Change My Mind: Invest in FG, need top 5e capability but also OSR/ShadowofDemonLord

[Trenloe]

Final Questions

1. When purchasing the Ultimate License, this does mean that my players need not purchase anything on their own correct? I ask because they will be splitting the price with me and I will cover add-ons/DLC at my own expense.
2. If the above is true, do the players just download Fantasy Grounds for free somehow and then join my game and have all the capabilities they need?
3. Will my players be able to save their character sheets and/or notes and all the "player stuff" on their computers or is that all stored on my computer via my Ultimate License and then pushed to them whenever we next resume the game?
4. In the same theme as the above question, would my players be able to work on their 5E character sheets without being connected to me?
5. Are there any limitations I'm not thinking of via the Ultimate License for myself or my players?

Very pumped to begin this journey!

1) Yes.
2) yes.
3) & 4) The players have a read-only copy they can access in their local cache (stored on their computer to reduce future downloads). The owning player can copy this and modify it through manage characters and so have a modified PC ready to upload when they next connect. The gotcha is that they won't have access to your DLC when they aren't connected to you.
5) The main issue is if suddenly one of the players wants to GM for a bit. They would need to get an ultimate license, or everyone other than you would need to get a standard license.

Yeah I'll tell ya right now, you guys are true salesmen and saleswomen without even trying...which is awesome.

It's interesting that the typical roll20 advocate, when asked to promote roll20 over Fantasy Grounds they usually try to put Fantasy Grounds down - with a lot of their views being inaccurate. When a FG advocate is asked to promote FG over roll20 they usually describe all of the cool things FG can do, very often what roll20 can do is hardly mentioned. There are exceptions to this, but that is my general experience. I think this speaks volumes for Fantasy Grounds - users who use it do so because they like the functionality that is there for them to use. Sure there are some things that roll20 (and other VTTs) do "better" (some of it bells-and-whistles and in-your-face graphical bling, some of it truly cool features), but in the end most users stick to FG because it has the depth of features they want/need for running good, coherent, long-running RPG campaigns.

[damned]

Your players wont need to buy anything.
Their characters will be saved on their computer and yours.
They can work on them between games but they wont have access to your books unless they are connected to your server.
The limitation to Ultimate that may not have come up is that you all need an Internet connection to at least start the game as each demo/free client does a license check on your Ultimate at connection - this can be an issue for offline lan games.

[LordEntrails]

What is this you say a way to create my homebrew monsters and import them easily in FG? No seriously - is that what you're saying because that's incredible. One of the most attractive things about 5e is the size of the community and if you have say 100 homebrews come out of them, maybe 50 are sub standard, but the other 50 are good, 10 of which are superb works so this is very cool! You have NPC/Monster and Spell engineer but what about homebrew items on FG?

Yes, NPC engineer allows bulk import of monsters and creatures (i.e. NPCs). Spell Engineer does spells. There is no Item Engineer, yet. But Masaq has indicated he wants to get there.

Final Questions
When purchasing the Ultimate License, this does mean that my players need not purchase anything on their own correct? I ask because they will be splitting the price with me and I will cover add-ons/DLC at my own expense.

Correct, the Ult license allows all your players to connect to you with the free/demo. They can also, while connected, access all the content or books you share with them (though things like the DMG are not designed to be shared and are big enough they may crash their client application.

If the above is true, do the players just download Fantasy Grounds for free somehow and then join my game and have all the capabilities they need?

Exactly.

Will my players be able to save their character sheets and/or notes and all the "player stuff" on their computers or is that all stored on my computer via my Ultimate License and then pushed to them whenever we next resume the game?

In the same theme as the above question, would my players be able to work on their 5E character sheets without being connected to me?

It's all stored on your computer, but a copy of it is in the cache on their computers. But, they can not edit their characters without exporting it from the campaign. Which means they would then have to re-import it next time they join your campaign.

Are there any limitations I'm not thinking of via the Ultimate License for myself or my players?

Well, DM books like the DMG can't really be shared with the players. You can, but as mentioned, it might cause their client to crash.
You won't be able to change who DM's, because the host of the game has to have a license (ult or standard) and the host has to be the DM/GM.
The official content is encrypted, so you can't modify it in a simple way. You can make copies of all the objects (classes,races, items) and edit those and turn them into your own modules, but then they are copies or duplicates.

[lostsanityreturned]

Oh should I then mention that making your own classes, subclasses, backgrounds, items, feats, skills, magical item templates (properties that can be forged onto any mundane item) and monsters / NPCs IS SUPER EASY in fantasygrounds. And you can comfortably export them into your own little modules to keep for later
NPC spellcasters are especially easy to create.

Now to answer your questions.

