RISE OF TIAMAT Now Available For Fantasy Grounds

Hot on the heels of the recent officially licensed release of Hoard of the Dragon Queen for the Fantasy Grounds virtual tabletop comes The Rise of Tiamat. You get the full adventure, image handouts, tactical maps, tokens, and more. The package costs $19.99, and requires that you already have one of Fantasy Grounds' official 5E ruleset modules. (Thanks to Matchstick for the scoop!)

Find it here!

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Avert the Cataclysmic Return of Tiamat in this Adventure for the World’s Greatest Roleplaying Game.

The Cult of the Dragon leads the charge in an unholy crusade to bring Tiamat back to the Realms, and the situation grows more perilous for good people with each passing moment. The battle becomes increasingly political as opportunities to gather allies and gain advantage present themselves. From Waterdeep to the Sea of Moving Ice to Thay, it is a race against Evil. Succeed or succumb to the oppression of draconic tyranny. Win or lose, things will never be the same again.

Dungeon Masters purchasing this module can use it to run the adventure with very little prep, other than reading through the adventure in advance. The contents of the story are indexed and linked, where appropriate. Combat encounters and boxed text are preloaded and ready to drop onto maps and into the chat window with a few clicks. Nearly everything has been optimized and streamlined for ease of play online.

This Module Includes

• the entire contents of The Rise of Tiamat adventure
• image handouts that can be shared with players collectively or individually
• maps containing information for the Dungeon Master (DM) only and with all locations pre-linked to story entries which may contain additional DM notes, boxed text, encounters, images and treasure parcels
• maps with all hidden information removed and resized for use as tactical combat maps
• tokens for many of the monsters in the module. When no token is available, a letter token is used to represent the NPC
• XP for encounters that can be dragged to the party sheet and awarded to the players as they complete them
• Searchable monster indexes by CR, type and in alphabetical order

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[Mirtek]

For Passive Perception, you can adjust this on the character sheet with a permanent modifier, such as for the Observant Feat. Hold the CTRL key and mouse-wheel up while hovering over the PERC.

Cool thanks. However this is not really very intuitive. If editing AC, attacks, damage, spells, etc. I can just click the magnifying glass and start editing, here I have to do this CTRL+wheel thing. I would not have been able to figure this out on my own, after some attempts to click the value somehow I just figures that this is fixed and can't be changed.

For Heavy Armor, this can be handled with a Power that applies an Effect targeting Self. [...]

That's at least an option, although not very different from writting your own scripts in Roll 20.

Originally, neither of these features was supported. They came about by people requesting them

This is were our perception is quite disconnected. These are essential parts of the 5e rules, how could they not have been supported? Of course people would request them after paying 50€ for the PHB pack and noticing these are missing.

I like your customer support, I think you're great guys, but I can not recommend buying your product if someone asks me about it.

but those words don't actually do anything without a human being interpreting them.

None of the words in the PHB do, yet that's why we pay programmers to tell the PC how to interpret them. FG is already interpreting the words that your PP is 10 + your perception mod (and also interpreting the words that your perception mod is your Wis Mod + your prof. bonus is applicable).
All that needs is to also check if the observant feat is on the sheet and if yes add another 5

At the table, the DM would have to remember "Dave has Observant." Because the DM is probably going to make passive perception roles (otherwise it's not very passive!) That's still true in FG.

Yet this makes that the automatization of PP in FG is useless and then should not have been implemented at all if it doesn't work anyway

That's sort of the beauty of FG. Where it automates, it improves. Where it doesn't, you just deprecate back to the original implementation which is; "you do it."

Roll 20 does all of that (the just script/remember it yourself thing) for free. If I wanted to script those and manually adjust that and remember this, .... I could use Roll 20 without paying 100€. I just thought I'd be paying for a software that does this by itself. The way FG was advertised and talked about by the community I just expected something different than what is actually is.

It's an OK piece of software and my license allows me to join some more online games than if I were limited to Roll 20 only, but in actual play experience it's just equal to Roll 20 and I don't see any improvement (the fact that Roll 20 DMs almost always supply their sets of macros I as a plyer can use without actually needing to understand how they work code-wise has certainly a lot to do with it. If I had to create these myself from scratch it would be more difficult)

Where Fantasy Grounds draws that line between automation and interpretation is idiosyncratic and arbitrary

Here we agree

but it's easy to just add a bonus in your Modifier box any time the automation lets you down.

 

[smiteworks]

Roll 20 does all of that (the just script/remember it yourself thing) for free. If I wanted to script those and manually adjust that and remember this, .... I could use Roll 20 without paying 100€. I just thought I'd be paying for a software that does this by itself. The way FG was advertised and talked about by the community I just expected something different than what is actually is.

It's an OK piece of software and my license allows me to join some more online games than if I were limited to Roll 20 only, but in actual play experience it's just equal to Roll 20 and I don't see any improvement (the fact that Roll 20 DMs almost always supply their sets of macros I as a plyer can use without actually needing to understand how they work code-wise has certainly a lot to do with it. If I had to create these myself from scratch it would be more difficult)

You keep comparing Roll20 to FG for a player experience and state that you could do everything you need by entering in text and macros yourself for free instead of spending $50 for the full PHB content. Guess what, you can do that without buying the Class Pack content in FG as well. In most cases, you didn't have to buy the class pack because your DM bought it and shared it with his or her players while they were connected. If you have your own license of FG and not a free license, then you could have alternately chosen to get just the PC customization pack and 1 or 2 classes you needed - $9 plus $5 or less for a class. If having an index of all the weapons in the game that you can drag to your character sheet or a DM can drag into a treasure parcel is not important to you, then you can hand-enter all of those yourself in FG. The same is true for spells. It doesn't automatically handle every spell's actions and effects, but all the text is there and for the other 80% or so of the spells, it is fully automated with the attack type or saving throw type and the damage (plus damage type) and/or effect.

