Question about store purchased content

[GroundZero]

Hello, I'm a prospective customer who recently started playing in 5e and I am considering purchasing FG. I am often the DM as well, and have considered switching my ongoing PF game to 5e. The big question I am trying to answer is whether FG can help or not given a few restrictions. Also, I should note that I love to tinker with rules, add campaign specific content, remove or update material I don't like, etc.

For the discussion assume I would be purchasing an Ultimate license.


Can I add, edit, delete, and share store purchase content with my gaming group? If I purchase the 5e PHB equivalent, MM, or the various adventures, will I be able to do this smoothly?
Can I modify the 5e ruleset to create my own unique variant?
Second, can anybody here who's done custom work with FG tell me how easy / hard it is to customize the system for house rules? For example adding a new skill, or adding another field to spells so that it has both a hit and miss damage/effect, add the spell points variant rule, etc. I've never used Lua, but I've done enough programing in the past, I could learn it easy enough.
Is there any sort of plugin / override system, or do you have to hack core?
How good is the documentation from the perspective of implementing house rules and tinkering with the existing rules?


I'm currently a Hero Lab customer with all the PF content, and while I love the character building rules are mostly all there, I have been frustrated by some of the limitations around editing/copying content, lack of documentation for the system, and the inability to customize certain aspects.

[dulux-oz]

Hi GroundZero, and Welcome!

OK, let's start with the basics:

The only difference between the Ultimate License and the Full License is that anyone can connect to a GM running the Ultimate License, while with a GM running the Full License the Players need Full (or Ultimate, or the now-defunct Lite) License: they can't connect with the Demo license. Other than that, there is NO DIFFERENCE.

1) The Player's DON'T NEED to purchase anything (apart from a License if the GM is NOT running with an Ultimate License). Any content the GM has (purchased or created themselves) is shared with the Players when they connect. When the Players are not connected they DON'T have access, unless they have purchased the item themselves.

Note that you DON'T NEED to purchase ANYTHING except a license to play: all the other "stuff" just makes the prep-time, etc, easier and smoother because all the work of putting in the data has already been done. You can enter in the Monsters, Characters, etc, yourself, but it can take some time - so in effect you are buying someone else's labor when you purchase the pre-made "stuff".

2) Yes - but it can be tricky depending upon exactly what you want to do. The Community is here to help you, though.

3) Depends upon exactly what you want to do: the more detailed the changes/automation then generally the harder it is to do. You will need to know XML, LUA, Programming Theory, etc. The level you need to know these depends upon what you want to do.

4) A bit of both - again, depending upon exactly what you want to do.

5) Not as good as we'd like. Most of us community Devs are professional programmers or very talented amateurs, and we learned by deconstruction the code. Smite Works is only a very small company (but with a large, active and very friendly community) so sometimes doco gets left behind while the Devs work on new things - and the Community as a whole would rather have the new features :)

This post from the FG Wiki may help you to understand some things in relation to your questions (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/wiki/index.php/Development_Overview).

Also, a lot of the 5E stuff is sold encrypted (licensing deal with WotC) so we can't deconstruct that code, but all the actual Rulesets (see the above link) can be "got at".

Hope that helps

Cheers

[damned]

hello propective customer GroundZero!

You can edit the 5e modules but the changes dont actually edit the source they will remain edited in your current campaign. Eg change the Zombies HD or give it a morepowerful attack or immunity or resistance to a different type of attack. You cant share this data as in send the files to someone else but they will get your changes in-game. You can use the Par5e tool to make new content into another re-usable module. Please see the ongoing discussions on Par5e and its future developments.

FG is not a character builder/generator. It will let you produce illegal characters etc. You can edit, buff, whatever your characers to suit your game. many changes are easy. Some that change the mechanics are much harder and require coding. People do this all the time but it is often not trivial. For example a member is building an extension to handle Vitality right now.

You create extensions when you want to overwrite, edit, change, add something to a ruleset and then you can choose to load or not that extension at startup.

The documentation is good and bad. There is lots of stuff there but it wont teach you how to use it. However all the existing code is there for you to pull apart and learn from. And there are many people here who will help you with issues/questions/advice. It is programming though and a knowledge of programming will make the process far easier.

You can download the demo and look at the existing rulesets. You can download and test extensions on the demo. You just cant save your campaign and you can only have one connected user at a time. But certainly I would have a look that way. If you want to go a bit deeper - get a 1 month subscription and the basic rules or lost mines of phandelver which includes basic rules and you will get a much better understanding of all the goodness inside the box.

[Trenloe]

Some info on modifying a ruleset here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?20651-Modifying-the-CoreRPG-ruleset This is for the CoreRPG ruleset (which 5E is layered on top of) so the majority of this is completely relevant to 5E.

Using extensions you can "extend" the functionality of a ruleset (e.g. 5E) without modifying the base ruleset. The only gotcha here is ensuring that any modifications you've made are updated when there is a ruleset update.

[GroundZero]

Thanks folks for the replies!

@Dulux-oz
Thanks for the info on licenses. I have targeted ultimate because in addition to the game I recently started playing in, the proposed gaming group being converted from PF would consist of 8 players, plus me as DM. Seemed like a natural fit given that I would definitely use it for both if I purchased it. I have reservations about such a large group, which is why I'm considering migrating to 5e and picking up FG.

