FANTASY GROUNDS Virtual Tabletop's D&D License!

Officially licensed D&D electronic tools! For real! Fantasy Grounds, one of the leading virtual tabletops, has just released a set of D&D 5th edition licensed data packages. These include the D&D Basic Rules, packs for each of the core classes, and a pile of monster packs. Each states specifically that "This product is licensed from Wizards of the Coast." This appears to be the first officially licensed and branded electronic product. (thanks to Matchstick for the scoop)

Check out their D&D wares here. They mention that "The DMG is still in the works, along with the Hoard of the Dragon Queen, The Rise of Tiamat and Princes of the Apocalypse." and that "The basic 5E ruleset will continue to be provided directly within Fantasy Grounds to all licenses. These purchasable options add a new graphics theme that is officially branded, along with the library module support, and whatever other enhancements we could squeeze in, like tokens or portraits or decals."

Here's the announcement:

We are proud to announce that we are officially licensed to sell D&D source material and content inside of Fantasy Grounds! This is the beginning of a great new partnership between SmiteWorks and Wizards of the Coast that will benefit gamers worldwide.

You can purchase the D&D Complete Core Class Pack with all the class, feats, spells and equipment or you can purchase individual classes only. You can also buy the monsters in packs or as the D&D Complete Core Monster Pack. These products have been converted to work really tightly with Fantasy Grounds to give you the best possible gaming experience - we know you're going to love them. They contain all the great artwork and content from the official products and all the smarts and integration to work with Fantasy Grounds. Not only will you get the same content that can be found in print, but you also get an exciting new Fifth Edition theme, adventures and content customized specifically for ease of play inside of Fantasy Grounds.

For Dungeon Masters and players on a budget, you might pick up a Player Customization Pack and one or two Class Packs of your choice. Dungeon Masters can often get by with just the Adventure of their choice and one or two Monster Packs.

Don't forget that players can gift purchases through Steam for Dungeon Masters who have linked their license on Steam.
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[Harry Dresden]

I keep getting an error message whenever I try and uninstall the demo. Whenever I try and run the demo nothing happens. Says it isn't a valid Win32 application.

 

[Aimian_Silverflash]

So we've run the gambit of online tabletops with my group. rpgtableonline, roll20, and a couple others. We decided to kill our game night last night and migrate everything over to FG, and give it a go. Overall, it went pretty well. Here's some notes I made:

The Good:
The "drag and drop" stuff from the 5E campaign pack was definitely pretty cool. Makes making a character super easy.

The map interface is outstanding.

Once we got the thing going, it ran really smoothly. The program isn't too heavy on resources, so that + Skype ran just fine on all our computers. Everyone loves the virtual dice rollers.

The Bad:
It was fortunate that the drag-and-drop stuff was as good as it was, because I think the interface for customizing it beyond that was rather unpolished. Figuring out how to manually set up your attacks wasn't easy. Neither were things like getting your AC to work right when you have a shield, but the shield isn't currently equipped.

The drag-and-drop 5e spells and classes definitely needed to be polished. Most any spell that required both a damage roll as well as a saving throw only had a damage roll built in. (Vicious Mockery & Dissonant Whispers, for example, as I was playing my bard.) Also there was nothing really in there for class sub-specialties, such as Cutting Words for my College of Lore bard. I know the group's fighter was complaining that there wasn't anything in the drag and drop for his Martial Archtype abilities either. Probably nit-picking, but there's definitely room for improvement there.

As a Bard with Cutting Words, both the DM and I were complaining that there's no way for him to roll a visible dice without the party knowing the modifiers on it, and weather it succeeded or failed. We still have no idea how we're going to work Cutting Words in this without significantly increasing combat time.

Summary:
Good product! Definite room for improvement, and to be fair, we expect to see improvement for the price you guys are asking. But we've got the money to spend! If you guys clean it up, I'd see us buying the product outright. Especially once you guys start adding time-saving drop-in modules, like Horde of the Dragon Queen we're currently running. If you can get rid of the couple hours it takes the DM to prepare for each game session by setting up NPCs, bad guys and uploading maps like you always have to do with other tables, you've got yourselves a winner. ;-)

 

[transtemporal]

Until the servers are down.

I would be surprised if that was the case with Roll20 though. Their tech seems pretty tight.

 

[transtemporal]

Nice one, thanks for that Nylanfs. Edit: Actually don't worry about my questions, I'll just pick the thing up and play!

 

[Mask_of_winter]

A license to use FG and the 5e material you can purchase are two separate things.
A license allows you to run games on FG, any game you want including 5e. If you want the 5e reference libraries, player's hb and monster manual and don't want to spend many hours using a parser to do so, then you purchase what's in the store.