If you are playing in another game on Roll20 and the DM has already built everything for you with macros and they hand-entered everything for your characters, then someone still had to do that. You are just making them work harder. A lot of the more positive feedback and comments are likely coming from DM's who have much less work to do when they run a game of D&D on Fantasy Grounds. It still requires *some* work, but it is greatly reduced.

How does Roll20 handle Heavy Armor Training or Passive Perception?

Let's assume you didn't buy any class packs where you had a feat dragged to your character sheet as reminders of what those abilities are and you just typed them in and followed the instructions listed above. Let's also assume you are using a free license of both because the DM on Roll20 wanted to be able to copy stuff between campaigns and have dynamic lighting and the FG DM wanted their players to be able to play for free (both costs would be $9.99/mo for the DM).

 

[Corpsetaker]

Cool thanks. However this is not really very intuitive. If editing AC, attacks, damage, spells, etc. I can just click the magnifying glass and start editing, here I have to do this CTRL+wheel thing. I would not have been able to figure this out on my own, after some attempts to click the value somehow I just figures that this is fixed and can't be changed.
That's at least an option, although not very different from writting your own scripts in Roll 20.
This is were our perception is quite disconnected. These are essential parts of the 5e rules, how could they not have been supported? Of course people would request them after paying 50€ for the PHB pack and noticing these are missing.

I like your customer support, I think you're great guys, but I can not recommend buying your product if someone asks me about it.
None of the words in the PHB do, yet that's why we pay programmers to tell the PC how to interpret them. FG is already interpreting the words that your PP is 10 + your perception mod (and also interpreting the words that your perception mod is your Wis Mod + your prof. bonus is applicable).
All that needs is to also check if the observant feat is on the sheet and if yes add another 5
Yet this makes that the automatization of PP in FG is useless and then should not have been implemented at all if it doesn't work anyway
Roll 20 does all of that (the just script/remember it yourself thing) for free. If I wanted to script those and manually adjust that and remember this, .... I could use Roll 20 without paying 100€. I just thought I'd be paying for a software that does this by itself. The way FG was advertised and talked about by the community I just expected something different than what is actually is.

It's an OK piece of software and my license allows me to join some more online games than if I were limited to Roll 20 only, but in actual play experience it's just equal to Roll 20 and I don't see any improvement (the fact that Roll 20 DMs almost always supply their sets of macros I as a plyer can use without actually needing to understand how they work code-wise has certainly a lot to do with it. If I had to create these myself from scratch it would be more difficult)
Here we agree

Thank you Mirtek!

I was actually thinking about buying Fantasy Grounds but after reading your comments and the responses from Smiteworks I have decided not to. It is just too expensive for not giving you everything. I think roll20 is all I am going to need.

 

[Banesfinger]

I was actually thinking about buying Fantasy Grounds but after reading your comments and the responses from Smiteworks I have decided not to. It is just too expensive for not giving you everything. I think roll20 is all I am going to need.

After reading all these threads, our group decided Fantasy Grounds was exactly what we are looking for, and purchased this today. (Just goes to show, everyone has different needs/tastes).

 

[BrockBallingdark]

After reading the comments on this thread, I went and bought FG over the weekend. Love playing around with it. I figured best to learn it now and get good at it for future use. Our group games face to face but nothing lasts forever after 15 years of gaming at a table.

 

[Nylanfs]

After reading the comments on this thread, I went and bought FG over weekend. Love playing around with it. I figured best to learn it now and get good at it for future use. Our group games face to face but nothing lasts forever after 15 years of gaming at a table.

If you want to get some good learning a) watch the bunches of walk-through video's on Youtube and b) Sign up for one of jh79's DM training class's.

 

[Uchawi]

I have a FG license and I would be tempted to buy the adventure, except for having to buy the PHB or MM ruleset. I already purchased the PHB in hardcopy, so I don't want to pay for it again. It reminds me of the debate I had when using the 4E digital tools before they went online exclusively, versus hero labs; where you had to buy rule modules.

It seems like everyone wants to charge a big up front price even to try the product. You would assume they would provide a cheaper entry point.

 

[smiteworks]

I have a FG license and I would be tempted to buy the adventure, except for having to buy the PHB or MM ruleset. I already purchased the PHB in hardcopy, so I don't want to pay for it again. It reminds me of the debate I had when using the 4E digital tools before they went online exclusively, versus hero labs; where you had to buy rule modules.

It seems like everyone wants to charge a big up front price even to try the product. You would assume they would provide a cheaper entry point.

The adventure has everything you need to play included. You don't need the MM for it. The PHB is optional, although I would highly recommend the $2.99 D&D Basic Rules pack since it pre-enters a bunch of the character building stuff and includes the basic 4 races and classes, along with the equipment and the spells for wizards and clerics.

 

[Doc_Klueless]

If you want to get some good learning a) watch the bunches of walk-through video's on Youtube and b) Sign up for one of jh79's DM training class's.

I was in jh79's first Fantasy Grounds Training Class and it was extremely helpful. I already knew how to sorta do most of what he showed, but his hands on approach and willingness to answer questions smoothed out my knowledge so-to-speak plus he showed me several tricks I didn't know about. Let's put it this way, I had to get up before 5 am on my day off to participate and I don't regret it at all. One of my better gaming decisions lately.

 

[Hawkwind]

hey every 5e is on sale https://www.fantasygrounds.com/store/