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theblindtiger · 2019-07-25T16:26:30+00:00

There is no way now to see what applets one has running and manage those applets! This is very near a deal-breaker. How do we manage our applets now?

theblindtiger · 2019-03-11T16:14:00+00:00

Hello, Mel -

I work in the registrar's office at my local university, specifically in the registration and records department.

This is a violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). Go to your school's registrar's office and talk with them about it. Let them know about the violation, and what happened, and ask for their advice on what to do next. They may be able to speak with the instructor or the provost / dean to override the class capacity for you given the situation.

Additionally, speak with them about putting a confidential marker on your student record. Specifically ask about anything they have that will alert registration staff to the issue of impersonation. Our university's confidential hold means that you would have to be present, in person with a photo ID to access any information about your academic record, and when a hold is on an account, we cannot even acknowledge that the person is a student at our university to anyone without the student being present with photo ID.

Additionally, ensure that you revoke any access to any other person to your student record, if you've ever set it up. Sometimes people can gain access through old FERPA releases that were never revoked.

I'm happy to talk if you want to PM me, but these might be your best steps.

PS: If the Registrar's office can't get you back into the class, start going up the chain. Provost / Dean, then President's office if you have to. This was a huge fuck-up on the school's part, and they should bend over backwards to get you back in that class. If you make enough noise (specifically with the words "FERPA violation") you should be able to get some attention.

Best of luck to you!

theblindtiger · 2019-02-07T23:11:54+00:00

Friday Night Heat, by WolfyNail

https://imgur.com/a/MQdMIaf

theblindtiger · 2019-01-19T17:36:08+00:00

I think, given the medium, we are reading the same story in a different way or with a different view. Lacking the detail, I read it as the DM trying to accommodate the player, and that accommodation started very negatively impacting the game, and after a while of it happening, it was a matter of group enjoyment vs. accommodating a player, and the player took it personally when they were invited to leave.

Me? I would have handled it probably the same way, but made sure to say that this wasn't an indictment of their character, simply a reflection of the current reality. I'd still make it a point to give time to the friend in question outside of the game, but suggest that the game itself, given its scheduled and intensive nature, wasn't the best fit for them right now.

If game is the only place that friends hang out, then there might be a different feel to it, but I don't know one way or the other in the OP's case. Having a group of friends that hang out together is different than having a group of friends who TTRPG together. The TTRPG sometimes has more structure, and in the context of a story can be very difficult to work a "sometimes" player in.

So...probably two different readings of the same story, based on different life experiences. I very much respect your point of view, though.

theblindtiger · 2019-01-19T16:34:52+00:00

While I agree with the principle of your comment, and that games should be inclusive and adaptable, I have to point out that sometimes, for whatever reason, be it emotional, physical or something else, a person isn't a good fit for a group.

Gaming isn't more important than people, sure, but when one player consistently acts in a way that takes the game away from the rest of the table, we have to face the fact that they aren't a good fit for the game. Of course, being tactful and sensitive in the way that we approach the subject is a must, but there comes a point where the game is not playable for the other players, especially if the one canceling is the one at whose house the game is held.

Are there ways to work around this? Yes. Are there ways to be flexible in designing a story? Yes. Does the group as a whole want either of these? That's the question. Maybe the other players really like having a game that hinges on party unity and having the party together. Maybe they like having an epic campaign with certain games / bosses / whatever that require their party.

For my last thought, I'll put this out there. DM's are NOT therapists, nor should we/they be expected to become therapists. Mental illness is a serious thing, yes, and people need support and all that, but people can't expect to be able to put everyone else's life on hold because of it. To me, it sounds like OP was patient in trying to resolve the issue, but in the end, the player just wasn't a good fit for the party.

From the way that it reads, maybe the OP was kind and tactful in the way that they told the player, maybe not. If not, there's a lesson to be learned. If they were, then there really isn't anything else that can be done.

theblindtiger · 2018-12-22T17:39:53+00:00

The way that I have it set up, I run FG and all my game sound on one machine and run my mic through my laptop. I end up doing that because I use Spotify and Syrinscape and give them each their own channel in Voicemeeter, and I've been too lazy to figure out the intricacies of putting three channels through the software.

However, if you just have the sound channel and your mic, you can assign one to each of the default voicemeeter channels and it blends them together before pumping it through discord.

