External tools to help play in FG

[lambchopsil]

Hi, I'm brand new to all this and recently bought Fantasy Grounds Ultimate to play with my friends. Basically none of our group has played tabletop games before, but we played plenty of board games together when we were still in college, so we wanna use FG to help facilitate playing online together. We're gonna start with D&D 5e (I already bought the class pack and the monster manual to make easier), and I was wondering about the existence of useful tools, programs, or websites outside of FG for players and the DM/GM? Got any recommendations?

[BlueDrake]

Skype, Google Hangouts or another voice chat program is helpful. I have a couple random fantasy name generators bookmarked in case I need an NPC on the fly. Other than that Fantasy Grounds is pretty complete, although the learning curve can be significant at first. The forums have a ton of useful tips. After 2.5 years of using FG to play Pathfinder and then for D&D 5E I'm still learning new things about it.

If you haven't played 5E before I recommend buying Lost Mine of Phandelver. It's a starter adventure and will help you learn the game without overwhelming you with options. The adventure is well written and will keep you and your friends busy for many gaming sessions. Well worth the $20.

[jshauber]

You might want to check out Obsidian Portal site. It has a nice forum for you guys to discuss whatever, a calendar so you can schedule games as well as lots of other features. You can use the free version or upgrade for a bit of cash to get extra functionality.

[Trenloe]

Yeah, I'd recommend you run some kind of voice chat application - even if it's just for out-of-character (OOC) or technical/rules questions. There are many options available, one of which is a community provided, free to use, TeamSpeak3 server - info here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?17071-Voicechat!-Community-TeamSpeak3-Server

I'm not sure exactly what you're looking for regarding useful tools. Have a look at the top three (sticky) threads in this forum: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?47-The-Commons

If you're looking at additional campaign management tools, some are mentioned in this thread (and the other thread linked within): https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?25220-Campaign-management-tool

D&D 5E doesn't really have a full blown character generator - FG goes a long way towards providing this with the drag/drop races, classes, etc. but is not a substitute for a full blown character generator - so make sure you are aware of the 5E rules and check any PCs you make.

Any specific tools/apps you're thinking of? FG is pretty much there in terms of what you need while running the game (except voice chat/video and background music/sound effects - see this thread for some options to do these: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?21761-Playing-Aids&p=182730&viewfull=1#post182730).

[Xorn]

This automated excel character sheet is pretty amazing, FYI.

https://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?427158-ForgedAnvil-D-amp-D-5E-Character-Generator

[midas]

Having users log into a Roll20 campaign is nice so you can use the soundcloud integration during your FG game as well.

[etropic]

X2 on obsidian.

Also this site has some tools, including the encounter builder which is easy for a quick random check.
https://kobold.club/fight/#/encounter-builder

[Griogre]

The donjon site has some good lists of monsters and will also generate random encounters, treasure lists or random dungeons. One of the things I did to learn FG was to completely build a small dungeon. Link: https://donjon.bin.sh/

Particularly in VTTs, having a map can be an issue. While you can just use the built in battlemap (and I do a lot for random encounters and 5E's theater of the mind) this site is one among many random map sites: https://davesmapper.com/ I like it better than some others because its geomorphic and you can change a map sector after it's been generated.

The excel character generator recommended by Xorn is quite good too, though it uses macros.

[lambchopsil]

So much good advice and suggestions!

@BlueDrake, I bought the Lost Mine of Phandelver after your suggestion. I played around a bit with it, and I agree that it's wellworth the $20

@jshauber, Obsidian Portal might be a bit overkill for my needs. I was originally planning to just use Facebook chat and a private group to organize things

@Trenloe, what are the advantages of TeamSpeak over Skype? I was originally planning to use the latter since everyone in my group already has a Skype account, but the community TeamSpeak server sounds tempting.
Your other links look useful too. I wish FG had some better support for sound...

@Xorn, looks like I'll be using that Excel sheet. It automates what FG doesn't :)

@midas, doesn't using Roll20 basically defeat the purpose of using FG?

@Griogre, donjon was a great find!

[Trenloe]

@Trenloe, what are the advantages of TeamSpeak over Skype? I was originally planning to use the latter since everyone in my group already has a Skype account, but the community TeamSpeak server sounds tempting.
The main advantage is that the voice bandwidth is all handled from the TeamSpeak server. For Skype the upload bandwidth comes from the computer that started the call, so it's recommended that the GM doesn't start the call (as they use upload bandwidth when sharing images, etc.).

I also like the TeamSpeak server as it's like rooms - people can go and wait in the rooms for everyone to arrive, if people drop they can easily come back online without everyone dropping. You can easily see who's waiting, etc.. The GM can set up priority volume for them if they want (allowing them to speak over the others if needed), etc..

Another nice feature is that the GM can make another sub-channel (room) and the GM and a player can briefly go into that "room" to discuss private going on without the others disconnecting/pretending not to listen.

The main downside to the TeamSpeak side is there's no offline messaging like you can have with Skype. But, we just use the forums here! Or campaign management sites like Obsidian Portal for that, and much, much more... Or, use Skype for one-on-one text messaging etc., and use TeamSpeak for your game time get together.

Note: lots of people have different favourite voice applications. The main thing I'd recommend is a server based option (like TeamSpeak/Mumble/Ventrilo, etc.) to avoid the upload bandwidth issue. The main thing with a server based voice application is that you need a server - hence why there is a community provided 500 slot server for everyone to use.

[Xorn]

Trenloe, Raidcall does everything you described, plus the messaging. On top of that, RaidCall is *remotely hosted* so no one has to set up and maintain the server. I've always been blown away that more people don't use RaidCall--I guess TeamSpeak just advertises better.

[Trenloe]

Yeah, plenty of options available out there.

[Nylanfs]

I wish I could talk about PCGen's support for 5e, but alas there's nothing official and WotC has brushed any contact attempt I have made with a form letter.

[epithet]

I use Skype for no reason other than my group already has it and is used to it. If I were to switch to another client, it would probably be the Curse voice client. I've used that when playing MMORPGs and been happy with it.

[kylania]

My main complaint with Skype is total lack of a fully functional Push To Talk key (their "toggle mute" workaround fails more often than not). No one needs to hear you snort, or drink, or swallow, or chew, or burp, or your TV, or your dog, or your keyboard, or your giraffe, or your wife, or your kids.

[Griogre]

My problem with RaidCall is you constantly have to give it Admin privilege just to run - that's poor programming. They should not writing their data in program files and its a security hole if it gets hacked. I do keep an account to use it as a "back-up" voice server should TS go down though.

[WhtZombie]

https://www.razerzone.com/comms is what my group uses.. Noise cancellation is excellent and some other features that are nice.