a lot of the flexibility of GMs and players to arbitrate rules and change/invent things on the fly, which for me is one of the major strengths of RPGs. D&D 5+ is already heading this way with classes and powers predefined (pretty much the nature of a class system) in a much more constrained way that 0e, 1e, 2e or even 3e did. I don't mind 5e - it works well, but it does tend to shoehorn people into what the rules say, and once you've got a hard-coded rules implementation it starts becoming difficult to change things without unintended consequences and/or people saying "but that's not what the rules say". I play a lot of board games, and I am quite happy there to thrash out the exact meanings of rules, in RPGs not so much as I prefer them to allow for creativity in interpretation.

(Strangely enough I came across a couple of slide rules the other day and was thinking about learning to use them!)

Edited October 12, 2021 by d(sqrt(-1))

[RandomNumber]

2 hours ago, d(sqrt(-1)) said:

However it does come with a significant downside in that it removes a lot of the flexibility of GMs and players to arbitrate rules and change/invent things on the fly, which for me is one of the major strengths of RPGs

Agreed. If I was playing RQG F2F I would hack it to what suits my group's sense of MGF. As I'm using VTT I am constrained to much of what has been developed for use.  This is of course a self-imposed constraint.  There's nothing to stop me playing RQG over Discord with a Die Roller bot and some sort of screenshare too (of which there are many). 

I'm tempted to teach myself Roll20's archaic macro language so I can hack some tools to enable 'House Rules' but it's not high enough of a priority.  With FG quite possibly on the way I expect I'll shell out for a license and try that. The constraints of Roll20 and 'official rules' are tolerable if it means I can get a game of RQG in.

 

[StephenMcG]

@RandomNumberI play a variation of the rules and have been pushing things onto a sandbox site created for users here.  You would be welcome to ask to join, steal what's there and ask for tips on doing other stuff.

The character sheet us great but ties you into rules as presented.  It is not hugely difficult to make roll20 do most of what you want...

[dvdmacateer]

4 hours ago, StephenMcG said:

@RandomNumberI play a variation of the rules and have been pushing things onto a sandbox site created for users here.  You would be welcome to ask to join, steal what's there and ask for tips on doing other stuff.

The character sheet us great but ties you into rules as presented.  It is not hugely difficult to make roll20 do most of what you want...

The Roll20 source is on github if you have a pro account you can create a custom sheet and make any changes you want.  

[RandomNumber]

5 hours ago, StephenMcG said:

@RandomNumberI play a variation of the rules and have been pushing things onto a sandbox site created for users here.  You would be welcome to ask to join, steal what's there and ask for tips on doing other stuff.

The character sheet us great but ties you into rules as presented.  It is not hugely difficult to make roll20 do most of what you want...

Thanks and @dvdmacateer too.  Is it this one:

I hadn't been on the Chaosium Runequest Sandbox for a while - I will have a poke around and see how you did that.

Many thanks

[dvdmacateer]

20 minutes ago, RandomNumber said:

Thanks and @dvdmacateer too.  Is it this one:

I hadn't been on the Chaosium Runequest Sandbox for a while - I will have a poke around and see how you did that.

Many thanks

That looks like the default Roll20 roll template.   As far as I am aware the Chaosium Runequest Sandbox is a game set up by @StephenMcG were they setup macros.  I am talking about the actual source code of the RQ:Glorantha Roll20 Community Sheet.

[StephenMcG]

Yeah, if you have a pro account, steal David's stuff rather than mine!  It is MUCH prettier.   And it can do more complex stuff.  No brainer.

If you don't have a pro account then please do root around and ask Questions.

[Arcadiagt5]

On 10/11/2021 at 3:09 AM, 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.

Largely because based on the last several quarterly reports I’ve seen from Roll20 RuneQuest is basically a rounding error in the stats. CoC OTOH runs to about 10% of games, which makes it a major player in the “Not D&D 5E” market segment. 

[RandomNumber]

@dvdmacateer @StephenMcG thanks.  I have a Pro account so will have a dig around at some point.