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[Celebrim]

While I completely understand why you would be put off by the UI of Fantasygrounds, I think it a pity that @smiteworks prioritise the creation of a map over revising the UI. Something I have stated on the FG forums.

Long ago I worked in wholesale supply for the turf and landscaping industry, and one of our vendors was a software company that had a landscaping specific CAD tool. And I had been tasked by the company to become the expert in it and after doing so I was talking to the vendor about improvements that could be made in the UI and in the functionality. It seemed like for some reason they had prioritized the automation of things that were simple to do without automation over the hard things that required matrix algebra and systems of differential equations (for example). And the vendor said, "Well, at one point we were going to actually do things like node and loop analysis of pipe networks, but we pitched the idea to our customer base and they were appalled. Their comment was, "If you automate those things, then anyone with your software could do our job, and then why would anyone ever hire us?" So we decided to keep the controls difficult and reduce automation for the benefit of our customers."

So my guess is that Fantasy Grounds in their business model doesn't really have GMs as customers. Their real customer are the content creators that do the complex stuff so that they can then sell it to GMs that don't have the technical skills or the time.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Long ago I worked in wholesale supply for the turf and landscaping industry, and one of our vendors was a software company that had a landscaping specific CAD tool. And I had been tasked by the company to become the expert in it and after doing so I was talking to the vendor about improvements that could be made in the UI and in the functionality. It seemed like for some reason they had prioritized the automation of things that were simple to do without automation over the hard things that required matrix algebra and systems of differential equations (for example). And the vendor said, "Well, at one point we were going to actually do things like node and loop analysis of pipe networks, but we pitched the idea to our customer base and they were appalled. Their comment was, "If you automate those things, then anyone with your software could do our job, and then why would anyone ever hire us?" So we decided to keep the controls difficult and reduce automation for the benefit of our customers."

So my guess is that Fantasy Grounds in their business model doesn't really have GMs as customers. Their real customer are the content creators that do the complex stuff so that they can then sell it to GMs that don't have the technical skills or the time.

That may well be true, but then D&DBeyond will eat them alive if it ever gets into campaign management tools.
That said, FantasyGrounds campaign tools are functional it is the UI that sucks.

 

[Mageman]

Playing some Alien RPG right now on foundry.