Questions Regarding Fantasy Grounds

[bigdaddygamebot]

My group and I currently use MapTools for a number of Pathfinder campaigns which is...adequate enough but pales in comparison from what I have read so far regarding Fantasy Grounds.

We all use Hero Lab and can easily export characters, etc into Fantasy Grounds and although I've done some reading about Fantasy Grounds I'm unable to suss out the following.

i) Map Tools has a "line of sight" and "fog of war" function in it's tactical maps that I find really adds a significant amount of weight to the battles. Does Fantasy Grounds have such a feature?

ii) My friends and I had a nightmare with port-forwarding and what not. Map tools has a work around to "connect directly" and we use a secondary application called HAMACHI that allows us to all connect and play without going down the rabbit hole of port forwarding. Does Fantasy Grounds have similar functionality that would allow all of us to connect to one another through HAMACHI?

I LOVE the aesthetics of this software.

I'd love to buy it but I don't want to make the significant investment of over a hundred dollars if I'm not one hundred percent clear on the two aforementioned features.

My apologies if it's written somewhere and I've missed it. : /

Thanks in advance for answers should they come.

[phantomwhale]

As a GM, I have port forwarding set up on my router for my games. My players have not needed to do anything. That said, you could use Hamachi in the same way (it creates a VPN, to avoid the need for port stuff) but we've been fine without it, and NONE of my players are at all technical !

As for Map Tools, I've not used it, but I suspect it has a greater depth around it's line of sight / fog of war capabilities than the FGII map / images from what you are saying. FGII has a mask you can slowly peel away to reveal parts of the map image, but nothing built in for line of sight (I think...) - I am a little unsure, as I play Savage Worlds and not 4E DnD, and the DnD might have other features built in for all I know.

What FGII really offers is a full, virtual table-top for character sheets, story elements, dice rolling, NPC stats and combat tracking, with various degrees of automation depending on which ruleset you use (4E is one of the best, and tends to have the better feature set).

I write the Savage Worlds ruleset, and tend to add in the 4E features that would apply to it, but as Savage Worlds is a lot "lighter" around rules, it doesn't benefit / require as much automation or tracking.

There is a demo you can download and run locally to try out the features of FGII - hopefully it should answer any small, more detailed queries you have. I personally find the combat tracker (and not so much the map) really helps me offload the bookeeping work, and allows me to focus on keeping the story and pace going (vital for an immersive online game !)

Cheers,
Ben (-PW-)

[Griogre]

Just wanted to add that you won't have any problem using Hamachi with FG. Instead of using an alias you just connect using the Hamachi IP.

FG has a map mask, as phantomwhale mentioned. The DM uncovers the mask manually as the players explore. MapTool has better map features than FG. FG is more like a battlemap on top of a map image. MapTool is much more like a the lighting and LOS in a computer game.

I'd second the suggestion you download the demo and play around with the mask and maps to see what it is like.

[Dakadin]

I used Maptools before switching to FG. Maptools has much better line of sight and fog of war than FG but other than that I think FG is much better. It has a lot of features that will really spoil you for most rulesets. Pathfinder currently has very good support so I think you will be very happy making the transition if you can do without the line of sight and fog of war.

One other thing to be aware of is FG doesn't allow you to create maps. You put your map images in a folder and they are available immediately in FG so I don't miss the map making at all. In fact there are a couple threads where you can get some great maps which I just put in the folder when I need them.

Like others have said try the demo out. You also might want to look in the 3.5E/Pathfinder forum to see if you can get in a game. Trenloe is championing Pathfinder Society so you might be able to try that out.

[Dracones]

Here's the import tutorial if you haven't seen it before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sXnQpA2j6Y

Fantasy Grounds works the same as Maptools as far as port forwarding and hosting goes. So that won't be a change for you.

Fog of war exists in FG, but the line of sight features are no where near what Maptools has. To be honest the philosophy is a little different between the 2 systems. Maptools is focused very much on the battlemap while FG seems to be more on the character sheet and props. In many ways the battlemap is just another "prop" you share out that you can manually fog of war and PCs can put tokens on.

In that sense it tends to recreate the "sitting around a table" feel a little better, in that you can hand out props, look up rules in the library, focus on the combat tracker, maybe cover a part of the map with paper, etc.

If you want to be able to easily hand out images to your players and have your players have an easy time entering in, updating and adding to their character sheets then Fantasy Grounds will make you happy. If you want an orc to be hidden from player A but not player B because of some trees or a wall and don't care about being able to share and photo and saying "this is what the bartender looks like", then Maptools is what you want.