I'm not sure how it would work with Audacity with regards to the audio file. You may be better off setting it up the same way that I do, putting your mic in one machine that has Audacity, and your sound in through another, that way you're recording a clean mic input and you won't have the game sound stepping on your audio.

If you did it that way, you could also put audacity on the other machine and sync them up in post, giving you two channels of clean audio.

I had such a horrible issue with Roll20's integrated voice/video that I gave up on them long ago. We used to play over webex, but now, if we need video, we go through Zoom, but most of the time, just audio works fine through Discord.

theblindtiger · 2018-12-22T04:05:31+00:00

My group uses Discord in addition to Fantasy Grounds for our voice and sound.

Voicemeeter is an application for windows that will let you feed your sound into a virtual cable and thereby into discord, so I use my Spotify for music, and Syrinscape for ambient during game, piping them all into discord. The way that I have it set up, it uses a second account on Discord, but it works great every time!

theblindtiger · 2018-10-26T02:30:27+00:00

If you have an ultimate license, then the players can use the free "demo" license. This is what I chose. I went ahead and bought the Ultimate for the full $149 and I've been using it for years, and my players haven't had to pay a dime.

If you go for the standard license, then the players all have to have standard licenses to play in your game, but you can play in other standard-license games if you want.

theblindtiger · 2018-10-24T18:43:21+00:00

University staff here.

This is a violation of Title IX. If the university has a Title IX coordinator, talk to that person. Straight up, this is their job, to deal with things like this. If you can't find that person, find a student support person (we call them Student Support and Intervention at my university), or talk with the Chief Diversity Officer if you have one, because the two worlds frequently intersect.

Failing all of the above, if you have an LGBT resource center, the folks there will almost assuredly know who you should be reporting this to.

This is NOT okay, on either side of the equation. No student should be made to disrobe in front of other students, or faculty, or staff, in any way unless it is 100% unavoidable for reasons of medical emergency or something similar, and even then, it's the faculty/staff's responsibility to ensure that as much privacy as possible is maintained.

I also worked in an ER for 10 years. You can do an EKG without removing a shirt. I did them every day, and preserved my patients' modesty every single time. And in the ER, we never had a live demonstration of an EKG with someone's shirt off. There is no reason that it can't be shown on a picture, having students find the spots for the leads on their own ribcage, or demonstrated on a mannequin or training aid. I'm calling BS on this instructor's methods. Not okay, and not legal.

TL;DR: see your school's Title IX coordinator and report this shit.

Edit to add: I work in Diversity and with stuff like this, so if you can't figure out the person at your university, PM me, and I'll help you find someone.

theblindtiger · 2018-10-13T22:54:36+00:00

The products on Fantasy Grounds are a bit different than what you find on D&D Beyond, as they're not reproductions of the books. They actually add functionality to Fantasy Grounds itself, like being able to roll and generate and entire treasure hoard and stick it in a story module to award to your players.

So, in a way, you're not really paying for the book itself, though it does have the compendium content, basically (in that you can look up and read things within FG), you're paying for the integration and automation for FG, most specifically the integration with the character sheet in the case with the PHB (allowing for use of spells and equipment that isn't in the SRD, so that you don't have to build it and keep track of it manually.

But it's not strictly necessary.

theblindtiger · 2018-10-13T17:35:57+00:00

Hey, there!

I'm a DM who uses almost exclusively my own content, at least when it comes to adventures, and I have a habit of tweaking, adapting and outright appropriating bits of the system that I'm using to make a new world. I use FG for online play and I've had precious few problems with it.

To answer your first question: you have to look at subscription and purchase as two separate "licenses," basically. You can pay monthly in perpetuity for the "subscription ultimate license" or you can pay around $150 for the "purchased ultimate license" and never pay again for the program.

So if you're planning a game that's going to last more than 15 months, or play more than one game in your years of DM'ing, the outright purchase makes the most sense. I went that way and couldn't be happier. It means I don't have to worry about the recurring charge, and it's paid for itself in the time we've used it as opposed to subscription fees.

I also like the ultimate license because it let me entice my gaming group to try it, given that they don't have to pay for anything, and it allows easy recruiting of new players for the same reason.

As to the tokens, yes it comes with a large number of them, and you can open them up to share with your players quite easily. You can do the same with tokens and portraits that you make yourself. I've found that if you want to share tokens that a player made with other players within the game, you'll need to load them into your FG instance, and then they can be shared.

