Fantasy Grounds II: Adventure Module Creation Tutorial (v1.0) by Xorne (Jason Hibdon) Introduction During my time spent on the Fantasy Grounds II forums, I spent the first few months mostly asking questions, and getting a lot of great advice and feedback from the community. During the last few months, I ve found I m able to start answering a lot of questions, and I thought I d take a few minutes to share my methods for a common activity for GM s: creating adventure modules. The way I construct my modules is not necessarily innovative or the only correct method but those who have used the adventure modules I create have said they liked the format, so I m more than happy to share the techniques I use, which incidentally are pretty fast, too. Note that I ll be building a module with the 4E_JPG ruleset for 4 th Edition D&D fan-created ruleset, but nothing I ll be explaining is restricted to any one ruleset. Before going further, let me explain why you might want to use an adventure module. I m going to make the assumption that the reader understands how to host a game on Fantasy Grounds II, and they are familiar with using the Story, Maps/Images, and Personalities, Items, and Tokens sections of their campaign. I will also assume that the reader knows how to enter Story entries, though if I do something unusual I ll try to list a good example. So back to the why I just mentioned; you ve got your campaign that all the player s characters are in, and you kick off their first adventure (let s say you put in Kobold Hall, from the 4 th Edition DMG) and you all have a great time. Next you re going to run them through Keep on the Shadowfell, so you enter in that adventure! You do it in chunks as you progress through the adventure, and the players have a great time. As Keep on the Shadowfell completes you start entering in the material from Thunderspire Labyrinth, and you re really detecting a problem you have too much stuff in your campaign! The Story window is gigantic, with hundreds of entries, your Images/Maps window is bursting at the seams with maps you ll probably never use again, you have so many Personalities listed now that you have to use the search tool to find anything, and the Items window (okay, the items window is probably doing alright), then the Token box is beyond saving, with so many tokens in it you can t find the one you want. If only there was a way to only see the Kobold Hall adventure material while you were in it, then be able to remove the Story, Maps/Images, Personalities, Items, and Tokens with a mouse click! You can: that s what making an adventure module achieves. It s very simple; you just create a campaign that contains all of the adventure material, then you export it! From then on, in your main campaign (which I ll call the host campaign) you can load the adventure up when you need it, and close it when you don t! So turn the page and I ll start to show you how to streamline your campaigns (and also make sharing your creations easy)!
Tip for the Dungeon Master This is a brief section I want to introduce, just to make a quick recommendation to any Fantasy Grounds II GMs: the second monitor. In no way, shape, or form am I suggesting that you have to have a second monitor to host a game I m just suggesting that it can really make things a lot easier on you. It s just a matter of real estate; let me show an example: I have a 22 widescreen LCD monitor, set to 1680x1050 resolution. Here is a screen of the module we re going to create in this tutorial: At right is a screenshot of my widescreen monitor; I have the combat tracker open (with 5 PCs and 5 NPCs, pretty basic for 4 th Edition D&D), a map window open, a smaller DM-keyed map under it (needed for setup primarily) and the story entry for this encounter. Tucked under the chat window is what I call the Adventure Index which makes navigating the adventure easier. As you can see, I ve pretty much used up all my space at this point. By setting an old 19 CRT monitor next to my widescreen (set to 1280x1024), I can make my window this wide. Now I have the combat tracker all the way open, my player map as well as my DM map, another little map to keep marching order on, a bunch of minimized maps, and on the right I ve got four story entries open, three personalities (the ones for this encounter) and the token box is beneath on of them. It s just a lot more room to work with on your screen! So my point is, if you have another monitor lying around, you might find it pretty handy to help you host games on Fantasy Grounds II; you have a lot more to look at on your screen than they do! Okay, so on to creating an adventure module!
