I'm very new to Fate Core — I've only been a GM for two sessions (but it is very quickly becoming my favorite system) — but I spent quite a bit of time putting some thought into how to present Fate Core on Roll20 so that it was easy for me, as a GM, to get a quick overview of my players and NPCs, all while also giving the players a way to view all the information relevant to them and to the game. I thought the Fate Core character sheets and Roll20 notes would be great for this (and to some extent they are okay), but Fate Core seems to work better when everyone can freely view the information — as is evident by the game suggesting you put things on index cards and spread them out on a table so all players can view them — so storing this information in character sheets just wasn't cutting it at all. Presenting this information on the board seemed to be the only way. The issue being that there is a whole lot of information to go around, and just writing text in a disorganized manner wasn't going to cut it. I decided to think about how to lay out the information in a nice way. I made use of the Roll20 drawing tools to come up with something, and here's what I ended up with (this is the second, more fully featured, version): Here's a larger version of the screenshot : <a href="http://d.pr/i/1hm8u" rel="nofollow">http://d.pr/i/1hm8u</a> If you take a look, it's pretty self explanatory, but the general idea is this: information that is modified frequently or utilized most often is on top, so that the player and GM can always be looking at the same area, and so that this can be done with minimal scrolling. We start with Fate points — each player has an area where their fate points are stored, and this is divided into two sections (the smaller division, on the right, being reserved for fate points that are to be paid to the player after the scene ends). Boosts and situational aspects are up top as well, as these get modified and changed quite frequently during the game, both for the scene and the players themselves. Having these on top make it easier for me to view and edit them. And then, of course, the player aspects are also near the top so I always have them in view in case I (or the other players) want to invoke or compel them. Extras are also given prominence (mainly because I frequently forget the names of things, so having that visible without scrolling was important). Off to the top right (which is slightly cut off in the image), I have a battle map. Nothing fancy — just a large rectangle, which I add information to when the players are in a conflict or other scene that requires visual aids. The further you scroll down, the more specialized and player-specific the information is, which also correlates to the increase of responsibility of the player to manage it. It's the player's responsibility to handle their skills and to apply their stress. They can scroll downwards and interact with that while I'm managing the chaos up top; so this is why I put that closer to the bottom. But if I need to glance at it, I can scroll down quickly, reference what I need, and then scroll back up. Finally, on the middle right and bottom right, I have the Fate Core cheat sheets, just in case the players (or I) need to view those really quickly. Between the cheat sheets and the player information — in the middle where all the side text is written — these are mainly notes for me or the players, as well as serving as holding areas for Fate tokens and stress markers. If you want to create this layout yourself, here's a few tips: Set the grid to 0.5 units (it helps with drawing the boxes). Use the "Draw Shape" tool very often, and when drawing be sure to hold down the Shift key, even before you do your first click . This way it locks the boxes to the grid perfectly. Holding shift after you initially click can and will result in the starting point not being in line with the grid. Make sure the information boxes are wide enough. I use a 14 point Arial font, as it's tough to read anything smaller when I AirPlay Roll20 to my living room television. But if you can get away with using a smaller font, you might not need to make the boxes as wide. Make sure to have the boxes where you type a lot of information (like Aspects and Stunts) taller than you think. Having to make edits to this after the fact is tricky and can be annoying. Better to have too much room rather than too little (in fact, I'm probably going to edit this to make the Stunts and Extras boxes a bit taller). When adding a piece of information, I'd recommend copying and pasting an already existing text box (unless there's a keyboard shortcut for adding text that I'm missing). It's usually always faster for me. When adding text, add them in significantly smaller chunks! There are two reasons for this. The first is that players, for whatever reason, can't edit text boxes that GMs create (or at least I've been told this). So if you create a very long text box, spacing becomes an issue. If you have several smaller chunks of text, you can more easily move them around, and if the player wants to type in something, you can easily accommodate that. The second reason is that if you attempt to edit a text box with lots of returns and line breaks, sometimes the editing will get all screwed up when you delete or add text in the middle of a chunk of text. It's not worth the hassle, so just break text into smaller chunks/text boxes, and you'll be happier later. After you are done, move all the drawings and labels to the background layer, but keep the text you enter into the boxes in the foreground. If there's something you won't edit often, move it to the background layer, just to be safe. If you need to edit things, click and drag to select everything you want to move and then use the arrow keys to move everything, as it keeps it locked to the grid. But I have noticed that text positioning gets screwed up when using this method, so you will have to tweak the location of text. Also, if you need to edit the size of a box, just delete it and then re-draw it, otherwise the resize tool skews the size and it can be visually distorted. If you need to re-draw lots of boxes, and you use a lot of different colors, be sure to select an already existing box of that color, and then select the "Draw Shape" tool, as it will then already have the color selected (otherwise you'll frustrate yourself having to re-select the color every single time). Anyways, I just wanted to share this, as I put quite a bit of thought into it, and I think it's working out very well. I think that this is a great way to present a Fate game to your players, so please let me know if it inspires you. Or, by all means, please share your setup instead! :)
