Virtual Table Top (VTT) support

[demonsbane]

Originally Posted by Drone 5

They may just 'endorse' the work but still not support it or provide any compensation for those who did all the work for them.

If that is going to be the case, it would be neat to open up some permissions for limited content and automation, like tables results for hit location, fright checks and such (at least in the case of the ruleset for Fantasy Grounds).

Things like these would make the whole thing more attractive and ready to play, instead of having each GM devoting some previous boring work in his own GURPS game setup by manually typing and setting up table results and other common configurations nowadays not allowed to be included with the endorsed ruleset.

[Drone 5]

Originally Posted by demonsbane

If that is going to be the case, it would be neat to open up some permissions for limited content and automation, like tables results for hit location, fright checks and such (at least in the case of the ruleset for Fantasy Grounds)..

Oh I wish!!! Roll20 is my VTT and we have nothing there at all.

[oma]

My GM on Roll20 took the default GURPS sheet and made it much better. It has all the combat modifiers built into it as clickable options, and calculates your DR from your equipment which has 3 different loadouts at once.

Really nice. Still definitely a work in progress, but it's a major improvement over the original.

I would love to see the game companies spend even a small amount of resources on the VTT as it promotes use amongst their player base.

Look at me, I shell out $50 to Roll20 for these online adventure packs pretty regularly just because I don't want to have to create everything myself. It's a huge time saver for the hobby player who wants to have fun but not spend a lifetime learning coding and mapmaking etc etc.

If we had GURPS content made like that, I would be totally interested.

[Ronnke]

Originally Posted by Drone 5

Oh I wish!!! Roll20 is my VTT and we have nothing there at all.

Move over to Fantasy Grounds, GURPS support is great, minus official ready to use content, but that's a possibility and something SJG has considered. They've been following FG progress for a little while now and they are pleased with the developments. I don't know exactly what is required for them to pull the trigger on official support, but I hope my efforts are getting us closer to that point.

6176 GURPS games were run on Fantasy Grounds in 2017, an increase of 263% on the previous year, which also made GURPS the top ten game played on the platform. These are numbers SJG liked.

To quote some of my correspondence with SJG.

That's great news about the increase in games played, and our status as top 10! Kudos to you and the group for all you are doing to support GURPS on FG.

I'm going to take this information to Steve and Phil, and discuss what our next steps might be. If you have any suggestions for how to continue to grow our base on FG, feel free to share.

In short, the more people using and talking about GURPS on FG, as the platform SJG are currently investigating, the more likely we will see official support. Which may then, with any luck, spill over to other platforms.

Besides, the Unity release of Fantasy Grounds is going to be glorious. :)

[Colarmel]

Originally Posted by Ronnke

Move over to Fantasy Grounds, GURPS support is great, minus official ready to use content, but that's a possibility and something SJG has considered. They've been following FG progress for a little while now and they are pleased with the developments. I don't know exactly what is required for them to pull the trigger on official support, but I hope my efforts are getting us closer to that point.

6176 GURPS games were run on Fantasy Grounds in 2017, an increase of 263% on the previous year, which also made GURPS the top ten game played on the platform. These are numbers SJG liked.

To quote some of my correspondence with SJG.


In short, the more people using and talking about GURPS on FG, as the platform SJG are currently investigating, the more likely we will see official support. Which may then, with any luck, spill over to other platforms.

Besides, the Unity release of Fantasy Grounds is going to be glorious. :)

I am psyched about FG with Ronnke's system. It's going to be my framework for my upcoming Action game. I just wish all the useless non-d6 dice would go away.

As for the Unity Release... I'll believe it's coming when there's a release date.

[VonKatzen]

It's worth playing on Roll20 despite the fact that it lacks a lot of integrated rules support.
It makes tactical combat easier. It makes it easier to keep track of all the sheets. You can copy-paste all relevant information into character sheets and handouts. You can create unlimited numbers of condition and maneuver cards. You can create rollable tables like critical hits that automatically print information of results to chat when used. You can still track stuff like turn order. Etc.

While it's not as convenient as the more heavily supported or simpler systems it makes running GURPS a lot easier than doing it by hand at a table-top. In fact I do this with every game I run - even if I'm running it in person, face-to-face. I find non-VTT games unacceptably clunky and for old people who can't computer.

Spend time creating one with all this stuff (combat cards, references, tables) as a generic GURPS game, then copy it for new games so you never have to re-do it.

Fantasy grounds has a lot of fan-made integration stuff but I find it overall to be more work to use. I would rather require my players to learn how to do math and read than spend time fiddling with automated rules.

[KataH]

On the question of whether or not SJ Games is even looking at VTTs, I got short but direct answer directly from Steve Jackson himself.

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

Hunter is correct; he cannot talk about licensing pre-announcement.

I can say that we have indeed discussed the VTTs. So we're aware.

[Swifty0x0]

I'm new to using VTT to RPG. The group I was part of, many years ago, has spread across the country, so face-to-face is out. But, we stay in touch and every once in a while we talk about starting up again (we had graduated to GURPS before people changed locations to find their real fortunes in life).

So, I researched today's VTTs and found them quite robust in allowing a tabletop RPG to be run online. I bought Fantasy Grounds ultimate on Steam (was 35% off the 1-time license fee) because it seemed to have the most GURPS support (even though only from fan efforts so far), and would be cheaper than Roll20 over time.

I've spread the word to my old group and some of them have already obtained FG, and definitely want to play online. All of us have the hope that SJG will officially support it, partly to take the tedium out of entering stats for everything ourselves, and to get ready made modules to play.

Even though our hope is SJG will support FG, I don't think there's any reason SJG shouldn't also support Roll20 (both VTTs support many of the same systems now), or any other top VTT. They should be interested in opening the market to all that make sense.

I have to express my thanks to those that have worked hard on the GURPS ruleset in FG. I'm still learning FG, but the online test cases I've done with a couple of my old group (using the GURPS ruleset)has fueled the fire to start up again. If I had to do it all myself from scratch I don't think I'd have the time. And this is partly why official support would be a plus. The time savings outweighs the cost (for us), so we're willing to pay for supported content.

[KataH]

Just an FYI -
If you are using the Roll20 GURPS Character Sheet (also called Sheet #1) - I have opened a thread about it here (please follow the topic): https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/66...ber-1-thread-1

[rerednaw]

I have been using VTT since rpg.net.

I am glad GURPS devs are exploring options.

:)