Create a New Campaign I m going to break this up into sections, for the step by step process that I use myself to create a new adventure module. For this tutorial, I m going to make an adventure module based on the adventure in Dungeon magazine #155, called, Heathen. The reason I have chosen this one is twofold it s not a huge adventure, but has everything I need to show all the steps, and Dungeon #155 is a free download, so I m not worried about my screenshots showing material that you have to purchase. (Do not ask me to send you a copy of the module we create this is a tutorial, so you can make it yourself, and we can all respect copyright.) The first thing you have to do is create a new campaign. Make sure this new campaign uses the same ruleset as your host campaign. (Note that the alias listed is not the alias I use.) After you create your campaign, it s time to start filling it out with you adventure material! Planning Each person has their own method for creating new adventures, but I like to start out by making list of everything I m going to need, so that when it s time to start assembling it all, I don t have to stop to go back and get missing things. Basically, I like to have everything ready before I start making Story entries, which is when I m going to tie it all together! So there s a list to be made, which is easily done by skimming the adventure for: Images/Maps Personalities (and corresponding Tokens) Items So I ve made my list on the next page:
Images/Maps A Timely Rescue (Battlemat) Adakimi (artwork) Black Cells (Battlemat) Blades in the Night (Battlemat) Fire on the Water (Battlemat) Hall of Warriors (Battlemat) Hunter and Hunter (Battlemat) Jaryn (portrait) Last Stand (Battlemat) Moonboat (artwork) Temple of Naarash (Battlemat) The Friend of My Enemy (Battlemat) The Pillars of Night (artwork) Village Showdown (Battlemat) The I will make two maps for each battlemat, one player version, and a smaller, keyed DM version. Personalities (plus Tokens) Advanced Hobgoblin Warcaster Advanced Human Berserker Blazing Skeleton Bugbear Strangler Bugbear Warrior Dajani, Tiefling Darkblade Death Cultist Mage Doppelganger Assassin Dragonborn Soldier Glyph of Warding (Trap, no token needed) Hobgoblin Archer Items Hobgoblin Commander Hobgoblin Warcaster Human Bandit Human Guard Human Mage Jaryn, Human Paladin Naarash, Barlgura Shadow Hound Steel Keeper Zombie Hulk +2 Magic Rod +2 Vicious Greatsword Boots of Striding Diadem of Alacrity Potion of Healing Looks like I ve got some prep to do! Now how you create your maps is beyond the scope of this tutorial. For this adventure, since we re working from a freely downloaded PDF, I cut and paste the maps and images into an image program, then save them into my \images directory in this campaign. Now I have all my art, portraits and DM battlemats. I open up each battlemat and resize them so that the squares are as close to 50 pixels across as I can get them, and use image editing to remove the DM s information, and save them again as a Player version. Entering in Personalities is probably the most time consuming part of making a new adventure, but there are some tricks you
Monster Manual Library Module can use to speed this part up. The best thing that works for me is to keep a campaign that I called Monster Manual and export just the personalities from it (you ll see how to export later). Then I load that module (temporarily) and drag the personalities I want into this campaign. Saves a lot of data entry for monsters you use a lot. In fact, for this adventure it only leaves the advanced creatures, the named creatures, and the Steel Keepers. I already have all the others I my Monster Manual. Next is the Items window which is kind of optional, but I like to just be able to share the item stats and the players can copy them down after that, without me having to be involved. Around a physical table, I put magic items on index cards and hand them to my players, too. The last part of the planning stage is getting Tokens ready! Now not only do I keep a list of personalities ready to go in my Monster Manual, I keep correspondingly named tokens in the \tokens\host folder for that campaign. So all I have to do for those is copy those tokens over to this campaign s (I ll call it the adventure campaign from now on) \tokens\host directory. Do not assign tokens to your Personalities yet, as there is an extra step we need to do so that your module exports correctly. Just make sure you have the tokens in the directory. So just like my personalities, I only have to find a couple tokens for the stuff unique to this adventure. Now at right you can see that all of our prep work is done. I have every Image/Map, Personality, and Item that I m going to need. (You can actually save tokens till the end, but I ve already gotten all the tokens I want to use.) Remember: Do not link your tokens to the Personalities yet. We ll do that later, for a reason I ll explain then. Drag entries into new campaign.
Building the Adventure (Story Entries) Now for what probably looks like the hard part, but in reality is the easier task we re going to put all that prep work to use, and make our adventure module! The very first thing I like to do is make my main Story entry, which I call the adventure index. This is like the home page for the adventure. It makes reading the adventure if you re not familiar with it very logical, and makes jumping to a certain part very quick, too. I put the name of the adventure in parenthesis for this story entry, so no matter how many entries I put in this will be the top one. My goal is to make sure the links I place in this Story entry lead to every section of the adventure in logical progression, so it s easy for the DM to navigate the material. I also want to link every Image/Map, Personality, and Item that is needed for that area/encounter to be right there, waiting to be clicked. Ideally, I don t want the DM to ever have to open anything directly from the side windows, except for the Adventure Index. At right, I ve filled out my index. I ve got the title and credits as well as the adventure introduction, then links to the background and synopsis. Then I started a new category which has three links to the three main sections of the adventure. First is the Frontier, where the characters explore the wilderness, the Black March, when they journey to the temple, and the Temple itself, where the final showdown occurs. Each of those entries will have subsections that break down the individual areas and some of those areas will have a subsection entailing any tactical encounters that take place. Finally I ve included a list of all the sidebars in the adventure. Each sidebar will be linked in any area that refers to them, but I list them here too, as the DM might want to pull one of them up quickly. So let s start filling all this stuff out!
Here s a quick example of how it all comes together: I link The Frontier entry to the Adventure Index, then I link F1. A Timely Rescue to that entry, then I link Tactical Encounter: A Timely Rescue to that entry. Ultimately, I want only the information you re going to need at the time to be on a story entry. During the tactical encounter you really don t need the canned text that the paladin Emesha will spout out when questioned. In the Tactical Encounter entry, note that I ve linked both maps I ll need to see, and all the personalities that belong in the Combat Tracker for the battle. In the F1 entry I ve linked a sidebar and an item that the party might find. I ve also turned all the descriptions and dialogue into boxed text, so the DM can drag and drop that information into the chat window easily. If you didn t know this, you can push Tab (or use the radial menu) to type in a speakers name for text boxes; doing so will prefix the dialogue with the speakers name, so it looks like you re using a separate speaker ID.
