Yesterday (roll20) passed 600,000 total players having signed up in Roll20!

[ianmward]

Wow! They are doing something right!

Yesterday we (roll20) passed 600,000 total players having signed up in Roll20! (https://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=851adce635852cfbbd9086f3e&id=be5936ebf7&e=16fa837076)

I know thay everyone here, (and everyone else) has signed up just to see what the fuss is about and that 'signed up' doesn't mean 'is using regularly', but still...

I think we, as a community, need to think about what we can learn from them and, sensibly, put into practice to grow the use of this fantastic tool.

Yesterday we saw a new user vent his frustration at not being able to get a game up and running in a short time. Much of what was said was, as pointed out, just due to the (much) smaller community but I think some of his complaints are valid.
To be honest, I think the game calendar is very unintuitive and does not add much value in its current form. Looking at the page, it is not possible to see the proposed game time (in my timezone, please) and it is not clear if the game is a long campaign or a one off, has started/finished or is just forming and still welcoming new players. Most of the entries appear to be out of date (I did say appear).

I think we could have two categories, one for one off (1-3? Session) games and onother for ongoing campaigns. For the one shots, the game time should be clear and the whole thing should be deleted/archived when it's over to keep it clear. For ongoing campaigns, the requirements are similar but different. You still need to see the scheduled game time, but it is more about setting up a waiting list.

My belief is that we need to consider the competition and make starting to use Fantasy Grounds as easy as possible, this is because once they use it and have a positive experience, they will see how much more it has to offer than roll20 and be hooked. If they have a bad experience, it is hard to set up and don't get a game, they may simply not come back.

First impressions are oh so important and some simple changes may help.

Sorry! Long rant! Anyway: discuss!

[ianmward]

Just saw the post from Doug, improvements to the Game Calendar ongoing... Excellent.

[Mask_of_winter]

...Not to forget they won a gold ennie for best software.

The calendar is a nice tool that could always be improved. We saw changes today. However, I think it goes beyond that.

1.Price Tag: This is the feedback I'm getting from the G+ community. The Ultimate License now has a monthly subscription option. Anybody can play for free if the GM has an Ultimate License. I think the pricing is fair. Basically, if you're someone without a group you can play for free if the GM has an Ultimate. If your whole group wants to join in then you have several options. I may be wrong but this is mainly the two type of people joining FG.
2.Licenses: Can I play with this license? Who can connect to me? We get those questions all the time.
3.Content: New users often believe they need to buy whatever content (setting, adventure module, etc.) the GM has. They don't! This is one of FG's strength. On other VTTs everybody needs to have the book or pdf to make characters and as a reference during games. On FG all that can be shared without violating copyright laws.

I think Ultimate License owners need to step up and offer more demo games. If every Ultimate user ran one short demo a month we'd see a lot more people. I've been trying to do that on G+, telling everybody it's free but have met little success. Doug is doing interviews and the game is being featured in various e-zines or blogs but this will take time. FG Con V is a good promotional tool but we can only do so many a year. The Con needs sponsors, needs prizes. FG needs users promoting their new campaigns or one shots on other forums and social media. The new champion program is a great idea but I only see the same the two or three people promoting anything. I considered applying for it but I can't commit to it in it's current format. I like running demos for FG and during the Steam launch, I was out there. People would tell me the first thing they did after the game was head to the store and buy a license and content. People will pay for quality, will pay to have a good time but you have to show them.
The three FG staff members can't do it all. I'd rather have them manage the company, fix issues and develop new content or improve existing content. And that's what they're doing.

I also think it's not a bad idea to look at what roll20 is doing but better to promote what sets it apart. This needs to be clearly defined and then aggressively promoted.

[ddavison]

We definitely are not standing by idly and we are willing to make changes that are reasonable. I don't think the disparity as quite as bad as it may seem at first glance though. The majority of the users on Roll20 are free users or people who have not played more than a few hours. When we researched it, we found that 297K users had logged 0.11 hours of playtime on Roll20. There is, however, still value in having that much membership. A free user for Fantasy Grounds does not have to sign up on the website to download and use the software with an Ultimate user and they don't have to join the community at all. A free user on Roll20 does, and then that gives them a sense that they are very popular, which leads to them actually becoming popular, and so on. It's a clever strategy that is working well.

Of the first 506K users, we discovered that only about 7800 of those users were subscribers to the Mentor or Supporter levels of Roll20. That is an extremely low percentage, but the net result is that it brings in a steady stream of around $57K a month in revenue. This information is all publicly discover-able and you can glance over some of the member profiles to confirm it. By comparison, we have over 16K GM licenses, 13K players and 1600 Ultimate licenses. The difference is that until recently, these were one-off sources of revenue and much of this went to the original creators of FG.

To solve the issue, should we place the Demo/Free license downloads behind a subscription wall on the forums?

What other changes should we look into making?

[Mask_of_winter]

Subscription is a good idea. Would it be possible to sign up through Facebook like some sites allow you to do? Like Infrno I think.

[ddavison]

Good idea on the Facebook linkage. It should be set up now. Now I just need a guinea pig.

[ddavison]

Scrap that. It was up for a bit but it started doing a redirect loop for some reason so I had to disable it until I can figure out what I entered incorrectly into our settings.

[Blacky]

To solve the issue, should we place the Demo/Free license downloads behind a subscription wall on the forums?
As a personal rule, I'm against things like this. Yes I know enough to see that on a mass market it might be sometime somewhat effective, but you'll get experienced people all guarded up right off the bat.

I would suggest a nice contemporary double opt in sign in form, either for the forums or a newsletter or something. Nice as in lean, clean, simple, elegant, with background automatic transparent validation, easy to read and write in, no clutter. The opposite of vBulletin ;)

You'll get less sign in than a subscription wall, but you'll get much much less issues with spamcop and the others when people report you as spam a few months after.

[Blacky]

What other changes should we look into making?
Warning: I know very little about roll20. I used twice since it started, mostly at the beginning, as a player, for one shots. Never dig into it. I know enough to see that's it's quite pricey if you play on a regular basis, and I don't like much subscriptions. I also don't mind creating (or finding) my own resources.

Still, a few unorganized thoughts:

[Blacky]

Elegantly simple. It's a quote from the roll20 frontpage, and yes it's marketing, but it works. It's a philosophy and a design principle that is the opposite of everything Fantasy Grounds is. Fantasy Grounds as an incredible steep learning curve both as a player, GM, and hacker, and everything nothing around it is slick, fast, simple, elegant. Sure, FG is also much more powerful, which is the reasons why it's more messy, but with work is doesn't have to be. And the FG website is still somewhat a mess.
Play to your strength. Fantasy Grounds has two huge advantages over, well almost anyone else.

It's a one time fee. I don't know if plan to make us pay for FGNext (Unity), if so tread carefully here. But it should be clear that FG is a one time fee, meaning it's $x per hour if one play one 4 hours game for a year for example. I hear on a regular basis that FG is too pricey, or has a price at all, but when I look at my personal usage (after 4 or 5 years, some years with 2 or 3 4 hours game each week) the hourly price is very low (and it's good, I wouldn't and some times couldn't pay more).
It has nice automatisms that really helps the GM's and players (mostly if you play D&Dish, that's another big issue, but you're not obligated to broadcast that :rolleyes: ). You should find a way to show that in a few seconds, a minute maximum. Maybe a slick video, or several, short, nicely integrated in the website, with a whaou effect. Maybe something real time, with real cases. “oh no, an improvised goblin encounters, I have a lot to set up! CLick click click done, and done”. Maybe (just thinking out loud).


Help the newcomers. The community is nice (if one speaks English), with a lot of answers and help.

