Is it allowed to have a "Group" account

[warderbrad]

My normal gaming group uses Roll20 for their games. I like FG much more. I have wanted to convert the group over but one of the hurdles is the cost. This is made more of an issue because we rotate who DMs. In most cases we can just share the books if we need to for the Roll20 game, this is not possible with FG. I have considered offering to buy the "group" an account with an ultimate license and slowly get the books we need (so I can afford it). The hope being that once they are happy with FG that they would want some of the books for themselves.

What I am wanting to know is would it be against any policies or terms of service or anything to get a license which is owned by a group. Then the DM who is prepping the game would use the license and run using it, when we rotate then the next person uses the license. In the end it would only be one person using it at a time and only within a confined group.

I am certain that once the group starts to use FG that they will want to get their own license and books cause they would not have to wait on having their "turn". I just don't want to do anything that would be viewed as breaking some policy or rule.

Thanks,

[LordEntrails]

No it is not allowed to have a group account. The terms of the license agreement state that the license is for a single user.

What most groups who rotate GM duties do is to buy a 4 pack of standard licenses on Steam (for the price of 3) and then whoever is running the module/adventure buys that adventure (if they are running a purchased adventure). Since many systems include the SRD and/or basic rules with a license, you can generally just use those. Though if one person buys the PHB, you just have to have that person be the GM during character creation etc.

[warderbrad]

The problem is more about the sourcebooks. FG is good but the real selling point is not having to input stuff because it is in the sourcebooks. Without that there is not a great enough benefit to using it over Roll20. At least not enough to warrant the high cost of entry.
One of the biggest roadblocks to people adopting FG is the start up price. It was helped by the monthly plan. However the monthly plan does not ensure it leading to ownership, cause you still have to put out a large sum of money for the stuff. What would be an improvement would be awarding the account of monthly subscriptions with a $5 gift certificate for each month to build toward purchases. Also adding subscriptions for system sourcebooks (most likely as a set like for 5e the set would be the Complete PHB, DMG, MM, SCAG, and Volos) with some amount being given back as a gift certificate as well. This would allow people to play and run games with a low entry price, over time it would add up to ownership but it would not require any new systems to lead to ownership.
Being that we have bought them as physical copies (if we don't support WOTC they won't produce books) at our local store (need to support our LFGS). It is a matter of a limited amount of funds for gaming. If there was a way to do this it would enable groups like ours to start using FG.

[Wookiee420]

however monthly sub is either 4 or 10 dollars, a $5 gift card is counterproductive. Maybe a once a month 10% discount on a "member bundle deal" where you choose what is in your bundle but you must spend $X before getting the discount. Your comment about support is slightly off, every single store sale has a certain amount of money go to the publisher that made the product. WOTC makes money off of every sale of their products in the store. If you already own the books and are running 5e just use par5e there are videos on the FG youtube. Thing is though if you are groups of friends just do what LordEntrails suggests, get multiple copies of the program and shift your responsibilities around the table, if you are using products you Par5e yourself, home made modules, then you can share them with the friends in your own game (but only in your game, dont share copyrighted stuff publicly) .

[warderbrad]

however monthly sub is either 4 or 10 dollars, a $5 gift card is counterproductive. I don't understand your comment, I was assuming the Ultimate subscription, so based on that Smiteworks would get $10 and give the user $5 that they have to spend with Smiteworks. They make $5 and then make whatever their cut is off the sale of whatever they apply the gift cert for.


Maybe a once a month 10% discount on a "member bundle deal" where you choose what is in your bundle but you must spend $X before getting the discount. This does not address the high cost of entry for a new user who wants to run games. I agree that the books are not required but if it is a selling feature for FG then the issue of cost of the books is a valid issue.


Your comment about support is slightly off, every single store sale has a certain amount of money go to the publisher that made the product. WOTC makes money off of every sale of their products in the store. If a person with a limited gaming budget wants to support their local store, how do you expect them to do that without buying the physical books fro the store? The point is that not everyone has multiple hundreds of dollars to spend each month on gaming. I am lucky if I have 20-30 if that. I am making suggestions to improve the barrier to entry of cost.


If you already own the books and are running 5e just use par5e there are videos on the FG youtube. Thing is though if you are groups of friends just do what LordEntrails suggests, get multiple copies of the program and shift your responsibilities around the table, if you are using products you Par5e yourself, home made modules, then you can share them with the friends in your own game (but only in your game, dont share copyrighted stuff publicly) . I have tried the Par5e and it is not intuitive nor user friendly and it assumes you have a electronic version of the book. If you have only a physical copy of the book that is a lot of manual entry of information. The point of trying to get my group to change was that all this stuff was available and we would not have to enter it ourself.