 

[smiteworks]

So we've run the gambit of online tabletops with my group. rpgtableonline, roll20, and a couple others. We decided to kill our game night last night and migrate everything over to FG, and give it a go. Overall, it went pretty well. Here's some notes I made:

The Good:
The "drag and drop" stuff from the 5E campaign pack was definitely pretty cool. Makes making a character super easy.

The map interface is outstanding.

Once we got the thing going, it ran really smoothly. The program isn't too heavy on resources, so that + Skype ran just fine on all our computers. Everyone loves the virtual dice rollers.

The Bad:
It was fortunate that the drag-and-drop stuff was as good as it was, because I think the interface for customizing it beyond that was rather unpolished. Figuring out how to manually set up your attacks wasn't easy. Neither were things like getting your AC to work right when you have a shield, but the shield isn't currently equipped.

The drag-and-drop 5e spells and classes definitely needed to be polished. Most any spell that required both a damage roll as well as a saving throw only had a damage roll built in. (Vicious Mockery & Dissonant Whispers, for example, as I was playing my bard.) Also there was nothing really in there for class sub-specialties, such as Cutting Words for my College of Lore bard. I know the group's fighter was complaining that there wasn't anything in the drag and drop for his Martial Archtype abilities either. Probably nit-picking, but there's definitely room for improvement there.

As a Bard with Cutting Words, both the DM and I were complaining that there's no way for him to roll a visible dice without the party knowing the modifiers on it, and weather it succeeded or failed. We still have no idea how we're going to work Cutting Words in this without significantly increasing combat time.

Summary:
Good product! Definite room for improvement, and to be fair, we expect to see improvement for the price you guys are asking. But we've got the money to spend! If you guys clean it up, I'd see us buying the product outright. Especially once you guys start adding time-saving drop-in modules, like Horde of the Dragon Queen we're currently running. If you can get rid of the couple hours it takes the DM to prepare for each game session by setting up NPCs, bad guys and uploading maps like you always have to do with other tables, you've got yourselves a winner. ;-)

We have nearly finished modules for Hoard of the Dragon Queen and The Rise of Tiamat. They need a little more quality checking before we send them to Wizards for review and approval. I would guess 10-15 business days.

As for cutting words, your DM may want to change their preferences to set Show GM Rolls to off. Since you never know when you will decide to use it, you almost have to hide all the rolls. Another way, which may not be RAW, but might make sense is for them to turn on the Dice Tower to allow for hidden rolls. You could pre-roll your next Bardic Inspiration die into the DM's Dice Tower and they would see the result. They could even save the result to a macro slot at the bottom of the screen. You wouldn't know how successful your Cutting Word is actually going to be, even though you would still be able to see by how much the enemy made a roll.

 

[transtemporal]

A license to use FG and the 5e material you can purchase are two separate things.
A license allows you to run games on FG, any game you want including 5e. If you want the 5e reference libraries, player's hb and monster manual and don't want to spend many hours using a parser to do so, then you purchase what's in the store.

Oh ok, so the Ultimate license provides access to the application and then you have to buy the rules for whatever game you want to play. Cool, cheers. Thanks for explaining that because the website does a truly horrible job of it. I just spent 30 frustrating minutes with the application wondering why I have 5e in my list of games and why I can create characters, but I don't seem to be able to do anything with it.

 

[mattcolville]

That's fair, I guess, but as a DM I can't imagine buying just buying "Constructs and Elementals" or "Celestials and Fiends." I mean, does anyone run a campaign where the characters only fight a single type of monster?

I mean, don't get me wrong, I bought the whole thing, but I also typically run big adventures. Night Below, The Banewarrens, Red Hand of Doom. Each of these focuses on two or three monster categories. So it would be reasonable to buy the ones I need and have enough monsters for months of gaming.

 

[RSKennan]

Just a note, all your data on Roll20 is on their[\b] servers. With FG your campaign, images, tokens and such are on your computer. And if you change GM's but want to continue the campaign you can simply email the new gm the campaign folder and pick up where you left off.

Yes. I have been meaning to point this out. If the Roll20 servers are down, or the company goes away, you lose your data.

 

[RSKennan]

Oh ok, so the Ultimate license provides access to the application and then you have to buy the rules for whatever game you want to play. Cool, cheers.

Just a note, the Full license provides the same level of mechanical support. The ultimate license just lets you allow your players to play for free. Same product, just more open.

You can play the game just fine without any of the rulebook modules (you still have the scripting and automation rules included in your license) by coding effects yourself. The modules just speed things up such that you can create a character ,encounter, treasure parcel, etc. in 5-10 minutes.