Master Maps (& Map Pins) Thus far, this adventure is pretty linear; most of the progression is from one area to the next, though it s possible to skip one of the encounters. As it s an event based adventure, this is pretty normal. However once the characters get to the temple, they might hit the encounters in a different order than they are listed. Now that s okay; you have a master map specifically so you can see where the areas in the story entries are located. But using Map Pins, you can make it very easy to jump right to the story entry from the map itself! After creating a story entry, if you would like to link it to a map, just drag the story link onto the map while holding Control down. Drop the link where you want it and a map pin will stick in the map (it s clickable). The pins normally don t show if you re not holding Control down (or you toggle them on in the radial menu). The end result looks like this:
So that s almost every story entry (I don t have the tactical encounters showing), which should give a pretty good idea of how I break down the adventure. The DM can easily open up the (Heathen) story entry, and have everything right in front of him as the adventure progresses. We re almost finished building our module now, all that s left to do is properly link the tokens, and export the adventure campaign to a single module file that can be opened in your host campaign! Module Not Loaded Host Tokens Because properly linking the tokens involves exporting the campaign, I m going to talk about that first. Remember that adventure campaign means this campaign, that we ve been working on. I m also going to refer to exported tokens and host tokens. Host tokens are the ones that you place in \tokens\host, while exported tokens are the tokens that show up in the top level of the token box when you load a module that has tokens in it. I ve got a picture on each side here to demonstrate the difference. Module Loaded This is a very important distinction, because in order to link tokens to personalities correctly in a module, you have to link the exported tokens. Let me explain the reasons real quickly: Exported Tokens
If you link a host token to a personality and then export the module, Fantasy Grounds thinks that the token that goes with the personality is located in %campaign%\tokens\host. %campaign% is the name of your adventure campaign (Heathen) rather than the name of your host campaign, so the token links don t work. The first workaround to this bug is to place a copy of all the tokens you used into your host campaign s \tokens\host directory. This leads to a cluttered token box over time, and makes sharing your adventure module with someone else more cumbersome, since you need to include the tokens you used separately, and the recipient has to copy those tokens into their host campaign. The second option (which I recently discovered) is to link the exported tokens to the personalities. To do that, you have to export your adventure campaign to a module (exporting the tokens with it), then open your adventure campaign again and load your adventure module. This will make your exported tokens appear, and then you can link those to your personalities! When you export the module now, Fantasy Grounds will think that the token that goes with the personality is located within the module file (and it is). After using this process, you can share your module with someone else just by sending the module file! So what we need to do now is talk about how to export a module. Before I show you how to export your module, you need to do one more thing to the adventure campaign: Type the name of the adventure in the chat window, and instead of pressing Enter, drag the text to each of the tabs. This will attach a label to the tabs, which makes it very handy for telling which tab is which when you load modules! Examples are below:
Exporting a Campaign to a Module To bring up the export window, you type /export in the chat window. The process is simple you fill in the fields and use the radial menu to choose Export. That s it. The file is saved in your \modules directory. So here s the breakdown: Name: This is displayed in the module window. File name: This is the filename to use (.mod is added automatically). Author: This subtext will be listed below the Name. Index group: If you index the exported data (see below) then you have to give a category name. You probably won t index adventure modules. Merge ID: When you load a module, new tabs appear in the windows. If two modules have the same Merge ID they will share tabs. Thumbnail: This is a graphic you would like to show in the module window. It looks in the campaign folder by default; so put.\modules\filename.ext if you want to keep the thumbnail with the modules (I do). Exported data: Check each section that you want to appear in the module (or drag individual entries); I want all of them to show up, so I check them all. In my Monster Manual module, I only check the Personalities. The letters indicate who should see the module (you want H for adventure modules) and if you want the module to appear in the library, then also check I ; I do this with my Monster Manual. Exported tokens: Drag the tokens you would like to export into here make sure you always drag the host tokens, not the exported tokens.
Exporting Your Campaign with Tokens Follow these steps in order to export your campaign to a module, while keeping your tokens assigned to the personalities correctly: 1. Export the campaign once, only filling out the Name, File name, and dragging your host tokens into the Exported tokens area. 2. Close Fantasy Grounds II and reopen it, and open your adventure campaign again. 3. Open the module window and load the adventure module you just exported. (It only contains your exported tokens.) 4. Drag the exported tokens to the Personalities you want to attach them to. 5. Re-Export the finished campaign, and make sure you still put the host tokens into the Exported tokens section (close the module if you want to make sure you don t use the wrong tokens).
Load the Module! The last remaining step is to open up your host campaign, go to the modules window, and open up your new adventure module, where you will find labeled tabs for your new adventure module! Disclaimer: I specifically grant Smite Works Ltd. permission to distribute this tutorial PDF via the Fantasy Grounds website.