FGs biggest problem

[JohnD]

I find myself disagreeing with you! Although i have run a 5e campaign, and it was very good indeed, i find myself wishing that there was just a character sheet for [insert game here]. I know that MoreCore can do most things, but it did take me an age to set up a character sheet for each race. And then, when someone went up a level and a stat increased, i had to go in and modify the dice script etc.

I have run loads of WFRP2e using the superb Morecore ruleset, loads of Earthdawn (and that is a cracking rulseset too!), some WFRP 1e, and quite a few more from character sheet only rulesets. To be honest, i would quite happily buy say a Palladium Character sheet plus theme (with no programmed content) for say £5-10. Or Pendragon, or Star Wars D6, or basic D&D or (and i could go on).

I backed the idea of a Character Sheet Creator a while back because i am not a coding person and never will be. I myself publish 8 or so games. Two of them have had the Character Sheet treatment from fans (and although based on the old version, so no drag and drop) are fantastic. I would quite happily supply or back a character sheet (if there was a creator) for all my games as it would increase my sales and hopefully boost FG too.

You'd need someone willing to code a ruleset, 100s of hours of work, for essentially pennies on the dollar (if that) and a willingness on the part of the IP holder to allow Smiteworks to sell the product (and take their cut of course). I know you know that, but it bares being stated regardless.

[LordEntrails]

...
I backed the idea of a Character Sheet Creator a while back because i am not a coding person and never will be. I myself publish 8 or so games. Two of them have had the Character Sheet treatment from fans (and although based on the old version, so no drag and drop) are fantastic. I would quite happily supply or back a character sheet (if there was a creator) for all my games as it would increase my sales and hopefully boost FG too.

As JohnD implies, how much money are you willing to put forth to have these developed for your 8 game systems?

That's really what it comes down to. I'm suspect if you came out and offered a community developer $5000 USD you would probably find someone willing to do it for you (that's a WAG, I have no idea the expense, but that is a reasonable amount for each system, i.e. 100 hr x 50$/hr). But how many more games would you have to sell in order to recuperate that expense? Let's see, if a niche ruleset sells for $10 and the profit on that is maybe $8 (?) then that's 625 sales. Would you expect to sell that many?

I have no idea. But I do know the RPG market is pretty small. For the largest system on the market, 5E, if I look at what it takes to get into the top 10% of products on the DMsGuild, that only 50 sales. Since less than 1% hit gold, which is 500 sales is where you need to look at.

Now, most of those numbers are WAGs, and comparing the sale of a FG ruleset to a 3PP product on the DMsG is pretty loose at best. But it does give a very rough idea of the challenge all RPG publishers/authors/creators have. There are only a very few RPG endeavors that can afford to actually be done to the full potential from a business perspective. Which means that leaves it up to those that love something to expand/enhance/create it and either give it away for free, or for very low compensation.

Which means since so many of us love RPGs, we do those things on the side. And we give away or sell for very little what we create. Which means that the customer/player market expects things for free or very low cost. Which means that the industry can't afford to become fully professional because sales won't support it. Which means we don't get all of the potential. Which as you can guess means it's a self-fulfilling problem.

(Did all that make sense? I feel I didn't write that very clearly.)

[Zacchaeus]

Two nations separated by a common language. WAGs here is 'Wives and Girlfriends' usually of sporting superstars, usually footballers (Soccer players). Took me a while to figure out why such persons would have anything to to with RPGs LE

[Arion]

I am aware of all of the above, which comes back to the "FG's biggest problem"! If creating a ruleset costs many thousands of $, it won't happen, so it rarely happens. Thus games feel unsupported as the OP mentioned.

Some of my books have sold several thousands each, which is great, but profit margins are not huge. And of course writing the game takes many, many hours (well over a hundred) and so the wages i get per hour are a few $, so not really worth spending that tiny profit for a bit extra. Hence an easier way needed to create character sheets!

[damned]

Ultimately - having had this discussion many times before - over 50% of the market is either only interested in, or primarily only plays D&D 5E.
Add in PathFinder, 4E and 3.5E and you are well over 70% and based on some reports over 80% already.

They are simple numbers. Numbers usually tell a lot.

The next 10 biggest systems include World of Darkness*, Shadowrun*, Call of Cthulhu*, Savage Worlds*, Warhammer*, AD&D*, Dungeon World, Star Wars*, StarFinder*, Fate*. They take up between 15 and 20% of games played. (The asterisks indicate that there is some ruleset covering these at least partially already).

That leaves a very skinny number for the other 8,000 odd RPGs that people play.

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Obviously having a fair bit to do with MoreCore my familiarity with it is probably higher than the OPs. Additionally the OP may have tried it before particular features were incorporated (it is on its 44th version). But in many cases setting up rolls is not that difficult.

Boon and Bane rolls are supported and automatically add the result to the Modifier. superteddy57 has set up a MoreCore extension and character sheet for how he uses it here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...anics&p=395789

Yes - you do have to learn how to use it. But create a template character and export and import once you have it right.

How often do you level up? Is it asking your players too much to go and adjust a handful of entries when they level up? They had to learn how to use the 5E sheet too.

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Im not positive but I do believe that many of the sheets for other game systems are not written by Roll20 themselves. They are written by community members just like here.

Writing a sheet for a new game is not as simple as picking up the PDF and converting it. You need to first learn the mechanics. This can take a long time and errors can be made by the person interpreting the rules. The conversion is best done by someone who is firstly familiar with the game system.

