Ridiculous slant against FG

[Moon Wizard]

I think there's a wish list item for card decks. Give it a vote. (See my sig.)

Cheers,
JPG

[ddavison]

There will always be posts and reviews from people who prefer something else. I'd rather there be more positive posts about FG than negative, but I think the only way to combat it successfully is to continue to share your personal experiences and successes with the software. Sometimes people clearly missed a feature that is possible with FG, but often times they aren't looking to be convinced - they just want to support their pre-conceived idea of which is best. Look at the XBox and Playstation battles. If we only listened to the negatives, then we would think there are two horrible systems to choose from.

[hangarflying]

Items 6 - 3 specifically bash FG.

Items 5 and 4 have merit before FG 3 came out. Now FG 3 combines these items into one on the CoreRPG abilities tab of the character sheet - freeform entry of abilities/skills/etc. and easy addition of dice and modifiers without having to code formulas.

Item 3 all depends on how you use Fantasy Grounds - if you don't want lots of stuff in FG don't put it in. Also, I don't think he grasps the fact that it is a freeform windows environment that allows people to close, minimise, move, resize the windows being shown.

And we all know the cost argument (item 6) will never be settled, no matter how many times it is debated.

Each to their own - VTTs are great in allowing people to play pen-and-paper RPGs and, just like GMs having their preferred RPG system, users will have their preferred VTT for all sorts of reasons. If users are happy with a certain level of functionality in a free application then that's great - I'm sure they'll have many hours of enjoyable VTT gaming.

We're going to continue to see Fantasy Grounds bashing - especially now that it is getting much exposure on Steam. FG's strengths are in its ongoing campaign management, character sheet oriented, many ruleset supporting, no further cost, free upgrade, great support, automation if you want it, environment. It doesn't have the visual bells and whistles (I mean in-game mapping, dynamic line-of-site/fog of war) that some other VTTs have - this (and the cost) will always be the main things people will use to throw mud at Fantasy Grounds.

Oh, and a lot of people will bash FG without ever giving it a go. But that is everywhere in all aspects of life, and very much in the RPG/gaming hobby.

You should point these facts out on his blog post.

[Zeus]

I unshamedly use Roll20. Why? Because I can't use playing cards when we play Falkenstein. But even then. Everything but the cards and what we do is in Fantasy Grounds. Because FG lets you manage a campaign better than anything else out there.

I guess what I am saying is: When do we get cards in FG???? *grins*

Vires Animi

SavageWorlds supports a card framework as does 4E (with the 4E Fortune Card extension). Your welcome to rip the 4E Fortune Card extension for your own needs - its pretty easy to mod the card images or re-work the extension to support other rulesets.

As for me, if you want a truly flexible and adaptable roleplaying experience thats as close to real world play as possible - at present and for the foreseeable future I see no real alternative to FG.

[viresanimi]

heheh... it was mostly a joke. I guess it misfired a bit.

And I have zero coding skills. And as far as I know the 4E thing is something like players can draw one card (mucked about with it a long time ago) and don't get me started on Savage Worlds. I looked into that too and came away confused.

Vires Animi

[Arcknight]

As an outsider, I JUST started creating content for roll20 less than a week ago, and now I'm starting to create content for FG as well (since I just found out about this site =P) and I have this question - When you FIRST start using FG, and you pay your $40.00, do you have any initial art assets? Roll20 is free to start, but you have 0. You have to immediately import or buy some, and I felt like this was an initial delay to get rolling.

[Trenloe]

When you FIRST start using FG, and you pay your $40.00, do you have any initial art assets? Roll20 is free to start, but you have 0. You have to immediately import or buy some, and I felt like this was an initial delay to get rolling.

Fantasy Grounds comes with the characters, creatures and monsters tokens from the base fantasy art kit as detailed here: https://www.rpgartkits.com/?page_id=401

It also comes with some generic letter tokens (actually very handy).

[ddavison]

It doesn't come with any map or images at this time, although I've been thinking of rolling out some generic dungeons for use. It also comes with a free adventure for D&D 3.5 and D&D 4E from White Haired Man. That has some images, NPCs, etc in it and gives a good idea of how you might choose to layout your adventures. Make sure to run the Check for Updates as soon as you get installed.

[Arcknight]

Right, I thought I had seen it implied that FG does give you some starting assets, which is important to any discussion about the price differences.

[Valarian]

Also has the Tale of Dinor sample adventure.