Fantasy Grounds II OVA Ruleset [WIP]

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Kitsune Zeta
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Fantasy Grounds II OVA Ruleset [WIP]

Post by Kitsune Zeta »

For anyone looking to play OVA online using a virtual tabletop, I have one possible solution. I've been working on a ruleset for the Fantasy Grounds II Virtual tabletop (you know, one of the two big non-free virtual tabletops, the other one being Roll20). It's not "feature complete," especially when you compare it to the stock rulesets for D&D and Pathfinder that come with FG2, but it is presently usable in that player characters can be made (and used) and skill checks can be made (currently using the "/ovaroll [x] <description>" slash command or drag-and-drop of the attack roll).

demonstration video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmFTXYbLBnk

The ruleset can be downloaded from here (dropbox). Put the OVARPG.pak file in the "rulesets" folder of your Fantasy Grounds Data folder, which should also contain other .pak files such as CoreRPG.pak.

Using the ruleset requires one of two things:
  1. Every player, including the GM, has to have a standard license (either $39 for one-time purchase or $4/month for subscription), OR
  2. The session host (GM) must have an Ultimate license ($149 for one-time purchase or $10/month for subscription), which permits anyone else to join their game regardless of if they have a standard license or not
You cannot use this ruleset in a session without doing either of the above. (Smiteworks' restrictions, not mine)

Presently, the ruleset does the following:
  • Allows players to set their character's abilities and weaknesses, with arbitrary grouping and individual, character-specific ability descriptions [akin to the ability descriptions in the player books]
  • Allows for these abilities and weaknesses to be added to the modifier widget, which is used when doing skill rolls
  • Allows players to set their character's attacks, including attack rolls
  • Allows players to perform an attack roll by dragging the corresponding number from the character sheet. These attack rolls do take the modifier stack into account.
  • Provides the standard note fields (fluff block, background, appearance, etc.) for each player character
  • Adds a slash command ("/ovaroll [x] <description>") for performing an OVA skill check. This slash command will take the modifier stack into account, so doing "/ovaroll +2" with a modifier stack total of +4 will perform a skill check at +6.
  • Sorts all dice in OVA skill checks, for easier result calculation by users.
  • Calculates the correct result of a skill check. This works even for negative rolls (rolls with a modifier of -1 or less).
  • adds the OVA Logo to the set of "desktop decals" and uses it by default. (Clay, if you have issues with this, let me know. Also, if you're willing to provide that April Fool's rebranding logo with a transparent background... by all means, let me have it and I'll get that added.)
The following is not presently part of the ruleset:
  • Proper NPC Definition - while extras can be defined (mostly), Any other NPC can't be created in the NPC list at this time. This is planned for future revisions of the ruleset.
  • Combat Tracker and Party Sheet - I currently haven't looked into the workings of either of these, but they are on the eventual TODO list.
  • Proper "contained abilities" - While abilities and weaknesses contained by other abilities (e.g. Gear) can be represented by creating a separate group for them, I am looking into properly parenting said contained abilities to their container ability. (That said, current implementation should be good enough for general use)
  • A visual reskin. I'm not a visual artist by any stretch of the imagination, so this is mostly beyond me. I do have some "wishlist" items on this front, but for now, this shouldn't be expected anytime soon
  • Any sort of Module information. Not only am I absolutely certain I'd need Clay's okay for this (either him providing a Standard Reference Document that I can include or outright telling me which parts can be included and which parts cannot), I'd have to actually figure out how to create modules in the first place. In any case, this would be beyond the scope of a ruleset to begin with.
Known Issues:
  • (FG 3.2, minor) rolls in the Manual Roll Entry are represented as Xd6+M, where X is the total number of dice in the roll and M is the modifier. Not sure how hard this would be to fix.
For those that do want to see the inner workings of the ruleset, two things:
  1. the ruleset .pak files are simply zip archives with a different extension. either copy-and-rename to .zip or just open them with 7zip or similar to extract them.
  2. This ruleset is layered on top of CoreRPG. Anything not defined or overridden in the OVA Ruleset would thus be present in CoreRPG.
Last edited by Kitsune Zeta on Tue Mar 21, 2017 7:54 pm, edited 5 times in total.
Clay
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Re: Fantasy Grounds II OVA Ruleset [WIP]

Post by Clay »

I haven’t used Fantasy Grounds, but that sounds amazing! Thank you for putting so much work into this, and I hope other players find it useful.

You can of course use the logo if you like. If you need any other content or want to run anything past me, feel free to email me or write here, and I’ll do my best to take care of it.

