Custom Dice are now available!

[Luna Fuerte]

Fantasy Grounds is my favourite vtt and that keeps improving over time.
As a dm, I've bought and used fantasy grounds for not just DnD, but also the Alien RPG and Star Trek Rule-set.

Though I don't support, that GM bought dice can't be shared with the players or vice versa, when players have bought dice, that they can't share them with the players in the game they're in.
The FG themes for instance, only require one purchase by the GM and can be shared with players.
I hope you may reconsider the option for dice sharing.

All I really want are dice effects for damage types. Nobody at my table is going to get excited for their own personal digital dice.

I just want someone to be able to cast fireball and fire dice show up, or have call lightning show lightning dice.

[Dudin]

Check out this post then: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...to-Custom-Dice

They are working on functionality to tie specific dice skins/sets to damage types. Though it would require you to own the skin set you are using for the damage type.

[HywelPhillips]

All I really want are dice effects for damage types. Nobody at my table is going to get excited for their own personal digital dice.

I just want someone to be able to cast fireball and fire dice show up, or have call lightning show lightning dice.

That's a good point actually. Doug's sneak peek of the different dice for different damage video was super-cool. But are all players going to have to purchase all dice packs to have those dice show up when their character rolls damage? Are they going to have to set the dice for different damage types themselves, or will that be a GM-only setting?

Because one thing I will pretty much guarantee that will kill the cool-dice-for-different-damage-types feature stone dead for my tables is requiring player-by-player purchases of dice followed by player-by-player options panels setting the dice for each of a dozen or more damage types. At that point the confusion when someone has their cold damage dice set to someone else' air damage dice type means the whole thing is going to get unmanageable and we'll all just switch them off or (more likely) only the GM will purchase any dice and use any of these options.

PROPOSAL: GM's can buy dice packs which become available for all players. GM's set dice style for damage universally for all players (and NPCs) on a campaign-by-campaign basis, on the basis of what dice the GM owns. Players can still purchase supplementary dice packs for their own regular dice rolls, if they don't like the GM's provided options. Perhaps the GM can set a flag to allow players to override the campaign settings for damage dice individually; if that flag is not set, players cannot allocate dice styles to different damage types (the option is greyed out or probably better the button doesn't even appear in the first place).

My preference would be for dice the GM buys to become universally available, to avoid having a two-tier dice store (GM pack vs. player pack). But even if you need that two-tier store for it to make sense financially I'd very much prefer to have GM provided dice packs for the whole table as an option.

Cheers, Hywel

[Zacchaeus]

Everyone will have access to the elemental basics dice - which covers all of the major damage types, fire, cold, poison etc. So there will be no need far anyone to buy any other dice sets unless they want to. And there will be a default dice for each damage type from that set. I don't know if there will be an option to switch that off or not. (Also I'm just going on Doug's video - I have no particular insight)

And yes, you will be able to configure which dice gets used for which damage type. Each dice set comes with all of the same elemental colours/skin - so all you would be doing is linking whatever dice in a particular dice set you want to use for a particular damage type.

As has been repeated a number of times now, dice are a much more personal thing than the Player's Handbook; so having each player be able to choose a dice set that they like without the DM over-riding their choices with their personal preference is a good thing. If you were playing round a table I doubt that many GMs would insist that everyone use a particular type or colour of dice.

[intergalactic]

First, I love the dice and the effects. They look great! Smiteworks put in a lot of time and effort and it shows in the quality of the work. While my feedback here is intended to be constructive criticism, it is still criticism because I am a bit dissatisfied with the product.

When I saw that the dice packs had been released, I immediately purchased the bundle. I mean, immediately. No questions asked. Gimme those dice! Despite the issues that I list below, I am not planning to return them. On the one hand, I am voting with my dollars that what y'all have released is good enough for me -- but, on the other hand, I am also not completely happy with the purchase. The whole thing has been a bit disappointing, which stinks because I was super excited about this feature when it was announced. I still am, but there's just a cloud over the whole thing now.

