Friendly Virtual Gaming Thread - /fvgt/

Ah, sorry. I was trying to think of a good opening hook to get people on the thread. I'm open to better introductions for future posts.

IF tends to be more puzzle-oriented to prevent the frustration of playing through an entire game only to fail because of something out of your hands. I would probably go with the latter option.

Well, in true Reddit autistic sub for everything fashion, /r/Vassal40k is a thing.

There's no point to dice rolls in a single-player CYOA with pre-decided outcomes.

This includes combat.

>Discord
discord.gg/BNR5J

>would you prefer a random skill checking system (i.e. dice rolls) or an absolute one (you always pass if you meet a certain requirement, think New Vegas's skill checks) in this kind of game?
I think I agree with Your mention of meeting a certain requirement reminded me of a CYOA book I read a while back that was part of a series.
One choice at the climax had a special alternate choice if you had a sword that was a potential reward in a previous book.
But as I recall, it did have you roll to determine resources expended and later your choices depended on if you still had resources left, so there's that.

That r/ is a desert

Discords kill discussion, usually with drama. We're shying away from a dedicated discord server and instead recommend you use it for the sole purpose of exchanging info to play games, and using it for voice chat.

My current idea for my combat-oriented CYOA (in Twine) is to just have a single number for a particular monster--Monster Strength. You have your own number, Personal Strength. You get a couple of rounds in which you can take an action, which can raise or lower those numbers. In the final round of the fight, if your Personal Strength is higher than Monster Strength, you win. If not, you lose.

So even HP loss wouldn't be random, but determined by how far above/below the Monster Strength your final total ends up.

i'd be willing to play, but i would have to get into vassal first. Does it work well?

Sounds good and simple enough.
Keep at it.

Here's an example of gameplay:

youtube.com/watch?v=7ugQB3ryGaQ&t=435s

What the fuck is the difference between this and the Gamefinder, and why is this here instead of it?

how well does twine work? I'm currently building my IF in C# and finding that I'm spending more time coding than writing (which could entirely be because I'm better at coding than writing)

difference being this serves as a meta resource for tg to get stuff done as well as a game finder. Second is that gamefinder is pretty much just people looking for other people for roll20 at this point, which is different from what OP is going for here.

Game Finder is a Roll20 beg thread for dedicated campaigns. This is more casual play. Also it's not limited just to games.

Do they already have representations for all the units? Or to i need to make my own tokens?

They use generic tokens, but you modify their stats. I wish there was an option to make your own tokens. We're looking for a better option that lets your make a more personalized 40k army. So far BattleBox3d with custom models looks like the best option, but we haven't tested it yet, and it's still in Beta.

It works well for what it was designed for--text-based CYOA games.

I've seen at least one sprawling empire-management game written entirely in Twine, so I'm guessing its very flexible as well. I'm an absolute beginner coder, so the ease of use is mostly what draws me in.

The only difficulty is figuring out where to peg the initial Monster Strength, both relative to player and to other monsters. I guess that's more of a playtesting problem than a math problem though.

battlebox3d sounds interesting but making 3d models will be WAY harder than 2d tokens

I'm planning on taking a page from the Apocalypse World rework and adding a few mechanics from that.

Here's the thing... Most of the work may already be done for us

makexyz.com/3d-models/order/cc570fcc07113f6094f9d95cca0d3f53

All that's left is a little THIN YOUR 3D MASKING TOOLS, and you could have it. There's also the myriad of 40k weapon models that have been made out there that could serve as kits.

Hmm... Stick around. We could probably get a following going. Especially if this 3d model thing for BattleBox3d Works. I'm sure there are people who have 3d models from 3d printing that they'd flesh out and mask for this sort of thing.

