[New] Connection With Friends

[3nvy]

A few friends and I are trying to connect and get a game started, none of us know anything about computers and are extremely new at this program we have 2 Full accounts and 4 player accounts trying to connect, now we haven't the faintest clue as to how to start, now mind you we are competent enough to be able to turn off our firewalls but after that were pretty much lost...I have been reading as to some effect we need to change our port to accept 1802 or something like that. we just need help and it would be much appreciated.

[damned]

you are going to have to learn *something* about programming the router at the games masters location. on this router or firewall you will need to add a PORT or NAT or Server using the Public IP Address and TCP port 1802 and the local IP Address of your computer.

are you the gm/dm?
what router do you have?

[3nvy]

currently im just a player, and my roommate is the gm but his brother wants to do it, currently we have figured out that my roommate can create a session with his gm account and his brother's wife can connect, but me being in the same house on the same router can not connect. when they (roommate's brother/wife) created the session neither i nor my roommate were able to connect to them. i dont know whats going on, roommate says he found out how to create a static ip address and open port 1802 but i am still unable to connect to him or his brother

im a player with a lite account
roommate is a full account
his brother is a full account
brother's wife is a lite account

Router is a Westell A90-750022-07

[damned]

ok - so your roomie is on to the right path if someone elsewhere can connect.
you probably need to try to connect to the internal/local ip address - not the public address when you are are connecting to your room mate.

when the brother wants to host a game he will need to set up the port forwarding on his router. your room mate should be able to guide him or do it for him if he did it on his/your router.
then you and your roomie will use the external ip address for the brothers connection and his wife would use the internal...
clear as mud huh!

[3nvy]

you sir are a God! i was able to connect to my roomie and i will apply the same theroy's to other people thank you so much

[Willot]

A few friends and I are trying to connect and get a game started, none of us know anything about computers and are extremely new at this program we have 2 Full accounts and 4 player accounts trying to connect, now we haven't the faintest clue as to how to start, now mind you we are competent enough to be able to turn off our firewalls but after that were pretty much lost...I have been reading as to some effect we need to change our port to accept 1802 or something like that. we just need help and it would be much appreciated.

ok Heres the big explanation!

Chapter 1. The sun shone through... All the internet server providers buy a bunch of internet addresses (everyones home/business on the internet has an address so they can find one another) that they hand out to their customers. As humans we like addresses like 123a CHerry drv Hobart Tasmania Australia. Computers dont! Computers like Numbers! YAY~! So the internet addresses you are given might be something like 240.29.45.240 They are called an IP(internet protocol) Address.

Chapter 2. With a roar he came on... First things first You need to find the internet address (ip address) your I.S.P assigned you. Go onto google and literary type "Whats my ip address" and it will come back and tell you. This IP Address can be used by your players to put into fantasy grounds to find your (the GM I assume) Game.

Chapter 3. Her tears fell... NOW heres the 1802 thing. It is possible that at your home you have more that one computer BUT your I.S.P only gave you ONE count em ONE address for your home. So what a Router does is hands out a bunch on its OWN ip Addresses for your computers alone.

The router takes the IS.P's address they gave you and "routs" the addresses your router gave out to your computer back through this. It like your own mini verson of the internet in your own home.

In this case you need you find your personal home ip address. Fantsy grounds accually tells you this stuff. Start fantasy grounds click on create or load a game (dont start yet!) On the right side you should see two fields> Address Information Internal & External. The Internal is your computers ip in your home the external is (you guessed it!) the one the isp gave you.

Chapter 4. He leaned back steepling his fingers his mind full of possiblities... Now you need to enter the set up of your router.

In a web browser type in the router's ip address (yes it gives itself one) it is usually something like 192.168.0.1 or 10.0.0.1. (as a side note when you type in a WEB address into a web browser it is actually a ip address. Computers having to cater for stupid humans again SHEEZZ!)
The instructions for the router should tell you this.

You will know you got it coz when you do it it will ask for a username and password for the router.
In there somewhere you will find something about port forwarding. Here it will ask you for your computer ip address and from what port do you want the information from. So if your computer's ip address is 192.168.0.2 the port would be 1802.

So when Fantasy Grounds from your players talks to your computer first through the ISP ip address to get to your house then your router takes over and the traffic from port 1802(your players) is sent straight to your computer via the address the router gave it.

Holy poop I hope that all made sense

[3nvy]

i feel like i somehow intellectually got trolled

[Willot]

i feel like i somehow intellectually got trolled
If its working with your roomie cool. But if one of your players cant connect read above :)

[damned]

i feel like i somehow intellectually got trolled

no trolling - willot does like lengthy backgrounds :)

[3nvy]

we were actually able to connect to my roomie's game but when we are trying to connect to his brother's were uable to connect to the host

[damned]

on the gm computer - the brothers - before you load the campaign there is a button:
Connection Test
Run Test
It will check if 1802 is mapped to the computer and reachable thru any firewalls. If it fails then you have a firewall (pc or router) in the way. Seeing as the brothers wife is at that location you can test the PC firewall easily. If her computer cannot connect to the Internal IP Address then the PC has a firewall stopping it (or you havent actually loaded a campaign on gm computer yet).
if it can connect then you need to check settings on router.
another thing that can stop it sometimes is if the gm computer is connected via a network cable and wirelessly. turn one off - preferably wireless in that situation - and restart fantasy grounds.

[JohnD]

i feel like i somehow intellectually got trolled
LOL :)

It was a pretty good description of what's going on in layman's terms.

[Griogre]

Just to make sure its perfectly clear, once the GM gets the router set up (the connection test is a success) - anyone connecting through the internet needs to use the alias or *external* IP address. Anyone on the same network like a room mate or spouse needs to use the *internal* network server address which is *different* from the *external* address and they can not use the alias.

These addresses are located in the Address information which is displayed before the GM loads or creates a campaign.

Every GM needs to set up his router up for himself - this is easy if they run from different locations. But if you have 2 GMs on the same router then you have to change the router port forwarding each time one GM's or have one use a different port setting from 1802 (this is the better option if both are going to run regularly).

[3nvy]

Thank you all for your help we have successfully connected and everyone is now able to log in, i am so glad that i pretty much got instantaneous help!