How active is the community?

[Morfedel]

Just out of curiousity, I'm wondering just how hard it is to find games, or players. I'm coming from OpenRPG, which is free, and has a somewhat active community. Also, all game servers are made public, and though you can password them to keep people out, if you wanted to recruit you can just keep the proverbial doors open and let people wander in.

In fact, that's how I found my current group of online gamers, through meeting them in these open servers, much more often then posting on a forum.

Apparently, since servers aren't posted on a master list or anything, one has to use, for example, these forums. And I wonder just how active the community is, in comparison?

Thanks!

[Ablefish]

Well, there is the Game Calendar as well - and last time I looked there were a variety of games looking for players.

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/calendar/

[DarkStar]

I'd rate it poor at the moment. There are just a few campaigns and too many people to play them.
I'd like to buy FG very much, but only if I have people to play with... So the way it works for me is to find a campaign, sign in and buy the product when I'm sure I'm gonna play. I don't like to waste money on software I don't use. :/

[Cantstanzya]

I'd rate it poor at the moment. There are just a few campaigns and too many people to play them.
I'd like to buy FG very much, but only if I have people to play with... So the way it works for me is to find a campaign, sign in and buy the product when I'm sure I'm gonna play. I don't like to waste money on software I don't use. :/ As you said, there are just a few campaigns and too many people to play them. Why don't you start your own campaign? I think there is just as much fun in DMing as there is being a Player Character. Everyone wants to just hitch onto a campaign but doesn't want to put the effort into running a campaign. This is not directed just at you, but this goes back to the days of PnP where people wanted to play but no one wanted to DM. My group has two campaigns going, one which I DM and another that a PC of my group DMs. This way everyone gets to play. Now granted not everyone is cut out to be a DM, but I wish more people would step up and create more campaigns.

[DarkStar]

As you said, there are just a few campaigns and too many people to play them. Why don't you start your own campaign?

Because I have always been a Game Master (not d20), ever since I got interested in RPGs. I want to play at least for once! :D Plus, I don't know D&D, besides reading the Player's Handbook, I have experience in Warhammer.



Everyone wants to just hitch onto a campaign but doesn't want to put the effort into running a campaign. This is not directed just at you, but this goes back to the days of PnP where people wanted to play but no one wanted to DM.

That's because the DM has a lot of homework to do in order to run a game, whilst a player just comes to your house and asks where's the pepsi. :P I have the same experiences as you do. And I want to play this time.

[Amurayi]

This product would be much more successful if the player version would be free and the DM would have to pay for the full version.

[Sigurd]

Ironically, I think the reverse might be true. DM's are what we need for our players.

If one could figure out a way to make the DM version free but unable to connect to another DM version that might make a big difference.

I sense a lack of running adventures as being the biggest threat to Fantasy Grounds. Smyteworks and the various Adventure packages should quietly announce free incentives for anyone willing to take all players (say up to 8 for realism).

Maybe Smyteworks should have a game exchange?

1) Run an adventure ( all your own artwork etc....)
2) License it to Smyteworks forever. Receive a free adventure to run next.

That would be a good system.


Sigurd

[DarkStar]

This product would be much more successful if the player version would be free and the DM would have to pay for the full version.


Ironically, I think the reverse might be true. DM's are what we need for our players.

Well, I think you're both right and wrong. ;) From the business perspective the scheme where you give away free player copies is bad, as you won't make much money on it. Yet, when you give away free DM clients, there still won't be enough players, as they won't be willing to pay to play, anyway.

The best idea seems to make an option to buy floating, open, call them whatever you like licences that let you host a game for up to [open licensce number] people. I'm thinking of something like Microsoft's "per server" Client Access Licenses, only with an additional twist. ;] If you buy five open licenses you could run one campaign on Monday and Wednesday for one party, then another campaign on Saturday for the second party, etc. We (SmiteWorks, actually) don't want that to happen! It takes away money. But what if the application (FG) would keep a record of how many simultaneous campaigns (or adventures, modules, whatever it's called) you have saved on your disk? :> Actually, since the player character sheets are saved on the DM's disk, you know the exact number of them. So, if you bought 5 open licenses, you can save up to 5 (player! not NPC) character sheets on your hard drive. If you want to run two simultaneous campaigns for 5 and 4 people, you'd have to buy 9 open licenses and so on.