Maybe you should advertise this. This past year, on average after posting an issue, how much time did it take to get an answer? I bet it's pretty low (meaning good).
Try multiple scenarios from a newcomer perspective. Commons things. I want to run FG under Ubuntu or MacOS; I want to change the background image; I want to have FG in my own language; I want to put my own monsters or rules in there; etc. Some don't have easy fix, but some do. Half a dozen forum stickies and a few hundreds posts mostly saying it's a pain or it doesn't work to use FG on a Mac isn't a fix, it's a newcomer nightmare come true. I mean, it's been 4 years for me, and the demo version description on the website (when one can find it) is still wrong and misleading and underselling.
Keep the forums organized. Maybe rethink the organization, maybe not. In any cases, when a thread is not in the right forum, moderators should move it (and vB has a nice redirection feature to go with it). Right now to find something somewhere, it takes a geek and time and courage; it should absolutely not. Same goes for thread subject, if it's wrong, moderators should edit it with a nice message.
No wide website search (hello Google custom integrated search)? I have to wait between forum searches? Come on ;)


More game systems. Frankly I just saw that again yesterday on the FG calendars (with the levels things), and I'm getting slightly fed up ith the fact that if you don't play D&Dish game, or maybe Call of Cthulhu, you're on your own. For a few select games a small niche inside the niche community can help. But still. No Warhammer. No Shadowrun. Complicated or no Star Wars. Complicated or no World of Darkness, Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, and such (classical or new WoD). No GURPS. Still no fully fledged Numenera. No Firefly. No Dragon Age. No Eclipse Phase. Very recent fully community base and sometimes impossible to download FATE Core. I don't play most of these games, and I don't work in the industry no more, but with a little Google help and the DriveThru top 100 sellers, that's a big, a huge hole. I know some publishers are difficult, sometimes incredibly so (hello Warhammer, hello Star Wars), but some aren't (FATE Core is fully Creative Commons, Eclipse Phase is non commercial CC but Rob Boyle does answer his emails and is very open and fair, Onyx Path do answer too). And without decent rulesets, yes FG is perceived (sometimes rightfully so) inferior to other VTT.
Lower the hacker entry barrier. I could buy tomorrow the best “Learn LUA” book there is, read it cover to cover, I still would not be able to make FG mods, much less rulesets. Zero comments lines on the code? Come on! I want to make a simple mods, like map pack, token pack, or just a cosmetic extension (and so I would need to know about extensions and their advantages), I need to put on an Indiana Jones hat and dig in deep the forums and hope I don't find first an old obsolete answer to that. CoreRPG was a very good step in the right direction, but we moved from 80's level of user friendly to 90's. Still not enough ;) Yes if one has specific question, one usually get an answer on the forums. But aside the fact that a lot of times it should not be necessary to ask, one has to know where to start to formulate a question. What I mean is you have an untap pool of geeks, people who aren't developers but can spend 2 hours write a few lines of PHP or javascript, install their own Mediawiki or Wordpress, write HTML and CSS, will tinkers if you like. FG ruleset writing/editing should be on the tinker level, not on the professional developpers with a few hundreds hours to spare level.
Internationalization. It's a market mostly untap by others. I don't have the metrics to back it up, again it's up to you. But just one French online community dedicated to VTT is bigger/more active than the FG community (taking just one metric, forums posts #) despite having autocratic insulting idiots (to stay polite) as admins.
Bigger community. A lot of issues derive from the niche small FG active community. Yes, increase it is incredibly much easier said than done. And even with its issues, your last move to increase online presence was a good one. As was getting on Steam. I strongly believe that VTT is the future of tabletop rpgs (until technology allows for cyberpunk level of mmo), even if your friends are in the same town as you, you still save loads of commuting time, smokers and non smokers can play together, hey you can play in your undies! Nothing beats that ;) There's no magic potion to get it done, it's hundreds of iterations on your online presence, websites, guides, FAQ, products, to get it right and lots of small moves everywhere to get traction. I don't read that so maybe you're already doing it, but when was the last time a major rpg website, blog, and/or magazine made an article on you? It should be happening several times a year at the very least. Set up a demo game, give a free FG to a journalist or big blogger, and spend 3 hours with him/here showing what a true (pen&paper) rpg is while doing it online on the Fantasy Grounds VTT. Hell, the community will certainly help you there, doing it right (with the right players/GMs) you won't have to do much yourself.
Up to date informations. The official FG website still put front (and near center) obsolete misleadings informations (hello wiki) and mods and rulesets. Yes it hurts to remove anything obsolete (see the thread about the wiki, I talked about it) because it shows how little there is left. But that should show you something. And when you get into non English communities, the level of misinformation is staggering. Just last week I stumble upon a French GM that did not update his FG because he thought he had to pay for FG 3.0 (and he spoke English, he just doesn't have any incentive to make the mental effort to stay informed from fantasygrounds.com).
Up to date resources and online browser. From what I hear, the resources browser of roll20 is appreciated. I personally put maps and tokens for FG on the forums and the right forum (and despite me having my own hosting FTP and website, and despite the forum software trying to stop me doing so, and Trenloe being snappy about it—again) and I'm sure 99.9% of the FG users don't know about it. I don't personally care, but I'm sure there's a huge untap resources center that could be unearthed. And it's 2014, why can't I click a resources icon inside FG and a have slick fast east search-as-you-type window that get me (good) results? It's not rocket science.
Get the good ideas and feedback. I know that SmiteWorks is quite small, and doesn't have a steady subscription income scheme. Why not ask the community to help filter things out? Get a few select people, moderators and whatnots, to forward you on a dedicated email hat they think could be good idea, feedback, issues, for the future taken from the forums (or elsewhere), with good tagging and a link back. This way you slowly get a big (freeform) database of ideas and feedback, and miss less things.
FGNext. I won't get into details again, but yes it's needed. People do appreciate roll20 because it's easy and slick. Slow 32bits IPv4 Windows software with 90's design principle and network layer? The wall hasn't been smashed into yet, but it's coming fast. And web development isn't easy, roll20 has its own engineering issues on a daily basis battling against javascript and html5 engines. Having a true binary helps you there.
Design. I'm talking true design, not just easy on the eyes graphics, and deleted the rest of my comment see below.

[Blacky]

And I'm missing and forgetting a lot of things. But it's a start. To summarize: play to your strengths, take the good elsewhere but don't try to copy them, beginners beginners beginners, more iconic games, small things matters, design design design.

And putting on new products with a good reason to pay on a regular basis would probably help you (like a dedicated website/forums for each campaigns, already talked about on another thread).

But it's a circle. I think you're on the verge of the vicious/vertuous circle of not enough players, hence not enough game supported, hence not enough players, hence not enough games supported, and so on. You can't do it all yourselves, but it's the same vicious/vertuous circle.

The post may come out harsh, it was not my intention. Simply it's mostly things I said several times here already, and it was 5am here when I started writing and just got up. I think you're doing good. Very much more so than a few years back. But your battling uphill, everything has momentum and your still paying for things that happened several years ago (no keypad support? get me a rope to hang myself, fast).

And again! vBulletin busting my balls because my post is over 10K characters. Come on, this isn't 1985! My Atari wordprocessor could handle more than 10K messages. As I said, it's the small things.

And 30 seconds between posting, so it's a pain to split my post. I've been here 4 years, when did I spam or flood the forums? Again, small things.

[Blacky]

Subscription is a good idea. Would it be possible to sign up through Facebook like some sites allow you to do? Like Infrno I think.
Know that if you do this, you're giving control of your user base to Facebook. Fair warning.

[Valarian]

There is one driving force to more games .... more GMs, or people who are willing to GM. A lot of people seem to be players, and if there are more players than games available then there will always be a shortage of games.

[Unbutu]

Subscription is a good idea. Would it be possible to sign up through Facebook like some sites allow you to do? Like Infrno I think.
Know that if you do this, you're giving control of your user base to Facebook. Fair warning.

Did I hallucinate this ? I've read this post and then I've seen a facebook button right to the left of ''Welcome, Unbutu'' (Top) . I think I've dreamed about this ! (Before just now, I was sure it had been implemented yesterday, and was tried then removed ! )


There is one driving force to more games .... more GMs, or people who are willing to GM. A lot of people seem to be players, and if there are more players than games available then there will always be a shortage of games.
Such a good thing to repeat because it keeps being true. I remember seeing that same subject raised right when I've joined FG: People where asking for games, but there was not enough GMs, especially with the influx of people that joined following the steam release.

I might be due to start seeing this like torrents. Some people don't mind only uploading, but what makes the system really sustainable is a rotation between the players and the GMs. Might have to get involved. Hum hum.

For me the barrier is the time it takes to master a ruleset + fantasy grounds on that ruleset enough to DM with it. Still, it's coming, it has to be coming !

[Trenloe]

Very recent fully community base and sometimes impossible to download (no thanks to Trenloe) FATE Core.
Err, would you mind explaining that comment please?

[Blacky]

There is one driving force to more games .... more GMs, or people who are willing to GM. A lot of people seem to be players, and if there are more players than games available then there will always be a shortage of games.
That's true, and as far as I know it's true of every VTT community, whatever software is used.

