FGU Standard - is it still useful?

[Imagix]

Not sure.. but appears that the standard license is currently 25% off in Steam. (Direct from Steamworks too)

[Nick Frost]

It WAS useful for "closed" groups that wanted to have rotating GM-duties. Nowadays people in that situation get directed to a cheaper competitor.


Relevant wishlist item: https://fgapp.idea.informer.com/proj/?ia=135351

[Minty23185Fresh]

I use the standard license. I use it for two reasons:
One, I don’t believe as the DM I should foot the entire cost of playing. Philosophically, I think everyone should have to ante up.
And two, it’s my opinion that players that have decided to buy into FG, have more commitment to playing. (True I’ve had no proof of this, since I’ve not had any demo players at my table. So this is unsubstantiated conjecture.)

[kronovan]

It WAS useful for "closed" groups that wanted to have rotating GM-duties. Nowadays people in that situation get directed to a cheaper competitor.

Fair enough, but it depends. When I bought FG I wanted to run TTRPGs like Savage Worlds and Traveller. The support and quality of those on other VTTs, was lower than their FG implementations - still is. So going with another VTT option because it's cheaper to rotate the GM, can end up loosing you some quality automation and features. If your intent is to only rotate GM/DM duties for D&D campaigns, using a competing product can be more attractive. As to cheaper...I haven't played in an IRL campaign with GM rotation that didn't run at least 2 years. The cost of using more rotating GM friendly VTTs, becomes very cost prohibitive (at least in my country's $) if they're only subscription based.

[Dudin]

If I could magically chose what I would like to see out of the standard license, it would enable someone to host/be GM and have access to a connected player's content who also has the ultimate license. I have the ultimate license and (probably too much) 5E content that I wanted. While I have friends who would be happy and willing to swap out every now and then for a one shot or just to take the DM mantle for a bit, they wouldn't do it at the cost of the ultimate license and purchasing all the DLC. It just doesn't make sense when you only plan to do it a handful of times at best. Even if the standard license were a bit more expensive, I think some players I have would consider it.

I also acknowledge SW is a business offering products to make money, so I don't expect to see this come true for any reason nor am I mad about it.

[Minty23185Fresh]

If I could magically chose what I would like to see out of the standard license, it would enable someone to host/be GM and have access to a connected player's content who also has the ultimate license. I have the ultimate license and (probably too much) 5E content that I wanted. While I have friends who would be happy and willing to swap out every now and then for a one shot or just to take the DM mantle for a bit, they wouldn't do it at the cost of the ultimate license and purchasing all the DLC. It just doesn't make sense when you only plan to do it a handful of times at best. Even if the standard license were a bit more expensive, I think some players I have would consider it.

I also acknowledge SW is a business offering products to make money, so I don't expect to see this come true for any reason nor am I mad about it.

A question Dudin have you actually tried to see if you can see others content or they can see yours? I don’t know the answer to this.

But in the past, with my Standard license, and I DM’ed, I could see a listing of my players’ content, that they had it shared. I was a bit busy at the time, with my DM hat on, to give it a try, see if I could actually view content, instead of just seeing titles of what they had.

[Moon Wizard]

GMs can grant players access to use content that the player owns, but they don't. However, neither the GM nor other players have access to that player's content.

In addition to licensing, there is no mechanism under the hood to "store" player content within a GM session other than portraits.

Regards,
JPG

[Minty23185Fresh]

GMs can grant players access to use content that the player owns, but they don't. However, neither the GM nor other players have access to that player's content.

In addition to licensing, there is no mechanism under the hood to "store" player content within a GM session other than portraits.

Regards,
JPG

Thank you Moon Wizard.

To my mind, a question arises then, from a DM standpoint. “Why?”

As a DM I’m going to grant an individual access to content that they have, that no one else, including myself, has access to? Wwhhaaat….? That makes no sense.

All it does is completely pollute the DM’s module selection dialog. A couple of my players had vast amounts of content, when I went in to open a module instead of my typical 10 screens of content to wade through I had 40. Again, why? If it can’t be shared with everyone?

[Moon Wizard]

Part of it is a legacy decision from before my time; but it also allows players to bring custom content to the GMs table with approval, and it is something that publishers have allowed in this current model.

Having a way to grant permission/access to data on a player machine is very different both license and data wise from providing access to the GM and other players to any book ever brought to your table. Some considerations: No technical system to share/retain that level of information that would have to be built/tested/tuned; licensing considerations with publishers and what they would allow; unknown allowed behavior for data shared (i.e. can books shared by a player that connected once over a year ago be fully used by GM and players within the campaign still? how would this be abused (i.e. just copy campaign and repeat)? How would publishers view this? etc.)

Given that GMs usually own more content than players, in practice, it's not usually that big of an issue to find modules. Plus, you only open modules once usually, plus you can search and filter the results if you're looking for something specific.

Regards,
JPG

[kronovan]

To my thinking, what Dudin and Minty are discussing is a client-server vs a peer-to-peer content sharing issue/concept. In the existing client-server model, only the content owned by the hosting FGU Standard or Ultimate licensee can be shared. Whereas in a peer-to-peer scenario, any campaign participant connected with a FGU Standard or Ultimate server license would have the ability to use content than any peer (Standard or Ultimate) has purchased. It reminds me of the less common, dual-mode database engines I used to admin, which could be run on a Server as dedicated client-server, or instead offloaded to an instance of the engine on a workstation for peer-to-peer.

While I think it would be a more ideal and equitable way for FGU to function, I can see some challenges with it. A big one being potentially much more Internet bandwidth used in both directions while ruleset, DLC and campaign content is exchanged. For players on slower connections, the initial acquisition of the file list can already be a very lengthy process. I can imagine it being that much worse if the hosting GM's instance of FGU is also busy uploading content. Then there's the impracticality that a key group member with required DLC content will always be available for every session. The biggest challenge would be the need to allow Ultimate and Standard FGU clients that are going to share content, to join a campaign in a mode that allows them to be both player-client and content sharer.

For dedicated groups of players with high speed connections though, it would be a very cool feature.