I am amazed that people would be against this, unless you feel that FG should only be for the elite players who have a lot of money to spend. Why not entertain any ideas that make getting more players and DMs for FG?

[Wookiee420]

if its $10 and they give you back $5 every month then they make half as much money.
there is no high cost of entry for new users, the only cost is for the GM, in fact, seeing as this group is friends, you can buy one Ultimate and everyone else uses free, then you share the cost of everything. Or you ask your players to chip in. Or you input your own material. Even then you can run games without buying anything but the program.
Also Smiteworks doesnt own any of the material, them giving you a $5 coupon would make them lose $10 per person (5 from sub fee and 5 from product cost). If you want to support your local store then do it, but using FG you wont be supporting your local store, and supporting your local store doesnt help FG.
We are against this idea because it takes money away from Smite. A license shouldnt be shared, just like with video games, Steam you can play your games at other people's houses but only on your account with your log in. Console games, there is a limit to how many systems a game can be registered on simultainiously (little more leeway there because console is about the shared experience). Also movies copyright works this way, as does other software, you can't just share your MSOffice, or your ProTools, or Avid, or anything like that, this is normal for software.
I again dont feel like anyone needs to buy anything but the core stuff from FG, you can make it all, the videos teach you how, and the community will answer any questions that you dont know. I couldnt code XML 3 weeks ago, now I am starting to help troubleshoot and teach some things because this community has taught me so well. Digital DM has youtube vids on how to make modules using FG interface alone.

[LordEntrails]

First, don't take anyone's responses as being against finding a way to make this work. The community here and SmiteWorks have always been very open to listening to suggestions. But we (the community) also have to keep in mind that just because we find a good idea/suggestion for a situation one (or many) of us may be in, doesn't means it works as a business model for SW (or adheres to the contractual obligations they have made with other companies).

The ideas presented to you so far are things we know works, without any changes required by anyone else. So we just need to make sure the discussion follows both courses; suggestions for what you can do now, and suggestions for maybe how things could change.


I don't understand your comment, I was assuming the Ultimate subscription, so based on that Smiteworks would get $10 and give the user $5 that they have to spend with Smiteworks. They make $5 and then make whatever their cut is off the sale of whatever they apply the gift cert for.
As Wookie says, then they make half as much money. But actually, they would then make even less than that because of the overhead and losses associated with gift certificates (which could easily eat up another $1). I will say this is the first time I've heard of this. It's interesting, but not sure it would work.


This does not address the high cost of entry for a new user who wants to run games. I agree that the books are not required but if it is a selling feature for FG then the issue of cost of the books is a valid issue.
I don't think the cost is as high as you feel it is. The cost of ownership of everything you want is high, but that's not the same as cost of entry. For instance, the car I want costs $100k, but that's not the price to get a new car. I can do that for $10k or less. The cost of entry for a group into FG is $10/month (assuming subscription). The cost of everything to use FG to it's fullest is hundreds of dollars. But that's not the cost of entry. That's the cost of the Ferrari with ALL of the bells and whistles :)


If a person with a limited gaming budget wants to support their local store, how do you expect them to do that without buying the physical books fro the store? The point is that not everyone has multiple hundreds of dollars to spend each month on gaming. I am lucky if I have 20-30 if that. I am making suggestions to improve the barrier to entry of cost.
I think very few of the people here have that much money to spend. I too am lucky if I spend $20/month on gaming. Myself, I don't support my FLGS, because FG is my local store. I live in one of the ten largest metros in the US, yet my FLGS is across town. FG is in my house :) We realize you have to decide whom to support with your dollars. We can only show you how to get the most value our of what you spend with FG, and show you what value it brings to us.

Keep the suggestions coming. We can give our views on how they may or may not work out. And like I said, SW is really good about watching what goes on in the forums and taking suggestions. They may not comment if they don't have anything constructive to add, but they are watching!


I have tried the Par5e and it is not intuitive nor user friendly and it assumes you have a electronic version of the book. If you have only a physical copy of the book that is a lot of manual entry of information. The point of trying to get my group to change was that all this stuff was available and we would not have to enter it ourself.
I agree Par5E is not friendly. That's why KP9911 has been working on his FG 5E Parser (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?30560-Fantasy-Grounds-5E-Parser). But, both assume you can scan in a copy of your own PHB or other book. Also remember, Roll20 requires you to purchase the PHB. Or if my understanding is correct, have a paid account if you want to effectively have room to make your own (without a parser tool).

