If I were to buy Fantasy Grounds today, what would I need to set up until I can play?

[Cerowlol]

Hi guys,

I've been reading through the forum the last couple of days and I spent a lot of time convincing my two groups to buy Fantasy Grounds (with the quantity discount).

So I play only 4e and I heard that there are a lot of modules where all the Skills/Creatures of D&D are contained so that you have them in your game. I'm just curious: how much effort/time does it take to set all that up?

Could someone explain to me in a few simple steps what I and my players would need to do until we were ready to play with all the features FG has to offer?

Thanks in advance!

[Valarian]

I would recommend downloading the software, installing as Unregistered and using the demo feature to run a session with one player connected. You can go through the 4e manual to try out the features using the demo campaign, though you won't be able to save any changes. The full features are available, except for library modules (the skills, creatures, etc). You can create your own content within the FGII sections (Story, Personalities, etc.). The demo campaign should have some filled in.

I'm afraid I can't help as far as the library modules and the various DDI data parsers go. You do need to have a DDI account in order to create the data files. The parsers then take the data and create library modules for use in FGII. I'm not familiar with how these work, not being a 4e GM myself.

[Cerowlol]

I already tried the demo. So if I make a DDI subscription, what else do I need to download (parser?) and what do I need to do with it? Is there a tutorial on that available?

All I found was discussion about errors and stuff like that.

[Trenloe]

There is a sticky thread in this 4E forum called "Guide: Using the 4E parser to create a module".

Also, these threads might be useful:

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17679

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17485

[Griogre]

I run several 4E games. To start developing encounters and adventures as a DM:

1) User the 4E parser to Parse the monster manuals. The DM needs the monsters, it simply takes too long to input monsters on the fly during a game. Alter, yes full input no.

2) If the DM is going to use digital maps you need those before you run the game, however it is possible to use the built in battle map to just sketch out a map for a random/simi-random encounter.

Thus on the DM side if you plan to use VoIP then you will most need monsters to build encounters from and some sort of map - though you can make maps on the fly.

For the players its nice to have the class powers and magic items scrapped into a library so they can just drop the powers on to the character sheet. However to start playing, its not that necessary since if you have a DDI account you can just copy and past the text of the power into the character sheet. Its the same for magic items.

However, eventually for the players you are going to want to:

1) Parse all the player manuals you allow for powers. You use Tenian's 4E paser for that. However that parser doesn't successfully parse magic items any longer though it does do normal items sometimes. However see below.

2) Parse all the mundane and magic items using Valeros' Item parser.

The player stuff has a lower priority for starting the game right *now* because characters only change once per level usually and because copying and pasting the power and item text a character needs from DDI is pretty painless.

Once you know how to use the parsers its pretty easy to do, however there is a learning curve so the first module will take a while. Dr.Z's tutorial on the 4E parser is right on - so you should follow it, except make sure you *always* tell the 4E parser to not scrape items. You have to do this every time because if the source book has items the 4E Parser will always default to trying to scrape items.

With the 4E Parser you will have to clean up the scraped text files because, frankly, WotC's data management for the Compendium is extremely poor on two levels. 1) The data is not entered consistently. This applies to the 4E parser. 2) The DDI database doesn't appear to have multiple indexes for sorting (or is so slow) the sever will frequently time out on queries at the book subset, all items level. It will work on the book subset, item type level, or all items in database level though. This applies to Valeros' Item parser (though it is also the reason the 4E parser doesn't successfully parse items anymore).

All that aside once you get the first one or two modules done its pretty much a process of getting a successful scrape to a text file for the either parser then mass find and deleting the stray html tags in the text files, then parsing it into modules.

You are also welcome to sit in on one of my 4E games as well though you will need a license of some sort as I have a full not an ultimate license.

[Cerowlol]

Thanks for the input, it was definitly helpful.

I honestly don't know how I could miss the Tutorial by DrZeuss on the parser, I managed to get it to work for our first session without it though. We just used the text from the Books and entered it manually, it took a while but we got used to the program in the process, so it wasn't too bad.

I will renew my DDI subscription in the next day and see what I can do with the parsers (good to know that there are actually two of them °_°).

Just a few more questions from a newb:
1. I really liked the calendar feature, but it seemed to lag a bit every time I wanted to open it. Is that normal? Also, what do the two numbers behind the date mean (default was 0 0 but I could alter it to any numerical value)?

2. Is there a way to have log entries that only I as a DM can see?

3. I wanted to try the lore extension but every time I started with it I ran into an error:

Script Error: [string "scripts/lore.lua"]:7: attempt to call field 'registerSlashHandler' (a nil value)
This was in an empty campaign with no other extension activated. Can anyone help me out with that?

Thanks for all the help, my group and I really liked the first session using FG, will recommend it :)

[damned]

in case you didnt pick this up earlier 4e is mostly (all?) copyrighted material so the combination of your DDI subscription (thats your license to use the material) and the parsers (really clever scripts that people here have put together to suck the info out and convert to FG formats) get you access to all the main bits and pieces. you will still find you have to add things here and there.
you will learn something new most sessions you play. ultimately this is just a table top with some automation. the real game still comes from you.

[Moon Wizard]

1A. The lag in the calendar is normal. FG doesn't support a grid feature right now, so there is a lot of UI component management going on. It's something I'm looking at for the next release as well.

1B. The two fields after the date on the top are for entering the "year" and the "era". (i.e. AD, BC, etc.)

2. The calendar does not currently support GM only notes. Please make a request on the FG wish list. See my sig.

3. The lore extension was developed for an older version of FG and the 4E ruleset. It will need to be updated to the newest 4E implementation before it will run correctly. Try asking on the forum where you found it, since that extension is community project.

Just let us know if you have any more questions as you get to know FG.

Cheers,
JPG

[Cerowlol]

Year and era makes sense^^ Thanks for the helpful answer. I actually managed to get the updated Lore extension and it's working now.

GM only notes for the calendar is not the most important thing though, it's already very good for keeping track of time and having a few basic notes on what happened each day. The lag is not too bad either, I was just worried it could've something to do with bad setup or something.

Concerning the need for an DDI subscription to create modules, I was aware of that. I didn't have an active subscription for a while now as I have all the core books anyways, but I planned to renew it in order to use it together with FG. In the end that kind of integration and all the functionality involved was one of the major USPs for using FG over roll20 and the other f2p stuff :)

[damned]

and (sorry wrong name!) DrZeuss is busily working away at the parser for 5e with very impressive looking results :)
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18123

[mattcolville]

Hi guys,

I've been reading through the forum the last couple of days and I spent a lot of time convincing my two groups to buy Fantasy Grounds (with the quantity discount).

So I play only 4e and I heard that there are a lot of modules where all the Skills/Creatures of D&D are contained so that you have them in your game. I'm just curious: how much effort/time does it take to set all that up?

Could someone explain to me in a few simple steps what I and my players would need to do until we were ready to play with all the features FG has to offer?

Thanks in advance!

It's not as bad as it might seem.

First of all, for your players, **** will just work. Because they can import their characters using the character import utility. The only thing they'll be missing is links to gear.

You'll need to parse Monster Data and Item Data and that gets a little tricky because WotC has changed the XML format a couple of times, so you'll get a handful of errors from the Parser that will require you to go into the text files and edit them. Not difficult, not even really time consuming. Just not, like, click a button and you're done.

If you limit your scope, say by only parsing monsters from the two Monsters Vault books, you'll save yourself some headaches. If you likewise limit items to, say...I actually don't remember which books items come from, but you get the idea.