Starting Out

[ltcmdr]

I am new to Fantasy Grounds, and I want to know what it will take for me and my friends to play dnd with each other on steam, and there are a lot of dnd dlc packs. What do I and my friends need to purchase so we can play 5e? If that turns out to be to expensive for everyone, 4e? Thank you.

[dulux-oz]

Hi Itcmdr, and Welcome! to the Community,

A group of FG players will need either of the following two setuos:

One person with the Ultimate License and everyone else with Free/Demo Licenses (or the other can get Full Licenses if they want), or
Everyone has Full licenses


There are no differences between the Steram and non-Stema versions - Steam is just a "wrapper" for the regular Fantasy Grounds.

You don't need to purchase any DLC if you are willing to enter everything manually - this goes for all Rulesets (5E, 4E, 3.5E, Savage Worlds, etc), both the ones that come with FG by default (5E, 4E, 3.5E, etc) and Rulesets that you purchase on top of the basic FG program (Savage Worlds, etc). However, if you don't want to enter stuff in manually than the DLC will help

So, here's what I suggest: grab a $10 Ultimate License subscription (for 1 month) and the Lost Mines adventure (I can't remember the price). This will get you up and running to try things out. Then you can work out what to do from there.

Also, if you haven't done so already, let me encourage you to take a look at some of the great Tutorial Videos available on the Fantasy Grounds Wiki (and on YouTube). Damn's are good, as are Xorn's, and people seem to like mine as well (mine are also available from the links in my sig, below).

Start with the ones on the CoreRPG, because the CoreRPG forms the foundation of just about all the RPGs we play with Fantasy Grounds - so by learning how to use FG with the CoreRPG you'll learn about 80% of what you'll need to know to play any RPG with Fantasy Grounds. Once you've gone through the CoreRPG Videos you can then go on to Videos about your chosen RPG.

When you get familiar with the basic Fantasy Grounds product the next step is to check out some of the Extensions (Plug-Ins) for FG, such as the DOE Sound, Locations, Weather and Organisations Extensions (to name a but a few).

And keep on asking questions - we're a pretty friendly lot here, and we love answering questions.

Cheers

[damned]

Definitely go the Ultimate Subscription + Lost Mines of Phandelver. Cost you $30 for your first 2 months and then $10/month afterwards. After you complete LMoP you might want the PHB and another module. But thats up to you.

If you dont go 5e you are better off looking at 3.5e or even more so at Pathfinder as there are far more free SRD/PRD resources for these two - in particular Pathfinder.
Then you would be at $10/month.

Oh and 5e also as a pretty good free SRD and free Basic Rules for 5e with your Ultimate Sub.

[ltcmdr]

So, if I do get the ultimate license, and my friends play on the demo version as they would have to, to my understanding, is it still partially automated for them?
Thanks

[Trenloe]

So, if I do get the ultimate license, and my friends play on the demo version as they would have to, to my understanding, is it still partially automated for them?
Thanks
When demo players are connected to a GM with the ultimate license they behave exactly the same as a standard license. This is what the ultimate license does, allow demo license players to join and game as if they had a license. The Ultimate license doesn't provide any more DLC than the standard license, you'll still need to purchase any additional DLC you might want. You'll get the 5E SRD and Basic Rules (as do standard licenses) as mentioned in the product summary on the home page of this website. Sorry if you already knew this, I just thought I'd clarify as sometimes ultimate license purchasers expect to get everything included because it's "ultimate".