VTT software could help on this by giving a hand to ne GM. People that don't GM (ever, or just not yet) because they can't manage all the rules, and/or all the things needed. A good VTT software could help by handling some of the rules, helping managing things, giving fast and easy access to rules, modifiers and such.

VTT community can help by connecting the right players with the right GM. The right player for me is probably not the right one for Valarian or Ianmward. But to be effective, it needs to have a lot of people in it. It (might at first glance) not be in the commercial interest of SmiteWorks, but for players one huge software agnostic VTT community (per language) would be a better place to encounter more players, more GMs, discover new games, and so on. We have several instead of one, but it's hat works in France (and French speaking countries), but even so there's always a shortage of GMs.

[Blacky]

Err, would you mind explaining that comment please?
Valarian put his Fate Core ruleset on Google Drive, which has chronic issues for a pure download repository usage… inability to download, or sometimes locking it behind a registration wall (which is already bad for a small basic website, but has non negligible privacy effects when we're talking about Google). When several people had trouble downloading the Fate Core ruleset, the answer at the time was “register to download”. When I said that was a bad thing to do, your answer was not that you were going to work with SmiteWorks to find a way to host free community rulesets when their author don't have the knowledge or means to do so properly, or providing alternative solutions. Your answer was “your lost, bye”. If I'm a new user, testing out the demo for my upcoming FATE campaigns, I won't try again, I certainly won't register to anything, I'll go to roll20 or any other VTT right away, and I won't be shy about why; especially coming from someone with quite visible special privileges, what might be perceived as an admin or moderator or something by a newcomer.

[Trenloe]

Valarian put his Fate Core ruleset on Google Drive, which has chronic issues for a pure download repository usage… inability to download, or sometimes locking it behind a registration wall (which is already bad for a small basic website, but has non negligible privacy effects when we're talking about Google). When several people had trouble downloading the Fate Core ruleset, the answer at the time was “register to download”. When I said that was a bad thing to do, your answer was not that you were going to work with SmiteWorks to find a way to host free community rulesets when their author don't have the knowledge or means to do so properly, or providing alternative solutions. Your answer was “your lost, bye”. If I'm a new user, testing out the demo for my upcoming FATE campaigns, I won't try again, I certainly won't register to anything, I'll go to roll20 or any other VTT right away, and I won't be shy about why.
Seriously? You have an issue with me, who isn't a Smiteworks employee and who isn't part of the recent champion program, not taking it on myself to work with Smiteworks for a ruleset belonging to someone else - the developer in question already has a good communication with the guys at Smiteworks. Really? How is that actually my issue and how is that *me* making it "impossible to download (no thanks to Trenloe)"??? YOU seem to have an issue with Google - if YOU didn't want to use the method chosen by the ruleset developer to distribute their own rulesets, then that is your loss - hence my comment, which was in response to your ever so helpful "I certainly won't download anything and sharing it with Google or any Google account. They know what what I ate last week, they don't need to know if I scratched my nose too.".

Why didn't YOU work with said ruleset developer to get their rulesets posted on a location that was satisfactory to YOU? I haven't blocked any download locations, nor do I stop people posting their hard work wherever they want. It was YOU who decided that Google was too risky for YOU and thus making it "impossible to download" for YOU - nothing at all to do with me. Your choice.

[Valarian]

If you have an issue with a publicly accessible Google Drive folder, you will have to wait until it can be integrated into the update engine. This is nothing to do with Trenloe. I chose to put the rulesets up on Google Drive to make them more accessible than the wiki gateway. If you have a problem with Google, then that is your choice. Don't blame others for your choices limiting your options.

[Blacky]

And now your putting words in my mouth, well keyboard. It seems you have a personal issue with me, if that's so I would advise getting it straight in private and not derailing the thread further (and I'm curious, because I certainly don't know why).

Edit: Valarian, I don't have major issues with Google, I'm just sensible about my online presence and links between real identity and various personal occupations and interest. At the time, me and several others (including all those who didn't post on the forums) couldn't download your ruleset because of your choice to putting it there, hence limiting our ability to comment on said ruleset as asked. And probably because you simply didn't know. But it's certainly your choice, after expressing once my opinion I didn't comment on it further until Trenloe publicly asked for it (despite having private notification on it already). If it was a big deal at the time, I would have contacted you directly. Don't let Trenloe blow this out of proportions.

[Honken]

I think that we all need to help FG more visible. If you use Obisidian portal as a hub for your games, you could make it obvious that you are using FG as the medium for your games.

I watch some of itmejp's Rollplay shows on Youtube, and has occationally watched it over twitch too, he have a crazy number of live viewers. I have never figured roleplaying a spectator "sport"... But they seem to sell it. And more live roleplaying seem to be available on twitch too. There was a PAX panel about digitizing tabletop rpgs that itmejp recorded and shared on soundcloud. Link here (https://soundcloud.com/jp-mcdaniel/pax2014-digitizing-tabletop-panel). The sound quality is not super.

I like that you (smiteworks) has been more active in the facebook group, doing blogs about all kinds of stuff geek stuff (not always role-playing related). It makes FG more visible.

FG in it's easiest form is a dice roller, a program for sharing pictures (maps and whatnot) and keeping track of your characters. Any automation above this is gravy (and/but adds complexity and steep learing curves).

I don't know if this added that much to the discussion but i wanted to get this off my chest. I hope it gives you some ideas.

/H

[ddavison]

It's funny that you just posted this. I just now discovered itmejp and RollPlay and indeed saw that they were using Roll20. I sent him and the DM, Neal, a message to see if they would be interested in using Fantasy Grounds instead.

[vodokar]

I've often thought about how to make Fantasy Grounds more viable as a business model. I currently use two VTT. Fantasy Grounds and Roll20. Out of the two, I much prefer using Fantasy Grounds and use it about 90% of the time. The only things I use Roll20 for is for games that aren't supported at all in Fantasy Grounds, such as DCC RPG. At any rate, I would classify myself as being a pretty heavy user of the software, sometimes using as much as 20 hours per week on and off since 2007. I love Fantasy Grounds and I want to see it succeed.

As great as it is, there are numerous things that would improve it, such as being able to support more game rule set development and many other things both with the software and with the website. But, it always comes down to the fact that those improvements can't be done unless a more steady income is coming in. You can't hire a new developer to work on niche official rulesets if its not feasible to do so financially.

It comes down to this. One time fee plus micro transactions for add on content (current) vs. subscription model (proposed). I have an idea for a third solution to explore, which would be a hybrid of the two.

Let's first examine each of the first two.

One time fee plus micro transactions. Pros: One time fee, and I think, very reasonable price, and you get to use the software forever and as much as you want. That's great for the customer. Con: Not a steady income for the company. Micro transactions for add on material are a good idea, but, also not really a stable and steady revenue stream. For myself, I have purchased some stuff in the store over the years, but it probably only amounts to a couple hundred dollars spent since 2007.

Also, in my personal experience, having the option for the ultimate license where the players don't have to purchase the software was a great and necessary idea for expansion of the player base. As a gm that has tried to put campaigns together several times in the past, trying to convince a prospective player to put down the money up front for the software before joining the campaign was sometimes a stumbling block. On the downside though, there has to be some amount of revenue loss involved in offering that.

Subscription Model: Pro: No large amount of money required up front. Steady revenue stream for the company. Con: Very negative to the customer to have to continue paying for the same thing over and over, which loss of that thing if they don't continue to pay.

I'll say it bluntly. Very Very Bad Idea to charge subscription to the Fantasy Grounds Software. I think it would lose more customers than it would gain. People don't like renting software. Even MMO's have finally caught on to that and virtually everyone of them has converted the opposite way, from subscription based to micro transaction based and are more viable because of it.

So, my proposal. A hybrid approach. Same Free/Payed options for the software itself with value added content for micro transactions, but with a subscription option added. So, what do you get for a subscription that would be worth it to the customer? Not access to the software, because he already owns that and doesn't have to pay to have access to it. Here are some ideas for value added services that could be covered under a subscription model.

Dedicated Campaign Bulletin Board (along the lines of wiki spaces or Obsidian Portal). Either set up your own service or contact one of those to make a business deal with them where your customers could save money going thru you verses directly to them.

PDF subscriptions to certain popular roleplaying magazines such as Gygax Magazine, Kobold Magazine etc. Contact the publishers and try to work out a deal.

Significant discounts to content in the online store for subscribers.

Work a deal for discounts at RPGdrivethru.

Those are some ideas that were on the top of my head and there are probably other things that would attract someone to hit the subscribe button. The point is, you can't ask someone to subscribe to software. You have to provide something they need on a continuing basis and that gives them additional value, not paying over and over for something they already have. Provide something of value that role-player need and they will pay for it willingly. That will make your income stream more reliable and allow for making the core product better, which will increase popularity, which will increase revenue etc.

One other idea, not related to the above, but just came to mind. We need to get a presence at the FLGS. Offer a program where a FLGS owner can log in and download printable Fantasy Grounds Discount Coupons to give away to his customers buying hard copies from him and some flyers to post in his store. It's good for the store for promoting roleplaying books if the customer is made aware of the online play option and it's good for Fantasy Grounds to get that kind of exposure. Your player base can more easily promote you if these tools are made available.

Cheers

[Carthar]

I think the major advantage R20 has is with the ability to get maps and tokens for your campaign easily.

Most people want nice maps and token artwork, but don't have the time to draw everything they need. I know I spend a fair amount of time finding suitable maps and tokens.

Integrating an art library into FG where I can get the tokens/maps I want for a reasonable price would probably would get me to spend more money on gaming. However you would have to do this intelligently, with a intuative micro transaction system, digital wallet and monetary incentive for creators.

Valve certainly makes money on doing just that with TF2. https://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.334758-Analyst-Values-Team-Fortress-2-Hat-Trade-at-50-Million

Carth

[Treegreen]

FG needs a reddit presence in /r/rpg and /r/dnd (/r/dndnext). In fact, step number 1 should be getting a link to FG on the sidebar of the DND subreddit where roll20 and some program I've never heard of are linked as ways to play online. Then, FG needs to post an update to those subreddits (as long as the mods are cool with it) highlighting the recent pricing change. As someone who started on Roll20 and then migrated here I can tell you my players really really really love the dice rolling. It adds a certain je ne sais quoi that helps make it stand out from the crowd.

[ddavison]

I will admit that I never really picked up on reddit and feel like I'm very late to the party in that regard. Is reddit noob friendly enough if I haven't been on it for the last 10 years or so and then suddenly start showing up?

[damned]

Fantasy Grounds has definitely stepped up its efforts to be more visible out there and this will take time.
All of us can help grow our hobby and our favourite tool by commenting on FG posts when you see them and if you have a "good new" story or anecdote thats FG related - share it out there.
Im busy on Steam and Google Plus and dabble a little on some other sites for some FG Con related posts.
I see some of you out there a fair bit and a smaller number interact quite a bit.
You dont need to suddenly become an evangelist but throwing teh additional Like / +1 / Comment out there from lots of different names is good.

Ive done a tiny bit on Reddit but I think Im already pretty stretched and Reddit really likes regular posters and im struggling for more time especially with FG Con coming up.

[damned]

I will admit that I never really picked up on reddit and feel like I'm very late to the party in that regard. Is reddit noob friendly enough if I haven't been on it for the last 10 years or so and then suddenly start showing up?

yes - but dont suddenly show up all evangelist.
start a little slow. its friendly enough but I know even for FG Con I used to get a few downvoters... crazy really... so just jump in...

[Nylanfs]

Don't forget that one can spin the d20!

[Irondrake]

I love Fantasy Grounds and my group uses it pretty much every session. The major complaints we've had are due to my internet connection. Since I'm the DM, they all have to connect to me. I live in the middle of nowhere with wireless internet (4G, not satellite, but just as bad). Since Roll20 is web-based, HTML 5, the connections are handled through a third-party server. That means no messing with routers...and when my crap internet goes out, the players aren't all kicked out. THAT would be a huge benefit for Fantasy Grounds. It would eliminate the hassle of set up...and is the only reason I made a Roll20 account as a "back up". I've yet to use it...I just prefer Fantasy Grounds that much more.

Other features that'd I'd LOVE to see (when I'm not hosting everyone's connection that is ;) would be Soundcloud integration...just like Roll20, music and sound effects streamed to the clients from Soundcloud. No need for third party software setup, extra teamspeak channels, etc...its just built in. Yeah, I'm dreaming up things, but might as well throw out the wants while I can ;)

Cards available in all rulesets without having to hack them in. Never know when I might need to toss in a Deck of Many Things...or a Tarroka deck. It'd be nice if I could do so with a minimal of effort.

Token Overlays that can be user-defined. They can be preset images, but I'd like them a little more visible than what is currently built in...and maybe selectable with the Effects system. Putting a big red X over creatures as they are killed instead of just removing them from the board would help me remember what was there and what needs to be searched :)

Other things I believe are already in the works, such as more dice functions...

[Treegreen]

yes - but dont suddenly show up all evangelist.
start a little slow. its friendly enough but I know even for FG Con I used to get a few downvoters... crazy really... so just jump in...

One way to address this would be to have a weekly reoccurring live stream of popular games. I'm primarily looking at D&D5e as televised via twitch. Start at character building for Phandelver or HotDQ and play it out. There needs to be some actual play videos. That could either be the current community members or trying to lure popular streamers with some free sub months or something. Mainly, the better the DM (and more familiarity) with FG the better.

[JohnD]

One way to address this would be to have a weekly reoccurring live stream of popular games. I'm primarily looking at D&D5e as televised via twitch. Start at character building for Phandelver or HotDQ and play it out. There needs to be some actual play videos. That could either be the current community members or trying to lure popular streamers with some free sub months or something. Mainly, the better the DM (and more familiarity) with FG the better.

Anything you do needs to not feature 45 minutes of "I can't connect; how do I do 'X'; rude joke that nobody laughs at except the person who said it; please help configure my TeamSpeak; etc...". That kills what you are trying to accomplish.

[ddavison]

Does anyone know how to submit a link and edits to reddit here?
https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/wiki/virtualtables

and the beginners guide that lists Roll20 and MapTool as being the two most popular virtual tabletops with links to both?
https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/wiki/beginnersguide#wiki_introduction

[Honken]

I would think that in both cases you could contact any of the moderators for and ask them to make the changes. You can find the subrettid moderators on your right side of the screen, a bit down.

/H

[Mask_of_winter]

The popular Savage Worlds GM Hangout On Air broadcast will air an episode comparing roll20 to Fantasy Grounds when it comes to running a Savage Worlds game online.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/csi33ct5gncvevksmt07rakolb8

[Cerbery]

Of the first 506K users, we discovered that only about 7800 of those users were subscribers to the Mentor or Supporter levels of Roll20. That is an extremely low percentage, but the net result is that it brings in a steady stream of around $57K a month in revenue. This information is all publicly discover-able and you can glance over some of the member profiles to confirm it.

Hi - just curious - how exactly did you reach these numbers?

[ddavison]

I data mined their user profiles, which are all publicly available. I suspected that many of their user accounts were spammers or people that just created an account to check it out or see pricing. Play hours, games played, supporter level, when they joined, etc. are all displayed on each user's public profile page. If you loop through each of these (since they are sequential), you can save and aggregate the numbers to figure out how many people are real users. You just need to be considerate when you do this that you don't blast their site all at once with requests, since the goal is not to degrade their site's performance.

They should be able to run simple queries to determine this information, but they have no incentive to report real #s. Their numbers are still very good. They just choose to quote the silly # of users again to inflate their success. To state that you have over 600K players is more than a little disingenuous. The sad truth is that this is a common sales tactic that actually works. People like to choose what they think is the most popular choice.

[leozelig]

My group met on FG, but we started using the Roll20 app in a Google hangout to play DCC RPG and other game systems because of the more open format and integrated chat. Our usage does not appear to register with the Roll20 website - I wonder how many of those other user profiles underestimate usage.

[ddavison]

What's the link to your profile on Roll20 look like?

[ddavison]

My group met on FG, but we started using the Roll20 app in a Google hangout to play DCC RPG and other game systems because of the more open format and integrated chat. Our usage does not appear to register with the Roll20 website - I wonder how many of those other user profiles underestimate usage.

I'm also curious why Roll20 appealed to your group more as an open format. CoreRPG is a generic/open format ruleset and FG has integrated chat as well. Did you find that something was easier to do on one platform than the other?

