Going Digital

For the last few years, our group has been using Hero Lab for the character generation aspect.
We've decided it determines what stacks with what else, and enforces legality of builds (you can ignore anything you want, if desired, but something that is wrong or incomplete is marked with in red), so if you can build it in Hero Lab it is valid for the game, but not if you cannot.
I print up current version of the character, for each session.



Realm Works, was initially the only other piece of software we've added.
This is a campaign management tool, by the same guys who do Hero Lab (Lone Wolf Development).
I found Realm Works before I even knew World Engine existed, so haven't really compared the two -- although they seem to fill a similar niche.
With Realm Works things start slowly but snowball.
Content Market has been promised for literally years, with the same "Soon" comment, but that's just a bonus when it arrives.
I purchased based on current functionality.

Basically on the "Mechanics" tab I enter each creature type, that is a monster in the current campaign (we're running Rise of the Drow (by AAW Games)).
Then there are various tools within Realm Works, such as Events, Locations, Plots, Relationships, and such.
A location can be created, and one could say there are five Acolytes of the Dragon here at all times; if Acolytes of the Dragon are defined anywhere else, a link is auto generated to their entry.
But on their entry, there is a section that displays incoming links as well, so you can see each section that links to them.
An event is more of less an encounter.
The encounters now have links to the creatures which have been defined, and Realm Works interacts very well with Hero Lab so the corresponding HL portfolio can be pulled up with a click.

For myself, the majority of the power of Realm Works is the campaign organizational effect.
Anything that is entered is then available to be referenced in the future -- hence the snowball effect.
It starts off relatively bare, but anytime anything previously defined is referenced it is cross linked...

The other tool for Realm Works that I'm getting use of is the "Player View".
I set the main HDTV as the display for Player View material, so each time I toggle it on that information is displayed on the main view.
Each monster entry (my most often shared piece of information) has sections called "Snipets".
One snipet may be that it has damage reduction, another that it is resistance to energy types (I'd make each their own snipet) and maybe immunity to something.
Every piece of information is it's own snipet.
Anything the group is aware of, I can mark as known; when information is shared, only the "known" stuff is displayed on the player view.
So they identify the creature as looking the same as a previously fought beast, and I click that the picture is known, since they can see it.
The last time they fought it, they observed it's reach, that it has poison, etc... so those snipets are marked as shared.



Over the summer I decided, if we're going slightly digital, maybe we should take the full digital plunge.
I was originally looking at Roll20, and going with their higher level paid subscription service, but it wasn't quite complete.
In the end, after comparing several VTTs in much greater detail, d20Pro was the winner (comparable power and learning curve to Fantasy Grounds, from my outsider [looking at features, videos, posts, reddit comments etc] perspective, and those two looked to be slightly ahead of MapTools and way ahead of anything else.
There were a lot more indications that d20Pro could use Hero Lab content both import and export easier than other options, and since I already had Hero Lab (with lots of content) and Realm Works (with a little) at that point, the ease of integration won.

Since our game is face-to-face play, with the players rolling their own dice, we're not using the full functionality of d20Pro.
Basically, we have battle maps (currently crude, as I'm learning Campaign Cartographer too) for the background.
Then we have a public domain fantasy art image, or a Character Artist (Campaign Cartographer addon) image, to represent the players.
Monsters have their image from the Bestiary books.
Characters and monsters are imported from Hero Lab; the process is not perfect, but the chassis arrives fine -- ability scores are all 10s and attacks are generally off by +/- 1-5 points.
I'm basically editing the import to have correct hit points, armor class, and attack values / damage values, and saving throws.

We end up with a map, monster tokens, player tokens and their view radius (darkvision/low-light vision) along with obstructions like pillars (the first session was confusing for the players with only "Walls" that blocked line of sight... no representation of the pillars themselves... just the observation of not seeing past them), and objects that block line of sight.
Our second session (still not close to where I need to be for Dungeon Designer (Campaign Cartographer addon), I used the "Paint" feature within the draw tools, to trace the outer edge of the map, the pillars and such, so the characters can see the edges of anything which blocks like of sight, rather than just have their vision blocked by an invisible object.
So the cavern edge (Rise of the Drow -- we're underground) is black and the connecting stalagmites stretching upwards to the stalactites have a gray edge.
Dirt that can be burrowed through (non-worked stone, in game terms) is brown... giving the players greater hints as to what they're looking at.



Syrinscape was a late addition to the mixture.
This is a suite of sound effects, with an optional purchase of each package or subscription to the whole thing, the fantasy elements or the futuristic elements.
I went with various environments, as a purchase (like d20Pro, I'd rather buy something and own it than subscribe monthly).

Each of the elements (desert, swamp, ocean, river, cavern, sewer, tavern) has both sounds of that environment, along with what they call 'moods'.
A 'Mood' when clicked activates several of the sounds at once, adjusting the volume of the individual sounds, along with the frequency with which they cycle.
The farm set of sounds has an option for being close to the farmstead and further out in the field; the close to the farm house has more domesticated animal sounds -- and those are louder.
The further in the field sounds have less domesticated animal sounds, and those are quieter as you're further out, but then there are more wild sounds too.

All in all, it's a neat tool, and adds a little ambience.

 

Some more pictures: