D&D 5E Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds?

[damned]

Not making a fully featured character builder on the basis that some groups use houserules, when there is absolutely a baselined ruleset, is not a great argument. Especially when the product is so expensive.

neither of these statements are particularly good arguments. it is a virtual table top its not a character builder. character builders are another beast altogether. FG does not advertise itself as a character builder. roll20, d20pro, maptools are also VTT products - not character builders. Hero Lab is a Character Builder and costs $30 by itself. For a single ruleset.
The product is not expensive. $4-10 a month or Fantasy Grounds or one off purchases of $40-150 are likewise good value. They compare well to Roll20's pricing. Feature for Feature the product represents excellent value. The D&D 5e content is at list price or lower for the same product in physical form and this product has gone thru so much more conversion and enhancement to make it work well in a VTT environment.
The automation and enhancement you get in FG is so far above that in any other VTT product. You dont need to buy any 5e content to use the amazing combat and spell mechanics. You can enter data in by hand as you go or spend time prepping in advance.
Your dislike for the UI doesnt make you other comments true.

 

[transtemporal]

neither of these statements are particularly good arguments. it is a virtual table top its not a character builder. character builders are another beast altogether. FG does not advertise itself as a character builder. roll20, d20pro, maptools are also VTT products - not character builders. Hero Lab is a Character Builder and costs $30 by itself. For a single ruleset.
The product is not expensive. $4-10 a month or Fantasy Grounds or one off purchases of $40-150 are likewise good value. They compare well to Roll20's pricing. Feature for Feature the product represents excellent value. The D&D 5e content is at list price or lower for the same product in physical form and this product has gone thru so much more conversion and enhancement to make it work well in a VTT environment.
The automation and enhancement you get in FG is so far above that in any other VTT product. You dont need to buy any 5e content to use the amazing combat and spell mechanics. You can enter data in by hand as you go or spend time prepping in advance.
Your dislike for the UI doesnt make you other comments true.

You actually said the character builder wasn't full-blown, not me. I just pointed out your justification for that (some groups use houserules) didn't make a bunch of sense. I personally find the character build functionality perfectly acceptable in the context of a VTT (as you mentioned above). Ideally, I'd like to output a pdf character sheet too so I don't have to repeat that work in another app but hey that's a nice to have.

You're right, your prices are in line with other products but just because we're resigned to paying USD60 for a triple-a game doesn't mean the big up-front expenditure isn't "expensive" in consumer eyes (and that's what consumers will generally judge you on).

 

[damned]

You actually said the character builder wasn't full-blown, not me. I just pointed out your justification for that (some groups use houserules) didn't make a bunch of sense. I personally find the character build functionality perfectly acceptable in the context of a VTT (as you mentioned above). Ideally, I'd like to output a pdf character sheet too so I don't have to repeat that work in another app but hey that's a nice to have.

You're right, your prices are in line with other products but just because we're resigned to paying USD60 for a triple-a game doesn't mean the big up-front expenditure isn't "expensive" in consumer eyes (and that's what consumers will generally judge you on).

Thanks transtemporal - the reason I was talking about that aspect is in relation to the question of houseruling. Fantasy Grounds isnt sold as a Character Builder or advertised as one. The system is designed around the role playing side of things rather than the character building side of things - so the primary focus is on building the interaction between the players and the GM and making that work really well.

D&D is expensive compared to many products on the market and on par with some others. You can get CallOfCthulhu for example with rulebooks and an adventure (or two) for $15. Castles&Crusades is a great ruleset - nice old school D&D feel and the ruleset I first started using on Fantasy Grounds - for only $10 and that includes the Players Handbook and the Monsters & Treasure volumes. Savage Worlds is also only $15 I think and that is a great ruleset with lots of versatility.

At the other end you have games like Star Wars Edge of teh Empire which is priced similarly to D&D in print form. Unfortunately FFG have no license for digital content so there is a community Ruleset for it with some great automation but no source material - you enter this in by hand as you need it. There are many other rulesets like this - ShadowRun 4 and DCC rulesets are recent additions from the community.