Do you have any screenshots of this in action?
Kitsune Zeta
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Re: Fantasy Grounds II OVA Ruleset [WIP]

Post by Kitsune Zeta »

Clay wrote:I haven’t used Fantasy Grounds, but that sounds amazing! Thank you for putting so much work into this, and I hope other players find it useful.
Fantasy Grounds is honestly my preferred virtual tabletop. That said, I do know there can be a bit of a learning curve for some parts of it from the player's side of things. Developing a ruleset can be even worse, especially if you don't know XML or Lua before starting. (I knew XML, but not Lua) Heck, when I went to package the ruleset up for distribution, I almost forgot to actually make sure Fantasy Grounds II could load the .pak file (which I had accidentally made as a 7z archive instead of a standard zip archive - FG2 doesn't handle 7z files)
You can of course use the logo if you like. If you need any other content or want to run anything past me, feel free to email me or write here, and I’ll do my best to take care of it.
Will do for things I'm not certain on as I work on the ruleset further. As for other content, I'm gonna hold off on asking for anything on the graphical side of things until most of the total functionality's present, since at that point I'd be able to basically get a total list of what graphical resources I'd be looking for and for what parts of the interface. (A visual reskin is basically the last thing I'd be doing for the ruleset)
Do you have any screenshots of this in action?
I'll get a couple screenshots showing the character sheet windows off (with Miho) and the dice results tomorrow. If I was certain I could actually use OBS without a working video card, I'd go that route instead (a video showing the current features off would do better), but screenshots will have to suffice for showing it off. I do have a few screenshots of the character sheet on hand, but those are from a much earlier revision of the ruleset, before I had the ability/weakness grouping thing figured out and implemented, so they're out of date.
Kitsune Zeta
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Re: Fantasy Grounds II OVA Ruleset [WIP]

Post by Kitsune Zeta »

Screenshot time! I've got these 4 screenshots up on Dropbox for now until I figure out where a better place would be. Each one is 1024x768, the standard size of the Fantasy Grounds 2 window (you can full-screen it and have more screen real estate, but I like to make sure my ruleset works without having to do so). I used Miho for our example character.

First up, the character sheet abilities tab.
On the character sheet itself, I have Miho's complete set of abilities and weaknesses entered in (most of the abilities are scrolled off the top of the area for them, in a group named "Base Abilities", but they're there). To the left of the name is the level of the ability or weakness. Abilities have a + in front of the (green) number, and weaknesses have a - in front of the (red) number. To the right are a place to put the Endurance Cost (if it's 0, nothing is shown in the field) and a button to bring up the reference info window for that ability. Two of these reference info windows are also shown in the screenshot, for two of the three unique abilities/weaknesses that Miho has. These can be edited by the character owner and the GM (and are read-only to everyone else!). Other than that, it basically behaves the same as in CoreRPG (The "Base ruleset" Smiteworks recommends using when creating new rulesets). Abilities (and Weaknesses) can be dragged from this list to the modifier widget (bottom-left corner) to add them to the stack, which is used whenever the player performs a skill roll (more on that later). Holding control as you do this reverses the sign (+/-) on the bonus/penalty, useful for when, say, being cute is a detriment to your action or being clumsy is helpful (this is standard from CoreRPG, but bears repeating here)

I should also mention that at the top of the character sheet is a standard header block (with a name field and four numeric fields for HP, Endurance, Defense Roll, and Threat Value) and spaces for character portrait and map token. There's also a button to start speaking as the character (which is only really relevant for the GM and any players using multiple characters, and even then, there's better ways to handle that IIRC). Excluding the four numeric fields, all of that is from CoreRPG.

Next up, the character notes tab. (We'll get to the combat tab later. I totally didn't forget to screenshot it my first go through)
This basically has all of the general "fluffing information" fields provided in the core rulebook and the four notes blocks that are on the actual character sheet. Nothing particularly special here.

To finish off the character sheet screenshots, we have the combat tab.
This presently shows the "standard suite of attacks" for a character, with the roll, damage multiplier, endurance cost (if applicable), and perks/flaws applicable. Like with the abilities, each attack also has a button to bring up reference information, in this case I brought up Miho's Gatling Gun attack reference information. (all of these, excluding the abilities/weaknesses under the Transformation: Self-Defense Mode group, are straight out of the Miho player book. The reason those three aren't from there is because they aren't explicitly described in there with a separate header.) The "Roll" number can be drag-and-dropped to the chat window to perform the attack roll, which is treated as a skill roll with the appropriate starting modifier applied. Any modifiers on the modifier stack are also applied to the attack roll. Miho's Gatling Gun, for instance, is treated as a skill roll at +3 (before any other modifiers). It can also be drag-and-dropped to the hotbar at the bottom for quick access.

