FGII vs. D20 Pro vs. Map Tools

[DeLeon]

As the title shows, I'm currently debating which virtual table top will be the best option for my needs. However, I'm curious as to why FGII is so expensive. I've downloaded the unregistered demo, and although I like the look and feel of it, it seems to offer few options, particularly regarding mapping. Am I just missing something? As far as I can tell, there is no mapping software at all; maps will have to be created with other software and then imported. Is this true, or am I missing something?

Lastly, why is FGII more expensive than D20 Pro, which is available in the full version for only $30?

[Griogre]

As you do your research on VTTs you will see that each one does things better than the others. The trick is to find the one that matches your style and the games you want to run. It can be difficult to compare VTTs because often you are comparing apples to oranges so price is not a very good way to do it.

For example, MapTools is free and is a very good program. Yet I bought FG which would be infinitely more expensive simply because it had the features I wanted while MapTools does not.

What do you think you are getting or not getting for the $5 difference between D20 Pro and FG? I'm not sure exactly what you mean about mapping options. You can create a map on the fly that looks much like the drawings on a blank battlemat in a face to face game. FG doesn't have the most sophisticated drawing tools but that can be an advantage since the learning curve can be lower and since it works more like a battlemat though it does have masking and invisible tokens.

If you have a specific concern(s) questions just ask.

[damned]

i bought fg because it seemed to have a community where i could more easily find players or games. the other vtt's that i looked at did not seem to have the same community - or at least that was my impression.
whilst im in the wrong timezone and have limited availability i have got a game running and im pretty happy with that - i have no idea if these other tools could be better - but fg does a pretty darn good job.
text chat, fog of war / masking, sharing of images, combat tracking / resolution, siege checks, auto generates hp for monsters, drag and drop dice rolls, drag n drop text, personalities and many more goodies...
someone also once mentioned that sometimes having to pay is good simply in the fact that the players are more likely to turn up if they have payed $$ :)

[DeLeon]

The community is definitely an aspect with which I am concerned. The community for Maptools definitely seems sparce by what I can tell on their forums. I'm not sure about D20 Pro. Ideally, I want to be able to play and run Pathfinder games online.

[damned]

theres another current thread that links to a yahoo group for fantasy grounds + pathfinder... there is most definitely a good community here. sometimes it can still take days or even weeks to find or organise a game. it will happen if you persist. most of the fg games running appear to be with established players/groups so they dont post here. there are however a decent number of players and gm's lurking here.

[Trenloe]

As the title shows, I'm currently debating which virtual table top will be the best option for my needs. However, I'm curious as to why FGII is so expensive. I've downloaded the unregistered demo, and although I like the look and feel of it, it seems to offer few options, particularly regarding mapping. Am I just missing something? As far as I can tell, there is no mapping software at all; maps will have to be created with other software and then imported. Is this true, or am I missing something?

Lastly, why is FGII more expensive than D20 Pro, which is available in the full version for only $30?

From you post looking for a game elsewhere it sounds like you've taken the plunge! Welcome to the community - I'm sure it won't be a decision you regret.

I initially purchased d20 Pro and played with it a bit - I just didn't like the way it worked - the main one being that the current map you were using replaced the desktop background with windows over the top of it, it made it hard to view the map properly and to switch between maps (e.g. when you go up stairs to a new floor) - I just like the flexibility of windows, make them as big, small as you like; close them, minimise them etc - have your desktop look how you like it.

I also didn't like how actions etc were implemented. Sure, they worked fine (quite well actually) but it wasn't like face-to-face role-playing I'm used to. Fantasy Grounds puts a character sheet in front of you and if you want to roll a skill check, attack, save etc. you double-click on the mod shown on the character sheet and you see a "real" dice roll and the result is calculated for you.

The automation is great, but it is there on top of the base face-to-face-like feel which I love...

[madman]

I would have to say it is the table top pen and paper feel of Fantasy Grounds along with the throwing of dice that made my pick easy. Four years later and a bunch of very nice upgrades to the whole thing, I don't have any real complaints. It has its bugs just like everything else, and still I would not use anything else.

Happy Gamer, happy GM!!!!


Chris

[phantomwhale]

Yeah, as I left my face-to-face group just over a year ago, we looked around. Some of them game, but are not hardcore gamers, nor are most of them that technical, so the combination of VoiP and VTT gaming seemed unlikely to work.