[VenomousFiligree]

I'm also curious why Roll20 appealed to your group more as an open format. CoreRPG is a generic/open format ruleset and FG has integrated chat as well. Did you find that something was easier to do on one platform than the other?

For me it was the (perceived) easiness to jump in and play with minimal software prep. Also the fact that it ran within a hangout.

[VenomousFiligree]

My group met on FG, but we started using the Roll20 app in a Google hangout to play DCC RPG and other game systems because of the more open format and integrated chat. Our usage does not appear to register with the Roll20 website - I wonder how many of those other user profiles underestimate usage.

I only ever ran within a hangout and it recorded all my hours.

[Litvyak]

Roll20 says I have 489 hours played. Actual time played with other people is really less than 20 hours. The balance is simply time accrued while playing around with my Mentor subscription or being AFK with the window open.

[ddavison]

To be fair, I've done the same thing in Steam before on games. Hours played can get skewed real fast when you leave your system running and get pulled away.

[Nylanfs]

I can honestly say that I haven't spent any time in FG:Steam that wasn't directly involved with making the RttToEE module. :)

[AstaSyneri]

[LIST]
Elegantly simple. It's a quote from the roll20 frontpage, and yes it's marketing, but it works. It's a philosophy and a design principle that is the opposite of everything Fantasy Grounds is. Fantasy Grounds as an incredible steep learning curve both as a player, GM, and hacker, and everything nothing around it is slick, fast, simple, elegant. Sure, FG is also much more powerful, which is the reasons why it's more messy, but with work is doesn't have to be. And the FG website is still somewhat a mess.

... [shortened due to space - but all is relevant!] ...


I found Blacky's post excellent (and only just found it). He is right on so many counts that I don't even know where to begin.

In an ideal world Fantasy Grounds should be the leader of the pack. My favorite system right now is Savage Worlds, because it is so well supported in Fantasy Grounds (including a lot of intelligent extensions by Ikael). But it's extremely hard to get into. Once you grasp the basics as a player, GM, and then mod/extension builder, it becomes a great tool.

Yes, it lacks accessibility. There should be a lot more videos explaining how to use it, showing full play sessions, how to modify it, and they should be from an official source.

Yes, FG should be way more user friendly. Maybe there could be a scripted ingame tutorial/adventure that somehow introduces the GM or even a group in the mechanics and how to use combat (as an example)?

Yes, FG should look better. The empty table tap rarely looks appealing - the touch of a real designer is dearly needed (not to make it work, but to sell it better). Of course most of the themes are done by design amateurs (which includes me).

Yes, Doug is between a rock and a hard place. I know all about the vicious circle Blacky outlined - it is the small game developer's bane. IMHO one of the answers may be a well thought out, low-targeted Kickstarter campaign (which didn't exist for me when I ran into that vicious circle). Even if it doesn't fund at the level you'd wish for, it'll raise a lot of awareness.

Beyond that it's all YouTube. Have some elite DMs film some of their roleplaying sessions (one-shots or even campaigns) to show that this tool is alive! "Elite DMs"? Yes, you'd want somebody who is lively while playing, doesn't have any hard accents, can keep his group involved AND has gone through the steps to both learn how to use FG most efficiently and the trouble of doing extra graphics for maps, has pre-setup encounters, is using attractive tokens, etc.

Personally I have just setup pages for my campaigns (one running, one being a pet project) on Obsidian Portal. I don't know about their usage stats, but going through their forums I find the key word Fantasy Grounds a whopping six times. FG simply isn't talked about in many RPG places. Get people to talk about FG more!

Doug - if you are reading this - you really have my deepest sympathies. Doing these things is not going to be easy and I really wish FG to make this next step successfully! The big advantage you have is experience how to handle a software that has many more important features than the competition. I believe that FG can be the leader of the pack.

[ddavison]

Thanks for the post. I do read it and we are moving in some of those directions. There will always be a balance of time invested in each area. I've seen FG mentioned more and more out on the web, but I still see Roll20 mentioned more often and as an often-times first thing to try. I read one just the other day where a group was debating which system to use and decided to try to play using Roll20 first because it was listed as free. I'm guessing that the limitations of the free use model of Roll20 don't readily become apparent and when they finally do, that group is already heavily invested in that specific infrastructure. The design and usability are all things we strive to improve, but I don't think it's even getting that far. In fact, I really don't think Roll20 does a good job at this at all. That system is a complete blank slate with little built-in functionality or design at all. All of the design and functionality comes from the user and once that step occurs, it's hard to get them to consider another option.

I really feel like in order to counter that perception, we'd have to offer a version of FG marked as "free, forever" and then severely gimp it so that people would feel the need to upgrade or subscribe at a certain point. It's free forever, but your total user storage can only be 100 MB, you have an ad banner, no access to the test or dev channels, no email support, can't use the /export command and you can't build your own extensions and rulesets. Of course, we'd have to hide the fact that those are actually limitations and not show the list of features until after they get started using the software. Basically this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEA9EKojlbc#t=594

The sad thing is that the approach above works. Is that what people really want?

[Nylanfs]

No!

[VenomousFiligree]

Lots of companies give free reduced versions of their software. 1 months free access is another. Don't see why you shouldn't try either.


Is that what people really want?
Are we the people to ask, it wouldn't impact us?

[ddavison]

We thought about doing a free 1-month trial. That might be enough to make a difference, but I suspect you'd still have people saying, "but Roll20 is free forever".

[Trenloe]

We thought about doing a free 1-month trial. That might be enough to make a difference, but I suspect you'd still have people saying, "but Roll20 is free forever".
It might make a difference to some people - give them the chance to try it. But, at FG-Con (where everyone plays for free) we always get a few people who are trying FG for the first time, say they love it and will get involved and then we never really see them again - some do hang around, but a lot don't. Is that because they have to buy the software? Is it because they can't find a game immediately? Is it because they were just free for some games during FG Con and so played and then moved on? Probably some/all of the above and other reasons too.

You'll always get people who want free forever, you can't change that. Having a one month trial to at least allow people to play in any game. Would the trial allow a GM to host many players when running the trial?

[ddavison]

Theoretically, it could be applied to the Ultimate Subscription to allow the Ultimate for 1 month.

[Valarian]

Fantasy Grounds is "free forever" if the GM has the Ultimate license. For competition with Roll20 though, I think the speed of campaign setup needs to be a thing that Fantasy Grounds needs to push more. The setup within Roll20 is a pain and a half, and has to be done for each campaign (unless you're a subscriber and have their transmogrifier thing). Basically you have to build the equivalent of a ruleset for each campaign you do.

For example, to run a game of The One Ring in Roll20 you have to do this:
https://wiki.roll20.net/The_One_Ring
followed by this
https://ringen.squarespace.com/loremasters-journal/2014/10/26/the-one-ring-setup-for-roll-20

In Fantasy Grounds, you do this:
- go to https://drive.google.com/open?id=1kiF75vvkNMAAYECGOsF1MPMrX7HszU5bV4UbWhNbq vo&authuser=0
- put the foundations_core.pak file in to the rulesets folder in the Fantasy Grounds application directory.
- put the fcore-TOR.ext file in to the extensions folder in the Fantasy Grounds application directory.
- create a Foundation Core campaign file with the The One Ring extension selected.
That's it. Done. Ready to play. Just add some maps, the stance mat and NPCs. Some story. Basically, you're in to campaign design straight away, not setting up the tool.

[Blacky]

Gosh my English was atrocious in that quote :(

As for the question, I would answer no. But I'm one of the people using FG and not Roll20. Sometimes one can't pay for a few days, weeks, months; but other than that I have no issue with a fair price. Nothing is free. When I see an hosted “free” service, I see my personal data sold left and right, I see invasive and stupid and probably illegal ads, I see my usage of said service (basically, myself) sold out, I see monthly premium that bleed me dry, I see something that might disappear or significantly change its usage policy with no warning. Since I tend and aspire to play long campaigns (as in years and years of real-world time), I invest a lot of time in my gaming, I don't want a tool with the ability to seriously disrupt that in any way.

But, that's me. Even thought roll20 is really, really expansive (I've used Fantasy Grounds for a little over 4 years now—and just because it was a requirement of an online campaign I was interested in, I didn't knew anything about FG at that time—and that's 39USD for FG, roll20 mentor that's 480USD. The math is quite easy) yes I think a lot of people have a very short view about “it's freeeee”. But, it works.

