Potential new user - Questions

[entity]

Hi,

I am considering purchasing FG Ultimate for our D&D, nWoD and Ars Magica campaigns, but have a few questions:

1. Does it support voice and/or video (not as important) conferencing?
2. Can I import audio files to the game (mp3's)?
3. Can I import video files into the game (I create little 3D animations for my groups)
4. Does FG support animated image types? (GIF and/or PNG)
5. Are the drawing tools robust? Can I change brush width, transparency and colour? Can I draw elementary shapes (ovals, circles, squares, rectangles, triangles, etc)?

That's it for now, if I can think of anything else I'll post here. :)

[damned]

er.
1. No you need externa voice app
2. No
3. No
4. I dont believe so...
5. No

But there are lots of other things it does....

[entity]

Oh dear,

That's a shame

oo/

[Dracones]

I'm not aware of any VTT that does these things. Tabletopforge is the only one I know of with voice chat built in, because it's based on Google Hangouts. But it's in beta.

Maptools has robust drawing tools, though using something like Dundjinni and importing the images into Fantasy Grounds can give you better results, image-wise.

[entity]

Thanks for the replies guys.

The other software we are exploring is BigBlueButton, but the obvious downside of this software is that it's not aimed at RPG's and has no rulesets or gaming logic. I guess an option might be FG + Mumble + Dropbox.

Just have to decide if the rules logic is that important. :)

[Dracones]

It's less about rules logic and more in the way everything is presented in a rpg fashion. For example with the Savage Worlds framework there really isn't anything that's automated. But you have a well presented character sheet will skills, abilities, weapons, powers, inventory and so on. So when the GM goes "everyone give me a notice check" you can just double click on your notice skill and the system rolls the dice and puts the result in the chat window.

Most rulesets also have a combat tracker, which again is presentation. It let's everyone see a list of who's in combat and whose turn it is. Maybe some stats too about how injured they are. It helps combat flow along.

And then with the battlemap that's basically just an image share, like BigBlueBitton would do, except it allows players to drop their tokens on it and control movement. They can put up arrows, cones, AE templates, scribble on it. As the GM you can mask it and slowly expose parts of the image as the players move through the map.

Then the entire thing is just setup with gaming in mind. There's a story section where the GM can put in story elements and show that as you go along. Images/maps section to store all the maps you can share. NPCs/combat encounters, items, notes and a library that can contain all the system rules. You can put these things all together and export them as modules.

For players it's easy to roll dice and deal with modifiers. Plus the software is easy to work with. I log in, create a character sheet and enter in the stats and add an image. Next game when I log in my character sheet is waiting there again for me.

These kinds of things are far more important than chat, which will always be done better by 3rd parties anyway, or audio/video/animation which most people don't have the bandwidth to push out anyway.

[wbcreighton]

Thanks for the replies guys.

The other software we are exploring is BigBlueButton, but the obvious downside of this software is that it's not aimed at RPG's and has no rulesets or gaming logic. I guess an option might be FG + Mumble + Dropbox.


If the features in your list of questions are really important then you should check out itabletop.com. I personally have found that I don't need any of those things in your list, of course everyone has different preferences.

[unerwünscht]

The application you are looking for is iTabletop. I am not a fan of it... at all... but it does have the features you are looking for. However I can safely say that FGII is a far superior application. Anyways as Audio/Video is what you are looking for, that is the one you should check out.

[Griogre]

Generally, audio isn't done by VTTs because third party apps are much better at it. There are a number of them used like Mumble, Ventrillo, TeamSpeak, etc.

FG is character sheet-centric. All your questions were about images and audio. FG shines at giving you a gaming experience over the Internet that is very close to the experience you have when you sit around a table in a face to face role-playing game. IE Dice, books, character sheets and a battle map with tokens/minis.

