I'm getting ready to run my first SWEX game on here (my first Infrno game as well) and was wondering how other people have handled combat.

Have you drawn a map on the whiteboard or gone totally narrative?

How do you handle initiative (deck of cards and good old GM trust or some fancy digital way)?

If whiteboard how have you dealt with measuring stuff or have you converted to a grid instead?

Lastly how do you GMs handle NPC character sheets, do you do them on here as well or oldskool paper?

Any help appreciated.

Hello!

I haven't run a SWEX game, but I'm the guy behind the curtain, and can answer most of your questions.

Re: initiative and a deck of cards. There's no card deck mechanism. There is a die roller built in to the text chat, which could roll 1d52, in conjuction with a lookup table. Hackish, but doable.

Re: Measuring. There is a resizeable grid overlay available, via the toolbar.

Re: NPC character sheets. The GM can register characters in the game, just like players, via the game's registration desk. Character sheets for registered characters are presented as tabs above the game table.

Some other resources to check out: the FAQ, and our feature videos

Hope that helps!

Thanks Mike.

I'd not thought of the D52 idea (although in savage worlds its a 54 card deck, you need the 2 jokers) but it would get very complicated once cards were delt out to players (2 people with the same 'card' etc. I know its doable but more effort than its worth I think). They can trust me or not its up to them, hey if you dont trust your GM then why are you roleplaying?

The grid question was mainly there because SavageWorlds isnt usually grid based, in the rules you move everything by measures inches like in a minature wargame. I was debating making a 'Ruler' jpg and importing that into the whiteboard but if it got resized it could be a pain for continuity ('lock image size tool' please :) ). I think I might opt for a mainly narative combat with some pencil sketch maps for clarity then see how it goes after a sesh or two. Its all a learning process right now.

Thanks for the links too.

If a player cheats, something awful should happen to his character. An ice-cold ladle of creamy karmic justice poured over the fresh-picked strawberries of his deceit.

Regarding a ruler, how about this: Use a circle from the shape drawer which has a radius equalling the desired movement range. I think there's a bullseye in there, which would give you 2 or 3 multiples. This would help prevent accidental resizing, because it eliminates the need for rotation.

Locking images is high on my wish list, along with object ownership and pinning. You're not the first to ask for a card deck mechanism, but that's a little further down stream.

Today is for time zone awareness, because not everybody lives in PDT, and then a week of focusing on video/audio quality.

Hey Mike.

Any update on image locking and ownership?  That was one of my biggest stumbling blocks in my initial tests.

I am also going to be running a SW game very soon and I have a few friends in other locals.  I tried using the whiteboard screen previously in a Cortex game I ran, but i got very frustrated when I or someone else would grab the map instead of their character and move it.

Also is there a way I have not seen yet on rolling exploding dice? i.e. rerollling a die that hits its max and adding it to the total?  In some die rolling software it is typically 2d6!6 or some combination like that...

Thanks!

In short: No progress on any of these items.

I'll bring up locking with one of my mentors this Friday, he may have some insight on that.

I'll add that notation to the die roll mods wishlist.

Call quality and InfrnoCon features have been driving my todo list of late, we'll get back to front end features soon. Things are moving along on other fronts, you can track my progress in my blog. For example:

http://infrno.net/muldoon/posts/608-triple-win-...

One more thing, I've started tagging relevant blog posts with 'troubleshooting'. I recommend keeping an eye on them, as they describe known issues and workarounds:

http://infrno.net/tags/troubleshooting

Hi Mike,

I think an easy way to handle locking, if it is possible, is to create image layers.  Then you don't so much have to lock the image, you just put it onto a "map" layer and then put your character icons onto a "character" layer.  Then the only way to move the map image would be to switch layers.

Thanks!

Joel

@Joel, re: image layers

Great idea!

@Mike, re: todo list

need some help? If I may be so nosy, how many coders do you have working on the game table features?

I'm not sure about the management structure of infrno or it's IP policy, but maybe its getting time to bring in some more folks to help, possibly on a volunteer basis.

I'm also very interested in seeing a playing card mechanism for SWEX play. I think 1d54 would work if certain rolls could be saved to variables and retrieved (i.e. "var muldoon_wild = 1d54;" or "$muldoon_wild = 1d54;" along with "$muldoon_wild" outputting '38' or whatever the saved result of the roll was) in combo with a collection of scanned card images. Problem is that the placement of uploaded images seems quiet broken and there is no way to group or save images into categories or collections, like the pre-loaded categories in the side-bar ('Basic','Biz','Meetings'.... 'Cards'???). Well, always more todo...

If you really want to track a deck correctly, you need to make a deck (an object with an array, or just an array).

If you make it generic enough, you could extend it not just for playing decks (ie, 4 suits of 13 cards each, optional jokers), but other decks as well.

Of course, how would you initiate such a deck? I think commands are going to need a special character to denote them, such as the often used /, to denote a command versus chatting text.

You could also extend the deck to be a special type of die, d3ck. (yes, that was funny/aweful on purpose).

@Revlin Yes! Help would be awesome, but how to integrate assistance is a big unknown. There's a major game table refactoring around the corner, and part of that is looking forward to enabling virtual goods. If I can modularize this well, selling custom card decks will be possible. Give the developer a cut of each sale, and there's a model everybody will love. I'll keep you posted on our progress.

As stated in the suggestions post. Me need card decks. Hulk Smash..

I concur on the need for a card deck. Monday's v02 release provides some plumbing to make it happen, but more work remains. 

I'm interested in running a SWD game, but haven't found a VT quite to my liking.  I like Infrno and have used it in other games, but I've been waiting for exploding dice and a card deck for a while now.  Hopefully this will be released soon, as I would very much like to start up a game.

Regardless, great work has been put into this so far and I'm eagerly awaiting more updates!

@Chad, Exploding dice and a card deck are going to be items in our first Feature Caucus (a semi-annual poll, in which users can vote for features, including write-ins). We're gonna let the community tell us what to do next.

So keep an eye on the newsletter, and come vote this stuff up!

Full account level details here.

And thanks for the props! We're getting there... 

I will definitely be voting for cards. Savage Worlds is my go to system for random insperations that are not a premade game for. So all my pulp action games currently cannot be played because there really is no way to use a card system.

It is not on site like the die roller, but yes there is it is called Video.  Basicly you have the person picking the card adjust there video camera so you can see them pick the card and show it to you.

Although that is an option, it isn't a viable one, at least for SW.  Initiative is supposed to be drawn from the same deck, so that kind of scratches out that idea.  The GM can always draw initiative for each player and keep track, but I like the option of having it in a digital format for record keeping.

I'm more interested in the exploding dice mechanic, since many other systems besides SW utilizes this in their system.