[Valatar]

I too would love dozens more systems supported! The trick is though that if someone's willing to do it, they either have to do it for free or work out a licensing deal with the owner of the game. If they try to charge money or solicit donations, they're opening themselves up to a legal hammering. Fortunately there are people in the community willing to do the work for free for the systems we currently have; without them FG would be a much less useful program.

[dulux-oz]

Just for a tad of context - the 13th Age Ruleset, which is based heavily on the existing 4E Ruleset, took over 900 man-hours of work to put together, test, refine, re-work, and publish - and that was just the time I spent. Add in the work Devin Knight did on the (excellent) Tokens for us, plus the work on the graphics by a number of people, and then the work required to proof and get it all published by the boys at SW, and the number of hours grows substantially. And it was the Character Sheet that took up just over half that time.

So using Lord E's figure of $5000 and a quick back-of-the-envelop calculation the Character Sheet alone would earn the coder approx $10/hr - and apart from doing the work as a hobby/love-of-it, there's no incentive for anyone to do it.

So it may sound like I'm agreeing (indirectly) with the OP, but I'm not, because you *CAN* run any game with just CoreRPG - I run two; Star Frontiers & Deadlands Classic - but you've got to think like it was when we played around an actual table - you know, blank sheets of paper for "character sheets", lego-men for minis, hordes of dice, and the games went on regardless

It's an expectation thing, that's all, not any real issue with the software - a bit like choosing not to play a computer game because you can't make/afford the "skin" you want.

Just my $0.02 worth.

Cheers

[spite]

I keep trying to write a response. I cant decide however, if I am in agreement or not with the OP. A huge turn off for me for morecore is the sheet is incredibly unintuitive for playing any game. Auto-alphabetising every section. Not allowing for modifiers to easily be understood, and a number of other minor gripes.
However, what it does give is already leaps above what Roll20 offers when it comes down to it. You have map interaction, health tracking on a universal combat tracker. The lions share of the grunt work (read: coding) has already been done. All Roll20's community supported smaller RPG sheets offer is a series of fillable macros. That's also not really thanks to Roll20 as a company, but from the much larger audience and community feeding into it.

As the other posters have said, the games that are supported officially and by community devs here at FG are of much higher calibre than anything Roll20 offers that it really is no comparison. The 40k sheets for example are insanely good. Look at Roll20? They're form fillable PDFs with clickable roll fields. Nothing that they spit out interacts with anything else in the way Fantasy Grounds behaves. That alone is, for me at least, a shiny wrapper with little substance.

However, people want shiny and they want to PERCEIVE their needs and wants being met. To the point where they'll slog through insane amounts of work and still claim that it's the underlying software that's so amazing because it allows them to do all this by themselves. And the fact that FG can not compete there is it's own biggest enemy. People see FG as too alien to conquer. Therefore I do agree with the OPs statement, it is among FG's biggest problems in attracting users.

[Arion]

I was writing my responses last night whilst trying to GM a WFRP2e over FG...

Anyway, to clarify my responses. I do agree with the OP that the biggest "problem" for FG users, especially new users, is the limited number of rulesets available (for a given value of limited). This is not to say that it is anyone's fault etc, just how it is.

To create a character sheet with a fixed set of appropriate boxes, labels and dice rollers requires either the skills of a programmer or a fan of the game who also knows how to code for FG. Therefore the alternative is MoreCore. I like MC, i have used it a lot for various games, and it does offer the option of running every game, but not straight off the bat. For some games it can be clunky and for others it takes a while to set up.

I have plenty of experience of setting up Morecore character sheets, but when i come to plan my next campaign, i usually go for one for which a character sheet is available, even if based on the old foundation/D20 etc. It looks nicer and is easier to handle.

I am not therefore suggesting that programmers work for almost nothing to set this up, nor am i suggesting that SW dedicate a vast amount of time to creating sheets for every possible game. If i could wave a magic wand, i would do one or both of the following:

A - Create "Mini-Rulesets". That is to say a functional character sheet and theme with rolls direct from the sheet, even if the only automation is damage, initiative etc. It does not even need game data in it, rather appropriate spell sheets and so forth. The WFRP2e sheet is beyond what i would go for here. These could be sold at say £5-10 depending on the complexity of the game.

B - A WYSIWYG Character Sheet creator. You draw boxes, add images and text etc much as any layout program, assign dice rolls to number boxes and so forth. This then exports it as a PAK file. I realise that this may not even be possible, but with the new version of FG coming this may be doable? This would solve this issue at a stroke because users could create whatever sheets they wanted and publishers could use it to create a FG ruleset for almost every system.

Would SW consider allowing the first of these commercially? Rather than focusing on huge all singing rulesets, go for smaller easier products. The developer still gets a cut as normal, but it would be a less daunting project.

[L. R. Ballard]

This community needs to start a Patreon run by a trustworthy member. That trustworthy member acts as a custodian over the Patreon's funds.

The goal of the Patreon is to crowdfund things for Fantasy Grounds that SmiteWorks isn't working on.

Interested parties get the necessary permissions from SmiteWorks and from any game designers whose IP, copyrights, etc., are at issue. The crowdfunding community approaches a trusted developer who is committed to working on the project. The community has a project price in mind: Perhaps the community is willing to offer the developer $5,000 to make a character sheet.

When the Patreon reaches its funding goal, the custodian hires the developer to work as a freelancer. The freelance developer builds the character sheet, ruleset, or whatever the community wants to have done.