Here are a few things I wish Foundry VTT with the GURPS Games Aid did:
Limited Vision Option
Vision is 360 by default. It would be lovely - although probably wouldn't make the players happy - if you could only see in the arc you can actually observe based on your disadvantages/advantages. Have Peripheral Vision? Great, you can see a wider area. Have a helmet with No Peripheral Vision? Then you see what your character sees, and probably understand why most people would doff that helmet outside of a direct fight.
Light is also 360 by default. Wearing a light stone on your chest on a strap? It lights up 360 degrees with no blank spots, as it was shining from directly above your head, and went through any and all obstacles. Nothing short of a wall or door obstructs vision. That's too bad, because it means you can't hide small monsters behind big ones, or get a sense of what is hard to see. You get the illusion of total vision yet the GM isn't going to play it that way.
Complete Monster Actors
Monsters are in the VTT, but they aren't wholly there. Advantages don't all port over. Damage Reduction doesn't come into play unless you manually check the box off on each and every hit. Given PCs that hit 2-3 times per PC per turn, this is a slowdown. It also means no monster in the system is to be played with a thorough review of everything they should be able to do, and careful checking to make sure it's implemented correctly on each attack, defense, or damage result. You have to check yourself for weaknesses, follow-up attacks, and so on. It gives the illusion of being good to go but you don't really know if you're doing it right.
Showing posts with label VTT Gripes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label VTT Gripes. Show all posts
Thursday, June 25, 2026
Friday, May 23, 2025
Weekly Wrapup 5/23/2025
- Basically no gaming this week. Lots of grappling practice. One of my friends is competing for the first time tomorrow so that's dominated my time.
- I did play a little Battle Brothers. Using some new mods, it's clear that I have a few poorly built brothers and it might be too late to upgrade everyone to survive the fights I need to take at this point. Hmm. I don't want to start over, but I made need to abandon these guys are try again with better knowledge of what to do.
- I had to do a partial rollback of my Felltower update because some of the modules I use won't run with the new version of Foundry. Sigh. We'll see how it holds up in a week.
- Oooh, I love Battletech with minis.
- I did play a little Battle Brothers. Using some new mods, it's clear that I have a few poorly built brothers and it might be too late to upgrade everyone to survive the fights I need to take at this point. Hmm. I don't want to start over, but I made need to abandon these guys are try again with better knowledge of what to do.
- I had to do a partial rollback of my Felltower update because some of the modules I use won't run with the new version of Foundry. Sigh. We'll see how it holds up in a week.
- Oooh, I love Battletech with minis.
Wednesday, February 5, 2025
VTT Gripes & Praises
Comments on the VTT we use - Foundry, hosted on Forge, using the Unofficial GURPS module.
This is all for Session 204.
Praises
- the new GURPS module for Foundry has a die roll confirmation - you can now see the net roll, with your mods, before you roll it. It's very handy. It's an extra step on each roll, but it saves a lot of pre-roll double checking, or post-roll calculation.
- the damage dialog gives calculations for major wounds, shock, knockback . . . and you can roll for the victim and apply prone, stunning, shock, etc. with a button click. Very nice. If we can be sure the calculation is right, I can inflict knockdown and stun on PCs instead of having the dely of waiting for the player to pull up a sheet and roll.
- the numbering at the end of the NPCs was sufficient to differentiate them.
- there is an editable status effect I think we can use for Resistances and such.
- Overall, the experience is getting smoother.
Gripes
- drag-and-drop damage doesn't work well anymore. If there are multiple actors in one hex, the top one is selected for the damage dialog. This was literally just fixed.
- I still can't easily add new combatants to a fight without revealing them. If there is a way to add someone to combat as invisible on the turn tracker by default, I'd love to know. The gnolls weren't a surprise because someone saw them populate the turn order before I could make them invisible until they were within sight.
- Sometimes when I marked someone as fallen, they disappeared from the map for the players. Since bodies are bad footing for our purposes, that is bad. I had to leave everyone up and on the turn tracker, which isn't ideal.