In a very very short time, from what I see around me and on the VTT communities I use, roll20 is already #1. The most used, and the first VTT tried for anyone knew to the hobby. And I mostly frequent French communities, where we had a free (and open source) VTT software: Rolistik (later Rolisteam). It was quite basic but did its job (chats, dices, images, maps with drawing and basic tokens, etc.), even with a few tools that no other VTT had.

So, it's free matter. Going down this road is of course a possible choice, but I'm kinda of the opposite school of thought. It's not that free is better or preferred, to me it's that the public isn't properly educated yet.

But as Rolistik showed, it's not purely about the entry price. It's also about ease of use. A lot of people are afraid of network issues, firewall and routing and NAT. That's the second most common issue I hear about (admittedly in my personal, thus limited experience), but it's also something often heard on gaming night and even here on the forums.

The entry price was an issue (how much is payed the first time around), but with the subscriptions it's not anymore. Well, it's managed. Some people won't by happy even with $4. Personally I don't mind, if a player doesn't want to pay $4 for one to four games, I don't want him/her at my table, he has no commitment and will bail at the first beer-with-dude event even if a game is scheduled that evening. There's also some people who have issues with Paypal and the subscription, I know one of my new player for anew campaign was unable to subscribe because of this; but those are probably the exception.

The demo version is useful, the absence of real and clear explanations to its limitations is damaging but that's nothing new.

To sum it up, I would personally advise keeping the current heading. Don't try to compete with “free” but instead explain, educate, show how is FG better and worth its (quite fair and decent) price. Put it smartly: for example my personnal FG is not $39, it's around 15cents a game and each time I play it's even lower and lower. And continue to invest. Better documentation, lowering the learning curve, improving features and adding new ones. Low money for a good product, and good customer support. Make roll20 chase after you, not the other way around.

And explore what the providers, movers and shakers need. If roll20 is the first stop for a graphic guy to sell maps, tokens or whatever, that will be an issue in the future. Same for developers, tinkerers, activists, rpg authors, and so on. Same for major bloggers and writers. You don't want Monte Cook doing demo of its next game on roll20, or high profile blogger recording its game preferring roll20 over FG. I'm guessing (with some difficulty, since we are kept in the dark but the brainless sheep herds on Facebook are not) you already heard that with the integrated shop in FGNext.

[Blacky]

That's it. Done. Ready to play.
Only if your game is one of the supported and somewhat decent ruleset (and even then, you forget about learning said ruleset, most of which have very little documentation, no design thoughts, no contextual help, no i18n, etc.).

Otherwise it's an entry into ruleset making-hacking-customizing nightmarish hell, from which very few escape.

[primarch]

Hi!

I've been an avid VTT user for many years. I finally settled on fantasy Grounds in 2010, after buying and using all other available offerings. Since I am predominately a GM more than a player it was the ability to make modules and how I could make campaigns with linked information with images, etc that won me over to FG.

This does not mean I have stopped looking at other VTT's, far from it. I continue to experiment with most that is available, including roll20. Mind you I used this at the "mentor level". I paid 99 dollars a year to get all the features and the developer ones.

The best way I can describe roll20 is as "an updated maptools you can use on your browser". This is not a knock to either program, both which I have used quite a bit.

But that is the thing, like maptools it seems when people praise it the first thing they say is "its free". Once you get down to the details however it depends on what you are willing to do with that framework that will determine its ultimate use.

They both seem to rely on scripts to get more advance functions to work (which I absolutely loathe) as well as frameworks with a bunch of scripts for rulesets. I am not a programmer, so while I have learned to tinker with things I had the same disenchantment with roll20 as I did with maptools. I do not want to have to invest in learning how to script to adequately get the interface to work like I wanted it too.

While they are trying to introduce things like character sheets and folders, it in no way works as efficiently as library books and modules do in FG. This was the single most reason I could not use roll20 to run games. I like to prepare the WHOLE adventure in advance with the appropriate links, images, monsters, etc all laid out to reduce any delays in information access. As it stands roll20 is not useful to me in this regard.

For me and the several groups I have run games for on FG one of the things that is often mentioned as a barrier to use FG is ruleset creation. Seriously FG developers, it is high time some kind of utility/program/app was made for the creation of rulesets WITHOUT INVESTING IN LEARNING SCRIPTING/CODING. I understand that knowing that makes for a better experience making said rulesets. I am totally willing to enter vasts quantities of material from gaming books on my own (and have done so for FG before the advent of parsers), but I NEED a method to create a ruleset for the game I want to run as well as to add rules materials to it in a way that doesn't require me to code/script.

Maptools and roll20 can be free all they want, but it still comes down to a core of users whom do all that scripting stuff and their willingness to share it. Under those two, I feel always at someone else mercy to make any change or modification. Since I lack to skill to do so.

The same happens with FG in relation to rulesets, but I feel a solution via a "ruleset builder" would solve it. At this point its the one thing I wish would be made for FG so I can stop looking at other VTT's. In a nutshell I am willing to put in the effort to tailor a ruleset to my wants and needs, but I need a ruleset builder as a tool to do so.

Finally I wouldn't be too worried about roll20 and their "free". I remember the same kind of discussions in relation to maptools and FG. For some people "free" is king. For those whom are of that opinion then they have roll20 and maptools.

If functionality is your prime concern, then I have yet to have actually used anything better than FG, even with all the obstacles it has. Make FG better and easier at what it does best and let others cater to the "free" crowd.

Primarch

[Mellock]

This cost thing... I've played with my license for 8 years now, and it's still going steady. I've been in steady games for most of that time. (Except for one game I had to bail out of, and I still feel bad about that, Valarian.)

[Blacky]

Seriously FG developers, it is high time some kind of utility/program/app was made for the creation of rulesets WITHOUT INVESTING IN LEARNING SCRIPTING/CODING. I understand that knowing that makes for a better experience making said rulesets. I am totally willing to enter vasts quantities of material from gaming books on my own (and have done so for FG before the advent of parsers), but I NEED a method to create a ruleset for the game I want to run as well as to add rules materials to it in a way that doesn't require me to code/script.
I highly doubt the letter of this is achievable. I mean, even if SmiteWorks was Microsoft, it probably could not be done.

However it would be possible to have a wysiwyg interface to place and build element (which was launched but at too steep a price, in part because of the coder not getting all the money put into it), supported by a more advanced graphic engine to allow easier graphical theming, and easier a semi-visual or very simple layer to do some automatism. I think a large majority of what players/GM need can be truncated into small, easy to manipulate, bricks. It's more or less always the same basic things: take this field, apply it to dices that way, roll and compute the dices this way; that goes into modifier; this mathematically affect that in this way; and so on. It would be limited, and would require significant design (not graphics, true design, thinking) and thus work. It probably wouldn't be colossal, but still quite a serious amount of work.

Beside that, numerous things could be done to either simplify things, or make it more accessible. By lowering the entry barrier to start doing small things to ruleset from experienced developper with a few hundreds hours of free time to the tinkerer level with a dozen hours or so of free time. Here, it's all about the entry barrier. Once someone can make FG do basic things (from a rpg point of view), like make a roll check this way, or place a condition on a field, or add a new field, etc. that person will have the ball rolling and will be able to dig deeper on its own and with the help of the community. Right now even the simplest thing isn't covered by any plain English documentation, and can't be done without investing quite some serious time reading undocumented code, and parsing the forums for missing informations. But that would also require work from SmiteWorks and probably the community.

[primarch]

Hi!

Well, I'm not a coder/programmer therefore I understand there is a lot more involved in such a thing and do not underestimate the amount of work it would take. I pledged at the highest level in the crowd funder that attempted this, too bad it didn't make it. Perhaps the price point and not being on kickstarter had something to do with that.

Something like you described would be good, even great. I'm just tired of having to look at other VTT's to run a game that FG doesn't have a ruleset to. I would really like to do them myself, no matter how much work is involved. But any interface, no matter how limited would be a boon at this point. :)

Primarch

[Trenloe]

Something like you described would be good, even great. I'm just tired of having to look at other VTT's to run a game that FG doesn't have a ruleset to. I would really like to do them myself, no matter how much work is involved. But any interface, no matter how limited would be a boon at this point. :)
You can do a lot with CoreRPG - no programming, just spending some time making a character sheet template (all in the FG interface). Of course there's no automation, just dice rolling from the character sheet - and all of the other base functionality that comes with the CoreRPG ruleset. But, if you're using another VTT then that won't have any automation either, right?

