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

[Blackwarder]

In the interest of moving this discussion along, if FG had mobile support for tablets and smartphones, both for online and in person gameplay would you use it?

Warder

 

[velkkor]

I wouldn't, but I've seen a number of folks on the Fantasy Grounds forums that have expressed interest (particularly for in-person games). The port to Unity will likely make that more of a possibility, though I'd hate to be the person designing the interface for touch.

 

[jgsugden]

Role playing, generally, is a cheap hobby. You buy the books and dice, maybe a few miniatures and maps - and can play thousands of hours of fun games with it.

Asking me to spend money on online resources that can be used for a a specific purpose, but I know won't be supported indefinitely.... well, it doesn't sit well with me. I do it for other activities, but it doesn't feel right to blemish one of the advantages of role playing.

As such, I don't tend to spend much extra money on the online supplements like Fantasy Grounds.

 

[Paraxis]

Fantasy Grounds is far and away too much of an investment, I am perfectly happy with Roll20 where I have been a member since June of 2012 and have logged in over 3700 hours.

Roll20 with the API allowed me to import all the spells and monsters stat blocks, it has built in voice chat, dynamic lighting, and built in character sheets with easy to use custom dice macros. I have everything I would want and don't have to pay them money to access books I already own.

Fantasy Grounds seems nice and having the information built into would be wonderful, but FG is in my view a luxury item, while Roll20 is meat and potatoes free VTT for the masses, and if you put in the time has the monsters and other tools you want to run a campaign and a couple features (dynamic ligting/voice chat) built into it that FG doesn't.

 

[Xorne]

I never discuss FG with non-DMs, because players, generally, invest very little into RPGs. Plus, as a player, Roll20 vs FG is a bit of a wash. For a DM, it's just... ing... amazing. It takes $10 a month to try it with your whole group, so... yeah. You absolutely do not need any of the commercial modules for FG, you can make them all yourself, easier than you might think. That said, I have both the PHB & MM modules (I literally made the tutorials for making your own though).

The character sheet, combat tracker, and campaign data are what makes FG just balls on the table incredible. Roll20 just doesn't have them, and as a DM (and player) I want them.

FG Ultimate License (monthly or lifetime) is affordable for what you get in my opinion. I find the core books (PHB, MM, DMG soon) are worth the money, while the adventure modules are pretty sweet as well if you don't want to build your own adventure.

But, I'm an adult with an adult job, so others might feel differently.

 

[Mistwell]

We play on Roll20.

To really take advantage of it, you need someone to have a Pro level subscription which is about $100/ year so you have access to the API scripts.

There are many cool things this allows us to do to save time! I believe [MENTION=45267]Mithreinmaethor[/MENTION] was saying how much time R20 requires inputting things. But with the API script and a monster PDF, all you need to do is copy-paste the monster stat block onto a token, run the appropriate API script, and voila! Monster created!

It works for us.

I haven't tried Fantasy Grounds yet, but FG strikes me (based on what I've read/seen here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/buyFG/) as being exorbitantly priced without saving much extra time or offering much added utility over R20.

Woah, I did not know this. I may have to look into the API level subscription!

 

[Uchawi]

They would need a solid 2E environment to make map making easy to be worth the investment for my wallet. Otherwise, I would rather have PDFs.

 

[Mistwell]

In the interest of moving this discussion along, if FG had mobile support for tablets and smartphones, both for online and in person gameplay would you use it?

Warder

If they get a massively more robust mapping tool system, then maybe. The answer of "others do it so much better than us we decided to not bother" is the real all-stop for me. I frequently have to add to maps on the fly. I am not going to open a third party program to do that and then import it into the game.

 

[Cody C. Lewis]

Video man, video.

I have three monitors (yes, I spoiled myself after I bought my wife a new house... I told her tough lol) so I can easily run FG and have Google Hangouts or Skype up. I'm fortunate I have a setup that is very accommodating.

But two of the players in my group run off of laptops. We need video built-in. Period. Until then, we just can't even consider FG a legit option vs Roll20 for our group's needs.

 

[Nylanfs]

Video man, video.

I have three monitors (yes, I spoiled myself after I bought my wife a new house... I told her tough lol) so I can easily run FG and have Google Hangouts or Skype up. I'm fortunate I have a setup that is very accommodating.

But two of the players in my group run off of laptops. We need video built-in. Period. Until then, we just can't even consider FG a legit option vs Roll20 for our group's needs.

Have you seen this thread?
http://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...o-make-an-overlay-and-setup-OBS-for-streaming!