Last, we have a more clear view of the rolls visible in the third screenshot.
All of these rolls were invoked with the chat slash command "/ovaroll [num] <description>" (which performs a skill roll using the modifiers on the stack and the modifier given in the command itself). The first one is done at +2, rolling 4 dice total. The next two were done at -2 and -9, rolling 2 and 9 dice respectively but handling them as negative rolls. (This actually starts at -1, but it doesn't matter when there's only one die in the roll)
The last roll was made with the GM acting as Miho, and was performed using the command "/ovaroll 0 I try a recipe I saw in a magazine!" with the two indicated weaknesses on the modifier stack. These two weaknesses, as mentioned before, were added by dragging them from the character sheet to the modifier widget in the bottom left.

Incidentally, the "roll" command you see in slot 1 on the hotbar was made by typing "/roll 0" into the chat prompt (but not hitting enter) and then dragging it from the chat entry field to the slot, and then right-clicking and renaming it for clarity. This shortcut will automatically do a skill roll with whatever modifiers are on the stack, but without any description.
Last edited by Kitsune Zeta on Tue Mar 21, 2017 7:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Clay
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Re: Fantasy Grounds II OVA Ruleset [WIP]

Post by Clay »

That looks great! If it weren’t for the fantasy chrome, I dare say it even looks like something officially made. Thank you for putting in that kind of work. I hope it serves you well for your online gaming!
Kitsune Zeta
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Re: Fantasy Grounds II OVA Ruleset [WIP]

Post by Kitsune Zeta »

Just a heads-up to anyone using this: the "3.2" update for Fantasy Grounds 2 was released today. I'm still in the process of verifying every little thing works, but some of the new functionality introduced in CoreRPG 3.2 (and available in this ruleset) is working correctly. This includes assigning the Game Master (that is, host) as the owner of a player character. This technically addresses the "NPC creation" thing, but I still want to properly address that in a future revision of the ruleset anyways since there are some nuances to NPCs that presently don't have fields for them on a player character sheet (most importantly, the type of NPC and, for Boss-type NPCs, boss abilities). Still, for those that need a temporary solution for non-Extra NPCs, update Fantasy Grounds II. I haven't found any issues yet with the current revision of the OVA Ruleset with CoreRPG 3.2, so at least I don't have to do any bugfixing (yet).

(Edit: Okay, so I fixed an issue caused by CoreRPG 3.2's Manual Dice Entry feature. It's still buggy when used in this ruleset (drag-and-drop rolls trigger it, but still do the roll), but at least negative rolls will still report the correct number and specifying a value of, say, 0 for a die in a roll won't cause a script error. Those fixes will be coming out shortly, after I verify that nothing else breaks the ruleset. That said, I suggest against using Manual Dice Entry for now)
Kitsune Zeta
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Re: Fantasy Grounds II OVA Ruleset [WIP]

Post by Kitsune Zeta »

I've put up a video demonstrating the ruleset's current functionality. I have also discovered that the issue with manual dice entry rolls not being sorted has apparently been fixed, although I don't know if that's due to my fix for manual entry on negative rolls or something changing in CoreRPG itself.

The demonstration video is on youtube, located at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmFTXYbLBnk (yeah, it's about a half hour long)
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Re: Fantasy Grounds II OVA Ruleset [WIP]

Post by sniffycrab »

I used fantasy grounds before for Savage Worlds. How does it handle a more open system like OVA that has no equipment lists or set things?
Kitsune Zeta
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Re: Fantasy Grounds II OVA Ruleset [WIP]

Post by Kitsune Zeta »

sniffycrab wrote:I used fantasy grounds before for Savage Worlds. How does it handle a more open system like OVA that has no equipment lists or set things?
I'm assuming you're referring to stuff that would be in the library data modules, such as D&D's SRD or the Savage Worlds Player's Guide.
I haven't really messed around with stuff like the D&D SRD's contents in FG, but I have a rough idea of how they're made. Basically, the items (or characters or whatever) are created inside FG using the corresponding ruleset and then exported out to a module [the exact process probably varies, particularly for things such as D&D5E's classes, and I haven't fully looked into that yet]. Later, this module's contents could be used in a different campaign altogether without having to manually recreate the items. From what I can see in the D&D5E and SW rulesets, there's a few reference lists that filter down to items of certain classes [backgrounds, races, edges, etc.] that are in the data modules, and I think those were added in FG 3.2 since I don't recall seeing them before then.

For what it's worth, CoreRPG (the generic ruleset that's basically the base ruleset for, among other things, the Savage Worlds ruleset) does have a tab on its character sheet specifically dedicated for the items that a character is carrying despite not having any modules that define items of any type. It is perfectly valid to ignore the tab entirely if you don't need items or money.

