Getting fantasy ground for local play

[Crusible]

I'm looking to expand the visuals of our group after seeing the TV built into a table for D&D link going around the web. They were using Fantasy Grounds and im curious about it. Is it the best program to use for local play or should I look elsewhere?

I want a program where I can load up maps, campaigns and run a session in place of a physical board where the DM would draw the dungeon or area. My plan is to still use paper character sheets and roll physical dice but I like the idea of having cool visuals.

[Trenloe]

Welcome to the forums.

I use Fantasy Grounds for face-to-face games all the time. See this extension here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?33834-Map-resize-to-TV-resolution-for-Face-To-Face-games that helps resize maps to the right size for using minis on a screen. Look through that thread, it has a number of photos of Fantasy Grounds being used for local play.

[Crusible]

Thanks ill take a look

[DGM]

Hi and Welcome,

I have only used Fantasy Grounds for campaign preparation and play at the table.
We use a beamer to project on the wall or on the table and it's working perfectly.

Players roll their physical dice and the calculations are sped up with manual input to Fantasy Grounds and for the GM it's a breeze to do book keeping in Fantasy Grounds.

Start up a second instance to connect to the machine locally and put it on the tv screen as the player's view.

[LordEntrails]

If all you want to do is display maps, then you could just use Paint or any graphic program to do that. If you want to add fog of war, then FG and several other programs will do that (pretty much any VTT). Now, with FG you get a bunch more than just that. Like DGM does, you can still have paper character sheets and roll real dice and benefit from the combat tracker automation and have a campaign management tool for yourself (organization, links between story entries and maps, etc). And down the road if you and your players want you can go the way I go, with full automation at the table, we do everything in FG. I have all my encounters setup with story entries and encounters with pre-placed NPCs, treasure parcels so I can quickly give the party all their loot, and even drag the encounters to the party sheet so XP is calculated and distributed with a click.

Obviously, we're strong proponents of FG, but we'll all be honest enough to tell you its not the only solution. If you have more questions, just ask :)

[Crusible]

FG seems like the best way to go. I want to be able to run sessions with friends where I can load up our campaign, enter a dungeon, run encounters, level up, keep stats all while being able to run it from my DM station. I Love the fog of war because it's just like having a DM map on your table where you draw your dungeon or town but it's visually more appealing which is what I want in the end. I download the demo to play with to get a feel for how it all works.

Im starting a new campaign in the new year with friend where ill be DMing for the fire time. they want to run tomb of annihilation so I'm hoping this works out well for me

[LordEntrails]

I think you'll really love FG. Any questions, just ask.

[Crusible]

I downloaded the demo to try and get an idea of how it all work but i cant seem to figure out how to run through a few turns as if I was running an actual game. I was able to re size the map, pull up a few monsters and place things. Any pointers for someone who is new to both FG and D&D?

[Nylanfs]

Drag things to the combat tracker, then to the map. Create place holders for your players and enter their rolled init.

[LordEntrails]

If you prefer to read insutructions, take a look at the manual; https://www.fantasygrounds.com/filelibrary/FantasyGroundsUserManual.pdf
If you prefer videos, there are a bunch here; https://www.fantasygrounds.com/wiki/index.php/Videos

Take a look at the 5E Tutorial campaign too, It should be available in your Load Campaigns, but if not, you can get it again here; https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?28150-New-5E-Sample-Campaign-Tutorial-Available

When you open it up there is a story entry that guides you through.

[Schmauch]

I´ve got a question regarding the licences. If running this on two PC´s in the same LAN you would need one ultimate or two standard licences. Am I right or is there an exception for local play? THX for considering.

[Nylanfs]

Welcome to the forums and FG community!

You can have one standard license on one machine and one demo running on a separate machine. If a second standard or demo license connects the first demo gets kicked. If you are just wanting to run a monitor or projector you can run a second instance on the GM's machine logging into "localhost" and use that to display to the second monitor.

[Schmauch]

Thank you for the quick reply and the welcome! I think I will give that a try for the very reasonable price of the standard licence. Happy to be onboard ;)