Fantasy Grounds Now Offers Free Trial; Plus D&D 5E Basic Rules Now Included In All Licenses

Virtual Tabletop Fantasy Grounds has been the licensed VTT for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition for a while now. The price point can be a little steep for those who just want to try it out, so Smiteworks has just announced a free 30-day trial (you have to sign up then cancel before it's up) and also that the D&D Basic Rules are now included in all Licenses and Subscriptions (other than the demo). That's the four basic 5E reaches and classes, plus 120+ spells, equipment, and the basic rules reference. It also includes, of course, other game like Call of Cthulhu, Castles & Crusades, and Savage Worlds.

Click on the pretty screenshot!
​

 

[Cody C. Lewis]

Very smart decision.

Charging $2.99 for rules WotC gave out for free always seemed like nickel and diming to me. And I could never try out the product really. It was like, Ok, so I downloaded the demo, cool lets check out how cool its going to be to have rules built in! Oh wait, the demo doesn't show me any of that? Bummer.

This is a great decision.

 

[Nylanfs]

Then buy the program for a one time fee of $40, the free trial is just to get your feet wet.

 

[smiteworks]

Yeah except it's still expensive after you decide to continue with the service after the free trial is up.

It all depends on how much you want preloaded and whether or not you want to cover the cost for your entire group or not. $4/month or $10/month after the trial if you keep it active and you only enter content not found in the basic rules. The adventures are probably the best bang for the buck, as either an additional $20 or $35 purchase can keep most groups busy for 6 months to a year and they include player and DM versions of the maps and all the monsters you need for the module preloaded.

 

[Southern_man]

I just looked through the DM basic rules, It looks like they've added GP cost to the magic items.

Headband of Intellect 183GP
Potion of Invisibility 22,449GP

WTH, where are they getting these prices from? I try to stay up on this stuff, but I may have missed a price list somewhere.

 

[smiteworks]

There are actually no official prices for magic items, but only a range of prices based on the magic item's rarity. For now, we've assigned a random value within that range, but we want to wait and see how the feedback is for it before we decide if that will be the method we keep long term.

 

[Southern_man]

That make sense, but it would be confusing for players picking this up, and wanting to buy Gauntlets of Ogre power for 458gp. I'd like to see a real price list that a DM could adjust depending on how they want Magic Items to appear in their game.

It could be a slide bar that would have different levels of magic item prices "High Magic - Average Magic - Low Magic - No Magic". The GM would decide this, and would let the players know exactly where they stand as far as what they should look far.

I guess this goes back to the core of 5e, where magic item prices are whatever the DM wants them to be.

 

[smiteworks]

Note that you can also drag that into your campaign's item list and edit the price directly by unlocking it.

Having a global tool that sets base prices up or down or maybe by vendor would be neat. Once the DMG is released, we expect to receive a lot more feedback on this specific area and I expect we will add more features or options after that feedback is collated.

 

[Southern_man]

YES! "by vendor" would be really cool.

 

[DMZ2112]

Unfortunately this does nothing for me. I /know/ I don't want to spend money on a Fantasy Grounds license. I am not interested in previewing (or using) the baseline VTT functionality.

What I am interested in previewing is the forthcoming DMG DLC that apparently includes new tools, and, to a lesser degree, all of the D&D content. I am glad that digital D&D5 books will exist in some form, but I do not appreciate them being held hostage behind a truly massive paywall consisting mostly of software I will never use.

 

[Morrus]

I do not appreciate them being held hostage behind a truly massive paywall

I love this new way of describing selling things. Holding them hostage behind paywalls!