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Thoughts on running Rappan Athuk (and deadly megadungeons in general) [SPOILERS]
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<blockquote data-quote="MNblockhead" data-source="post: 9006338" data-attributes="member: 6796661"><p><strong>Thoughts on Game Aids when Running a Mega Dungeon</strong></p><p></p><p>A lot can change in four years. A new job requiring working overseas most of the time, a pandemic, and new technology. </p><p></p><p>Before our Rappan Athuk campaign, I was running Curse of Strahd in person. I printed all the Schley maps with a large-format printer and we played a mix of theater of the mind and printed battlemaps with minis. </p><p></p><p>With Rappan Athuk, that wasn't going to be practical. Especially since my father retired, sold his company, and his large format printer. Paying to print the 100+ maps in Rappan Athuk was beyond my budget and trying to create fog of war to keep the sense of danger in the dungeons of RA with physical battlemaps would have taken more work than I would want to deal with. </p><p></p><p>I started the campaign using RealmWorks, which is what I built and ran my first campaign in (which was homebrew). There was no way that I was going to do all the data entry of putting everything from a 660 page (they really should have added 6 pages to stay true to the setting <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /> ) book into RealmWorks. But I also bought there physical map pack, so I would just enter the maps and display them on a vertical display using RealmWorks manual fog-of-war features to reveal the map as they explored.</p><p></p><p>Then Lone Wolf Development stopped supporting RealmWorks. Also, it still required more prep to get the maps in RealmWorks. In RA you can move from level to level, map to map, and it was difficult to know where the PC may go and find themselves. If they go in a direction that I didn't have a map ready for, I would have to take a short break to get it into RealmWorks. </p><p></p><p>So, I moved to the open source software Map Tool. It was amazing. I could have my hundreds of maps and hundreds of tokens on my hard drive and easily search through them. I could find, load, resize a map, apply fog of war, and drop tokens in a couple of minutes at most. I didn't bother tracing walls for line of sight or anything like that. I just used the manual tools to reveal areas as the PCs explored. Very little prep needed. </p><p></p><p>Then I got a job that required me to live overseas for much of the year in an area with poor bandwidth. Trying to host games on Map Tool over the internet was more of a hassle than I wanted to deal with. I tried running the games using Google Meet, but need me to move all the PC tokens based on the players instructions wasn't fun for me or the players. So I spent many, many hours testing all of the major VTTs at the time, in particular: Roll20, Fantasy Grounds (classic and Unity), d20pro, and Foundry. Roll20s was great in terms of still being usable without great bandwidth, so long as I used something else for audio/video conferencing. But the space limits were too stingy, even at the highest subscription levels, to load all of the maps for RA. Loading them on the fly was not a great experience for me. d20pro I found clunky and limited in features. I really liked Fantasy Ground classic, which would have supported both in-person and online play. I didn't like that the players had to install software to use it, but the killer was bandwidth. It was almost unusable from the location I was at. Unity was too buggy in general at the time and suffered from the same bandwidth issue. </p><p></p><p>So I ended up selecting Foundry hosted by the The Forge. It provides an excellent online experience without players having to install anything. Performance offered by The Forge was also excellent. I was able to upload all 100+ maps for a reasonable hosting cost. The main downside is the manual fog of war in Foundry is not official supported. You have to use a community mod. The developer stopped supporting it and even though it was taken up by other devs, it has not been reliable. To good news is that the Foundry makes tracing walls and applying auto fog of war reveal and lighting and line of sight features easy. At least, easier than any other tool I used. </p><p></p><p>For a while prepping maps became a separate hobby between sessions. When working abroad, between sessions, on the weekend I would spend a few hours listening to podcasts and prepping maps. I now have all the maps prepped in Foundry. And for some of them I've taken time to apply some cool features to the maps that add to game. Lighting and sound effects. The most difficult to prep was the blood ways with its spagetti of maze-like passages that lead up and down levels constantly. I applied teleport tiles so that when they moved to an area that leads up or down a level or several levels, the character token is automatically moved to the right spot on the new map. It took a lot of time to prep but really made the Bloodworks easy to run. Plus I was able to add a red mist effect and limited sight ranges. </p><p></p><p>Dungeons are ideal for VTTs. A few years ago, I would have told you that I the time needed to prep a map wasn't worth it, but now that I've gotten quite efficient in map prep, I enjoy it, and it makes running the game easier. That said, most of play time takes place in VTT maps. For my next campaign, I want to move away from that somewhat and use the VTT just for set-piece battles. I am looking forward into injecting more theater of the mind back into my game in my next campaign.