But then, we don't want to save sheets in plain XML files, so you can't cheat on the protection. The file should be signed with DM's license key, so you can't use it with other FG copy (unless the DM gives away the license key - and that's piracy - they can do it now, too).

It's far from complete solution, just my quick idea. It solves the problem of expensive (?) player clients, but buying single DM client is not enough to host games. The problem is, it hits DM's pocket, because he has to buy all those licenses. The best situation would be to leave the current purchase plan plus what I wrote above.

I don't even know if it can be done, probably not. You should consider such things in the software design phase, not with the final product at hand.

[joshuha]

Once 1.06 comes up I plan on running 3 concurrent campaigns. I have 1 going now, and working on making 2 more but waiting on 1.06 to implement certain ruleset features (one is d20, one is WoD with dice pools, one is Shadowrun with dice pools).

[Morfedel]

I GM much more often than I play, and guess what? I prefer GMing. I LOVE GMing.

I"m not running one yet, however, because I bought the program a mere two days ago, and I need to learn how to build an adventure. I thought doing things like linking maps into the system would be as simple as, say,
File->Insert and insert the map you need. However, I can't figure out how to put it in.

If it requires coding, then I don't mind, I know how to do that. But I need to learn the structure of the XMLs being used, and how to code it (and frankly, forcing a GM to also be a programmer is not wise; there are alternatives out there without that requirement).

If it doesn't require coding, I've yet to figure out how to do it. Of course, its only been two days, and I've been doing other things too, but....

[joshuha]

Dragging the image into your \images directory in your campaign doesn't work?

[DarkStar]

Is there no documentation at all or what?

[linkmaxwell]

Just past the image that you want to include into the campaign folder that you're playing. (took me a while to figure it out, too)

[Dupre]

Is there no documentation at all or what?

The manual (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/filelibrary/FantasyGroundsManual.pdf) is available online under the Downloads (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/downloads) section. Granted, the manual is old and doesn't cover all the features available, but it does contain enough to get you well underway.

Regarding images, you can place them in the images folder as described in the manual on page 17.

[Cantstanzya]

That's because the DM has a lot of homework to do in order to run a game, whilst a player just comes to your house and asks where's the pepsi. :P I have the same experiences as you do. And I want to play this time.Which is why the best players are ones that have DMed/GMed before. They can appreciate the work that is put into running a campaign. You'll notice that the first people to bail on a campaign (or are very disruptive) are ones that have never put any work into one.
As far as the community not being active, I tend to disagree. I think it is very active and helpful. The developers are great and participate in alot of the topics. In response to not being able to find games, I made a suggestion 3 or 4 months ago about the Full Version being free and charging more for the lite version. Here is how it would work:
Anyone could download the Full version for free to create content and host games. The full version could not connect to anyone, only the lite version could connect to the full version. This would increase the amount of DM/GMs in the community because anyone could host a game. More modules and rulesets would be created and I believe the community would grow rapidly. The only down side I see in this is that it wouldn't allow for multi-DMs in a campaign, which I hope Smite Works will some day put into FG.

[AngryPhoenix]

I joined, bought FG and found a group to play with the next day. That was last week. What I would do is find a group to play with, then buy the licence. Until you find the group you can download the demo to see what the program is like.

[DarkStar]

That's exactly what I'm doing now. I will gladly DM, but when I gain more experience in d20, now I couldn't.

[Morfedel]

Well I'll be darned, it sure is in the manual. I completely missed it. That, and there are so many things missing out of the manual that I just assumed that I didn't miss it, heh.

I'm going to have to go back and read it more thoroughly, I see.

And I'll run a game myself, once I am comfortable with making adventures in FG.

[Dupre]

You might also find Holyfield's Visual FAQs (https://www.landofcaern.com/visualfaqs.htm) helpful.

[valyn]

I thought teh interface would be a bit friendlier as well. Its O.K. once you get the nag of it and you can build modjule w/o any coding whatsoever, their tutorial and manual is jstu a bit to simplistic to allow you to grasp the program quickly.

I would like to start a game mysels, but it has been so long since I ahve played RPG's I don't think I would make a very entertaining DM at this point.