Reposting because thread was dying
My ideas for a not!Souls rpg:
1) 2 D10 system where success on any test is on an 11+. Additional degrees of success are on 12-20. Instead of degrees of success providing more of something, tests require a specific degree of success to succeed.
2) Attributes do not “level-up”, instead the characteristics change at the GM’s discretion through context (e.g. spending time in jail would prompt the GM to lower attributes, whereas a character training would prompt the GM to increase the character’s strength). Attributes assist a character in succeeding at a test, providing a -x requirement on a test where x is their relevant attribute bonus (attribute/10, rounded down to the nearest integer)
3) Combat is more realistic than in most other RPG’s. Combat actions are specific and are often aimed. Pain from wounds is a factor in combat, which results in the combatant fighting worse. This includes both melee and projectile-based fighting.
4) Magic based on slots equal to Intelligence (or other attribute bonus), with varying casting times and focus required.
5) Characters may have an amount of traits depending on the background of the character. These traits may have a positive or negative effect (or both) regarding success on a test.
6) Functioning somewhat similarly to the fate points system, in that a character has a finite resource that replenishes at the beginning of a game session, each character is allowed to not!hollow 3+(willpower bonus) times each game session before being fully not!hollowed.

Not sure if I should make a separate thread, but I like the notion that Veeky Forums gets shit done.
if anyone is interested add me on steam: Existential Ego Death / halubi

I like a lot of this, but i think 3 sounds problematic. I know overly simplified systems are frankly less than perfect, but the more complicated combat gets the slower and less interesting it gets as well in many cases. I mean if your stopping to figure out, "ok so he tried to stab me in the stomach but he missed and just cut me along the hip, so i took a x inch gash which adds a y pain modifier to my attempt to slash his throat which i miss cause he dodged and now we need to roll to see if i managed to hit anything else when i missed my target and it looks like i got his nose...somehow. Alright roll for superficial damage since damage to this area can't actually kill him, ever, but i can cause pain at least." it kinda goes south. I know that was a ridiculous over exaggeration on my part, and i know that probably is not at all what you had in mind, its just i always get a little worried when people start talking about making more realistic combat. It's never quite worked out for me in the past.

I think you should use the Blade of the Iron Throne RPG, as suggested in the last thread. You can grab it from the PDF Share Archive PDF here:

i.4cdn.org/tg/1480198013612.pdf

It's a fairly straighforward conversion, has great combat, great roleplaying, and the only catch that I can see is that it's d12 dicepool based(Actually, rolling a bunch of d12s probably feels pretty awesome)

I bought Tabletop Simulator on sale on steam, bought the 4pack for my group excited to try it out. (We usually just play over roll20).

>get excited, download a ton of mapmaking mods, character sheets, maps, and minis from the steam store
>nothing saves directly to the object chest, maps are all individual tables and minis have to be manually imported one by one from their respective tables
>character sheets are non-interactive. You can't write on them at all, they're just pretty objects to look at and decorate the table with
>99% of the maps were made by idiots who just wanted them to look pretty and had zero concern for them actually getting used in a fucking game. None of them have any sense of scale and have random NPC figures strewn about with no regard to grid placement or character scale.
>but it's got a flip table button!

Jesus fucking Christ is there some "don't fucking suck" setting I'm missing? Is this useless piece of shit a scam or what? It's just a physics sandbox with zero ability to be able to simulate Tabletop Games at all.

I recently picked up the Vassal for WiF blitz; a kind of scaled down version of my main wargaming vice, World in Flames. Anyone interested in the game? You can find the rules and the download here.

vassalengine.org/wiki/Module:Blitz!_A_World_in_Conflict

Oh, yeesh. That puts that right off of the Paid options list I was working on. I might suggest testing Battle Box, but that's a selfish suggestion, as I'm still trying to figure out if It's a working option, and whether I should put effort into gathering 3d 40k models, 3d model editing and painting software, and other shit in order to push virtual 40k as something that can be done.

