Fantasy Grounds Unity GURPS?

[watzl]

Fantasy Grounds has just released their Kickstarter, and have thus far funded more than 200% if their goal in the first day. I was wondering if SJG would consider porting some official GURPS assets to their platform. I know you do not endorse online play officially. However I see this as a wonderful opportunity for you to get some people's attention to the system, and show the world that GURPS is alive and kicking. My preferred method of play nowadays is online, for various reasons, namely time and distance from friends. I believe this holds true to a great percentage of the player base. If you have ever considered going online, why not join the wagon now? Let's do this! If SJG officially endorses this platform, or any of their choosing for that matter, I believe we could get a lot more people to play GURPS. Thanks.
Vinicius Watzl

[Dalin]

I know that these marketing decisions are complicated, but I, too, was sad not to see GURPS or DFRPG as options in the Add-Ons section. I was pleased to note that they explicitly mention hex maps and facing rules close to the top, options that were conspicuously absent from Astral TableTop's recent revamp.

[Gigermann]

I can, at least, say that unofficial GURPS support will continue for FGU, without doubt.

[seycyrus]

Originally Posted by Gigermann

I can, at least, say that unofficial GURPS support will continue for FGU, without doubt.

The Gurps ruleset in FGC is a great asset that supports the Gurps userbase. It will undoubtedly continue to do so in the unity version of Fantasy Grounds.

I'll take this opportunity to once again thank Ronnke for his ongoing efforts.

[Boge]

I don't play online and likely never will, but having those digital assets would be awesome.

[seycyrus]

Originally Posted by Boge

I don't play online and likely never will, but having those digital assets would be awesome.

There's a segment of people who use FG for their person to person gaming.

[Anaraxes]

A VTT is a good way to put maps up everyone people can see them, move tokens around, and so on. The same setup is good for presenting other visuals, like pictures of the setting or NPCs. If everyone at the table has a computer, then there's a little utility from using the chat interface to send private messages and avoid the really obvious physical note-passing which makes everyone at least aware that something unusual just happened* and at worst makes them turn to the recipient, demanding to know what just happened. The maps will be prettier than what you can draw on your Chessex mat, and if nothing else don't disturb the snacks.

Some people really like physical miniatures and 3D terrain to play with. Other people are happy with something more schematic, and might use a digital display, even when they're all gathered around the table together.

Then there's the application where everyone is widely separated. An experience inferior to a group around a table IMO, but it's better than nothing.

--
* unless you spend time chaffing the real notes with some bogus ones... and yes, I've done just that.

[Bruno]

What I really would like to test out is a hybrid setup, with part of the group present physically, and one or two players connecting remotely (with video conferencing of some kind). This would allow our group (which is somewhat spread out) more flexibility in tabletop play.

We're fortunate enough to have enough spare (old) electronics kicking around that one or two remote players could have their own laptop sitting at the table showing their video feed, and I'd really like to figure out how to hang a 360 camera in the middle of the table and send a feed, so they could look around and see the room properly. Probably something on Twitch or Youtube would do.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Bruno

What I really would like to test out is a hybrid setup, with part of the group present physically, and one or two players connecting remotely (with video conferencing of some kind).

Unfortunately, that's been the least successful version in my experience. The VTT setup works okay when everyone's remote. When most of the group is together and only a few remote, then the local relate to each other more strongly than they do to that one face in a window off to the side. So the remote people tend to turn into wallflowers. Sufficiently strong personalities or sufficiently central positions of those characters in the narrative might counter that.

There's also some technical issues to resolve. A single mike for the whole table, for instance, sounds muddy and confusing over the voice chat system. It's hard to pick out individual conversations with all the usual crosschat and side conversations of a tabletop group. (I don't know why piping that over an audio channel makes a difference -- but it does. Maybe you need stereo imaging in the mike setup.) Everyone could wear headsets so they get their own mike, and mute everyone but the remote people so they don't hear double voices, but that's a little awkward. No doubt a real sound engineer could make it work. But it's more challenging than just dropping a mike on the empty spot on the table.

Give it a shot and see how it works for your group. Let us know what worked well and what less well.

[Bruno]

The 360 camera I'm looking at has 360 audio directional recording. I'm curious how that works for the viewer, headphones would probably be required.

I can see why it would be hard to hear though. It's like hearing aids - unless you have super expensive ones, they make busy noise environments really hard to work with.