Nervous to spend 100$ on Ultimate Licence

[FullyTorqued]

So my best friend just moved away and I have another friend that I have never been able to play with because of distance. So the obvious answer is to play online. I am the DM and cant count on any of my players to pay for anything for reasons. Im nervous to spend so much money on Fantasy Grounds Ultimate Licence but it seems like my best option. My main concern is how much am I going to spend additionally for more product like the core rules and anything else that is important for playing DnD 5e. Am I going to be spending loads more even after indulging in the Ultimate Licenc

[Trenloe]

It all depends on what you're going to be running (commercial product or your own adventure) and if you are fine entering data manually or wanting everything entered for you.

As a minimum I would recommend taking out the $9.99 ultimate subscription for one month - this has a money back guarantee. This will allow you to get to know the FG VTT system and also access the 5E rulset and SRD data.

[Szabtom]

Yep, try the monthly sub first. You can start with the free rulesets and community rulesets, there is plenty of them. If you go the 5e way, you can try the free SRD rules before investing in the core set.

[Asterionaisien]

Well, with the ultimate license comes the 5ed srd. That's enough to play a bit imo, if you do adventures yourself, and maybe buy something only when needed.
If you buy a premade adventure they come with complete stats for monsters, npc etc, soif for example in an adventure there is a tabaxi and you dont have the volo guide, it's fully statted and usable in the adventure.
You can manually entry your own monsters and stuff and also use par5e to import from pdf; on the latter i cant comment because i never used par5e https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?27297-Par5e

[Maasq]

Hiya

I took out the ultimate subscription when I started 6 months back; I'd recommend it. It is just $10 and can be cancelled any time.

You get access to all the important things for playing - the ruleset, and the SRD (the stuff that Wizards made freely available to everyone). This gives you a decent range of monsters, treasures, spells, character classes etc to build adventures on. If you already have a stock of paper-based material you can enter it all into FG yourself if you have the time and patience. If your adventures are home-made, then you'll need to anyway. It's a great way to learn the intricacies of FG, and I felt the system helped me round out my adventure more.

There are a number of free tools that can help you with aspects of this - graphics editors, map makers and so on - and if you need pointers for any of these, there will be lots of advice... just ask.

All the games I have played so far have used Discord for the chat aspect. This is totally free too.

You'll almost certainly make further purchases to make your life simpler, but I have waited for every item I wanted to go on sale (2 items per week get 20% discount). I now have (in order of importance, as far as I could see) Player's Handbook (called the Complete Core Class Pack on the store), Monsters Manual, DM Guide, Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, & Volo's. I haven't paid for any of the WOTC adventures yet, but I have bought a couple from other companies.

Hopefully you and your 2 friends will meet another couple of people and have a whale of a time on here :)

Maasq

[Nylanfs]

Consider it like this if you all want to play Call of Duty do you buy the game for all your friends? Or do you expect them to not be cheapskates? :-) put it to them that way and point out you'll get a LOT more playtime with FG.

[Ken L]

FG has the most bells and whistles but if you're looking for bare bones and free try r20. Then when you want more features I'd go FG rather than going 'pro' there.

[Milke]

The hundred something dollars (and I'd do it now, while there's a sale going on), buys it forever. It's yours. And with ultimate, no one else you play with has to have a license. Everyone can connect with yours.

[Diceman]

The hundred something dollars (and I'd do it now, while there's a sale going on), buys it forever. It's yours. And with ultimate, no one else you play with has to have a license. Everyone can connect with yours.
This is true as long as you are the one who is the gamemaster. If others do not own their own license then they cannot host games. Only you can. It's a minor point but it should be made clear. Also any characters they make can only be used in your campaign. As an ultimate license holder you can create characters for yourself that you can use in anyone's game.

[Myrdin Potter]

If you have a group of friends that want to switch off as GM, then buying a standard license each makes the most sense. You cannot have any "free" players, but everyone can take their turn being the GM. The monthly subscription at that level is a lot lower as well.

The Ultimate license allows you to play in any game and to host even players that do not have a license.

You can export the characters for players if you want to and they can use them in other games and a copy is even kept locally for them as well.

[Andraax]

Also any characters they make can only be used in your campaign.

Not true; worst case scenario is that GM would need to export the character and email it to you. However, for some rulesets, even the demo version can export from the player side, IIRC.

[Trenloe]

Not true; worst case scenario is that GM would need to export the character and email it to you. However, for some rulesets, even the demo version can export from the player side, IIRC.
Correct. Manage Characters is available to Free/Demo licenses - this allows you to create/edit characters and also access your characters from previous sessions in read-only mode. But you can export and import the character XML to be able to edit/update the PC.