You might also check here:
alternativeto.net/software/tabletop-simulator/

Yea I checked it out and some of my ideas are based off of it. It's just I want to make a more dedicated system that reflects the Souls series.
Yeah, I mean I was thinking of how to make it simple. What I thought of was just that when you take a wound you also get pain, which removes some of your dice from your dice pool until you recover.

If you're going that route, I think at this point you need your own thread. You'll gather more attention, and probably get better feedback.

Hi, combat user here.

If i may make a suggestion there is a game i really like called Ragnarok:Fate of the Norns, and it think one of it's mechanics may be relevant to your concept. In fate of the norns rather than dice you have runes. Actions are taken by paying runes. You have a certain number of runes and you can draw a certain number of runes a turn, depending on how you spend your levels. When you get wounded you take runes at random from your rune bag and start them down the wound track. For instance if i take 3 damage i take 1 rune and move it three spaces down the wound track. there are different tracks depending on how hard core you want to be. In any case at the end of the wound track is the death box. if all your runes end up in the death box you die. While a rune is in the wound track you can't use it. What this means is that as combat goes on you slowly bleed runes, which means that even if ordinarily you'd be able to play and draw three runes you can't now because you don't have that many in your bag. You also loose access to certain abilities that were mapped to those runes. Maybe you are now in to much pain to concentrate for that spell, or your leg is hurt and that heroic lunge isn't such a great idea. Any way this is what my mind goes to when you talk about modifiers for wounds. I don't know if that is helpful information, but maybe it can give you some ideas.

TTS's problem is they wanted to let it do everything so they gave it no tools to do anything, which doesn't make any fucking sense. The functionality of it is so limited that it's barely useful as an online dice roller, and when it comes to maps and map making free programs like roll20 and map tools have it beat hands down. For RPGs it's next to useless, and for war games it's next to useless as well because of the way the asset "chest" is set up.

The only things it does well is the simplest of board games and card games, anything with a modicum of complexity it doesn't have the tools to handle.

Shit man, my condolences on your wallet.
Well, I'll keep on the lookout for better options, unfortunately there's not much in the way of 3d Virtual tabletop sims. The options listed above are pretty much it, plus that one IPad App.

Interesting.
painting them will be an interesting challenge

I will stick around, this thread better stick too
Maybe we can ever get to make some match ups

>IF in C#

>not using Inform, or TADS

Text adventures are a programming problem that REALLY benefits from a domain-specific language.

Speaking of which, take a look at Reliques of Tolti-Aph, which was a demo game for Inform 7. In that game, most of your problems have a puzzle-based solution, but if you can't figure it out, you can generally try to fight your way through. using the gamebook-style combat system. Fighting is dangerous and unreliable, though, so it's better to save it for when you're really stuck.

I'll be sure to keep it up. I'm almost always free for an MTG game, though I mostly do commander. I need to spend some time putting together my Black-Green Fungal Tribal deck, or my Mana-Elves Stompy Fun Stuff deck.

So, what Text-based Adventures do you guys like? Personally I'll always vouch for Hitchhiker's Guide, but that's a classic within the genre.

My personal favorite would have to be Anchorhead. Lovecraftian IF with good writing? Yes please!

also, the IF Archive is a slog. this is much more organized, and searchable: ifdb.tads.org/

Thanks. I'll add that to the OP. Personally, I respect Zork. I don't like it, mainly because I had to slog through the entire thing without a guide on a dare, but I respect it.

General advice: Look at the top 10 in the Annual IF Competition. Anything that ranked well is probably damn good.

My favorite ones that haven't been mentioned are All Roads, Aisle, Shade, Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head Nor Tail of It, Varicella, Hunter in Darkness, and Enlightenment.

The Arcade minicomp was pretty cool, too. I'll never look at Pac Man the same way ever again.

Ah man, Aisle. There's one everyone needs to go play. One scene, One action you can perform, but so many different outcomes based on that one action. If you haven't played a Text-Adventure before, play this one.

I know you mean well, but using an irrelevant language outside of one specific task would personally defeat half the point of taking on the task in the first place. And quite frankly, I've yet to come across any problem that's taken more than a few hours to solve, if that.