[damned]

You cant compete with Free when its Free is what some (lots of?) people want.
Free with a 100MB storage limit - my current campaign is at least 18months old and currently only has 8mb of stuff in it - that aint gonna work - for SmiteWorks anyway.
Free isnt growing your

What are the other barriers to entry?
Networking changes on the router/firewall when it doesnt just work and this is out of your comfort zone.
Rulesets for the next half dozen most popular games out there. Yes - 80% of gamers are playing D&D/PF. But the perception for a lot of people is that FG is just for these games.

[VenomousFiligree]

Rulesets for the next half dozen most popular games out there. Yes - 80% of gamers are playing D&D/PF. But the perception for a lot of people is that FG is just for these games.

Personally I think this (https://www.enworld.org/forum/hotgames.php) is the best indicator of what people are playing at the moment. On the combined list and checking the supported games here (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page) (and others that aren't listed), I think FG has most of the top 20 games covered...?

[Nylanfs]

Also in the Orr Group's latest blog (https://www.examiner.com/article/orr-group-report-d-d-5e-pathfinder-dominate) they list all the game system being run on Roll20 (again) and 5E has taken over Pathfinder.

[Mask_of_winter]

For me and the several groups I have run games for on FG one of the things that is often mentioned as a barrier to use FG is ruleset creation. Seriously FG developers, it is high time some kind of utility/program/app was made for the creation of rulesets WITHOUT INVESTING IN LEARNING SCRIPTING/CODING. I understand that knowing that makes for a better experience making said rulesets. I am totally willing to enter vasts quantities of material from gaming books on my own (and have done so for FG before the advent of parsers), but I NEED a method to create a ruleset for the game I want to run as well as to add rules materials to it in a way that doesn't require me to code/script.

Primarch

I agree. CoreRPG is cool and I understand the need to for it. But it doesn't have the cool automation the other rulesets have. I also understand the efforts put in 5e for a bid with WOTC. I think the move to Unity is a good move. Next should be a powerful editor.

I chose, and continue to use FG exclusively over others because I don't have to script. Also because of the community and customer support. If I didn't run Savage Worlds and Ikael didn't release the Library Extension I wouldn't be able to create my own content and would be limited to what's available in the store. I would buy another Ultimate license ( hell even $10-20/month) to have access to an editor with support. To me, this is where FG shines. The guy I did the Savage Worlds on FG bootcamp in google + last year is switching over to FG because of how easy it is to add custom content. An editor would take it to the next step. I know this would be a big project for a small team like Smiteworks.

This may be how you can have different membership levels for the next FG. If you have a license you have access to the editor with customer support. If you're a free user, CoreRPG only, 3.5,4e.PF,5e,Numera can be purchased in the store, no editor, no support and you don't have access to certain forums. Plus, you put ad banners on the splash page displaying all the cool stuff you're missing out on by being a free user.

[damned]

from where Im sitting the only [EDIT: I wrote only but that is not accurate - perhaps main would be more appropriate?] advantage of a free tiered license is you rob(?) your competitors of a potential paying customer.
personally i think you just end up with more non-paying users all round.

[ddavison]

Well, the big boost is that all those free players start mentioning it as the first choice to play instead of the competition. If you have 3 people in a group that only want to play free things, they can sway a GM who would otherwise have no problem dropping $9.99 a month. The funny thing is that it would have been free to the players in that case too.

[damned]

Well, the big boost is that all those free players start mentioning it as the first choice to play instead of the competition. If you have 3 people in a group that only want to play free things, they can sway a GM who would otherwise have no problem dropping $9.99 a month. The funny thing is that it would have been free to the players in that case too.

:)

As the Big Kahuna they are your decisions to make!
So then is your free product a feature lite one?

[ddavison]

Just thinking out loud. You guys help with that process. :)

We've already got a number of things in the queue that we are working through, so this might still be a way down the road -- if at all.

[dulux-oz]

For what its worth (& its only about $0.02 worth): in my MBA program at Uni we were taught (from case studies and from actual entrepreneurs) that the quickest way to fail, or at least to not succeed, was to chase the competition and try to align our "product" with theirs. A way better (ie more successful) strategy is to NOT chase the competition but to differentiate our product - and KEEP differentiating it - and to focus all the "highpoints" on why our product was better than the competitions' BECAUSE of the differentiation.

Funnily enough, Sun Tzu said something similar when talking about military strategy over 2500 years ago (and, come to think of it, so did Clausewitz).

In other words, (in this particular case) keep on aggressively "advertising" the benefits (ie the UNIQUE features) of FG AND DON'T MENTION the competition at all!

Cheers

[Valarian]

In other words, (in this particular case) keep on aggressively "advertising" the benefits (ie the UNIQUE features) of FG AND DON'T MENTION the competition at all!
I agree with this

[AstaSyneri]

For what its worth (& its only about $0.02 worth): in my MBA program at Uni we were taught (from case studies and from actual entrepreneurs) that the quickest way to fail, or at least to not succeed, was to chase the competition and try to align our "product" with theirs. A way better (ie more successful) strategy is to NOT chase the competition but to differentiate our product - and KEEP differentiating it - and to focus all the "highpoints" on why our product was better than the competitions' BECAUSE of the differentiation.


You kind of stole my next post ;-).

It's called USP = Unique Selling Proposition. Work out what your product does best, better than any competition and then make people aware of that. With a product in transition it's difficult, but at the same time you have all the chances to model the product so it fits your vision.

For FG I haven't followed what the plans for FG Next are, but here is the chance to blow everybody away with features and accessibility at a rate the world hasn't seen before ;-).

[Blacky]

But it doesn't have the cool automation the other rulesets have.
I would not call “cool” something as basic as doing a dice roll. And vanilla, FG can't handle the commons rolls of a lot of rpg, if not most. To me, “cool” is for example I click on a token on the map, then click on an attack and FG handle attack, damage, defense, parry, dodge, armor, knockback, whatever.

[Andraax]

And vanilla, FG can't handle the commons rolls of a lot of rpg, if not most.

What "common rolls" does FG not handle?

[Doc Sportello]

I'm not sure if this is what Blacky means, but FG can't animate the Star Wars: Edge of the Empire dice. The Edge ruleset displays the Edge dice before you roll, but when you actually toss the dice, you see the regular FG dice hurtling across the table. The ruleset then translates the roll into the chat box. It works very nicely, but it's not as fun to watch as the actual Edge dice-rolling in "Tabletop Simulator" (now on Steam for about $15).

Also, someone earlier posted one of the enworld metrics on popular fantasy games. The same site offers an alternative ranking, and it puts the FFG Star Wars series much higher -- maybe as high as #3. (I doubt it's THAT high.) See it here: https://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?1984-Top-5-RPGs-Compiled-Charts-2008-Present

Back on topic: I agree that FG should just highlight its strengths. Be the iPhone of the VTT market! Go for the paying customer, not the free one. I may be a warped minority, but the price actually attracted me to FG; I took it to mean more committed gamers would be playing here. So I've paid for FG, and I've played Roll20 once for free. You guys have already gotten more money out of me than Roll20 ever will. :)

[damned]

FG currently doesnt support exploding dice and other similar reroll mechanics in CoreRPG.
Im pretty sure that Moon_Wizard has most of that nutted out for the Unity release though....

[Andraax]

"Exploding dice" are "common rolls"? I play dozens of different RPGs, and only one that I play uses that mechanic.

[Litvyak]

My biggest problem with Fantasy Grounds as compared to Roll20 is the amount of work required to adapt it to a new ruleset. I've had an Ultimate license for years and every single online game that I have run has been run with other VTT software because I usually burn myself out halfway through the ruleset creation process of Fantasy Grounds.

Roll20, on the other hand, is dead easy. Attached are some screenshots of a Mekton Zeta sheet that took just a few hours worth of work. Sure, I could probably automate it considerably more using Fantasy Grounds, but then we'd be talking a few weeks or months instead of a few hours. There is, of course, the CoreRPG's generic character sheet, but I can make something much nicer in a short amount of time in Roll20.

Now, I really do appreciate the depth that one can tinker with Fantasy Grounds. It is very powerful and very awesome in it's customizability. It's just that the amount of work that's required to access that customizability is staggering, and the tutorials for working with it have become increasingly outdated.