First, while I am disappointed that my players cannot use the dice that I purchased, I get the reasoning behind it. I also agree with other users that there should be a note on the product pages that the dice sets are per user. One of the reasons that I immediately bought the bundle wsa because I thought it would be available to all my players. I get the per-user model. It's common for dice. However, dice sets are new here and yall have never released anything (AFAICT) that has been DM only.

Second, The main reason that I bought the bundle was to have dice tied to damage types. Again, disappointed that this wasn't already available. I spent about 15 minutes to make it work before coming to the forum to see if others were having the same issue and that's when I noticed the note about this being an upcoming feature. I'd suggest adding a note so that everyone who watched the video can have a heads up.

(To be fair, you may have clarified both of these issues in the video, but I scrubbed through the video, watching only bits and pieces of it. Maybe that's on me, but I don't think this is an unusual way to watch Youtube videos. So assuming that people know it because it was mentioned in the video is not great.)

Third, and this is something of a nitpick, but when I opened the dice picker (before purchasing the dice), I only saw the Default dice skin and not the Elemental Basics. Did I need to expand that tab to be able to access those dice? I have already bought all the dice packs, so can't see how it worked. Want to know so I can let my players know.


Some questions:

Is there a way to gift a set of dice to my players? That would make a great Christmas present for them. (I did look for it, but didn't immediately see a way to do this.)

Having purchased the dice sets, will I get the dice damage effects, too? When I purchased the dice, I had assumed they were already there (see point number 2 above), but even once I had clarified that, I assumed that I would get them as part of my purchase when they were released. I am now second-guessing that assumption. Please clarify. (I make this assumption based on the fact that they were covered in the same video and appeared to be part of the same feature-set. And the groupings of dice in the dice picker palette indicate some association with different effects.

Am I correct in understanding that while the players cannot use my dice, they will still see the dice effects when I roll them?

Once the damage effects come out,
- Will player damage rolls use these effects if they themselves don't own the set of dice? I would likely return some or all of the dice if the players' damage rolls don't use the dice effects. I get that their standard rolls should not use the effects, but there is no joy in the damage effects if they are not shared.

- Will players see the DMs damage effect rolls? I would definitely return some or all of the dice over this.

- Are the effects set by the DM or can the players customize their own effects? Seems like they should be set by the DM unless the player purchases their own dice in which case, they can customize how it looks to them.

Super nitpick: Any thought given to changing the dice selector icon? The painter's palette doesn't make a whole lot of sense anymore - not that it ever really did since you weren't selecting a system-wide color.


That's all my feedback for now. Seriously excited to see how this feature evolves, but there are still lots of questions.

[intergalactic]

Everyone will have access to the elemental basics dice - which covers all of the major damage types, fire, cold, poison etc. So there will be no need far anyone to buy any other dice sets unless they want to. And there will be a default dice for each damage type from that set. I don't know if there will be an option to switch that off or not. (Also I'm just going on Doug's video - I have no particular insight)

So, your interpretation is that anyone who hasn't purchased the dice set that the DM has set for the damage effects will use the Elemental Basics dice?

If that is the case, that is pretty disappointing. The dice effects just aren't fun unless they are shared with the players. And it would seriously suck to have some players be able to see the effects and other players not. Especially if those other players can't due to financial reasons.

[damned]

Everyone will see the dice that others throw.
They will only be throw dice that they own or that are included.

[Zacchaeus]

Yes, you can gift dice to players. If you go back into the store you'll see a 'buy again' button - Doug hasn't announced that feature yet - but it's there.

Yes, once the damage coding is released it will be available to everyone - even those who don't purchase any dice sets since everyone gets at least the basic elemental dice.

Your players will see the DM dice rolls only if you have Show DM rolls set to on in options.

