I havent posted anything regarding our Age of Ashes campaign in a while, since we discontinued the video efforts for the storyline. This campaign continues on pace, with our bi-weekly games, and we continue to use Fantasy Grounds Classic for the sessions.
Just recently, the group wrapped up Chapter 2 successfully, and we quickly moved into Chapter 3. The group is already level 9, which provides a lot of overall power for the group, especially given the large player size. This causes its own challenges in the story – it can be difficult to scale an encounter for an oversized group without unbalancing
The bigger challenge however has been the virtual tabletop software itself, and the ease of training and teaching the large player group. Because of different levels of technology, availability of computers, technical knowledge of the players, and several other factors, some of the players are faster or slower at learning the technology. The same can be said about the game itself – without really understanding the mechanics of Pathfinder, the technology doesn’t help. As a result, we continue to have a steep learning curve with the group making Fantasy Grounds a streamlined and simple tool. I estimate we spend approximately half of each section dealing with either technical issues (bad mics, unable to connect, updates required, etc) or with answering game mechanics questions (how many spells to memorize, how do abilities work, etc).
Much of this problem would be cleared up with either face-to-face gaming (removing Fantasy Grounds), or with a smaller group (making questions and answers more specific). Unfortunately, until Covid becomes more under control, this continues to be a necessary pain point in order to avoid cancelling the game entirely.
