Thinking about buying the Product, have some questions.

[Lostdwarf]

Hi all,

I am thinking about getting fantasy grounds, but I have a few questions.

#1: Does each player need a copy of the game?

#2: How "ready to go" is fantasy grounds. I looked at a free product called Maptools, but rejected it becuase it took quite a bit of work to get it up and running. it didn't come with any counters, terrain, etc, and you had to go out on the web and get it yourself. This was quite a turnoff. I really need something that I can download and start to design an adventure on without tromping about the web trying to find artwork for an orc cheiftan and his treasure chest.

#3: Does it work with recent 4th edtion dnd rules? How easy is it to modify as new material comes out for the game?

#4: System reqs? both my computers are getting old and crappy.

#5: can a player have control of more than one character? This is kind of a dealbreaker as well, its a very small group and sometimes we run more than one character per player.

Thanks in advance, I am sure I will think of a few more things as well.

[unerwünscht]

The simple answer is Fantasy Grounds is a Virtual Table Top. It emulates the playing surface used to play the game. There are modifications available that add character record sheets etc. But most of them including 4th Edition you have to go find (lucky for us Obi keeps a wiki that has 90% of it available there).

As for adding new material, that part gets a little tricky, you need at least a basic understanding of XML in order to code new material in as it is released (and old material for that matter, if you are looking to access the books through the application).

As for the tokens, fantasy grounds ships with a set of generic wooden tokens (little round wood like dots with the letters a-z on them). You can go find tokens for just about anything you would like to use, but this sort of thing could take some time. My company made and freely distributed a plethora of generic tokens and D&D Miniatures tokens at one point, but due to legal bickering, and corporate backstabbing among the content providers for Fantasy Grounds we no longer distribute any such material.

And to my knowledge noone has made or at least distributed any terrain sets or "map tiles" as it were. Tho you could, here again, go find them on the net, there is no simple way to lock them in place on the map. However I am willing to make the guess that now the topic is up in the air Smite Works will be willing to look into adding that ability. It should be a rather easy thing for them to add, less than 15 lines of code would be my guess.

[Griogre]

Hi all,

I am thinking about getting fantasy grounds, but I have a few questions.

#1: Does each player need a copy of the game?
Yes, everyone needs to buy a copy of FG. As unerwünscht said FG is not a game. It is software that allows you to play RPGs over the Internet.


#2: How "ready to go" is fantasy grounds. I looked at a free product called Maptools, but rejected it becuase it took quite a bit of work to get it up and running. it didn't come with any counters, terrain, etc, and you had to go out on the web and get it yourself. This was quite a turnoff. I really need something that I can download and start to design an adventure on without tromping about the web trying to find artwork for an orc cheiftan and his treasure chest.
FG comes with a battle map that both the GM and players can draw on and the GM can place a grid on and endlessly expand the battlemap in all directions. It does come with some built in wooden counters at 30x30 pixels and a few male and female portraits for PCs. It's not pretty, if you have ever used a battle map then you know what it looks like - on the other hand you could use all these things the day you download FG. You should make sure you download the demo and mess around creating a map and placing tokens. If you did get FG you would probably add more tokens just because it is easy - but it is not required. Your players will probably get tired of the four male portraits and four female portraits and add other portraits, but again they don't have to. If you play D&D 3.5 FG has the core rules from the SRD already loaded. If you wish to play something else you need to get a ruleset for it or use a generic ruleset.


#3: Does it work with recent 4th edtion dnd rules? How easy is it to modify as new material comes out for the game? 4E license is much more restrictive than the 3.5 SRD. There is a fan based ruleset that works well. However, you will have to input your own data, since because of the license it is illegal to distribute WotC's intelectual property. You can use FG to play "with your books open in your lap" though. And there is a parser you can use to convert a text file into a referance book for the 4E ruleset.

On adding content it varies. To add an adventure you can do all the work inside of FG and export it. It's easy to add adventures. It's also pretty easy to add a monster or two or itemes ect. However to add referance books it depends on your skill with XML. It's not hard to use XML, its human readable so for some it is easy but tedious, for others very difficult.


#4: System reqs? both my computers are getting old and crappy.
For FG to run the system requirements are pretty low - except your video card *must* be fully compatiable with DirectX 9.0c or later. Download the demo and try it on your computers. Roll the dice. If the dice roll properly and the numbers show up you are good. Make sure you try it on both computers. Must desktops are probably fine. Laptops tend to have crappy video cards as far as compliance to DirectX standards because they are energy efficient and energy efficient cards often don't have the GPU or VRAM DirectX needs.


#5: can a player have control of more than one character? This is kind of a dealbreaker as well, its a very small group and sometimes we run more than one character per player. Yes one player can control more than one player at a time.


Thanks in advance, I am sure I will think of a few more things as well.
You should have seen all the questions I asked. :)

I strongly suggest you download the demo. You can connect two players runing the demo to the demo host. Mess around with the demo and come back with any questions. I'd suggest you connect your two computers so you can see the differances between the GM and the player. Be aware the demo doesn't save any changes so don't waste a lot of time inputing things. The demo has the d20 ruleset built into it.