D&D 5E Do you find Fantasy Grounds just too much of an investment?

[Corpsetaker]

I keep coming and going when it comes to Fantasy Grounds. I really would like to get the whole thing but it's just the price at the end of the day that keeps me away. I was looking on Steam and to add SCAG to Fantasy Grounds is 31.99 on top of all the other things they have broken down into individual packets that cost money each.

Do any of you find the large investment just not worth it?

 

[Mithreinmaethor]

That depends how much is your time worth? For maths sake lets just say your time is worth $7.25/hour the National Minimum Wage.

How much time are you going to spend porting everything for each book into the client? How much time are you going to spend porting the modules into the client?

I have watched a couple DM's that moved from roll20 to FG just for the reason of the ease of use vs the amount of time they have to use to input everything. In the end they come out ahead of the game.

 

[DMCF]

I'm up in the air as well. I currently subscribe to Roll20. I've bought books, and DM AL so I get adventures. I bought all of Devin Knight's fantasy tokens a while back because I like his art style. I also buy figurines and I just started buying ones I can paint (and therefore bought all the painting accessories).

I've considered FG because I like how well the adventures are integrated, but when you add up the cost for the MM online and the one I bought it gets expensive and all I'm gaining is tokens.

Running both online and live games I think I'd rather sink money into the live games. Conversions of PDFs and some art tokens don't seem worth it at the prices their charging. I know they can't undercut their own book prices but for those of us who bought them there needs to be some way to get us to invest online. Not that I'm blaming anyone since it doesn't currently exist. Roll20 and FG API are relatively new and their customer curves have been skyrocketing the past couple years.

WotC can add future incentives such as codes that come with the books, $5 statless token bundles for various MM's etc. I hope WotC understands marketing and goes with this. The number of people who'd buy an $5 MM token packs alone is massive profit. Then again it's WotC and they are horrible at marketing...I kind of love that about them too . They could be owned by lets say...Electronic Arts for instance. Anyone can spend 5 minutes on Google and learn what that means!

 

[vandaexpress]

I'm on the fence. I spent a ton of money on an ultimate license forever ago and never used it, ran with Roll20. I do a hybrid setup where I run a live, face-to-face game using electronic tools to enhance the experience, like digital battlemaps, pictures, etc.

I felt like I had to do an enormous amount of data entry with Roll20 and even then, a lot of the stuff relied on API scripts that were prone to breaking. I got burned out running my sessions because of the amount of work I had to put in with Roll20 to make it work. Like, we're talking 10-15 hours a week when you count the time I was spending manually entering monsters and spells and stuff, alongside normal prep work, and buying the maps from Blando/Schley to display.

Fantasy Grounds... we'll see. I love that everything is in there and ready to go. If it's as easy as it seems to be, I would put myself in the "it depends on how much your time is worth camp". For me, it would be worth it. I admit I'm a little disheartened at how expensive SCAG is after shelling out money for the physical version.

 

[Corpsetaker]

SCAG is after shelling out money for the physical version.

This is what gets me. I run live games with my normal group and I wanted to start doing online games as well. I really want to run my homebrew Forgotten Realms campaign but I don't see where it's worth handing out money for the physical book and the DLC. If I could use the Fantasy Grounds version offline like a PDF then that would be fine, but you can't.

 

[vandaexpress]

This is what gets me. I run live games with my normal group and I wanted to start doing online games as well. I really want to run my homebrew Forgotten Realms campaign but I don't see where it's worth handing out money for the physical book and the DLC. If I could use the Fantasy Grounds version offline like a PDF then that would be fine, but you can't.

Yeah, I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm likely to buy the physical version of the book for ease of reading - the formatting in Roll20 is serviceable but it's not as easy to read as a physical book. Not sure if there's going to be as much cannibalization of physical book sales as they fear if they cut the price down on the digital FG-only versions.

Would love to see a hybrid PDF-FG product though. I would have no problem buying that instead of the physical product, at full price.

 

[Prism]

This is what gets me. I run live games with my normal group and I wanted to start doing online games as well. I really want to run my homebrew Forgotten Realms campaign but I don't see where it's worth handing out money for the physical book and the DLC. If I could use the Fantasy Grounds version offline like a PDF then that would be fine, but you can't.

You can use it offline if you like as a reference. In many ways its better than a pdf typically is as everything hyperlinked logically together. Still have to choose between book, FG or both. The only way I could a combo deal being done is if you can purchase both from the same source much like Kobold Press is doing with their latest kickstarter

 

[gyor]

If buying it via fantasy grounds instead of the physical book is AL legal, then I think Fantasy Grounds is the better deal, especial after seeing my PHB's pages are starting to come out.

I'm thinking of just buying books through fantasy grounds from now on, instead of physical copies, only thing holding me back is a lack of mobile support, spefically andriod.

 

[habahnow]

i'm not too interesting in playing dnd online, but i would say that even if i was, i would be very unsure of buying the FG books for many of the reasons others have said: paying the full price for the books but without getting a physical copy. Many people don't exclusively play online, meaning they would have to pay double to play online as well as in person.

 

[mlund]

I think the price is solid, except for the port-forwarding thing. If you are on some sort of shared environment (like dorms, apartments, condos, etc.) where an intervening network element hoses your ability to assign port forwarding you can't host a game at all.