{"id":4294,"date":"2017-10-22T09:05:32","date_gmt":"2017-10-22T16:05:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/?p=4294"},"modified":"2017-10-22T11:59:56","modified_gmt":"2017-10-22T18:59:56","slug":"hell-to-pay-actual-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/hell-to-pay-actual-play\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Hell to Pay,&#8221; a GURPS\/Fantasy Grounds Actual Play"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hello, GURPS fans, and welcome to a rare non-Thursday Game Geekery post!<\/p>\n<p>What could prompt such an unusual turn of events? Well, last night I ran &#8220;Hell to Pay,&#8221; the GURPS Old West\/Halloween <a href=\"http:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/old-west-halloween-on-fantasy-grounds\/\">one-shot<\/a> I&#8217;ve been <a href=\"http:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/gurps-with-fantasy-grounds\/\">posting about<\/a> recently. And it was&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><em>(drum roll)<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8230; awesome.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Seriously, I had so much fun with these guys! <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fantasygrounds.com\/home\/home.php\">Fantasy Grounds<\/a> really,\u00a0<em>really<\/em>\u00a0enabled us to connect and enjoy a game together in a way we couldn&#8217;t otherwise (I&#8217;m in L.A., Ronnke player is in Australia, and Tony, Zuljita, and Gilda are in two different states of the Central time zone). There&#8217;s a video of the complete actual play (4 hours, 45 minutes) for those interested:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Hell To Pay (GM&#039;s View, GURPS via Fantasy Grounds)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ILVXlbfcQcM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>And a\u00a0<em>second<\/em> video of the same game, but this one from\u00a0Ronnke&#8217;s player client so you can see A) the difference between the two, and B) how an experienced player (and author of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fantasygrounds.com\/forums\/showthread.php?36043-GURPS-4E-Core-Ruleset\">current GURPS ruleset<\/a> for FG) uses the available tools to their fullest:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Hell To Pay (Player&#039;s View, GURPS via Fantasy Grounds)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RNNhn5tUC30?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h3>About the videos:<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>I did no editing on this at all (the game just ended a few hours ago), I&#8217;m afraid you&#8217;ll have to forebear a bit of dead air and &#8220;Uh&#8230;&#8221;s.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;d recommend setting the quality to 720p HD, it makes the text less &#8216;fuzzy&#8217;.<\/li>\n<li>There are a couple\/few curse words in the audio (over a 4+ hour game, that seems pretty good).<\/li>\n<li>Watching back, I quickly noticed that I seem to let go of my push-to-talk button about a half-second too quickly, which frequently clips the audio when I speak. Also, I\u00a0hate my voice (don&#8217;t we all?), don&#8217;t enunciate worth a damn, and for some odd reason I press the push-to-talk key when I chuckle to myself. Habits to work on&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>About Fantasy Grounds (and Discord):<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>The sound quality on Discord was rock solid for the duration, no issues at all. It simply *worked* in the background, didn&#8217;t have to think about anything. Bravo! Discord recently added video chat as well, which I think I might give a try if I were GMing an ongoing campaign.<\/li>\n<li>What more can I say about Fantasy Grounds? It&#8217;s been super fun and stable to kind of twiddle around with on my own, seeing how this works, testing that out, but I was a little worried about using it live the first time. While there were definitely some rough spots, overall I consider this game an absolute success.<\/li>\n<li>I was\u00a0<em>so\u00a0<\/em>fixated on the Fantasy Grounds UI, I kind of completely forgot every single GURPS rule as soon as we started. It was a <em>huge<\/em> help to have Ronnke in the game, not only giving us tips and insight into Fantasy Grounds as a long-time online GM, but also giving advice on GURPS itself.<\/li>\n<li>One of the major pitfalls of online gaming, I&#8217;ve read over and over, seems to be the logistics of getting players to show up ready to game. I was skeptical, but then I had one cancellation 48 hours before game time and one at game time, so there may be some truth to that. I was able to find replacements, but it did delay the start of game quite a bit. If at all possible, I&#8217;d recommend having alternates ready to step in (just like a face-to-face convention game).<\/li>\n<li>One of the most awesome bonuses? Once the game wrapped up and we shared some post-adventure discussion, ending the night was as simple as clicking a mouse button. No late night driving, 30-45 minutes in the car, traffic or weather or anything, just &#8212; the game&#8217;s over, <strong>click<\/strong>, get up and it&#8217;s done. <em>Gravy.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>About the game:<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>The most obvious thing is, I <strong>way<\/strong> over-prepared this game, even after cutting out some stuff earlier in the week. I prepped about 25 NPCs, but they only encountered maybe half of that in any meaningful way (some they never met at all). Likewise, I had 24 maps ready to go, and only ended up using 4. Important to keep in mind for the future!<\/li>\n<li>In particular, I overestimated how much time the PCs would have to explore the city in just a four-hour game. It was basically, &#8220;Shoot-out, the town, the saloon, the sheriff&#8217;s office, the church, the end.&#8221; There was an entire encounter for after defeating the sheriff, to confront the demon who was *really* in charge of corrupting the town, but we were already 45 minutes over the agreed-upon end time when the sheriff was vanquished, so he became the Big Bad (and it fit perfectly).<\/li>\n<li>Having said all that, I thought the pacing of the actual game flowed very smoothly. Regardless of &#8220;prepping too much,&#8221; the end result was a solid game that we all enjoyed, so who cares?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In case you couldn&#8217;t tell&#8230; I really had a great time last night, and am excited about the current possibilities of GURPS and Fantasy Grounds (that&#8217;s not even including anything that might materialize down the road regarding <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/gurps-with-fantasy-grounds\/\">official\u00a0<\/a><\/strong>GURPS support!). Thanks to Tony, Zuljita, Gilda, and Ronnke for playing and helping me explore the wonderful world of online RPGs!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>If you enjoyed this post and others like it, might you consider the <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/TheMookNet\">Game Geekery Patreon<\/a><em>?<\/em><br \/>\n<!--Precis - Posting an Actual Play video of my first-ever GURPS game GMing online with Fantasy Grounds. It was a total blast, I laughed a lot, and I look forward to more in the future. Have you any GURPS over Fantasy Grounds stories to share? --><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>Hello, GURPS fans, and welcome to a rare non-Thursday Game Geekery post! What could prompt such an unusual turn of events? Well, last night I ran &#8220;Hell to Pay,&#8221; the GURPS Old West\/Halloween one-shot I&#8217;ve been posting about recently. And <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/hell-to-pay-actual-play\/\" title=\"&#8220;Hell to Pay,&#8221; a GURPS\/Fantasy Grounds Actual Play\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4307,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,5,3,6],"tags":[],"series":[],"class_list":["post-4294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fantasy-grounds","category-gming","category-gurps","category-rpgs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4294"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4309,"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4294\/revisions\/4309"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4294"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=4294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}