Running Scion Online - Roll20 vs Astral vs Other

[Ravian]

So use only Discord then and 'Mind's Eye' of yours. I do like tactical fights, from time to time.

I mean that's fine, but Scion really doesn't support it. Fights are narrative by design, you won't find any references to specific rules for distance, time, reach, positioning, any of that stuff. The game very literally does not care where you are on a field and largely only includes the very abstract range bands to illustrate why it might be easier to shoot a character that's narratively described as being very far away rather than trying to stab them with a sword.

If you really, really want to use a map of some kind for your game, I would recommend zone maps. Rather than making a precise map of a location, just have several areas on the board that convey the general environment, any Arenas associated with each one, and how they connect to one another.

So for example if you were having a divine martial arts tournament, where some of the players were competing atop bamboo poles over a bed of spikes, and some were in the stands full of screaming fans, with a cage separating them. You wouldn't map out every detail of both. Rather you would designate an "Arena" zone, outlined that it has the arena condition that meant that everyone had to keep balance to avoid falling onto the spikes, a "Stands" zone, outlined that navigating through it could be difficult given the frenzied fans, and designate that anyone trying to cross from the arena to the stands will have to deal with the cage separating the two.

But obviously this can all just be extrapolated in mind's eye instead, because Divine Demigods typically don't care about something as fiddly as how many feet they move in the span of 6 seconds, they get where they're going whenever is most dramatically appropriate.

[Mateus Luz]

In my games, we hardly use anything more than a map as reference (we just mark which room or close to what the characters are) and we more than once used the Arena idea. It worked fine both to separate different floors in a bar and for a fight happening around and inside a fountain, including tests to move from one area to the other as part of a complex action (just moving had no test).

Worked very well in my opinion and saved us of moving all the pieces around.

[Kyman201]

I mean that's fine, but Scion really doesn't support it. Fights are narrative by design, you won't find any references to specific rules for distance, time, reach, positioning, any of that stuff. The game very literally does not care where you are on a field and largely only includes the very abstract range bands to illustrate why it might be easier to shoot a character that's narratively described as being very far away rather than trying to stab them with a sword.

If you really, really want to use a map of some kind for your game, I would recommend zone maps. Rather than making a precise map of a location, just have several areas on the board that convey the general environment, any Arenas associated with each one, and how they connect to one another.

So for example if you were having a divine martial arts tournament, where some of the players were competing atop bamboo poles over a bed of spikes, and some were in the stands full of screaming fans, with a cage separating them. You wouldn't map out every detail of both. Rather you would designate an "Arena" zone, outlined that it has the arena condition that meant that everyone had to keep balance to avoid falling onto the spikes, a "Stands" zone, outlined that navigating through it could be difficult given the frenzied fans, and designate that anyone trying to cross from the arena to the stands will have to deal with the cage separating the two.

But obviously this can all just be extrapolated in mind's eye instead, because Divine Demigods typically don't care about something as fiddly as how many feet they move in the span of 6 seconds, they get where they're going whenever is most dramatically appropriate.

All very good points but I still maintain that there ARE tactical fights to be had. It's just that tactical in this case does not take into consideration WHERE you are in a field/zone. In this case, the tactics would be making sure that you have a target's weakness in position to take advantage of, that you use your divine powers effectively, that you're able to use fire against the Frost Giants and all that.

Mostly I just wanted to make a point denoting that there's more to tactics than moving a token around on a grid. :P

[Florin]

They're tactical like Final Fantasy boss fights. Does the boss have Reflec up? Better cast Reflec on one of your team and start casting magic at them!

[BunniRabbi]

I run games for work, so I approach everything with an 'It must work, and it must not be frustrating.' mentality. I avoid all of the platforms created specifically for gaming, because I have a max capacity of 24 players (multiple groups meeting at different times) and there's always something about the gaming platforms that doesn't work for someone. Similarly, my players range from 16 to 54 (at the moment), so there's a vary wide range of technical familiarity, and I don't want that to be a barrier.

I use Google Meet. There's an extension for rolling dice in the chat, you can screen share for static images, and you can share a whiteboard for maps (so people can move their own tokens). People can PM you anything they don't want the others to know about. I also use Google Sheets character sheets, because they can have the calculations done for them, and because I created a 'GM Screen' Google sheet that loads information from their character sheets for my reference.

A also use Google sites for reference material that I make available to the players outside of game time. It's all Google products because they interact well, they're free, they work on everyone's system and they don't break.