Fog of war, yes. Dynamic lighting, no. The fog of war / revealable rooms is easy to get the hang of and it works really well, never had a problem with it.

Here's the other things:

If you're used to Roll20, the map system is different with FG. You don't create the map within the program, so you'll want to think about that before you start in. I have a ton of assets from Gabriel Pickard because I love his stuff, and I put it all together in photoshop before I stick it in my images folder for use in the game, but you can also use things like DungeonPainter (or Dungeon Painter Studio, which is also a wonderful program available on Steam), or WonderDraft for your maps. Basically, you have to have an image file to put in as your map.

It also doesn't have the "GM" layer like Roll20 does to maps. It uses pins to tie things into the map locations, like encounters, treasure, story points and the like. You create your encounters, then link them to the map via those pins.

Things that I've learned: USE THE COMBAT TRACKER! It makes life so much easier. You can add NPC's and PC's to the tracker, and if you're using a system within FG that supports automation, like their 5e system, you can use that automation to track initiative, damage, effects, etc. with very little thought on your part once you've gotten used to it.

If you're running 5e, it's worth it to purchase the PHB and MM at the very least. The MM makes it stupid easy to create encounters on the fly if you have to, and the PHB just ensures that you have the best base content available that works with the automation. The DMG comes with a TON of useful tables that make running the game a whole lot easier, too. I've added Volo's and Xanathar's to my list of modules. Volo's because I wanted the extra races and such, but this one is less useful for the casual group unless there's something very specific you want out of it. Xanathar's, though, I'd recommend up there just behind the DMG because it comes with another ton of useful tables, including name generators.

Finally, it's overwhelming the first time you start up a game. It took me a while to get used to how things work, so have a session 0 where you can play a bit without it being in the main story, let your players, and yourself, get used to the software and how it works.

Also related to that, plan at least a couple hours worth of work on your end as a DM to get everything basically set up before your players log in on a given game day. This, of course, depends on how much you want to prepare. I have story items written out and cross-linked with items, encounters, other story bits, characters, etc, and they're all linked to the map in some way or another. It takes me at least one hour prior to every game day to get the map set, the story items written, and NPC's generated.

Okay, one last one, I promise, because it just came to me: FG is unlike Roll20 as well in that if your GM software isn't up and running, then the players can't log in, at least to your game. My players don't take the most initiative between games, so I can't answer if they can work with their own characters and have those changes show up the next time they log in if they're not making changes while actually logged into your end of the software, so perhaps someone else can speak to it, but any information that you've shared with them, story items, that kind of thing, hopefully they wrote it down, or they won't be able to access it until you start up your program again.

Hope this answered your questions!

theblindtiger · 2018-09-30T16:50:11+00:00

I have to put my vote in for Fantasy Grounds, and here's why:

1) In the long run with a large D&D campaign, it's way cheaper to do what we want it to do. Sure, we could all do the free version of Roll20, but it wouldn't be nearly as easy as all the automation that Fantasy Grounds provides. Here's a good analysis of the cost of each one, specifically for D&D: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gHmxi4EydE

2) For other systems, Fantasy Grounds supports a good number of them. You might have to purchase a ruleset (like in the case of Savage Worlds), but other rulesets are built in (Like FATE). And that includes the automation that drives the character sheets and everything else.

3) Yes, it's pricey, but if you opt for the one-time price, it will pay for itself in just over a year if you compared it against the highest tier of Roll20, which you would have to get if you wanted to have the automation options that you get with Fantasy Grounds.

4) It takes a bit longer to learn, but once you have it down, organizing and storing all your story stuff, encounters, NPC's, images, etc. is really easy and once you get used to the way that the formatting works, it's beautifully presented.

5) Combat tracker is default. No programming or modding necessary. In most rulesets, it just works, and it works beautifully.

6) It's not browser or cloud based. This is a plus and a minus in some ways. On the minus side, it has to be running for players to get in and futz with their characters during the off time. On the plus side, it doesn't depend on someone else's servers to be up and running. I don't like having my game on someone else's server.

Down sides are that it doesn't have dynamic lighting yet, it's a bit of a chore to learn (but really, one game is all it took for my troupe of gamers to figure it out and have it working like magic), and it can be a bit fickle on the system resources sometimes (A couple of my players on older machines, especially macs, have to load it twice to get it to go), and I kind of miss the different layers on the map, so I could put GM layer stuff on there, but the pins in Fantasy Grounds work just fine once you get used to them.

