Fatigue and Equipment on Roll20

Thought I'd take a moment to point out that because the Encumbrance rating on the character sheet for Roll20 is auto-calculated from weapons and equipment, and because treasure weighs 1 point of encumbrance per point of treasure, writing Treasure as an item on the equipment list, and using the number of treasure as the encumbrance value, will automatically include its weight in the companion's Encumbrance.

Furthermore, some companions have special powers that make them capable of carrying more, in that case you can write in the special ability in the equipment list as well, giving it a negative value.

Parchement Battle & Travel Mats

Based on Voidstate's battelmat, here are my latest update. In-game I have the rules for the combat maneuvers written in text on the GM layers above the mats, so I can refer to them fast, without having them clutter up the UI.

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Roll20 Character Sheet Updated

I finally found the problem that was causing the favoured weapon skill checkbox to not save properly. The good news is that this means that the favoured weapon skill state is now saved, and it can be used to do macros like this (NPC vs. Adversary, first weapon), one of a series of macros I'm experimenting with that makes setting up characters and having them duke it out with each other a lot easier.

/emas @{selected|token_name} attacks @{target|token_name} (TN #pc_vs_npc_defense ) with a @{selected|repeating_npc-weapon-skills_0_npc_weapon_skill_name} (Damage @{selected|repeating_npc-weapon-skills_0_npc_weapon_damage}, Edge @{selected|repeating_npc-weapon-skills_0_npc_weapon_edge}, Injury @{selected|repeating_npc-weapon-skills_0_npc_weapon_injury}, @{selected|repeating_npc-weapon-skills_0_npc_weapon_called_shot}, Damage Bonus @{selected|attribute_level}).

/r 1t[feat] + @{selected|repeating_npc-weapon-skills_0_npc_weapon_rating}t[@{selected|bar3}] + [[@{selected|repeating_npc-weapon-skills_0_npc_weapon_skill_favoured} * @{selected|attribute_level}]] + ?{Modifier|0} > #npc_vs_pc_defense

This uses the Favoured Weapon Skill State to calculate whether the NPC gets to apply his Attribute Level to his roll (because the Favoured Weapon Skill State is 0 or 1, it's just multiplied with the Attribute Level).

The bad news is that because the new 'true' value of '1' is different than the old one (which was 'on'), all characters will lose their Favoured Weapon Skill States. Sorry about that. I try to not break things going forward unless there is no other way, and in this case it was a matter of me not understanding how Roll20 saves default data (I still don't understand why anyone would want 'on' as the default value over 1, which is much more useful in dealing with macros, but whatever).

Dot Dot Dot

Skills now have dots for their ratings, instead of simple number input fields. Makes it a lot easier to quickly gain an overview over which skills and categories are your strength, and which you should steer clear of/work on. Adversaries and Loremaster Characters retain the number input field, to allow for some more... flexibility.

I used the same technique as the Exalted sheet, but built the CSS from scratch (this approach works a lot better).

Mapping Amon Naugrim

Maps have always been intimately tied with tabletop roleplaying games, and never more so than after the D20 wave, which practically required tactical combat to be played out on a grid-based map.

The One Ring however doesn't require a map, and in fact I'd argue that the use of maps aside from the Wilderland map itself, is potentially damaging to the game, especially if the players have a grid-based background. The One Ring's combat system is entirely narrative/abstract, to the point where it doesn't even attempt to concern itself with locations, figuring that the group will handle it on their own with circumstantial modifiers and common sense. That's all fine and well, however in larger battles or in places with slightly more complicated geography, position becomes important, as does the effects of those positions.

We played the first part of the Battle at Amon Naugrim (Part 1, Part 2) using the map provided by Rich H in his extension of The Marshbell. The map is great at giving sense to the area, but when it came time to plan the coming battle and play out the arrival of the first orcs, the map started grabbing more attention than it should have. So for the second part of the battle, I decided to try something else, as seen above.

It worked quite well, giving everyone a sense of the geography and placement of a considerable number of adversaries at the same time, which would otherwise have been completely chaotic.

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New Loremaster Character Sheets for Roll20

Finally got around to creating a creature/NPC sheet for Loremaster use, this'll make making macros and scripts a lot easier. I'll create a pull request later today, with some luck it'll be in the official sheet list by the 28th when the sheets go live on the productions servers, until then you can get it on Github.

The Player Character sheet is of course the full sheet, where as the LM Character and Adversary sheets are for the Loremaster. And the difference between the two is that the LM Character uses has Hope points and uses the 'feat' table to roll, whereas the Adversary sheet has Hate points and uses the 'lm-feat' table to roll.

Introducing The Fellowship

That's Anders, and in order Jens, Tom and finally me, in the midst of an incursion against an orc scouting party on the old Dwarven road. This was our first more structured combat situation, and I think I'm starting to get the hang out of how to get the most out of Roll20. We'll see soon enough.

I'd like to run Roll20 full-screen, but beyond referring to my notes, which Roll20 doesn't really support, and Google Hangout, which my players prefer, that'll have to wait. We've got a mix of screens in our party, me with one 27" and Tom and Anders with dual large screen setups (who knows what kind of monitor Jens is on; probably his phone). So while I'm whining about running out of space (and me having to have much more reference materials on hand that everyone else), they prefer to split the load between their screens.

I'm hoping that battle isn't lost just yet.

I still haven't found a good way to keep track of which enemies are on which companions during combat; in the above case it becomes a bit much with all the tokens bunched up like that. I might have a separate set of tokens off to the side to track that with.

Also, I think I'll start using the turn tracker to show the stances of the companions, but for that I think I'll have to write a script, since I don't want to input it manually.

Script Updates

I'm not sure they're quite ready for primetime, but I've worked over the Roll20 scripts for The One Ring a bit, mostly to work with the character sheets (one of which I've also made), that are being released later this month. With the right attribute and token setup, they'll do some of the lifting for both the Loremaster and Players. Each of the scripts has its own description embedded in the JS files, have at it.

The biggest advantage is probably having the script automatically set the weary state on characters and mooks, and using that attribute value in macros to roll on the right table for Success Dice. Shoot me an email if you're not sure how to set that up.