- I still need a way to mark statuses on NPCs without revealing them. The PCs spotted a pair of disabled mechanical knights and no one even remarked on them . . . because they could see the disabled icons on them. They should have had to at least question if they were active for a second, not get the answer from icons I put down.
- Facing is still weird as you move your guy . . . and being able to draw a path and then click to move along it would clear up a lot of questions about how people moved around.
This is all for Session 204.
Praises
- the new GURPS module for Foundry has a die roll confirmation - you can now see the net roll, with your mods, before you roll it. It's very handy. It's an extra step on each roll, but it saves a lot of pre-roll double checking, or post-roll calculation.
- the damage dialog gives calculations for major wounds, shock, knockback . . . and you can roll for the victim and apply prone, stunning, shock, etc. with a button click. Very nice. If we can be sure the calculation is right, I can inflict knockdown and stun on PCs instead of having the dely of waiting for the player to pull up a sheet and roll.
- the numbering at the end of the NPCs was sufficient to differentiate them.
- there is an editable status effect I think we can use for Resistances and such.
- Overall, the experience is getting smoother.
Gripes
- drag-and-drop damage doesn't work well anymore. If there are multiple actors in one hex, the top one is selected for the damage dialog. This was literally just fixed.
- I still can't easily add new combatants to a fight without revealing them. If there is a way to add someone to combat as invisible on the turn tracker by default, I'd love to know. The gnolls weren't a surprise because someone saw them populate the turn order before I could make them invisible until they were within sight.
- Sometimes when I marked someone as fallen, they disappeared from the map for the players. Since bodies are bad footing for our purposes, that is bad. I had to leave everyone up and on the turn tracker, which isn't ideal.
- I still need a way to mark statuses on NPCs without revealing them. The PCs spotted a pair of disabled mechanical knights and no one even remarked on them . . . because they could see the disabled icons on them. They should have had to at least question if they were active for a second, not get the answer from icons I put down.
- Facing is still weird as you move your guy . . . and being able to draw a path and then click to move along it would clear up a lot of questions about how people moved around.
Thursday, January 23, 2025
GURPS VTT Module Wish List
Here is a quick list of what I'd like to see in my VTT, especially for the GURPS module. I'll keep the updated as I go or as things change.
drag and drop damage onto the combat tracker. There are times I'd like to be able to drag and drop damage to the combat tracker. Or to an open character sheet, for that matter.
Ability to automatically assign a random 3-digit number after all NPCs. If I drop 10 orcs down on the board, giving them adjectives before their names just causes goofiness from my players. "Sleepy Orc" or "Angry Orc" is going to start a whole derailing series of time-wasting comments and annoy me. "Orc (175)" and "Orc (609)" are easy to tell apart and minimize the commentary.
Undo Damage. Look, sometimes people mess up their roll, or their target, or it gets on the wrong guy. One-click Undo would be awesome.
Assignable Mods. I'd like to be able to, on the fly, add changes to a figure. Give it Homogenous or additional DR or whatever and keep the change on the character.
GM-only visibility on statuses. I'd like to be able to put a status on an NPC that I know about, but that the PCs don't. They shouldn't know if someone is mentally stunned, or can fly (if they haven't flown yet), or have Armor 3 cast on them, or whatever. I'd like to mark it privately but visibly to me.
drag and drop damage onto the combat tracker. There are times I'd like to be able to drag and drop damage to the combat tracker. Or to an open character sheet, for that matter.
Ability to automatically assign a random 3-digit number after all NPCs. If I drop 10 orcs down on the board, giving them adjectives before their names just causes goofiness from my players. "Sleepy Orc" or "Angry Orc" is going to start a whole derailing series of time-wasting comments and annoy me. "Orc (175)" and "Orc (609)" are easy to tell apart and minimize the commentary.
Undo Damage. Look, sometimes people mess up their roll, or their target, or it gets on the wrong guy. One-click Undo would be awesome.
Assignable Mods. I'd like to be able to, on the fly, add changes to a figure. Give it Homogenous or additional DR or whatever and keep the change on the character.