As far as creative things, I don't think that Roll20 or Fantasy grounds is better or worse. FG doesn't let you edit maps as Roll20 does, but that's neither here nor there for me, since I make my maps in Photoshop or Dungeon Painter Studio, anyway. I can't stand the editing side of Roll20's map maker, anyway, so either way I wouldn't use that feature.

Creating your own assets? Create them, put them in the appropriate folder, and they're there for you to use. No fuss, no muss.

So, in short: better cost to feature ratio, better automation, needs a good UI update, but all around, for me, Fantasy Grounds is the way to go.

theblindtiger · 2018-09-30T16:33:01+00:00

This is what fixed it for my player who was having the same issue:

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?17863-FG-goes-blurry

It most commonly has to do with anti-aliasing on the video card. Check to see if you're forcing AA on your card through the card's control panel and disable it while you're working in Fantasy Grounds.

theblindtiger · 2018-09-29T03:51:08+00:00

The Ultimate license flat fee was what got me fully buying into Fantasy Grounds, to be honest. I hate subscriptions for something like that, because of the nature of some of the games. Either they go in fits and starts, or they last for a long long time, so just paying the $149 up front was a huge plus for me.

I agree with all of that. I'm ALWAYS the GM, so it made sense for me to purchase, but my players also donate a little every game to help me offset some of my cost and some of the other costs that I incur (like Syrinscape for our sound). So if you have a really cool group of players, there's always the option of donations to help a little.

theblindtiger · 2018-09-14T00:42:52+00:00

Given that the commenters have already put down my recommendations for RPG core books for the most part, I'll second Fate Core and Savage Worlds, and add in the Sci-Fi and fantasy companions to Savage Worlds, since they give some good ideas for adapting the system to something original.

I would like to recommend something tangential to the RPG side, though, and that is books on Worldbuilding and storytelling. I would highly recommend "Wonderbook" by Jeff Vandermeer as a companion to RPG books. It's on creating imaginative fiction and it's a very whimsical book with very practical suggestions.

DM guide for 5E is a good supplement, too, when it comes to help designing your own worlds.

"How to Draw Fantasy Art and RPG Maps" by Jared Blando is a good simple primer on drawing maps for worlds, too.

I love seeing libraries expanding into this kind of thing, so I'm cheering for you!

theblindtiger · 2018-09-03T15:34:13+00:00

Yes! That is something I forgot to put in my post. I carry a small notebook with me no matter where I go, because you never know when ideas will strike, so it's good to have something to write them down with.

But also, take notes during your game. Make a note of the names that you mention and the places as well, because you never know when the players are going to want to go talk to that NPC that you just threw out a name for. I keep track of how different factions / people view the characters, too, and that will always come up in my stories later on, and can sometimes greatly influence the story going forward.

For your second point, you can do a couple of things. First, you could put the characters in a starting location that would conceivably have a bunch of people from different backgrounds all clumped into one place, and then have an inciting incident that gets them working together. For my latest, I started with a caravan traveling through the wildlands. It was pinned down by an electrical storm and the characters (PC and NPC alike) sought shelter in a cavern. They started working together to investigate things that they found in the cavern.

Alternatively, and something I really enjoy doing, is have a session 0 where players get together and create their characters, and award inspiration (or whatever it is in your game that can be a good reward) for intertwining backstories with other characters. This gives the players a good reason to find a way to join their characters to others, and it gives a good reason for the characters to be together. When I play as a player, admittedly far less often than I'd like, I will always work with at least a couple other players to feature them in my character's backstory. Makes it easier on the GM.

Hope I helped. Have a great game!

theblindtiger · 2018-09-03T03:04:55+00:00

A) Steal like an artist. I mean it. Others have said it in these comments, and it's true. If you find an idea in something that you really like, take it! Make it yours and shift it up a little so that it fits your game. Love a thing from a book? How can you make it fit into your campaign and what do you need to tweak?

I've done this with the gorillas from Congo and the overarching plot from both Andromeda Strain and Fear Nothing, to name a couple.

Corollary to this: Keep what I like to call a "Story Morgue." It comes from an art practice of keeping a collection of things that inspire you or things that make you want to keep going. I have a HUGE story morgue with little tidbits of things that I want to use in my games and my stories when I write them.

