Noob Help For First Game

[steerpike65]

Hi

I am setting up for my first FG session - primarily doing character creation. I have an Ultimate licence and all my players have the free licence.

I suddenly realised I'm not quite sure how the character creation is going to run - I have scoured the FG Wiki and videos but the amount of information is a little overwhelming and I can't seeem to find a direct answer to my question quickly:

I understand that the free licence does not allow character creation, so either the characters must be created by me or ?? can the players create their characters in session on my hosted version?? If so, does importing/exporting of characters need to be done, and if I need to move those characters from one adventure to another how is that done? I don't need definitive answers - if someone can just post a link to the relevant sections in the wiki that would be great.

Thanks.

[Mask_of_winter]

They can connect to you and make their own characters. If you want those characters moved to another campaign you can export and then import them, yes. Edit button on the character selection screen will take you there.

[steerpike65]

Many thanks - that makes sense. Cheers

[Trenloe]

The players can also make their own character locally with "Manage Characters" - but they won't have any access to your library modules, only their own. Any character they make in Manage Characters will be stored on their local hard drive.

When they join a game they have the option to import a PC from their local hard drive. See "Import a Character" here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/wiki/index.php/Character_Management

[Mask_of_winter]

The players can also make their own character locally with "Manage Characters" - but they won't have any access to your library modules, only their own. Any character they make in Manage Characters will be stored on their local hard drive.

When they join a game they have the option to import a PC from their local hard drive. See "Import a Character" here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/wiki/index.php/Character_Management

You can Manage Characters without a license?

[Trenloe]

You can Manage Characters without a license?
Yes, since June 2014:


Version 3.0.4 (2014-06-04)
...
•Free licenses can now use Manage Characters mode, just like Player licenses.
...

[damned]

Most games will start with a (formal or informal) character creation session.
The GM will run up the server and players can build characters and discuss options with the GM.

[LordEntrails]

Don't forget, you can start a second session of FG and connect to your GM session as a player using the "localhost" for the IP/address. That way you can see just what your players will see, including what character creation is like.

[Topdecker]

So I _just_ ran my first session last night using an ultimate license. The intent of the session was to 1) get player introductions done and 2) generate characters.

The first thing that became evident was that you need to allow for some time to transfer the PHB and any other immediately shared resource (Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, for instance). I have DSL and it is very poor for upload speeds.

I also had spent very little time generating player characters. Fortunately, I had a player that was eager to get started and he had spent quite a bit of time in the character sheets prior to our first session. He was able to act as a guide and was much better positioned to handle questions that were bound to being a remote user.

Also, because I had tested it out, you may want to review the file sizes of all your images. I found that being under 1mb in size was important to performance and I ended up adjusting jpg compression levels to improve performance.

Anyhow, my first session did not go smoothly - there was nothing to be done for the three players downloading so much material across my very slow uplink. This stuff will be buffered, so future sessions will be pretty smooth unless the material gets updated. The first 90 minutes was a bit rough, then it smoothed out. If I had it to do over again, I probably would have gotten the players to check in individually and get all of the BIG pre-loads conducted on a 1 on 1 basis. Live and learn.

We finished the last 45 minutes with some casual role play which left the group positioned to almost immediately get into some action during the first real play session. I left them with enough information about the setting to keep them thinking about their goals and the environment. They're just outside the mansion in a heavily re-tooled version of U1...

Top

[Nylanfs]

Awesome!

[Andraax]

I always start up my server an hour or so before game time so users can connect early and do their downloads, while they eat dinner or whatever.

[Trenloe]

Some good guidelines for image (and map) sizing here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?25150-Best-Image-Size-for-Handouts&p=221485&viewfull=1#post221485 Maps mentioned in the final paragraph.

[damned]

Hey TopDecker for the most part the first session is slow due to file transfers, lots of questions, new GM etc. The next couple of sessions will be faster but probably still not fast. But each session you run you will get more comfortable with the process and it wll get easier. Ask questions here post session and people will often have good suggestions or ideas as to how to work with/around any challenges you are facing.

Any time you see your FG flash with an update let your players know they need to update FG in advance of the next session and whenever possible have them log in early as Andraax says above.

[dmkevin]

Great Job!!