SCAG Now On FANTASY GROUNDS VTT

Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide is not only out on general release today, but it's also available on the Fantasy Grounds virtual tabletop. It includes the entire contents of SCAG (divided into DM and Player sections), image handouts, maps, and 37 new character portraits. It's $39.99, and requires an appropriate Fantasy Grounds license. "Get everything you need to adventure in the Forgotten Realms on the exciting Sword Coast, home to the cities of Baldur's Gate, Waterdeep, and Neverwinter. Crafted by the scribes at Green Ronin in conjunction with the Dungeons & Dragons team at Wizards of the Coast, the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide provides D&D fans with a wealth of detail on the places, cultures, and deities of northwestern Faerûn." And, of course, if you haven't yet, head to your local game store and grab the actual book!

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Find it here.

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[Mithreinmaethor]

I have played 25 games online with Fantasy Grounds since June 20th. The price is well worth it especially if the majority of the play you do is online.

I could have played more except the AL and WotC are dragging their feet with releasing what will or wont be allowed from SCAG for AL. I do not want to create any new characters until that is released so I have missed several opportunities to play because of it.

 

[GameDoc]

It was indeed odd timing to release SCAG weeks after Out of the Abyss as opposed to in advance of it to allow the new character options to be used from day one. But given that, I'm glad they didn't just sit on it until the next adventure arc.

 

[smiteworks]

iPad and other tablet and mobile interfaces are on our roadmap for development. We are in the middle of a big overhaul of the core engine to move the platform to Unity and then we will be working on some additional planned development, including a version suitable for use on the iPad and other tablets and phones. Some of the design choices work best with a lot of screen real estate, so we are redesigning these features to enable a better experience on a single monitor or mobile device. No ETA yet though.

 

[Dhaylen]

That is excellent news!
(On a 'geeky' note - not going with UnReal 4? It's all good.)

iPad and other tablet and mobile interfaces are on our roadmap for development.

 

[Osgood]

I like the idea of a digital tool--I hate flipping through books trying to find a stat block or a spell--but my group plays in person around a table with minis and the like, so we have no need to a VTT.

For folks that use it (or Smiteworks) how does FG work as a tool to support in-person play? How does it handle building encounters and the like? How about adding or editing monsters? Does it have easy references (for example, if a monster has a spell it is easy to pull up the spell text)? I glanced at the website a while back and everything seems focused on online play... is there a good page or video I can check out (particularly for 5E use)?

I think everyone has a tablet of some sort of tablet, and everyone really wants an app for character management, and I see tablets are in the pipeline. Any hints on if that's a matter of months vs. years off? Until there's tablet support, how would it work for players? Can they print a character sheet?

 

[jamesjhaeck]

iPad and other tablet and mobile interfaces are on our roadmap for development. We are in the middle of a big overhaul of the core engine to move the platform to Unity and then we will be working on some additional planned development, including a version suitable for use on the iPad and other tablets and phones. Some of the design choices work best with a lot of screen real estate, so we are redesigning these features to enable a better experience on a single monitor or mobile device. No ETA yet though.

Any plans on making it natively compatible with Mac, instead of running it through Wine?

 

[Mithreinmaethor]

If you do a little research you will find that they are in the process of porting FG over to the Unity Engine.

I think researching the Unity Engine will answer several questions posed here.

 

[Shadow Demon]

Any plans on making it natively compatible with Mac, instead of running it through Wine?

I second this question.

Edit: Sure enough, the Unity engine is compatible with Mac OS X.

 

[smiteworks]

I like the idea of a digital tool--I hate flipping through books trying to find a stat block or a spell--but my group plays in person around a table with minis and the like, so we have no need to a VTT.

For folks that use it (or Smiteworks) how does FG work as a tool to support in-person play? How does it handle building encounters and the like? How about adding or editing monsters? Does it have easy references (for example, if a monster has a spell it is easy to pull up the spell text)? I glanced at the website a while back and everything seems focused on online play... is there a good page or video I can check out (particularly for 5E use)?

I think everyone has a tablet of some sort of tablet, and everyone really wants an app for character management, and I see tablets are in the pipeline. Any hints on if that's a matter of months vs. years off? Until there's tablet support, how would it work for players? Can they print a character sheet?

I personally think it works excellently as a tool for a DM at the table. It's great for tracking initiative and for not having to flip between several different books. Innate Spellcasters and Spellcasters, for instance, will have their full spell descriptions automatically imported into their character sheet and set with the proper attack amounts and Saving throw DCs per spell. You can still roll your own dice and just type in what damages are applied. If the player rolls their own dice and fails a saving throw, you can drag the effect from the NPC to their entry in the combat tracker and it will track that info for you and remind you when their turn comes up. It's also good for general campaign management, tracking party inventory, dividing coinage and loot across the party, dividing XP across the party, tracking quests, building and helping scale encounters, etc..

The tablet versions are probably a year or more out still. Development hasn't started on it yet, although it is on our roadmap. The move to Unity will give us native distribution on Mac and Linux with additional options for Web, Xbox and Playstation.
[MENTION=6803957]Dhaylen[/MENTION], the Unreal engine is very powerful. We just felt like we had more experience in Unity and we liked the support for the different platforms mentioned above.

 

[Prism]

A couple of our guys run it on their Macs using Wine. Seems to run without any problems except for the fact that you can't change the location for campaign saving to standard folders. We tend to save our campaigns to OneDrive or Dropbox and this doesn't seem to work on the Mac. Unity should fix little issues like that