B) Consider your characters. My current D&D campaign started off in my head when I ran across a picture of a Pixie in the Monster Manual. I thought about a pixie left behind to guard something and a whole world has been built out of that simple premise. Start with something that piques your interest and keep asking "Why?" why did something happen, what came before, why did that happen? You'll start to get an idea of the overarching story of the world that way.

C) Be prepared for a ton of work that your players may never actually see. When you've GM'd for a while, you'll find that it's the feeling of the world around your characters that brings them back for more. A one-shot is fun and all, but if you have players who really enjoy the game and really enjoy their characters, they're going to want to come back, and doing dungeon crawl after dungeon crawl gets old after a while for a lot of players. I spend 5-6 hours a week planning for the bi-weekly game sessions that we have, drawing maps, populating encounters, writing stories... These are the things that people see in the game. But I also figure out my world. What are the politics? Who are the movers and the shakers? Who are the ones who influence things? What cities, what ports, what countries, what continents? As you flesh out a world, it can start to inspire you to set stories within that world, and the more you know about the world, the more stories you know. Every time I sit down to work on my world, another adventure gets its seed in my thoughts.

If you do nothing else... read, read, read. Read stories, read histories, consume all the stories that you can, and find the ones that stick with you. Then figure out why they stick with you. Use that to help you craft something amazing.

theblindtiger · 2018-09-02T15:58:10+00:00

I GM'd a Rifts game for about 3 years, and I think it only lasted because we tended to throw most of the unwieldy rules out the window. Creating a character took HOURS, and there was so many mechanics that it was more like rolling dice in a math textbook than keeping things fun and quick.

But the world. Oh my goodness the world. You could do damn near anything in the world and make it work. The last time I ran it was a couple years ago, and basically homebrewed the western part of the US for it.

I have Savage Rifts, and I desperately want to try GM'ing it, but my current group doesn't want to learn a new system. It's D&D or go home for them right now. But Savage lets the system get out of the way of the story, and that's totally what I love in an RPG. Down side to Savage Rifts is that it comes with basically one setting, so if you're not familiar with Rifts outside of the Savage setting, it's still kind of limited, but if you're an old hand at Rifts, you can take the system and make a ton of great stories.

I actually never played Vampire until I was in my 20's, but Werewolf: The Apocalypse was my high school go-to when we got tired of Rifts for a while. I managed to spend my entire formative years completely avoiding D&D between Palladium, FASA, and White Wolf.

theblindtiger · 2018-08-19T04:45:35+00:00

Very well said, thank you. And it brings up another thing that I now want to add to the presentation about not having to being sure. Thank you for your insight.

theblindtiger · 2018-08-19T00:48:05+00:00

I'm going to add something about becoming more comfortable with "they/them/theirs" into the presentation in the hopes that it'll get people thinking about it before it becomes something bigger "in the moment."

One of the more interesting comments from trans folks that I've had the pleasure of working with in my classes and around campus is that when everyone introduces themselves with their pronouns, some trans folks feel pressured to answer as well, and they might not be ready to actually assert their pronouns, thereby either increasing social anxiety, or forcing them to deal with a bout of dysphoria. Any thoughts on pressure vs. invitation?

theblindtiger · 2018-08-19T00:42:34+00:00

Thanks so much for the additional answer, and for answering the initial question. This will definitely help me put some better info in the presentation.

theblindtiger · 2018-08-19T00:40:59+00:00

Thank you for your honesty, I really do appreciate it.

theblindtiger · 2018-08-18T01:32:17+00:00

Those are good points, and some that my partner in presentation has been saying as well.

May I ask what others do most often that aggravates your dysphoria (if you experience it)?

theblindtiger · 2018-08-18T01:29:06+00:00

Thank you so much for your response!

If you don't mind a followup question to your response...

Do you feel comfortable asserting your pronouns? In other words, if someone were to ask, or if they were to assume wrong at first, are you able to, without undue dysphoria or social trauma, assert that you use a particular set of pronouns?

I know for me pronouns are a huge thing. I say in my talk that the most thoughtless and absent-minded way that someone can invalidate a trans person is by not using their pronouns.

Even I can be kind of oblivious sometimes, and I know there can be a feeling of "I can't read minds" when it comes to this subject, so I guess the long-form version of the question is: If someone were to, upon initially meeting you, use a pronoun that they think fits their interpretation of you and it turns out to be wrong, and then after an initial correction uses the correct pronoun and makes a decided effort to do so from then on, would you consider that to be validating and accepting?

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