I agree that the drag and drop is a huge benefit to buying the PHB in FG. I actually decided when I started playing 5E to only buy my books/adventures/etc in FG. So I don't have physical copies at all. Just my FG versions.


I am amazed that people would be against this, unless you feel that FG should only be for the elite players who have a lot of money to spend. Why not entertain any ideas that make getting more players and DMs for FG?
Again, I don't think anyone is against getting more players and DM's to use FG. We're all for it and are often talking about ways to do this. You may notice FG Con 10 (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjN0O_-jZPTAhWqsVQKHfsyD94QFggcMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fg-con.com%2F&usg=AFQjCNGnQTHNFZB-Zdzl3Uvzhlk9UtEF7w&sig2=N4VXIiu2RWVKd7vqEYUyCQ) which is running this weekend. It's one of the things the community does to help grow itself. We also do talk about ideas such as yours fairly regularly. And SW does adapt and change. For instance, the subscription model is relatively new as well as the Ultimate License.

So, keep the ideas coming :)

[Zacchaeus]

For what you want to do warderbrad the cost will be high. I suspect that you are in a minority in that your group are all players and DMs; most groups will only have one DM and as always the DM will bear the brunt of the cost. It is perhaps dependant on how often you rotate DMs of course but if you were going to be running say Storm Kings Thunder then that is pretty much going to take you several months of gaming to get through and initially only one of you will want the Ultimate license + (I would suggest) the PHB and the adventure itself. The cost of the Ultimate can be mitigated by taking out a subscription leaving more cash available to buy the necessary adventure and PHB.

The PHB and the adventures are regularly on sale at a decent discount.

If your rotation is more frequent that this however then you are looking at each DM buying at least a standard license and also the PHB and one adventure each. You can theoretically just use the SRD for character creation (it comes free with the standard license) but it is inadequate since it lacks much of the archetypes, backgrounds and feats which give the characters all of the options.

It isn't necessary to use par5e; since you can now enter all of the classes, backgrounds, feats, spells and anything else directly into Fantasy Grounds. That does involve a fair bit of typing of course if you are working from a hard copy.

I don't think there is an easy solution to your problem; but there are solutions which will keep the initial cost down. Much will depend on what you and your group thinks and what you want to do.

[warderbrad]

I have offered the subscription offer to my group. They saw it as a cost sink with no end benefit due to not giving anything toward the purchase of the software. We rotate about every month and we are not running any hardcover modules but are doing personally created content. So each of our DMs (3 total) would have to have the PHB, DMG, and MM at least. Since some of us have used info from the SCAG and Volo's guide some would need those available (that could be left to those players who need it possibly).

I can understand how it would seem like Smite would get less with the option of getting a gift cert, this would be the case if they were only selling to the current player base only. Of the people I have talked to (about 30 people) 12 have already gotten FG (4 of those are under a subscription), 10 are just not interested and 8 would but the cost is the major issue (and feel that the subscription is not a good enough option). This leaves about 25% would but won't cause of cost (based on my rough esitmates). I have no idea what their sales figures are but assuming that they have 1,000 current subscribers to the monthly plan. Using those numbers if 13% of players out there would do the subscription, and another 25% might, then lots of money is being left on the table and not going to FG. Even counting the cost of giving the gift certs (I think $1 is a bit high but a big enough issue to argue over) getting the extra $5 from the subs alone would be a big increase.
I bet if the monthly sub came with a portion back as a credit to the account and the price for the sub went up it would probably still be a desirable option to those using the sub now and would address the issue that many say when you offer the sub.
If it was possible for players (not just DMs) to share their books if they have an ultimate it would address the issue of the books and would make the VTT more resemble how people play face to face. I know that for many they have given up face to face play in favor of VTT due to the reasons you have stated. I just want to see everyone using both, I can't help those that are not reasonably close to a local store, but I can come up with ideas to make FG more attractive to people. I can only base my ideas on the resistance I have faced myself.

[ddavison]

Some things to consider regarding the DM's requirements.

