Roll 20, Fantasy Grounds, or other VTT?

[Chris633]

That’s a bit of an overestimation. The FG ultimate license frequently goes on sale for about $113. The core 5E books are $30 each and frequently go on sale. So it’s reasonable to get the license and the core books for under $200. My group actually pooled funds so we could get it. As GM, I shouldered the bulk of the price, but my players helped. I haven’t purchased any other books. But they are all $30 or less mostly. Plus they go on sale. You end up paying the most as soon as something is released. But it comes down in price relatively quick. With FG, if you are patient you can usually get a deal.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

I use Fantasy Grounds, but, I have to admit, I really have a love/hate relationship with it.

Sure, as a DM, you get fantastic tools. Really great stuff for getting up and running.

On the downside though, it's unbelievably expensive for what you get. I mean, an ultimate license is going to run you 150 bucks, another 150 bucks (maybe 100 depending on the discounts you get) for the core three books means that this is a 200-300 dollar program. Tack on a couple of extra books and you're looking at a 4-500 dollar program.

This is NOT a 300 dollar program.

As noted, if you buy the ultimate license at full price (not on sale), then it is $150. It is pretty easy to wait for a sale and pay around $120. But with that license, none of the players need to pay for a license. If it is 4 players and one DM, then the cost is $30 each at full price.

You cannot add the price of the books in, that is WoTC material. Plus, no 5e book is $50 on FG. Regular price is $30 ($29.99). They go on sale and they have a bundle that makes them even cheaper.

If you want the marque features for Roll20, the subscription will run you &10 a month and the WoTC books are more expensive as well.

 

[Ovinomancer]

As noted, if you buy the ultimate license at full price (not on sale), then it is $150. It is pretty easy to wait for a sale and pay around $120. But with that license, none of the players need to pay for a license. If it is 4 players and one DM, then the cost is $30 each at full price.

You cannot add the price of the books in, that is WoTC material. Plus, no 5e book is $50 on FG. Regular price is $30 ($29.99). They go on sale and they have a bundle that makes them even cheaper.

If you want the marque features for Roll20, the subscription will run you &10 a month and the WoTC books are more expensive as well.

Yes, pro tools on R20 are $10 a month, but you can run a game very well with the free version or the $5/mo plus version.

Another tip in R20's favor for me is one often cited by naysayers as a drawback -- it's hosted entirely online. This has been a boon to me because I can use any PC I happen to be near to get onto the platform and everything is there. My players don't have to manage downloaded clients -- it's there. I'm tech savvy, but I have players that aren't (like, at all), so the lack of a need to download clients and work peer-to-peer connections is a real plus for my group. R20 is easier to use, but still has a lot of depth if the GM gets the sub and uses the additional pro tools (like API access, it's huge the amount of things you can do with API scripting).

Another plus for R20 is that it's setting agnostic. It has official and unofficial support for a larger number of games than FG does, and you can just hack-in a game super quick without worry.

A final plus is integrated video and voice chat. It's decent, you may want to use another program, but, again, if your group has Luddites like mine, integrated is a real bonus.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

Yes, pro tools on R20 are $10 a month, but you can run a game very well with the free version or the $5/mo plus version.

Another tip in R20's favor for me is one often cited by naysayers as a drawback -- it's hosted entirely online. This has been a boon to me because I can use any PC I happen to be near to get onto the platform and everything is there. My players don't have to manage downloaded clients -- it's there. I'm tech savvy, but I have players that aren't (like, at all), so the lack of a need to download clients and work peer-to-peer connections is a real plus for my group. R20 is easier to use, but still has a lot of depth if the GM gets the sub and uses the additional pro tools (like API access, it's huge the amount of things you can do with API scripting).

Another plus for R20 is that it's setting agnostic. It has official and unofficial support for a larger number of games than FG does, and you can just hack-in a game super quick without worry.

A final plus is integrated video and voice chat. It's decent, you may want to use another program, but, again, if your group has Luddites like mine, integrated is a real bonus.