1- The ultimate license allows anyone with a demo (free) account to log in, yup.
2- Yes, they will log into your game, download any modules they need from your server (which can take a little while the first time or after an update depending on your internet speed). But other than that they are in and playing, you can even get the demo from steam.
3- It is all saved on your side, the server side. And demo licenses cannot create or manage characters without logging in to an ultimate server, if they had standard licenses they could but only if you exported their characters for them (easy to do). Thankfully leveling a character in FG takes all of 3 minutes, literally drag and drop (even with homebrewed elements)
4- Nope, not unless you export their sheets and they have a paid license.
5- Ultimate is just standard that allows players to connect to the DM if they haven't paid for the standard edition. Nothing else is different and it doesn't allow any more or less outside of that

[damned]

3- It is all saved on your side, the server side. And demo licenses cannot create or manage characters without logging in to an ultimate server, if they had standard licenses they could but only if you exported their characters for them (easy to do). Thankfully leveling a character in FG takes all of 3 minutes, literally drag and drop (even with homebrewed elements)
4- Nope, not unless you export their sheets and they have a paid license.

Demo/Free licenses can manage their own characters offline - if they have the ruleset and if they have access to the modules they need.
So 5E and other included licenses plus Community Rulesets this works for. It wont work for commercial rulesets as they cant be bought on a demo license.
So a 5E character could be edited etc but only using SRD/Free/Homebrew modules or just by editing directly.

[Maasq]

What is this you say a way to create my homebrew monsters and import them easily in FG? No seriously - is that what you're saying because that's incredible. One of the most attractive things about 5e is the size of the community and if you have say 100 homebrews come out of them, maybe 50 are sub standard, but the other 50 are good, 10 of which are superb works so this is very cool! You have NPC/Monster and Spell engineer but what about homebrew items on FG?
Very pumped to begin this journey!

Hiya. Both systems (Roll20 and FG) have ways to type in any homebrew that you may have. I never played with Roll20 for long so can't speak much about it's way of working, although it didn't match up with how my mind works. That wasn't necessarily their fault, though! My main reason for coming here was the community. I had a frustrating 10 days on R20 - I couldn't get in to a game, or even get people to answer my posts on the forum. I found a mention of FG, and within 24 hours had been greeted by several prominent members of the community and had a game sorted. That sold the system for me hands down. I may just have been unlucky on R20, so I wouldn't like to talk it down.

Anyway, back to my point. Entering items/spells/etc in FG is fine for one or two, but obviously importing a whole bestiary or grimoire this way is time consuming. I wrote the programs I have to try to simplify things. I've had decent feedback on their usability, so I'm confident you'll find them useful if you try them out. Item Engineer is probably next on my list, and there's a couple of parts to finish up on Spell Engineer. My real-life job is interfering with my programming just now, but this will be over by the end of June and I can get back to being a pasty-faced geek

So in summary - items can be entered in the FG interface, and by asking about it you've given me a spur to create Item Engineer over the summer.

Welcome aboard, BTW - we'll be expecting you on the various Discord servers. Has anyone mentioned Fantasy Grounds College to you yet? This is a fan-run Discord based group that will offer 'classes' in any aspect of FG that proves difficult. Again, I think this is a fantastic community resource and I am sure someone who knows more about it will tell you all you need to know.

Maasq

[JohnD]

1) Yes.
2) yes.
3) & 4) The players have a read-only copy they can access in their local cache (stored on their computer to reduce future downloads). The owning player can copy this and modify it through manage characters and so have a modified PC ready to upload when they next connect. The gotcha is that they won't have access to your DLC when they aren't connected to you.
5) The main issue is if suddenly one of the players wants to GM for a bit. They would need to get an ultimate license, or everyone other than you would need to get a standard license.


It's interesting that the typical roll20 advocate, when asked to promote roll20 over Fantasy Grounds they usually try to put Fantasy Grounds down - with a lot of their views being inaccurate. When a FG advocate is asked to promote FG over roll20 they usually describe all of the cool things FG can do, very often what roll20 can do is hardly mentioned. There are exceptions to this, but that is my general experience. I think this speaks volumes for Fantasy Grounds - users who use it do so because they like the functionality that is there for them to use. Sure there are some things that roll20 (and other VTTs) do "better" (some of it bells-and-whistles and in-your-face graphical bling, some of it truly cool features), but in the end most users stick to FG because it has the depth of features they want/need for running good, coherent, long-running RPG campaigns.

That last paragraph is golden and oh so very accurate.

[Gray Geist]

Hello all! Very direct and useful responses as always, thank you. Based on what many of you are saying it sounds like that perhaps having everyone (including me) buy a "Standard License" might be more useful in the long run. I want my players to be able to get on (on their own) and edit characters, etc without relying on me to home to turn on computer or rely on my internet connection. Now with that said I have a feeling I may have the wrong idea and having the Ult License as a DM may be highly advantageous. Has anyone experienced a situation with everyone (including DM) having Standard? Are there severe limitations to the DM having Standard I'm not understanding? On the other hand has anyone experienced having Ult and everyone having the free version? Have you run into the issue of players having no access when you're not around and had to plan it so you can get on to give them access to look at their character sheet, etc?