Hopefully we can get you to give your FG purchase another try in the near future! FGCon7 is coming up in October and we will have another event before that too.

 

[Hawkwind]

Could you link to the instructions on how to do this? I've been hunting around and the wiki is so arcane that I can't read it. Is there a step by step guide for building races, building classes and building monsters?

making a new monster module is pretty easy, just create a new npc and then export it from the chat window witha /export command and then clicking the right boxes to make sure it get saves as a 5e mod. Doing new classes and races and spelis is not so easy but doable if you have a lot of time on your hands there is a link to a video tutorial here http://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?21964-PAR5E-Tutorial, this is also the method that individual GM's built their player hand books, Monster manuals etc before the official release came out and people have used to import all the necromancer games books for 5e

 

[Hawkwind]

you can export your character you built in fantasy grounds to pdf using this web tool http://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?22440-5E-Character-sheet-from-XML

another useful tool if you don't want to spend $3 dollars on the basic rules for Fantasy grounds or you want to get the various free web supplements for HOTDQ and Rise of Tiamat is this http://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?21835-D-amp-D-Basic-Rules-PDF-Parser. You will have the rules and all the npc's and spells to run HOTDQ and Rise of Tiamat and the starter set adventure, all you will need to do is find some fan produced battle mats or buy them off the artist and you are good to go

 

[transtemporal]

Thanks man. Another poster mentioned dynamic lighting which I wasn't aware of, so I'll give it another whirl.

 

[Blue]

Here's a bit of a sideways review.

I was in a long running 4e campaign using MapTools. It was good, we handled all mechanics outside of it. Players who used both Roll20 and MapTools said Roll20 was superior. Again, this was for a game where we handled mechanics outside the system.

I am recently in a FG game, where the GM runs a server and purchased everything and we don't have to spend a dime. It's a bit clunkier to use as a player than MapTools, and it's horribly in-efficient in use of real estate - I had it stretched across 1 + 2/3 monitors (that last 1/3 was for skype video) and still didn't have enough space. Also it feels like a new product that didn't have a lot of things and still has simple errors (like Oath of Vengance channel divinity test under Oath of Ancients). All of that said, it seemed remarkably easy for the DM to add in things (effects or rage and reckless attack, paladin smites damage, etc.), and the system was pretty good at automating 90% of the bookkeeping during combat. That part was pretty impressive.

So, as a pure battle map, dice roller and chat MapTools beats FG due to better interface and less clunky, and MapTools seems inferior to Roll20. But FG has a good amount of handling the mechanics and looks like it can easily be expanded for more which gives it a lot of potential. It could also easily show "hand-out" images and the like. When FG gets more mature in handling of rules plus improves the inefficient use of space and all the swapping back and forth between pages (skills and actions on PC, combat tracker, party tracker, combat map) it'll be very impressive.

 

[Grakarg]

As the OP, I'd just like to thank everyone who's taken the time to post on this thread so far. Many of the posts are insightful and helpful with great info of the various VTT options and features.
I appreciate all of the comments so far!

 

[Burticusb]

Just trying to get my 10 posts in, but I thought I'd chime in on this as well, I have Fantasy Grounds. I purchased it like 5-10 years ago, and at this time it seemed like a good fit, and we were still playing 3rd edition at the time. Now with 5e rules out there I'd really like to start using it again, but I really feel that this application needs to become a joint operation with the folks from Lion's Den who have developed Fight Club & Game Master 5e. Those apps are spectacular and very useful, so if you have an iOS device, you really need to check it out. It's not a VTT, but it has some awesome tools...

 

[Kalshane]

I've been running and playing games in Roll20 for a couple years now. I looked at FG and the entry-level price point was too high to get my players to just try something out (I realize they offer subscriptions now). For the first 6 months of using Roll20, none of us paid a thing, including myself as the DM. I finally paid for a subscription not because of any of the additional features, but to support the service since we were getting a lot of use out of it.

Having never actually used FG, I can't really compare the two. But I've been happy with Roll20 so far, even if it took me a bit to get the ins-and-outs down.