Fantasy Grounds is also settings agnostic. Via Core RPG and More Core, you can play just about any RPG out there and there are a fair number of fan rulesets written (Good examples are AD&D and DCC and these rulesets are free). I travel a lot for business and can run FG on my laptop or desktop. Installing the client is as easy as any other program. The only one that has to jump through any hoops is the DM to get the right port open.

Roll20 is fine as well, it is like Coke and Pepsi in many ways. Different people will like different programs.

 

[Hussar]

Like I said, for the price, fantasy grounds should be a hell of a lot better than it is.

To give an example, the number of steps required to add something as simple as a single image is a bad joke. Find the pic, download it to your computer in the correct directory. Go back into fg find the file through the images tab, hope that you know the file name because good luck finding it otherwise. Bring it up on your game table. Right click and navigate the radial menu to find share and now you can show a simple jpg to your players.

Compare to Maptool which is a free program that is about fifteen years old and I drag and drop the image to the game map and poof everyone can see it.

I paid 130 USD for what exactly?

 

[Myrdin Potter]

Like I said, for the price, fantasy grounds should be a hell of a lot better than it is.

To give an example, the number of steps required to add something as simple as a single image is a bad joke. Find the pic, download it to your computer in the correct directory. Go back into fg find the file through the images tab, hope that you know the file name because good luck finding it otherwise. Bring it up on your game table. Right click and navigate the radial menu to find share and now you can show a simple jpg to your players.

Compare to Maptool which is a free program that is about fifteen years old and I drag and drop the image to the game map and poof everyone can see it.

I paid 130 USD for what exactly?

You mean download an image, put into the images folder of your campaign, click the images button and share it? I mean, some images, like maps, are DM only, so sharing explicitly is needed. Takes me under 5 seconds, it is not like remembering a name you just gave it is hard and you can organize the images quickly. FG has not had tabs for quite a while, it has drop down sections now.

Images are about the weakest link for FG, however. It does maps and fog of war masks well enough, but the built in images tools are rudimentary. I find the tokens are really good and link well to the combat tracker and size themselves when you drop it.

Plus, I thought your complaint was it cost $300. Now it is $130 instead?

For $130 you got a full featured VTT that anyone, even without a license, can connect to. That anyojencan connect is the only difference between the ultimate and $40 (on sale for $30) regular license. So you paid $100 so your players can play for free and no ongoing subscriptions. And by full featured, it has official licenses for 5e and other leading game systems and you can buy adventures all ready to run with no prep other than reading it.

 

[Radaceus]

Roll20.
and Maptools/ProTools, which I no longer use but may again for a mega-dungeon project I have because of ability to script for free versus paying for pro on Roll20
and VASL for board games (Squad Leader)

FG is to cumbersome. I'm not sold, I tried, really, I tried.

 

[Hussar]

You mean download an image, put into the images folder of your campaign, click the images button and share it? I mean, some images, like maps, are DM only, so sharing explicitly is needed. Takes me under 5 seconds, it is not like remembering a name you just gave it is hard and you can organize the images quickly. FG has not had tabs for quite a while, it has drop down sections now.

Images are about the weakest link for FG, however. It does maps and fog of war masks well enough, but the built in images tools are rudimentary. I find the tokens are really good and link well to the combat tracker and size themselves when you drop it.

Plus, I thought your complaint was it cost $300. Now it is $130 instead?

For $130 you got a full featured VTT that anyone, even without a license, can connect to. That anyojencan connect is the only difference between the ultimate and $40 (on sale for $30) regular license. So you paid $100 so your players can play for free and no ongoing subscriptions. And by full featured, it has official licenses for 5e and other leading game systems and you can buy adventures all ready to run with no prep other than reading it.

I went with the 130 dollars that you insisted on quoting. For the sake of argument. It is about 300 dollars to run a 5e full featured game. But, fair enough, you do get a lot of bang for your buck for that second 150 bucks. I'll agree with that.