On the other hand I can see having Ultimate is useful and worse comes to worst I would log in 30 minutes early with my players to have them level up characters, etc but sometimes people can't crunch 30 minutes in. Just spit balling here really

Hiya. Both systems (Roll20 and FG) have ways to type in any homebrew that you may have. I never played with Roll20 for long so can't speak much about it's way of working, although it didn't match up with how my mind works. That wasn't necessarily their fault, though! My main reason for coming here was the community. I had a frustrating 10 days on R20 - I couldn't get in to a game, or even get people to answer my posts on the forum. I found a mention of FG, and within 24 hours had been greeted by several prominent members of the community and had a game sorted. That sold the system for me hands down. I may just have been unlucky on R20, so I wouldn't like to talk it down.

Anyway, back to my point. Entering items/spells/etc in FG is fine for one or two, but obviously importing a whole bestiary or grimoire this way is time consuming. I wrote the programs I have to try to simplify things. I've had decent feedback on their usability, so I'm confident you'll find them useful if you try them out. Item Engineer is probably next on my list, and there's a couple of parts to finish up on Spell Engineer. My real-life job is interfering with my programming just now, but this will be over by the end of June and I can get back to being a pasty-faced geek

So in summary - items can be entered in the FG interface, and by asking about it you've given me a spur to create Item Engineer over the summer.

Welcome aboard, BTW - we'll be expecting you on the various Discord servers. Has anyone mentioned Fantasy Grounds College to you yet? This is a fan-run Discord based group that will offer 'classes' in any aspect of FG that proves difficult. Again, I think this is a fantastic community resource and I am sure someone who knows more about it will tell you all you need to know.

Maasq

That is all so awesome to hear. Yeah if I imported lots of things it would be two things, Items and Baddies. You must be a Spells homebrew type guy huh? I don't see a lot of people messing with spells much most likely because of how quickly it can probably get away from you, that's a really awesome niche you've filled there though for sure! I see some incredible items being built out there so I'm surprised you didn't attack that first. I look forward to the Item Engineer for sure, I make all my items custom in the style of Dark Souls with little stories behind them, teasers to flesh out the world.

Speaking of Discord, I just can't get into the damn thing! I tried twice and find myself utterly overwhelmed by it and I absolutely hate it's interface! Is that just me? I'm sure everyone has their own ways of reading it and such but I don't think even Odin himself could keep up with all the crap that comes down the stream even only following a few boards. Do you log on and "catch up" on some stuff and focus on real time convo or do you just focus on the real time piece? I've been gaming on my PC for years and I'm a pretty fast learner but Discord just won't click - I even tried keeping it on my phone and just...meh ya know? But if Discord means I can talk to this crowd in real time and go to FG College (awesome!) then I'll have to learn

That last paragraph is golden and oh so very accurate.

Yeah, I've gotten that feeling already. It's very telling when a community can just speak about their favored product and it beats the other without hammering on the other. Plus if I'm being honest, I have seen the leadership of places that shalt not be named say some very strong things to the community in a blanketed way that I don't condone and do not want to financially support. So win win!

[Trenloe]

Demo/Free licenses can manage their own characters offline - if they have the ruleset and if they have access to the modules they need.
So 5E and other included licenses plus Community Rulesets this works for. It wont work for commercial rulesets as they cant be bought on a demo license.

Doing some testing recently I found an exception to this - if you have joined a GM's campaign with a demo license, and that campaign is for a commercial ruleset (the testing I did was with Starfinder), the ruleset data is downloaded to the local cache (which we pretty much already know). This allows the player to use Manage Characters and select the campaign cache data to load up that ruleset into Manage Characters - even though they don't have the ruleset installed locally. They can create characters with a ruleset they don't own this way. Of course, they don't have access to the GM's library and so can't do drag/drop character editing (which may make it of limited use to some).

[pindercarl]

Hello all! Very direct and useful responses as always, thank you. Based on what many of you are saying it sounds like that perhaps having everyone (including me) buy a "Standard License" might be more useful in the long run. I want my players to be able to get on (on their own) and edit characters, etc without relying on me to home to turn on computer or rely on my internet connection. Now with that said I have a feeling I may have the wrong idea and having the Ult License as a DM may be highly advantageous. Has anyone experienced a situation with everyone (including DM) having Standard? Are there severe limitations to the DM having Standard I'm not understanding? On the other hand has anyone experienced having Ult and everyone having the free version? Have you run into the issue of players having no access when you're not around and had to plan it so you can get on to give them access to look at their character sheet, etc?

Something to keep in mind regarding the licenses, purchased DLC is linked to the account that purchases the product. For example, if all of the players have a Standard license and one of them purchases the 5E PHB, only the player who purchased the PHB will have it available. So, while all the players having a Standard license will allow them to GM for anyone else with a Standard license, if you plan on getting a lot of the licensed products for your group, the advantage may be minimal.