GM-only visibility on statuses. I'd like to be able to put a status on an NPC that I know about, but that the PCs don't. They shouldn't know if someone is mentally stunned, or can fly (if they haven't flown yet), or have Armor 3 cast on them, or whatever. I'd like to mark it privately but visibly to me.
Wednesday, October 23, 2024
VTT Gripes
Foundry & Forge were a problem in our last game session.
We had some of the usual - slowdowns, occasional drops and hangups, etc. The usual network issues. That's typical.
- There has been a change since a few sessions back with dragging and dropping damage onto a token. The bounding boxes seem to be too large - if I drop damage onto a character, the nearby tokens also get put up as options. That's useless but not a problem when it's on, say, Hannari Ironhand, Chop, and Percy. It is when it is on Gnoll, Gnoll, or Gnoll.
In order to do damage to specific tokens with area-effect spells, I had to resort to dragging them one by one out of the fight, applying damage, and then putting them back - and then making sure their facing was correct.
This took a long time. It literally took 10 minutes (12:51 to 1:01 pm) to inflict damage from one explosive spell thrown into a packed field of about 8 foes. With better damage dropping, it could have taken 2 minutes, if not more like 1 (if I typed fast enough.)
- GCS/mook generator issues abound. DR doesn't always import well. Some stats are missing sometimes. I usually ffind out when I need them that, say, DR is 0 on the vitals of a golem. That slows me down because I have to generate a mook, then import it, then check it line by line. It would be vastly easier if I could just do the line by line in the first place because the mook generator imports poorly at best.
- I can't seem to figure out why the icon facing always chooses something inappropriate. You can drag your icon one by one by one along the map, and the facing it chooses will vary according to a pattern we can't discern. It would be much better if you moved hex by hex and had facing change as you faced into it by default, or not move at all by default, and then display the actual move when you click to end the movement.
- We can't have tokens cover more than one hex without just being bigger overall. I've had to essentially make falling prone a one-hex thing, and big monsters into one-hex foes. It's annoying at best - I've had to essentially change the rules so I don't have to deal with it.
Those things really slow us down in play.
Here are a few things I'd really like:
- Ability to put GM-view-only status effects down. I should be able to mark who has a Missile Shield or is poisoned or whatever without my players knowing automatically.
This is especially true with Reeling, which sometimes comes on for monsters that cannot suffer from Reeling. That's annoying. I need to figure out how to turn that off for certain NPCs without turning it off for everyone.
- droppable smoke or other vision-blocking effects.
- Actual item tokens I can put down.
- An actual, official, licenses, SJG-backed VTT package for GURPS. A person can dream, I guess.
We had some of the usual - slowdowns, occasional drops and hangups, etc. The usual network issues. That's typical.
- There has been a change since a few sessions back with dragging and dropping damage onto a token. The bounding boxes seem to be too large - if I drop damage onto a character, the nearby tokens also get put up as options. That's useless but not a problem when it's on, say, Hannari Ironhand, Chop, and Percy. It is when it is on Gnoll, Gnoll, or Gnoll.
In order to do damage to specific tokens with area-effect spells, I had to resort to dragging them one by one out of the fight, applying damage, and then putting them back - and then making sure their facing was correct.
This took a long time. It literally took 10 minutes (12:51 to 1:01 pm) to inflict damage from one explosive spell thrown into a packed field of about 8 foes. With better damage dropping, it could have taken 2 minutes, if not more like 1 (if I typed fast enough.)
- GCS/mook generator issues abound. DR doesn't always import well. Some stats are missing sometimes. I usually ffind out when I need them that, say, DR is 0 on the vitals of a golem. That slows me down because I have to generate a mook, then import it, then check it line by line. It would be vastly easier if I could just do the line by line in the first place because the mook generator imports poorly at best.
- I can't seem to figure out why the icon facing always chooses something inappropriate. You can drag your icon one by one by one along the map, and the facing it chooses will vary according to a pattern we can't discern. It would be much better if you moved hex by hex and had facing change as you faced into it by default, or not move at all by default, and then display the actual move when you click to end the movement.