1. You have the SRD 5 Data modules, so you have lists of monster, items, magic items and even 1 version of each race and class -- plus the D&D Basic Rules pack.
2. You could rotate a $10 a month license so that the group cost to DM is just $10 no matter who is running. If another DM wants to work on prepping their campaign, they would at least need the $4 plan for that month while they prepped. Otherwise, the 4-pack licenses would definitely be a good solution with no longer term costs.
3. Additional DLC for a DM would typically be a prebuilt adventure module. Only the DM running that adventure ever needs that module. You don't really even want the other DMs to have access to it while they are playing in that game. Those modules include the full monsters from the Complete Monster Pack whenever one is included. There is no need to add an additional DLC purchase just to run those.
4. Players Class Packs and Race Packs are either purchased as the Complete Pack or individual ones plus the base pack -
a) The PC Customization pack adds all race, feat, background info, etc. This is helpful for anyone running multiple characters or using options not already included in the SRD 5 Data modules. This adds $8 just to the purchase who thinks they need that. If you just need 1 or 2 feats, you could pretty much have 1 player copy and create a single item you needed. FG recognizes the content of the text. It doesn't care if you manually typed it in, copy and pasted from another source or pulled it from a purchased DLC.
b) Full versions of each class are available from $3 to $6. Each player would just need the class they wanted to play and again, only if they want to use the options not already included in the SRD and didn't want to have to manually enter anything.
5. The Complete Dungeon Master's Guide and the Complete Monster Pack - these are great for DM's who are going to run their own custom adventures and who want all the images, tables and other fluff content not found in the SRD 5 Data module. When an adventure uses content from either of these packs, that content is included and you don't need these modules.

[Nylanfs]

IF you are okay with having your purchases linked to Steam everybody could buy a $10USD Steam card at most convenience / CVS / Walgreens / Walmart stores and stack them up for a couple of months to get everything.

[Answulf]

The problem is more about the sourcebooks. FG is good but the real selling point is not having to input stuff because it is in the sourcebooks. Without that there is not a great enough benefit to using it over Roll20. At least not enough to warrant the high cost of entry.

Just curious, how is this different from Roll20? I haven't played there in a few years, but don't you have to pay the same price for the sourcebooks there too?

[JohnD]

Just curious, how is this different from Roll20? I haven't played there in a few years, but don't you have to pay the same price for the sourcebooks there too?

And get less functionality.

[damned]

Its different in that as roll 20 is browser based its dirt easy for different people to login to a single shared GM account... but still against their TOS.

[Bidmaron]

So the op is really griping because he can't easily steal a shared GM account?

[Answulf]

Ah, I see. Well like it or not, if Roll20 is easy to steal from that's gives them a competitive advantage in this area.

[Bidmaron]

That is like saying I will get more customers at my restaurant if I don't make them pay

[LordEntrails]

I don't think the OP was interested in stealing anything. He was asking what was allowed, and making suggestions on what he thought would help bring more players to FG. He added comments and opinions based on his experiences and discussions about what prevents people from using FG.

[Answulf]

Agreed. He did the opposite - he came to the forums and asked if it was allowed. Although he is saying that it is hard for his group to justify the FG cost when Roll20 is so easy to steal from.

[damned]

Hi guys - keep the conversation on track - the comments on roll 20 were mine not his.
The OP has posted in good faith asking first if this was a thing and when told it wasnt offered some suggestions.

ddavison posts some really good options. start with core classes, maybe grab the UA module from DMsGuild, players can grab a class pack, can start with the SRD/Basic monsters and manually input one new monster a week etc.

[JohnD]

It certainly can be done piecemeal if necessary. I'd think that the value of moving to FG would be self evident, but everyone's value proposition is based on a different equation.

[swbuza]

I must also be in the minority, because our gaming group of six regulars has four regular DMs that we rotate through. We've been doing this since about 1985. Frankly, I find it weird for any long-term playing group to only ever have a single DM. In any case, FG is new to us and I just went out and bought the ultimate edition so I could host the first series of games (actually, I'm running two different groups). Over time, I expect everyone else to buy the standard license. As far as the adventures go, I agree with Doug on #3 above. That's up to the DM wanting to run the campaign. Either you invest the time to make the whole thing up, or you buy a pre-made off the shelf. That's not any different than it has ever been.

[ddavison]

Those are the best groups in my opinion. Players who have sat on the other side of the table tend to be more willing to help out the DM and vice-versa.

[JohnD]

Those are the best groups in my opinion. Players who have sat on the other side of the table tend to be more willing to help out the DM and vice-versa.

Yeah, its really nice when that happens.

[swbuza]

Interestingly, Group #1 in my signature is the same set of guys playing together since college. Group #2 is the next generation -- children of the original group. I'm having a blast running them through. They are actually ahead of the parents despite starting at the same time. Eventually, once one of that group (in their twenties) begins to take charge, I'll step away and let the next generation go on its merry, storytelling way feeling like I've left a little bit of a legacy...