Thus FG tends to mimic a battle map with tokens and counters rather than a video communication program. It may be that those are more important than character sheets in your game. I haven't used iTabletop so I can't comment on it. However, another alternative that is Map and Image-centric is MapTool. If you study each VTT you will see they all tend to emphasize different aspects of gaming. The one that will work best for your group will have the most emphasis on the things most important to you.

Make sure you check out the demos and ask plenty of questions about anything that confuses you.

[Tubel]

As a brand new FG2 user (my mates and I picked up 4 full licenses a little over a week ago) I have to say that it has proven to be very good. Our first attempt to link up without any prep, to try out and learn some features, proved to us how easy it was to get things happening. Between us we worked out how a whole bunch of features worked just through some experimentation. We will use one of the many voice comm programs out there for chatting while fg does the heavy lifting of managing the rpg itself.

[damned]

good stuff tubel. try and sit in on a session with an experienced gm of your preferred ruleset and you might get some more tips too. im pretty sure i know less than half of the things it does...

[entity]

Thank you all for the helpful feedback!

OK, it looks like we're going the FG route after all, supplemented by some 3rd party applications.

Now it's a matter of how to go about purchasing FG. Will unregistered clients be able to play in and create characters for alternative rulesets (Ars Magica, nWoD) if I buy the ultimate package? Or will they need the Lite version as a minimum?

[damned]

you can play with multiple unregisterred clients against the ultimate license - but they cannot act as the GM/DM.

[Trenloe]

Now it's a matter of how to go about purchasing FG. Will unregistered clients be able to play in and create characters for alternative rulesets (Ars Magica, nWoD) if I buy the ultimate package? Or will they need the Lite version as a minimum?
However, once any version is connected to a game being hosted by a GM with an Ultimate Licence (or a lite/full/ultimate to a full) then the players can create/edit their characters while connected to the game.

A lite client is needed for the players to be able to manage characters locally - it makes no difference if the GM has an ultimate licence (as the player's aren't connecting to the GM if they are using manage characters). Note - some rulesets don't have the manage characters locally feature. In rulesets that support manage characters locally you can create a new character or get read-only access to a character that has been used in a campaign.

[entity]

One last question before we buy our bundle this weekend...

If two of my players live in the same house, can they run both of their players from one copy of FG, or will they each need their own copy?

Also since we will be running an Ars Magica, each player usually has more than one character in any case. Does this work alright in FG?

-----
Edit: Well, two questions actually :P

[Nestor]

One last question before we buy our bundle this weekend...

If two of my players live in the same house, can they run both of their players from one copy of FG, or will they each need their own copy?

Also since we will be running an Ars Magica, each player usually has more than one character in any case. Does this work alright in FG?

-----
Edit: Well, two questions actually :P

If you have an ultimate license, i believe that it would not matter how many people connect from the same house, if you get a Full, then each individual must have their own lite, or full license to connect.

one person can have multiple characters connected to the GM at the same time. for expample:

a druid character will have his animal companion set up as a second character, one person could conceivably run an entire party, from one lite license.

[entity]

Thanks Nestor, that answers it for me :)

[entity]

Just an update, we had our first Ars Magica session last night with FG and it worked great in combination with Skype! Thanks again everyone.

[damned]

well done entity.

[bdf1992]

1. Does it support voice and/or video (not as important) conferencing?
2. Can I import audio files to the game (mp3's)?
3. Can I import video files into the game (I create little 3D animations for my groups)
4. Does FG support animated image types? (GIF and/or PNG)
5. Are the drawing tools robust? Can I change brush width, transparency and colour? Can I draw elementary shapes (ovals, circles, squares, rectangles, triangles, etc)?

Skype works well
I used youtube to upload videos or play music for my players
Again you tube
i think i heard something about it maybe being implemented...not sure if it is or not tho
and no but you can use an image editing program, im assuming it's for maps?

Other than that it's simply a nice program for a virtual tabletop, nice for sharing images, sheets, rules, and showing dice rolls.

[JohnD]

Mumble/Murmur also work very well for voice communication. I believe this option is less CPU and bandwidth intensive than Skype as well.