Well, C# is kind of... proprietary. I mean, I know you can technically install the .NET framework to make it cross-platform, but still, it's very much a Windows language.

Though you can completely ignore me. I'd just code the entire thing in Java using some pre-existing IF library and LibGDX to save on porting issues

Microsoft, not Windows, but you know what I mean. Let's not start a Language war on here though. The last thing we need is for this to turn into a brand new kind of edition war.

>I'd just code the entire thing in Java

Like I said, Ignore me.

Yeah, free cities is pretty good, isn't it?

>I'd just code the entire thing in Java
Honestly, I'd try to cobble something together in C - it's pretty simple and lightweight, and parsing isn't too hard with it.
Then again, I'm only an undergrad...

>Aisle
Mah Niggas.

Well, There's something far too endearing about Lost Pig, the tale of Grunk the Orc who needs to find his Pig.

Eh, as long as we're being faintly dismissive, I'll say that if you want to use a butter knife as a screwdriver, that's fine, but IF is a very unusual case and the available IF-focused languages are highly advanced for their tasks. Roll-your-own IF engines are notorious within the IF community for being crude and unfriendly, and as a result are very unpopular.

And if you really want to be a good programmer, you absolutely need to learn more than one language, man.

Well, if you liked Anchorheads, there's a small cult of Lovecraftian text-games that run about.

ifdb.tads.org/search?searchbar=lovecraft&searchGo.x=0&searchGo.y=0

So, are we still going to do that MUD Guild or not? Did we ever decide on a game besides OP's suggestion that we do Discworld?

I also had some ideas for a souls ttrpg you wanna throw some ideas at each other?

He made a thread:

Well, I've been thinking that sort of thing needs its own thread where you guys can recruit actual players, and decide on a game. Unfortunately, that means you need to have someone who can take charge of that, and be guild leader, which is something I don't have the time for right now, otherwise I would.

There's Tabletopia in the works, but it looks like they'll have much tighter control over what gets put on the plaftorm regarding IPs. Not sure it will be a viable option for private groups trying to put up whatever game they feel like playing, but it at least looks better than TTS, I'll give them that.

Thanks. Edyctis looks like the first item on my list, but I'll check everything out.

Alright, I'm going to start working on the official OP pdf. What else do I need to add besides what's in the OP?

It does look good, I'll give it that.

Needs Custom Models or it's mediocre at best though. Also a single product key for Mobile and Steam.

Bump.

>Art for the OP
Well, here's the thing I promised.
Let me know if you like it or had other ideas.

not OP, but that's some good shit

Does Veeky Forums have a discord?

>MTG.
Sure, you could use XMage or Cockatrice.

MTG Forge is better though, and also has the option of single-player.

its linked upthread

Several general threads also have their own discord.

What do you think of solo roleplaying? I've tried it, and it is best to keep it simple and freeform.

Did a one-shot towergirls, with an improvised d6 system. First I wanted to give my knight some gimmick or recognizable trait, so he bought a broken magical gauntlet from an elf. Each finger casted a spell: fireball, waterbeam and other spells I pulled out my ass. If I rolled a 1, the gauntlet explodes along with the adventurer hand.

Firefucked archer ratfolk in first floor, discovered the invisible path in the spike trap in the second and in the third a harpy appeared. She throwed him out the window, but used waterbeam's recoil to ascend to the fift floor. Fucked up some wyvern, it broke my armor.

At the last floor, he was about to save the kobold princess, when the harpy bitch appeared again. The ceiling was low and she could not throw him out the window, so after some wrestling he stabbed her heart.

He saved the kobold princess and also obtained a Shiny Armor. The artifact could shine to stun all creatures in the room, but needed to recharge with sunlight. Maybe he will save another princess and decide which to marry, maybe he will keep going.

>Solo Roleplaying
Like, 1 person and a DM, or like you're both the DM and the player?