Now the FGII interface is a bit... non-standard (with the radial menu etc...) although inclusion of things like a left-click close buttons on modern ruleset helps there. But what it came down to was my players weren't going to be as engaged with any of the other tools, and FGII automated most of what I needed to prepare as a GM more than the others.

Must admit, as a SWEX player, rather than 4E / 3.5E, it wasn't an obvious choice. The support for 4E combat and powers is just outstanding, and really fun to use (vital for a good VTT to engage the users !). So of course, I added some patches and got SWEX up to the quality we needed to get started. And then I thought... what if I could make it even better :) and now I'm the developer for SWEX ruleset. And with v3.2 coming out REAL soon, I honestly, and extremely biased-ly, wouldn't touch another VTT for my Savage Worlds gaming needs.

If your not gaming on one of the well-supported rulesets, I'd look around before committing (although vanilla FGII should still be in that running). If your going for the D20 systems, BRP or Savage Worlds (oh, and C&C is pretty good too, I hear - forum search for others !) then I'd recommend FGII everytime. The money is nothing compared to amount of time spent trying to get good play experience out of less-dedicated software tools.

[damned]

i use the Castles&Crusades ruleset which is a rules-lite framework and then as i've been out of gaming for many years im a little light on rules too :) we use the combat tracker and i get the guys to roll their seige checks etc but i dont get too hung up on evrything the vtt can do for me - it does everything i want it too and much more as i am slowly discovering.
fg does replicate that pen and paper / face to face / tabletop experience pretty well. we use teamspeak/ventrillo for voice as its much quicker than typing and takes less prep work than dragging pre-prepared text for everything. i do still use the chat window but its secondary to voice.

[GunnarGreybeard]

Well, I certainly love the automation that FGII brought to my Rolemaster game but I gotta admit that there is just something way cool about seeing those dice bouncing around the chat box that puts me in an RPG mood. :D

[Dershem]

It's the dice and out of all the programs I tried it feels most like a table top game to me.

[Valarian]

FG2 has the advantage of flexibility. D20Pro, I believe, just does that one ruleset - but does it well. It has a lot of map features because d20 requires them. Maptool is also very map focussed. I like FG2 because the focus is on the character sheet, the character. The ability to display a map is there but it's not the focus of the software. FG2 also has the ability to support loads of different rulesets.

[DeLeon]

Yes, Trenloe, I went ahead and made the purchase. The community is what sold me. I know there is a Pathfinder community to play with here, whereas other table tops don't really seem to offer that.

[dr_venture]

DeLeon, welcome! If you're looking for a good community, I can't say enough about how great this one is. The web is full of jerks and worse - this FG community is the only one I really choose to participate in besides Facebook. I used to work for Adobe Systems, and while the place has it's problems, my highest praise of working there was: I never ran into a jerk there - not even once in 5 or 6 years. Sure couldn't say that about Apple! This FG community has the same honor in my mind: I have never run into a jerk here... rather quite the opposite! A great group of folks, I really feel like I lucked out in finding this place.

[DeLeon]

Thank you for the warm welcome dr_venture. I'm curious if you could recommend a beginning token and/or map pack for the software?

[damned]

check out Devin Night....
https://www.immortalnights.com/tokensite/tokenpacks.html
He has made some wonderful tokens and allows you to use a good number of them for free (non commercially).

[dr_venture]

DeLeon - you're quite welcome! I'm grad damned jumped in with that link - I lost all my links recently when Firefox decided to just stop launching (a whle nother subject). The only place I can remember off hand is:

https://rpgmapshare.com/

You have to sign up for an account (free, I believe), but it's worth it. I'm assuming you're interested in top-down figures. Token style figures would be a different issue. There have been a couple of discussions in teh forums on the subject - try searching a bit on figures and I bet you'll turn up quite a bit.

Also, you're going to want to learn a bit about scaling your figures: how many pixels per inch you want to use. At some point you'll find that some of your figures wioll be at a different scale than the others when you put them onto a map. You can work around this, but suffice to say, it's probably something to be aware of at the least. That subject has also been discussed quite a bit... see if you can search out what you're looking for.

I sure wish that in addition to just a forum there was a database-driven FAQ system up here that could tie together our common questions and answers. We're all happy to help folks when they need it, but I think there are a lot of folks who would use such a system and never need to ask in the first place. Sometimes just browsing a good FAQ can answer questions that you didn't even know you had!

[damned]

dr_v - https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/faq.php
i dont know if it has everything you expected but it is there :)