Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Million Dollar TTRPG Crowdfunders
Most Anticipated Tabletop RPGs Of The Year
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Tools for PCs?
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="500 Toads" data-source="post: 9858062" data-attributes="member: 7056434"><p>The license for Fantasy Grounds VTT is indeed free, which means that you no longer need to pay Smiteworks in order to be the host (and GM) for a session.</p><p></p><p>They still need to abide by intellectual property rights, though. So, they can (and do) ship with implementations of the freely-available base mechanics and SRD'd content, they cannot include the great bulk of player options without paying WOTC for the privilege. Most of the subclasses in the PHB (either version) for instance are non-free; and any legitimate, non-infringing tool needs to abide by that. In this case, the Smiteworks/Fantasy Grounds model has the GM pay for licensed content to enable him to use it in his campaigns, where he could share any and all of it with the players.</p><p></p><p>If you only want to use the Fantasy Grounds character sheet functionality for tracking things, however, and don't actually care about associated automation (character creation wizards, resolving spells, w/e), you can certainly manually enter things in the character sheet. If you <em>do</em> want automation and don't want to pay WOTC, you can still enter things and take time to enter all required metadata etc. for that, but it's a question of how you value your time; and you wouldn't be permitted to publicly distribute anything like a module that just contains data records for everything in the PHB, nor would anyone be allowed to send you such a thing.</p><p></p><p>The other quibble that comes to mind here is that since Fantasy Grounds uses a "host the campaigns on your own machine" model and only uses the Smiteworks services for faciltating connections ( lobby functionality ), unlike e.g. DDB or Roll20, the character sheets are not accessible to a web interface, but only when connected to the host (1) via the FG client. This excludes users who only use tablets or phones, because there is no FG client for those platforms.</p><p></p><p></p><p>(1) Technically, the players retain copies of their own character sheets cached on their own machines; but I haven't checked lately to see how usable these are if, say, there are references to material only owned by the GM. I think they may still be usable outside the session with data records being copied to the character sheet, but <em>shrug</em>.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="500 Toads, post: 9858062, member: 7056434"] The license for Fantasy Grounds VTT is indeed free, which means that you no longer need to pay Smiteworks in order to be the host (and GM) for a session. They still need to abide by intellectual property rights, though. So, they can (and do) ship with implementations of the freely-available base mechanics and SRD'd content, they cannot include the great bulk of player options without paying WOTC for the privilege. Most of the subclasses in the PHB (either version) for instance are non-free; and any legitimate, non-infringing tool needs to abide by that. In this case, the Smiteworks/Fantasy Grounds model has the GM pay for licensed content to enable him to use it in his campaigns, where he could share any and all of it with the players. If you only want to use the Fantasy Grounds character sheet functionality for tracking things, however, and don't actually care about associated automation (character creation wizards, resolving spells, w/e), you can certainly manually enter things in the character sheet. If you [I]do[/I] want automation and don't want to pay WOTC, you can still enter things and take time to enter all required metadata etc. for that, but it's a question of how you value your time; and you wouldn't be permitted to publicly distribute anything like a module that just contains data records for everything in the PHB, nor would anyone be allowed to send you such a thing. The other quibble that comes to mind here is that since Fantasy Grounds uses a "host the campaigns on your own machine" model and only uses the Smiteworks services for faciltating connections ( lobby functionality ), unlike e.g. DDB or Roll20, the character sheets are not accessible to a web interface, but only when connected to the host (1) via the FG client. This excludes users who only use tablets or phones, because there is no FG client for those platforms. (1) Technically, the players retain copies of their own character sheets cached on their own machines; but I haven't checked lately to see how usable these are if, say, there are references to material only owned by the GM. I think they may still be usable outside the session with data records being copied to the character sheet, but [I]shrug[/I]. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Tools for PCs?
Top