Use FG solely as a DM tool? Manual initiative input, other advice?

[PghDrake]

I have an FG Ultimate license. I had big plans when I bought it for a group (in 2013) to play online, but it fell through. Now I'm looking for a good DM too just to keep track of character stats, initiative order, some notes, whatever.

I've been playing around with the tool but I can't see how to handle initiatives without having the tool roll them - I want to be able to ask around the table what everyone's initiatives are, type them in, then have the tool organize rounds in order for me.

Is there a way to do this, and does anyone else know any tricks on how to use FG as a DM-only tool for these things?

Thank you in advance for your time!

[darrenan]

Depends on the ruleset. In 3.5e/PF there is a setting to turn off automatic rolling of initiative, not sure about other rulesets though. One of the buttons in the top right hand portion of the screen should be "Settings" or something like that, which will open up a window of all the things you can configure.

Other than that, you should be able to manually enter initiatives anyway, and overwrite what FG rolled for you.

[PghDrake]

Well I'll be playing 5e but if i'm only using it for base DMing tools then I would think edition didn't matter much, especially if I'm entering my own initiative data.

Thanks for the info, I'll take a closer look.

[Trenloe]

In the 5E ruleset (and most other rulesets) the GM can manually enter the initiative in the Combat Tracker and it will auto order all entries based of the Init value entered.

[Mirloc]

I have used FGII as solely a tool for the GM at tabletop games. I set up my laptop with an external monitor. Ran the GM edition on my laptop and the "player view" on the monitor. The players were able to see the screen with all the info they needed (mainly maps and handouts), effectively copying the Masterplan system, but also being ruleset agnostic.

[Blackfoot]

I use FG to run all my tabletop games these days. It's way better for keeping track of things than doing it manually. I can't even imagine how I did it before.

I set up all my stuff like I was running an 'online' game but then sit with my laptop instead of notebooks and a DM screen. I display my maps from FG onto the TV using an FG client in addition to the host but you wouldn't have to do that.