Each player and DM can customise their own effects (once damage can be mapped to dice that is). How much customisation they can do will of course depend on what dice sets they have purchased.

Since everyone has at least the elemental basics everyone can map dice to a damage type.

[Zacchaeus]

So, your interpretation is that anyone who hasn't purchased the dice set that the DM has set for the damage effects will use the Elemental Basics dice?

If that is the case, that is pretty disappointing. The dice effects just aren't fun unless they are shared with the players. And it would seriously suck to have some players be able to see the effects and other players not. Especially if those other players can't due to financial reasons.

The players will see the DMs dice if the DM has set show DM rolls to on. I'm assuming that the damage types will map to the Elemental basics, yes. So if a player (or DM) hasn't bought any dice packs they'll still be able to roll different dice from the elemental basics. Players (and the DM) will also see all other players dice as well.

[ddavison]

Thanks for the feedback.

Each Dice Pack has a 30 second trailer video and a longer walk-through where I show the dice and talk about how they work per user. This walkthrough explained that dice were per user and we released these about a week prior to actually launching the product. We included the dice in the beta and we mentioned this during the beta and during streams where we discussed the upcoming feature. Not everyone watches the videos, however, and the product description absolutely does need to have that clarified. As a result, I added the following to the descriptions of each product:

These dice are digital only items for use within Fantasy Grounds Unity. Dice Packs are linked with individual users. Other connected players and Gamemasters will be able to see your dice roll on their screen for any non-hidden rolls, but Dice Packs are not sharable.

The pre-week sneak peek video I released on Monday shows the next iteration of the dice. We normally don't showcase upcoming features linked to products because we want people to buy content based on what it can do at the time of purchase. It is close enough to releasing that I thought I would bend this rule a bit and answer one of the most common questions we expected to hear after release of the dice.

Here is a link to the sneak-peek video:
https://youtu.be/KduT6JHgQM4

The other stuff I didn't sneak peek that shows how these are assigned is also cool but the screen UI was undergoing some changes, so I didn't showcase this yet.

Why did we change the way Dice Packs work compared with modules that can be shared?

We worked on this part of the project considerably during the design stages and we made a very direct decision that these would be per user for a few reasons.

1. Financial Reasons. One of those is unquestionably because we think it will generate more revenue this way. More revenue means that we get a better return on our investment for the development cycles we spent on it and that development cycle involved multiple developers and our staff artist, Joshua Watmough. Our investment was fairly substantial for this project.

By spreading this across all users and not just GMs, we expect it will make more revenue for the company. This also means we can lower the price to a price point that we believe is very low at $5 / pack.

2. Personalization. We think dice are a personal expression thing around the table and we think they should be this way online as well. While some people will want to collect them all, we expect to release more of these over time and we don't think everyone will feel the need to collect them all. We want to have lots of options for people and as they expand, there will be more and more personal decisions available that will fit better with the personalization aspect of the dice.

3. Users who don't purchase dice packs
We included a full set of elemental basics dice for all users without requiring any purchase. This will allow people to use custom dice and to use the stuff in our sneak peek and see different dice for different damage types without requiring any additional purchases. It directly competes with our other dice packs, but it felt important to provide something for everyone.

4. Gifting
We modified the gifting system to allow these to be gifted to individual users. You can buy a pack on an order and then gift the entire order to another user. This means that players can gift a set to their GM and vice-versa, or player to player. Just remember that the entire order has to be gifted at once. Again, the $5 price point was a key consideration here. We think that a $5 gift is a nice thing that hopefully won't break the bank for most people.

These are the reasons we made the decision we did on dice. I take full responsibility for this decision, and I don't expect to change that decision after launch. While we hope that you will support the decision, we do offer a very generous refund policy that is good for 30 days from purchase on anything in our storefront. (*Steam has its own refund policy*). To request a refund, please contact us at support.fantasygrounds.com and our Customer Support team will get you refunded quickly and easily. We appreciate your feedback, especially with refund requests.