This really isn't intended to be a rant against Fantasy Grounds. It's only my own experiences, and the reasoning why I choose to pay $100 a year to Roll20 when I could continue to use Fantasy Grounds for no additional cost.

[ddavison]

Thanks for sharing Litvyak. Do you GM mostly indie games then?

[Litvyak]

More or less. Indie or at least less common games.

With that being said, I'm going to be pitching a game of Mutants & Masterminds using FG to some potential players tomorrow. So, hopefully I'll be running my first FG campaign soon.

[jh79]

I believe there are two totally different paths here, one is free (Roll20) and one is paid (FG), and like many have said before, can't compete with free.

Doug, I don't believe it's a good idea to go free, gimp, have freebie trial periods, or any of that stuff. IMO the only way to combat free is to have big time WOW factors in your software, that people say, WOW I gotta have it! It can't even be close with you and other VTT's that are free, you got to blow them out with wow features they can't do.

Some features could be 3D maps, steam in video (cut scenes), keyed sounds, press a key and a monster screams into everyone's headset, WOW factor stuff, and then showcase that, stuff roll20 could only dream of doing. If this isn't possible then I'm afraid it will stay exactly as it is now, with Roll20 ahead only due to the fact that its free.

Something I saw that was very successfully was with the Shroud of the Avatar MMO and their stretch goal kickstarters. I know you guys have a voting list for features, but why not identify WOW features, 3D maps, video, sound, etc and have a kickstarter for each of them? I think if you called a guy named Dallas at the game mentioned above he would give a lot of good info on Kickstarter. That game went over 5 million in KS money. The guy I mentioned is accessible, give it a go.

Maybe send out an email blast every time you have a feature kickstarter and let us support it. If I see one of those wow features I like I would surely pledge, and for the people that pledge they get the new wow feature in a special install. That could get a lot of new revenue for you to do the next wow feature. Pretty soon you would have so many new features there would be a huge gap in "cool stuff" and a much greater chance of you taking a bigger piece of that VTT pie imo.

Someone mentioned GM's stepping up for FG. I'm willing to step up as a GM and do one-shots to introduce players to FG. Whoever is coordinating that send me a PM, maybe we can setup a very visible thread here on FG where people sign up on a weekly basis for a one-shot then a GM volunteers to run it or vise-versa. I think that may become one of your most popular threads, with players signing up constantly to play and GMs checking it and signing up to run it. I'd be willing to do 5e games on certain days. Let's make it happen!

[Valarian]

FG currently doesnt support exploding dice and other similar reroll mechanics in CoreRPG.
Im pretty sure that Moon_Wizard has most of that nutted out for the Unity release though....

"Exploding dice" are "common rolls"? I play dozens of different RPGs, and only one that I play uses that mechanic.
It supports every die roll, in the same way that they are supported at the game table. By throwing dice. It's only the totalling and automated additional dice rolls that are not supported. You always have the option to use CoreRPG and roll by hand for mechanics beyond the basic totalling of dice+stat.

[Blacky]

What "common rolls" does FG not handle?
Just a few examples: L5R, World of Darkness, Shadowrun. If one was picky, one could include any d% game (0 instead of 100, and inverted modifiers for most games).


"Exploding dice" are "common rolls"? I play dozens of different RPGs, and only one that I play uses that mechanic.
Warhammer, World of Darkness, Shadowrun. Three major massively played games with exploding dices. But you could also add Rolemaster and many others.


Roll20, on the other hand, is dead easy. Attached are some screenshots of a Mekton Zeta sheet that took just a few hours worth of work. Sure, I could probably automate it considerably more using Fantasy Grounds, but then we'd be talking a few weeks or months instead of a few hours. There is, of course, the CoreRPG's generic character sheet, but I can make something much nicer in a short amount of time in Roll20.
Quite interesting. How is it done? Visual interface? Drag&drop? Coding?

[JohnD]

Uh Rolemaster has exploding dice, if that means what I think it means.

[damned]

The main issue is that CoreRPG does not. If you want exploding dice or other dice features you need to build that extension/capability yourself at this time.
It is most likely coming with or soon after Unity as Moon_Wizard had done a fair chunk of the dice work already middle of last year from memory.

[Mask_of_winter]

Playing at a real table doesn't automate anything. Yet, it didn't stop anybody from playing anything. So is CoreRpg. Food for thought.

With that said, if FG wants to give this WOW! factor, CoreRPG needs to be more than it currently is.

[Litvyak]

Quite interesting. How is it done? Visual interface? Drag&drop? Coding?

HTML with CSS. So, basically coding, but on a much simpler level than what's required for Fantasy Grounds. On the other hand, it can be frustratingly more limited than what Fantasy Grounds is capable of. For security reasons they only allow character sheets to use HTML, CSS and a very few functions mostly related to math and die rolling... no Javascript or anything of that nature.

Of course you also need to have a mentor level subscription to be able to play around with custom character sheets.

[AstaSyneri]

As for the dice I'd love to enter hexadecimal values instead of using that awkward color selection process. Or even better, I'd love skinnable dice, where I can have something like a Chessex dice (https://www.chessex.com/Dice/Gemini/BlueRed.htm) effect, or even custom dice (might be possible already, but I have never seen it).

Beyond that Ikael is showing for Savage Worlds what cool features are possible. It's only that you have such a steep curve to learn how to add features, that 99% give up. You need more showcases (I am repeating myself), where the very best of the features are presented ad nauseam on Youtube and in screen shots as well as a lot better documentation and tools for the GMs. GMs are the ones paying threefold - they "don't get to play", they have to expend additional time to prepare stuff and they often pay more for books and tools than the casual player does. Now add the cost for using FG and this effect is even more intensified.

IMO making things for them (A lot!) easier will go far for FG.

[ddavison]

Do you mean something like this?

[dulux-oz]

As for the dice I'd love to enter hexadecimal values instead of using that awkward color selection process.

I've got that done as a personal-use extension already - I just didn't bother releasing it because I didn't think anyone would want to use it.

[Lundgren]

I'm not familiar with LUA, but I often script in other languages as part of my job. My barrier to use FG is primary that I'm still aiming for a face to face group. But I have an Ultimate license (and I'm one of those with a Roll20 account and less than an hour of activity there).

If I start a game through FG, it won't be one of the official ones, and most likely neither one of the community created ones. So I will have to go by Core until I have got around to start modify it.

One thing I believe would help me, and probably a few other coders new to FG (and perhaps LUA as well) is a good snipped repository. It seems there is quite a few snippets in here in the forums, but they are more or less hidden. So more or less just a place to collect them, and then let the community contribute more. So adding a new dice mechanic, I might take a code snippet for calculating successes ST style, but change it for another dice type; then perhaps a snippet for exploding dice, etc.

While it wouldn't help the non-coders much, it might help some of us start doing something. Which in turn might benefit the non-coders. I get a sense there currently is an idea of; if it isn't a full fledge module, it isn't worthwhile to share it (unless it is in form of an answer to a direct question in the forum).


I've got that done as a personal-use extension already - I just didn't bother releasing it because I didn't think anyone would want to use it.I for one wants it :) One of my ideas of a first coding project for FG is just that, but until I get around to actually do it...:rolleyes: So I prefer one made someone else.

[VenomousFiligree]

Do you mean something like this?

Nice! :)

[Mellock]

Do you mean something like this?

Is that FG Unity? As a fan of translucent/gem dice, I am slightly salivating at the mere thought. Here, let me pull out my set of gamescience dice.

[ddavison]

Those are some of the prototypes that Zeus whipped up in Unity.

[VenomousFiligree]

Is there an eta for Unity FG?

[Nylanfs]

I believe it's Soon(TM)

[dulux-oz]

I for one wants it :)

OK, see this this thread here (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?20432-Alternative-ColourGizmo-Extension).

Cheers

[Lundgren]

OK, see this this thread here (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?20432-Alternative-ColourGizmo-Extension).

Cheers
Thanks :)

[AstaSyneri]

Do you mean something like this?

:D Yes, pretty much exactly like that :D.

[Blacky]

I believe it's Soon(TM)
Never saw that.

[Nylanfs]

Warning! TVTropes Link! (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealSoonNow) also Urban Dictionary (https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=soon+%28tm%29)

[ddavison]

I'm going to shut down this thread. Feel free to start a new thread if you want, but it's kind of served its purpose for now. :)