D&D 5E Interesting review of Fantasy Grounds software posted on reddit

[Nylanfs]

They haven't really made a one location info thread you have to search the forums and a couple of screenshots on their FB page to find the info.

Unity is a game engine


Mentions of Unity in the forums

Thread with quite a bit of info

First screenshot

Second screen shot

3rd & 4th screenshot

 

[smiteworks]

The launch of D&D fifth edition has delayed our efforts on moving to Unity, but work is still underway. John has been working on all the boring back-end stuff for the last few months, so we don't have much more to show at this point. We don't plan to announce an ETA until we get to a polishing stage.

 

[Blue]

It is important to note that this isn't intended to be a fully automated D&D game--it's got a lot of automation built into it, but almost all of it can be adjusted, customised, or toggled on-and-off. This is a program designed to let you play your tabletop RPG (D&D, Pathfinder, etc.) across the vast distances of the internet (whether that's on the other side of the world, or the other side of the coffee table.)

What that means is that you can choose whether to apply bonuses to hit manually to the roll, for example, or apply an effect to the character that applies it automatically. Either way works just fine, both ways are easy to do, but you have the flexibility to play the game in a style that is your own.

Frankly, I'd rather it be all-or-nothing in terms of rules. There are apps out there that give grids, movement and dice without any rules support and that works at a low price point. Some are free, which I'm not sure I understand their business model.

The other end of the spectrum is a fully functional app that will take care of the rules automatically, with the ability for the GM to do anything so to adjust for all the greatness that a DM can bring. And that's complicated and willing to pay for that, but it also needs to stay current if there are errata or new rules out.

Something that does 80%, but I now need to remember "THIS part is done automatically and I shouldn't add the bonus from Bless, but THIS part is done manually and I need to prompt my DM to edit damage" is a lose-lose compromise, not a win-win.

In case that comes across harshly, I'm having a lot of fun with Fantasy Grounds. And the automation so far seems complete enough that we were able to have our group set up through 5th. I love how it handles initiative and damage and to-hit and saves and everything - it really speeds up the mechanical aspects of the game so we can focus on playing.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Wow. That should be a high priority. It's simple and very high utility for the user.

FG's mapping overall is VERY underwhelming.

If a free javascript tool from the early 2000's (MapTool) can do lighting that automatically reveals hidden areas, can tile images, has clickable objects, supports hand-drawn maps, and multiple layers, I don't quite get why it's hard to do in something I'm paying for in 2015. It perhaps just hasn't been that important, but it is one of the things that, as a DM, I'm constantly running up against in FG.

I basically need to get correctly-scaled maps from somewhere (that don't have a mis-aligned grid!), and use some kludgy fog-of-war to get the job done.

After a few months with FG, I'd say that this is the biggest thorn in the side for me. I like its combat engine, I like its drag-and-drop story elements. It was totally worth purchasing LMoP and running it. The fact that an errant mouse wheel spin can flip tokens or shrink/grow tokens is annoying, but not the worst thing. But the lack of a good built-in mapper is something I've butted up against HARD this week, and it's really.....annoying. It's kind of the achilles' heel of the program, and it's why I'm still not entirely willing to be an evangelist for it, and why, depending on what you're doing, I'd recommend you go with another tabletop.

If you wanna play the WotC adventures, FG is the only option, and it's pretty good.

If you wanna do your own thing...well, that's a more nuanced point.