- We can't have tokens cover more than one hex without just being bigger overall. I've had to essentially make falling prone a one-hex thing, and big monsters into one-hex foes. It's annoying at best - I've had to essentially change the rules so I don't have to deal with it.
Those things really slow us down in play.
Here are a few things I'd really like:
- Ability to put GM-view-only status effects down. I should be able to mark who has a Missile Shield or is poisoned or whatever without my players knowing automatically.
This is especially true with Reeling, which sometimes comes on for monsters that cannot suffer from Reeling. That's annoying. I need to figure out how to turn that off for certain NPCs without turning it off for everyone.
- droppable smoke or other vision-blocking effects.
- Actual item tokens I can put down.
- An actual, official, licenses, SJG-backed VTT package for GURPS. A person can dream, I guess.
Friday, November 25, 2022
Links & Thoughts for 11/25/2022
Friday links and thoughts gripes!
- I didn't know there was a CRPG based on the Odyssey, kinda, in German. Where you can play a butterfly.
- I aspire to this level of fatality in my games. And diversity of deaths. We're getting there.
- This is a very cool city make called Queensport.
- I still can't seem to figure out lighting in Foundry. I have a dungeon room where the PCs get full, unrestricted line-of-sight dispersal of Fog of War, despite having light sources that only extend out a few yards. Instead of darkness, they just have areas that are less-than-fully-lit that they can see out until a wall blocks them. Resetting Fog of War does nothing. Changing their vision to nothing and lighting to nothing and resetting it all gives the same results. I just don't understand how to make it so that they can see normally within range of a light source but not otherwise. I did not have this problem on an earlier map. Just now.
- So many sales, but I haven't painted more than a few minis in a year or so, and haven't finished reading everything I've already bought. So I'm largely sitting this out. Even this 3 for 2 on top of 50% off 5e D&D sale isn't quite doing it for me.
- I'd linked to the kickstarter for Tonisborg. Here is a post talking about why they didn't do a PDF. I understand, but I also remember fully OCR'd PDFs of out-of-print books popping up in the early 2000s. And I understand what others have said - including at least one independent author - that those who would steal your book weren't going to buy it anyway. I'd love to see Tonisborg, but not enough to pay a lot to get a physical copy shipped to me. I eye my game collection and wonder who will end up with what when I move to a smaller, more distant place . . . and I'm reluctant to add anything to the collection that isn't going to follow me forever at this point. Or which has some trait that makes it worth owning on paper in order to benefit from its use now. So no PDF . . . I'm not likely to want it at all.
- I didn't know there was a CRPG based on the Odyssey, kinda, in German. Where you can play a butterfly.
- I aspire to this level of fatality in my games. And diversity of deaths. We're getting there.
- This is a very cool city make called Queensport.
- I still can't seem to figure out lighting in Foundry. I have a dungeon room where the PCs get full, unrestricted line-of-sight dispersal of Fog of War, despite having light sources that only extend out a few yards. Instead of darkness, they just have areas that are less-than-fully-lit that they can see out until a wall blocks them. Resetting Fog of War does nothing. Changing their vision to nothing and lighting to nothing and resetting it all gives the same results. I just don't understand how to make it so that they can see normally within range of a light source but not otherwise. I did not have this problem on an earlier map. Just now.
- So many sales, but I haven't painted more than a few minis in a year or so, and haven't finished reading everything I've already bought. So I'm largely sitting this out. Even this 3 for 2 on top of 50% off 5e D&D sale isn't quite doing it for me.
- I'd linked to the kickstarter for Tonisborg. Here is a post talking about why they didn't do a PDF. I understand, but I also remember fully OCR'd PDFs of out-of-print books popping up in the early 2000s. And I understand what others have said - including at least one independent author - that those who would steal your book weren't going to buy it anyway. I'd love to see Tonisborg, but not enough to pay a lot to get a physical copy shipped to me. I eye my game collection and wonder who will end up with what when I move to a smaller, more distant place . . . and I'm reluctant to add anything to the collection that isn't going to follow me forever at this point. Or which has some trait that makes it worth owning on paper in order to benefit from its use now. So no PDF . . . I'm not likely to want it at all.
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