Practicing running Legend on Roll20: 22/03/2014

[danskmacabre]

For those who are interested, I'm running a Legend test session using Roll20.
It'll be based in a custom fantasy world.

If you want to take part, you can generate a character using standard Legend rules.
Excluding Common magic.

It's mostly to see how the mechanics play out in a Roll20 session and to see how realistic it is to use Legend with Roll20.

So whilst it should be a fun gaming session, it'll probably be stopping and starting and experimenting with different ideas on how to run a Legend RPG with Roll20.

This will start from 20:00 (GMT +10, I'm in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia) on the 22/03/2014 onwards.

I DO have a sort of scenario in mind, so your character will literally get "dropped" into it. Although once you're there you can do what you want. Its not a scenario in the DnD sense, meaning you must follow some sort of storyline.

If you interested, let me know here or via PM.
Please have a standard Legend character generated before Thursday the 20th so I can take a look at it.

 

[DamonJynx]

I'd love to Andras but unfortunately I'm away this weekend.

We tried it a year or so ago. Roll20 is great for D20 based games, we didn't really like it for Legend though - unless it's changed quite a lot of course.

 

[danskmacabre]

Nps. Damon.

I've done a couple of test sessions with one person already.
One thing is for sure, I won't be using much in the way of the turn management tools, character details and various other features in Roll 20.
It's too much work and tbh doesn't really add that much to the game.

The status icons, the coloured circles to show 3 statuses are handy though.

I'm not keen on importing image maps and prefer to hand draw areas like you would on a battle mat. The roll20 tools for that are good enough to prep various area and even if I need to draw on the fly, it's good enough.

At first all the macros and stuff seemed really useful but all those buttons and so on just take up screen space, so we found it easier to just generate the dice rolls on the fly.

I'm hoping to generally use the maps to show what an area looks like, rather than have full blown tactical combat like in games such as Pathfinder. Although if it DOES come down to a combat, I'd certainly use the grid etc to monitor where everyone is, I just don't want to get bogged down into ultra detailed tactical combat.

I guess I'll just see how it goes. The video and voice chat is going to be really useful as all the RP can be done via that, so I'm hoping that'll be much like a tabletop RPG session in that way.

 

[DamonJynx]

I guess I'll just see how it goes. The video and voice chat is going to be really useful as all the RP can be done via that, so I'm hoping that'll be much like a tabletop RPG session in that way.

That's the best part really and the ability to draw maps on the fly. You've already picked up why we didn't like it for D100. Good Luck, hope you get some takers!

 

[danskmacabre]

I think the idea is to keep it pretty informal, meaning have RP sessions and not generally EXPECT to fall into combat regularly.
Of course it's pretty much inevitable to combat will take place at some stage, but not to the same level as games like Pathfinder.
As we know Legend combat is deadly anyway, do you really WANT to get into big fights multiple times a session?

 

[DamonJynx]

I know I try and limit combat to one per session at best and more like one every other session. If I know it's going to be a walk in the park due to the opposition being mooks I may have 2 combats but only 1 taxing one.

 

[2gigch1]

Hi, I am new to the forum & to Legend, however I have a history with RQ2 going back to the early 80's. I am getting back into it these days because children wish to learn tabletop gaming, and I'm still in touch with the gang I played with over 30 years ago...

Damn I'm old.

Anyway I was hoping you could report on how this experiment on Roll 20 worked for you. My kids live with their mom in a different state, and the gang is a bit far flung, so a virtual interface sounds like the thing.

Any observations would be appreciated, and if I get to run some games myself I'll be sure to give a synopsis of my findings.

Thanks

Kurt

 

[DamonJynx]

Personally, I would prefer Maptools over Roll20, though the learning curve is quite steep, for games where battlemats and mini's are part of your groups gaming style, if they're not, you may be better off just using Google hangouts or something similar.

 

[danskmacabre]

I would personally not run Legend using any virtual tabletop.
Legend/RQ2 whatever is a great system, but it's just too fiddly to run online.

It's all the combat action, turns etc management just makes it a pain to run.

I would consider running an earlier version of RQ with less complex combat rules perhaps, but TBH, if I DO run an RPG using a virtual Tabletop, I'd most likely use a completely different and more abstract RPG with a lot less rules.

That's just my opinion of course, other people may have had better experiences with it.

 

[strega]

I've been playing a Legend/RQ mashup (Legend rules in Glorantha using Griffin Mountain) every two weeks for nearly 18 months using a mix of Hangouts and twiddla and the game has been running even longer. Works fine with locations sketched out or maps posted and viewed online. Gridded battlemaps are almost never used, I think once in an underground setting.

Don't let anyone put you off.

Roll20 should work well with the builtin ability to add macros to tokens for common combat and skill rolls.