It's actually kind of surprising how many people assume that manual item creation cannot be done. I actually saw a review on steam that claimed that the only way to set classes in the D&D5E ruleset was to drag-and-drop a predefined class from a module to the ruleset using the drag icon for it (if you open up the D&D5E ruleset and click on the field for a PC's class, it pops up a subwindow to handle their class information, including levels and hit dice)

In the context of OVA, what would likely exist in such modules would be the various abilities and weaknesses (perks and flaws would likely also be listed, but I don't really have a way of cleanly showing them implemented yet, so drag-and-dropping them isn't an option in the current version). As I've noted earlier, that's kinda beyond the scope of what I'm aiming to do at this point, and I don't want to go asking for permission to include that info in a module while the ruleset itself is definitely not feature-complete (at a minimum, I would probably want to get NPC creation fully supported and separated from PC creation, and maybe some things with the party sheet)

It's also worth pointing out: I don't have special handling set up for "Manage Characters" in the OVA ruleset, which would allow for a bit more streamlining on that end. CoreRPG doesn't do anything special with it either (the only sidebar buttons visible are the Characters button, the color selector button [for changing dice color], and the Library button). I'm probably gonna look into how Savage Worlds and some of the stock rulesets that come with FG handle it. This was raised a bit on the priority list due to 3.2 allowing for the sidebar buttons to be switched between "GM View", "Player View" and "Create PC view" during a session, the latter of which is used by default in Manage Characters. Granted, some of the functionality would only be useful if there was reference information to begin with, which again leads into the whole "not making modules at this point" thing.
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Re: Fantasy Grounds II OVA Ruleset [WIP]

Post by draconis_imp »

Hi! First of all I would like to thank you for putting in all the work you did to make this. My only issue was that it still used the CoreRPG default NPC sheet instead of having one similar to the PC sheets. So I burglarized your code and the Core RPG code to edit the NPC sheets. I've attached the .pak file with the edited record_npc.xml file. It's not pretty, but it's functional.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iYzGgT ... sp=sharing
Kitsune Zeta
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Re: Fantasy Grounds II OVA Ruleset [WIP]

Post by Kitsune Zeta »

So, let's talk about future plans for this ruleset. Oh, right, I have plans. And I'm getting back to work on this ruleset.

The ultimate end-goal is to have something that has quality on par with the official licensed rulesets for Fantasy Grounds (so, the D&D rulesets, Pathfinder rulesets, Savage Worlds ruleset, etc.). This, by necessity, would require that I get in the groundwork for making modules at some point, so I'll probably end up actually tackling that sooner rather than later (using, for now, the player books as the main references, as those are already available for free anyways)

This also means doing something about the, as Clay put it, "Fantasy Chrome" skin on the ruleset, and I've already done a bit of looking into how to replace it. I'm pretty sure I've got the basics of doing so down, so it'll just come down to actually creating the graphical assets. For now, I'll be using placeholders of the expected sizes for the various buttons and whatnot. My ideal thing for this would actually involve getting some official art done for some of the buttons on the "desktop", but I'll start asking for that once I get to the point where I'm happy with the rest of the ruleset, and I hold myself to high standards, so that will be a while.

As far as more immediate plans, I have a short checklist of goals that I want to get done by the end of March:
  • Improve Skill Roll automation a bit by recognizing All Ones (including any 1 on a negative modifier) and Amazing Successes.
  • Properly differentiate between normal abilities/weaknesses and what I will call "Container" abilities/weaknesses [Gear, Transformation, etc. - basically, any ability/weakness that itself contains other abilities or weaknesses]
  • Allow perks and flaws to be added directly to abilities, which will in turn auto-calculate the endurance cost of the ability
  • Implement NPC character sheets (supporting Heroic NPCs). I realize draconis_imp attempted this, but his implementation... didn't work on my end. Considering I'm redoing part of the PC character sheet anyways, I'd have to redo the NPC character sheet as well if his was working.
  • Allow GMs to make NPCs from PCs and vice versa.
  • Lay the foundation for making modules containing Abilities, Weaknesses, perks, and flaws.
My plan is to properly start work on the above in March, with the aim of getting as much of that done by the end of March. Ideally, I should have another WIP release in the last week of that month.

Alongside the next release (as well as any further releases), I plan on documenting as clearly as possible how the skinning works, so that it's easier to understand how to go about doing the reskinning. This is mostly in case anyone wants to provide graphical assets that are less placeholder-y than what I'll be making myself. I'm no graphical expert, but I do understand programming to a degree, and I'm fairly confident in my documentation abilities that some of the more inclined artists should be able to figure out how to handle it.

At a minimum, the "skinning" documentation for the next release will include the desktop (including decal) and the various buttons on the right-hand side of the desktop. As I work out how other parts of the whole graphical stuff in Fantasy Grounds work, I'll add them to the skinning documentation in subsequent WIP ruleset releases.
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