>1 person and a DM
Disappointing, but doable.

>you're both the DM and the player
I'd rather play a decent vidya.

Both dm and player.

If videogames are porn, solo roleplaying is masturbating using only your imagination or writting smut. You have to focus and be in the right mood, but if you do it well it is very satisfying.

>If [SinglePlayer] videogames are porn, solo roleplaying is masturbating using only your imagination or writting smut.
Both of which I'd also be very unlikely to do.
For me, the reason to play RPGs at all is the inability of videogames to be capable of the same freedom, in the context of multiplayer games.
In the context of singleplayer games, something like The Witcher, or Neverwinter Nights, or Disgaea, or Final Fantasy Tactics, or Skyrim, or Zelda, all do a much better job than I could "gaming by myself,".

>I'd rather play a decent vidya
This

I can kinda see the appeal, but if there is no story or puzzle to unravel, I'm afraid I just don't see the point.
No offense.

Your Towergirls example could just be a writing exercise with rolling to determine the outcome of events rather than thoughtful plotting.
Which would be a diverting and light way to write, but it's not really what I'd consider a game.

Thanks user, this is awesome.

You're welcome.
Glad you like it.

I'll definitely be using this as our OP from now on.

Also, everyone, hear me out on this, but I've been reading through Blade of the Iron Throne's Combat system, and I think it could easily be repurposed for something rather fun...

A *good* Pokémon Tabletop.

Combat is fast and flavorful, and the action/reaction dicepool system could easily account for things like dodging, Special Defense, STAB, and most other Pokémon stats and abilities.

It's also pretty easy to learn, making it better for /vp/ users to pick up.

>usually played through IRC
Do you mean telnet?

Ah, yes, my bad.

Isn't MTG Forge exclusively single player?

Never Mind, Online Multiplayer. testing it out right now.

I play HellMOO. I'd love a Veeky Forums corp there -- if Hellmoo is too grindy, we can try InfernoMOO.

We're open to suggestions, but we'd need someone to be a guild leader and organize the group. Would you like to?

OK, MTG Forge is actually really nice. Adding it to the list.

Anything else?

Good shit

Alright, Game Request, Who want's to go up against my Athreos Commander Deck on MTG Forge?

Ok, so I extended an offer to EDH general: A dedicated MTG Server for them to go at it with the software above. Figured it might be good to have some allies with a couple of the dedicated communities.

You should include Cyberboard, for PBEM players. It's basically chess by mail, but for Wargames and Board games.

Will do. Keep this thread warm for me, I'll be back later this evening.

They added online multiplayer almost 2 years ago. Used to be exclusively singleplayer before that.

Occasionally you find a card on Forge that doesn't work as the rules text should make it work due to a bug or another, but that's not common, and it happens less and less with every new release as they fix the bugs. They have most of the cards ever printed in Forge these days, which is pretty impressive. They're nearing the point where they'll only have to add new cards as they come out.

You can also replace the card art with higher res images if you grab them, but the auto-download off the internet option is good enough in a pinch.

i wanted to test out my grenzo deck in forge just now, and it turns out goad doesn't really work properly. if you attack 2 players with 2 different creatures, all your goad triggers will only affect 1 of the players. or maybe i just fucked it up somehow, i don't think i did though

also the UI seems like a hellish clusterfuck compared to xmage

I'm planning on setting up a server for Veeky Forums, and I'm trying to figure out which program will be the most serviceable. So far I'm leaning towards Xmage, with cockatrice as a close second.

Ok, so I've been thinking. We need a project that has immediate results and anyone can do. Why not attempt to update the wiki a little? Not drastic changes that would get reverted by the main editors,but polish a few pages here and there. Make things more relevant. As part of me making the server for /edh/ I'm going to request that they update the Commander page to be more relevant and easier for a newb to read through and get into commander.

I can get behind that. There's some places that could use a bit of cleaning up.