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="MNblockhead, post: 9006338, member: 6796661"] [B]Thoughts on Game Aids when Running a Mega Dungeon[/B] A lot can change in four years. A new job requiring working overseas most of the time, a pandemic, and new technology. Before our Rappan Athuk campaign, I was running Curse of Strahd in person. I printed all the Schley maps with a large-format printer and we played a mix of theater of the mind and printed battlemaps with minis. With Rappan Athuk, that wasn't going to be practical. Especially since my father retired, sold his company, and his large format printer. Paying to print the 100+ maps in Rappan Athuk was beyond my budget and trying to create fog of war to keep the sense of danger in the dungeons of RA with physical battlemaps would have taken more work than I would want to deal with. I started the campaign using RealmWorks, which is what I built and ran my first campaign in (which was homebrew). There was no way that I was going to do all the data entry of putting everything from a 660 page (they really should have added 6 pages to stay true to the setting :) ) book into RealmWorks. But I also bought there physical map pack, so I would just enter the maps and display them on a vertical display using RealmWorks manual fog-of-war features to reveal the map as they explored. Then Lone Wolf Development stopped supporting RealmWorks. Also, it still required more prep to get the maps in RealmWorks. In RA you can move from level to level, map to map, and it was difficult to know where the PC may go and find themselves. If they go in a direction that I didn't have a map ready for, I would have to take a short break to get it into RealmWorks. So, I moved to the open source software Map Tool. It was amazing. I could have my hundreds of maps and hundreds of tokens on my hard drive and easily search through them. I could find, load, resize a map, apply fog of war, and drop tokens in a couple of minutes at most. I didn't bother tracing walls for line of sight or anything like that. I just used the manual tools to reveal areas as the PCs explored. Very little prep needed. Then I got a job that required me to live overseas for much of the year in an area with poor bandwidth. Trying to host games on Map Tool over the internet was more of a hassle than I wanted to deal with. I tried running the games using Google Meet, but need me to move all the PC tokens based on the players instructions wasn't fun for me or the players. So I spent many, many hours testing all of the major VTTs at the time, in particular: Roll20, Fantasy Grounds (classic and Unity), d20pro, and Foundry. Roll20s was great in terms of still being usable without great bandwidth, so long as I used something else for audio/video conferencing. But the space limits were too stingy, even at the highest subscription levels, to load all of the maps for RA. Loading them on the fly was not a great experience for me. d20pro I found clunky and limited in features. I really liked Fantasy Ground classic, which would have supported both in-person and online play. I didn't like that the players had to install software to use it, but the killer was bandwidth. It was almost unusable from the location I was at. Unity was too buggy in general at the time and suffered from the same bandwidth issue. So I ended up selecting Foundry hosted by the The Forge. It provides an excellent online experience without players having to install anything. Performance offered by The Forge was also excellent. I was able to upload all 100+ maps for a reasonable hosting cost. The main downside is the manual fog of war in Foundry is not official supported. You have to use a community mod. The developer stopped supporting it and even though it was taken up by other devs, it has not been reliable. To good news is that the Foundry makes tracing walls and applying auto fog of war reveal and lighting and line of sight features easy. At least, easier than any other tool I used. For a while prepping maps became a separate hobby between sessions. When working abroad, between sessions, on the weekend I would spend a few hours listening to podcasts and prepping maps. I now have all the maps prepped in Foundry. And for some of them I've taken time to apply some cool features to the maps that add to game. Lighting and sound effects. The most difficult to prep was the blood ways with its spagetti of maze-like passages that lead up and down levels constantly. I applied teleport tiles so that when they moved to an area that leads up or down a level or several levels, the character token is automatically moved to the right spot on the new map. It took a lot of time to prep but really made the Bloodworks easy to run. Plus I was able to add a red mist effect and limited sight ranges. Dungeons are ideal for VTTs. A few years ago, I would have told you that I the time needed to prep a map wasn't worth it, but now that I've gotten quite efficient in map prep, I enjoy it, and it makes running the game easier. That said, most of play time takes place in VTT maps. For my next campaign, I want to move away from that somewhat and use the VTT just for set-piece battles. I am looking forward into injecting more theater of the mind back into my game in my next campaign. [/QUOTE]
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