3 out of 5 rating for Fantasy Grounds
I'm going to be the voice of dissent here after all the back patting over how great this program is. I've been playing D&D and other games over VTT's since 2002. I started with OpenRPG, moved to Maptools, and Roll20. Our group has currently moved to Fantasy Grounds, and, quite honestly, the ONLY reason I would consider recommending this program is because of the WOTC 5e licensing. The VTT itself is a massive disappointment.
Let's walk through the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
The Good
The combat tracker in FG is fantastic. It really is the best combat tracker of any VTT. All your information is right there and it's almost entirely fully automated. You can tell at a glance what effects are on a character, how long that effect will last and pretty much everything else. That's just outright excellent.
The Party Tracker is also great. You can stuff all sorts of things into the party tracker, which will also track marching order and watch order and the like, and then distribute those items to the players as needed. Additionally, moving items from one character to another is a simple click and drag. Again, excellent.
And, as I mentioned at the outset, the 5e rules integration is A+. You click and drag a class to your token, and poof, 99% of the work is done for you. Even things like backgrounds and whatnot are a simple click and drag away. Monsters are parsed very well and it's simple to create your own or tweak existing ones. From a DM's side of things, this is the standard to which all VTT's should aspire. Just excellent.
The Bad
There are a number of functions missing from FG that are standard in other VTT's. The ability to easily post in multiple fonts to the chat window is one. The ability to actually resize the landscape hogging chat window so that 1/4 of your play field isn't taken up by the chat window would be another. Yes, I know you can change the font size for the chat window to make it eye-bleedingly small, but, what's wrong with making it dockable, like it is on most other VTT's, so it can be resized to whatever size I want? How about the ability to post using HTML code so I can make color and format changes within a single line? These are basic features that have existed in VTT's for over ten years that FG lacks. The chat function is primitive.
Along with that is the annoyance at not being able to resize, tab or otherwise modify the very ugly GUI. Why can't I have tabable windows? Why do I have all this landscape being taken up by the crap at both sides of the tool, never minding the dice tower and dice rollers at the bottom of the screen that I can't move. I've seen several people talk about how it's better to have two monitors to use FG. That's ridiculous that the GUI is so bad that I need two monitors in order to use it.
The Ugly
And this is very, very ugly.
The mapping tools in this program are awful. Outright the absolute worst tools I've ever seen. The fact that you have to pay for this borders on criminal. Where should I begin?
You cannot draw more than one object per user at a time. What? What if I have two area effects going at the same time? What if I have an area effect and want to draw an arrow as well? Nope, sorry, can't do that. As soon as you draw a second object, the first disappears. Utterly useless. I have a Wall of Fire up and then cast a Fireball. Oops, sorry, poof, there went your wall. Where was it again? Uhh, maybe on this square? Oh, and let's not forget that the point you use to pick up an object is so small, you're essentially pixel bitching every single time you want to move an effect. Casters spend more time moving their map accidentally than actually moving what they want to move.
Oh, and let's not forget that our map only zooms to a certain point and then stops. Hope you can get close enough or zoom far enough out to see what you want to see. No? Well, too bad, now you can use that little arrow tool in the bottom corner of the map and try to shuffle your map to the right place. Oh, wait, did you accidentally click on an open window behind your map and now you can't see your map at all without closing that other window? Oh, that's not annoying at all. Shame you can have tabbed windows like every other VTT on the market.
And draw a map? Good grief, don't make me laugh. I had better, more robust drawing tools in MS Paint for DOS. The drawing tools are an add on joke. Oh, and no object layer, so, if you want to include things like, oh, furniture on your map, get ready for lots of minis being buried under other tokens and starting the mini shuffle to try to find your character minis again. Is he under the table or the chair? Let's find out shall we?
And lastly, the fog of war function. Wow. Again, I used OpenRPG back around 2002 and it was programmed in Python. It had the same functional fog of war that FG has, but it did so darn near fifteen years ago. Compared to Maptools or the dynamic lighting of Roll20? Not even close. This is an abysmal failure.
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If I'm actually having to pay for a program, I do not think that it is unreasonable to expect to get at least the same level of functionality that I would get from a free program. The only reason that I give FG 3 stars is because of the integration with 5e D&D. If I wasn't playing 5e D&D, I wouldn't even consider using this program. As it stands, I can barely tolerate using it because of the integration. Here's hoping that the influx of 5e dollars and users is put to good use bringing this dinosaur of a program into at least par with other industry standard programs.