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!
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[FormerlyHemlock]

No, that's true. It's also not their fault that their Wizards licensed products (specifically) are so expensive. But I'm not calling SmiteWorks out over their "free trial," or even over their VTT-required implementation of the D&D5 DLC. I simply stated that none of it is targeted at my demographic, because of the aforementioned paywall.

I have dispersed my criticism in an appropriate forum in the vain hope that someone who /is/ responsible will see it and take it under advisement. Is that not what we are doing here? Screaming into the void?

What makes Enworld (owned by Morrus) the appropriate forum for communicating with WotC? It looks more like thread hijacking than appropriate communication.

It might be more effective to contact WotC directly. Call (425) 226-6500. It will be a better use of your time and of Enworld readers' time.

 

[dd.stevenson]

Many tools implement a similar feature in a different way. FG doesnt have a ping but you can draw arrows, circles, cones, squares on the map - player or GM.

That isn't the same feature. Consider: RPTools and R20 offer both features for free; FG charges money but offers only one feature.

I understand that you're a dedicated FG customer, but you're (maybe unwittingly) mirroring the language of marketing employees addressing PR problems. That's not going to help anything, because (1) my feedback isn't a PR problem; and (2) the condescending presentation of a non-fact won't make me less frustrated with FG.

 

[Rhenny]

Thanks Smiteworks. Your product works well for me and my groups. I'm just waiting for your next sale to make a big 5e content purchase. I appreciate how FG improves as time goes by and I look forward to better drawing tools especially. I hope a lot more people try it out.

 

[pedr]

Instead of using the pointer menu, the faster way is to make a "quick pointer" by holding the LEFT and RIGHT mouse buttons down and then drag from point A to point B to make a measured line. When you are done just press LEFT and RIGHT mouse buttons again. You can also make quick round, square and cone areas this way too but doing that and pressing SHIFT, CTRL or ALT.

Is there a way to use this feature on a laptop/with a trackpad without physical mouse buttons?

More generally, is there a basic introduction to the interface design principles for FG as I've often found myself confused as to how to get it to do what I want - when do I click, when do I drag something, how can I pan around a large map (click-drag seems to move the window, contrary to the general GUI design principle that clicking inside a window does something to the content, and clicking on the borders does something with the window itself), etc.

I get the sense that there is a clear set of design choices, but I haven't found them immediately self-evident and a simple "this is how you interact with FG" would be really helpful.

(While I'm in a thread listing suggestions, it doesn't seem that FG works terribly well with touch screens. It's a small market now, I guess, but it would be great to be able to use my touch screen laptop in tablet mode with FG. )

 

[smiteworks]

Using a trackpad or touchpad with the current interface is less than ideal. There are a lot of shortcuts that utilize clicks, left and right clicks together or third mouse button click (mousewheel click down). Many of these features were developed and designed long before touchpads became possible and the UI will benefit from some redesign as we work to prepare for distribution across iPad and Android tablets. The Wiki page linked from our site has a lot of information under the various User Guides. The "Basics" section covers the basic idea of interacting with the windows and some other areas.

http://www.fantasygrounds.com/wiki/index.php/User_Guides

 

[pedr]

I must admit I was entirely expecting using a touchscreen to be problematic but would never have guessed that clicking two buttons together would be chosen as an interface method, nor, really, that third-button use would be important - plenty of mice don't/haven't had third buttons, surely?

Is there a timescale for making FG fully usable without a third button or workarounds? If these are shortcuts, that's one thing - are there non-short ways of doing those things?

 

[smiteworks]

That isn't the same feature. Consider: RPTools and R20 offer both features for free; FG charges money but offers only one feature.

If having this single feature is a make or break feature for you, then FG won't be the right choice for you at this time. I think you are missing out on the numerous other features that FG provides that other tools do not provide. It does seem to be a popular requested feature and that means that it will most likely make its way into a future version of FG. You can see the most requested features here and vote for items you want to see added first:

http://fg2app.idea.informer.com/

We don't work exclusively from the list, since if a feature is inside an area that we are already working on it will often get included; whereas if a feature is part of an overall overhaul we are planning, it might be delayed until that larger component gets worked on. Most of the mapping features are all being planned for the version of FG that rolls out on Unity.

 

[smiteworks]

There are shortcuts and alternate ways of doing each of those things still. It just adds more steps. For instance to pick up a die and roll it you just click and drag and then throw and release the left-mouse into the chat window. To do multiple dice, you right-click while you have the die in drag mode. To do this same thing without 2-buttons, you would most likely drag multiple dice to a hotkey bar and use it as a dice bucket. Once you have the # of die you want to roll, you could click and drag from that dice bucket hotkey bar to grab them all to roll.

The area that is the most problematic is tooltips. Since touch-only interfaces don't show a current mouse location, the mouse location doesn't become available until you do a click or touch-event. I expect that we will need to add a feature where you can turn on or off all tooltips across the screen (or by window) at once. People would likely turn those on (like a help feature), read the labels they wanted to know and then turn it off again before using the window again.

 

[Dire Bare]

That isn't the same feature. Consider: RPTools and R20 offer both features for free; FG charges money but offers only one feature.

I understand that you're a dedicated FG customer, but you're (maybe unwittingly) mirroring the language of marketing employees addressing PR problems. That's not going to help anything, because (1) my feedback isn't a PR problem; and (2) the condescending presentation of a non-fact won't make me less frustrated with FG.

No one said "it was the same feature". You asked for a map "ping", more than a few of us had no idea what you were talking about. Once it was clear what you were asking for, SmiteWorks and several FG users said, "No, that feature doesn't exist in FG, but here's something similar you might try."

And you go off accusing folks of being condescending and marketing shills for SmiteWorks?

If you're frustrated with FG because the program lacks a map "ping" feature . . . all I can say is, "Wow!" It sounds like a really cool feature, it sounds like you are not the only one who'd like it added to FG, and it sounds like SmiteWorks is aware and has added it to their "to do" list.

And that's just not good enough for you. Okay. Can we talk about something else now?

 

[aramis erak]

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.

In other words, you're not actually implementing the rules as written?