I understand that the add-ons are not necessary, but I definitely have more money than free time, so for me its a no brainer. Part of me might say damn, thats another $100 on top the books I bought, but that pales in comparison to time I would spend doing data entry, even with Par5e. The only reason I wouldn't buy the data sets, is if it limited my usage.

Regarding the 5e stuff being encrypted, I assume you're referring to the downloadable content, or is it more than that?

@Damned

Regarding the editing of 5e modules, so its sounds like the underlying modules would stay intact, but I would have an edited version in my campaign. This is the part that is concerning me about the data sets. So is there a mechanism to share the changes to content (i.e. house rules, additions, deletions) between campaigns, and other users, or is locked down along with the DLC? For example player 2 buys PHB data set, can I share a module of "changes" to it so the complete content is the same?

Regarding Par5e, I've checked it out and its looks like its a great tool to enter content quickly. I can easily see editing text documents from my tablet on break and incorporating them in the next run. Very intriguing :D

@Trenloe

Could you comment on the frequency of ruleset updates with respect to 5e? I took a look at the release notes and it looks like there has been lots of 5e related updates, which I assume would regularly include changes to the ruleset. Its great to see the system getting lots of attention, but it sounds like it wouldn't be worth making any major changes until that stabilizes a bit.

@All, thanks for replies and links, it'll give me something to read on break :)

[GroundZero]

Double post.

[GroundZero]

Please see the ongoing discussions on Par5e and its future developments.

I just noticed this line about future development, and after checking out the Par5e thread, it sounds a lot like the project's future is questionable. I'm not entirely sure if I'm understanding the situation correctly or not, but it sounds like official date sets have better support in FG, but limits your options to customize the content and share it, while self generated date sets gives you better control how you use it, but you lose out on new features.

[Trenloe]

@Trenloe

Could you comment on the frequency of ruleset updates with respect to 5e? I took a look at the release notes and it looks like there has been lots of 5e related updates, which I assume would regularly include changes to the ruleset. Its great to see the system getting lots of attention, but it sounds like it wouldn't be worth making any major changes until that stabilizes a bit.
I can't comment for the developers, but you usually see an update every 2-3 months. As the 5E content is now heavily tied to the WotC releases, expect to see updates to the ruleset as changes are required to cater for new rules/features within the base 5E RPG as new WotC products come out and get ported to FG. Also updates for bug fixes/feature requests will be included.

If by "major changes" you mean writing code to change/add ruleset functionality then, yes, I'd recommend holding off for a bit until all of the major core rulebooks, and their associated functionality, have been released and gone through a patch release. If you're writing your own library modules either using PAR5E or manually editing XML then you might still have to make some changes in the future, but these would probably be a lot less than coding a ruleset extension - especially if you keep to the base functionality of the library module for your data.

[GroundZero]

I can't comment for the developers, but ...

Understood. Short of an official statement from SW about what they're working on, I expect that past experience is the best indicator we have to work with. Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions.

[damned]

There is another thread where a poster points out that there are features that he would expect to already be in FG - be assured FG is not and never will be finished. These updates continue to improve features and functionality all the time. Where something is not or only partially implemented today it may be fully featured next month. 5e is getting the bulk of the attention as you would imagine. In many, many cases FG will not rigidly hold you to the rules because many gamers have their own house rules. Using house rules is easy enough - automating them requires coding skill and some time :)

[GroundZero]

There is another thread where a poster points out that there are features that he would expect to already be in FG - be assured FG is not and never will be finished. These updates continue to improve features and functionality all the time. Where something is not or only partially implemented today it may be fully featured next month. 5e is getting the bulk of the attention as you would imagine. In many, many cases FG will not rigidly hold you to the rules because many gamers have their own house rules. Using house rules is easy enough - automating them requires coding skill and some time :)

I understand; I currently use Hero Lab and Realmsworks for my pathfinder games and like FG both are continually a work in progress. The former contains much more automation for generating characters that FG does, however that automation comes with a cost in flexibility in supporting house rules, and as someone who simply *must* tinker with the rules, it can be quite challenging with a complicated system and limited documentation.

When I started investigating 5e, I found FG and was impressed with the advancements they'd made over the years, and in particular I thought that they'd found a good balance between automation and flexibility, and the ability to manage encounters, treasure, combat, etc., all seemed quite intuitive. While HL handles character generation well, and RW does campaign management, I found the HL combat tracker UX to be lacking, awkward, and the tiny text difficult to read. However the company believes that functionality trumps user experience, so I don't have much hope of this being addressed.

[Nylanfs]

Just a note FG imports from HL and PCGen, so get it as close as you can in HL and then fix anything outstanding in FG. :)

[Trenloe]

Just a note FG imports from HL and PCGen, so get it as close as you can in HL and then fix anything outstanding in FG. :)
A note around this - the HL/PCGen import is for the 3.5E and Pathfinder rulesets.

[Nylanfs]

I wonder if PCGen 5e characters will import... Hmm testing might be in order.

[GroundZero]

Just a note FG imports from HL and PCGen, so get it as close as you can in HL and then fix anything outstanding in FG. :)

Hmmm, good to know!

It'll be interesting to see if HL will get a 5e license as well, and if so support a similar functionality for 5e.