But, you do kinda gloss over the steps needed to load an image.

1. Download the image to your computer and place it into the right folder (not an easy task since FG runs everything from the AppData folder - hope you have that on a quick access).
2. Open Fantasy Grounds
3. Click on the Images button to bring down that drop down menu - which lists every single image you have, including any images from books you've downloaded and added to the compaign file - mine's about seven pages long.
4. Either find the image by scrolling through the couple of hundred image files, or search - again, I hope you remember that file name since quite often when you download an image, you don't need to give it a new name. Or, click on the Files tab to bring up your images folder and find the name. Note, you can't actually import from that folder, you still need to go back to FG and click on the appropriate file name.
5. Now you have the image in your FG, and you need to right click to bring up the radial menu, click to get to the share option and then click share.

There, you have just shared a single image file.

In Maptools, if I want an image file that I don't want the players to see, I drop it on the hidden layer, poof, done. One step. Drag and drop.

This is my point. Not that it's impossible to do things in FG, but that for the most expensive virtual tabletop on the market, it's a horrible kludge. Never minding that it lacks a whole bunch of options like sound support (yes, you can download a user created widget for that, but, guess what, as soon as they update FG, which is about every two or three months, you have to uninstall and reinstall every single option you added to the table). The drawing tools are a joke. No line of sight support or vision support - both of which Maptools, a ten year old free program written in Java supports. No native layering of images - everything is jammed on the same layer. On and on and on.

My complaint is that the most expensive option out there should not be lacking in anything. I should have the head and shoulders best VTT on the market considering the price. Instead, I've got a ten year old program that is just barely keeping up with the other options on the market. Had they not gotten the WotC license, I wouldn't even consider Fantasy Grounds at all.

 

[Chris633]

Hosting an image on FG is not at all hard or as complicated as you are making out to be. Now I guess some of this will depend on a GMs organizational style. But it is easy on FG. If I am in my campaign, I go to my maps/pictures tab. Create a folder for whatever adventure I am running. Then just drag and drop all the pics I need. And there they are easy to find. Then I can share or not share as needed. It’s not hard or complicated. The key is just creating a folder for each adventure. Then you always know where to find the picture. If you don’t want to do that, also easy. Just have your own coding system for naming files if you want to keep one folder with one running list.

Honestly, I think it all comes down to personal preference. We can argue back an forth all day over what program we think is superior. But it is personal preference. You are correct that you can’t do as much with the maps as you may be able to do in maptools (though that will be changing with the coming new version). But I don’t need those extras. I just need a battle map I can run combat on and that I and the players can see and manipulate. What I love about FG is the ease I can organize and share images (their interface works for me), create encounters, automate combat, manage the party, give rewards, players can make rolls only I can see, easy to use bestiary (official and custom). I also keep FG in full window mode and I can keep all the game windows up I need to run on a given night. I have my combat tracker up, list of maps, encounter list. It’s all right there for me to see and since I organize by adventure, there is no need to search for anything. For me it works well.

But it’s all about personal preference. All GMs have differentiate styles and comfort levels with software. Some programs are going to synergize better to certain GMs. In my opinion FG is the superior GM tool, but for you it is maptoolsand another is roll20. That’s cool. The original poster needs to try out each and see which program best suits his needs and play/GM style. It’s obvious that there are passionate supporters for each platform. So honestly, you really can’t go wrong. Each has strengths and weaknesses that can appeal or frustrate.

 

[Hussar]

Sure, you can make it easier and organize things. Totally agree.

Doesn't change the point that each of those pictures take about five steps in order to use. As compared to drag and drop which every other VTT does.

One other issue to bear in mind too is the ability to port forward on your router. This has been an issue for me since my router doesn't support port forwarding, requiring me to use Hamachi in order to run the program. Not a huge hurdle, but, something to be aware of. Granted, this was also an issue with Maptool but, not one for Roll 20.