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LocustPoint
March 9th, 2018, 02:20
Hello all! Well I finally did it. I bought the ultimate license.

I am 48 year old who first started gaming in 1980. Keep on the Borderlands. I played for three years before I tried my hand at DMing. I was a natural. My group and I stayed together for years and years. Lost a few...gained a few but the core group stayed together for 20 years. We went through 1st edition, 2nd edition, 3rd edition and a little bit of 3.5. They are still together playing Pathfinder which I didn't have the pleasure of playing. Why did I not continue on you ask? Well my ex wife is still in that group and she remarried one of the others in my old group. Good for them. But that is neither here nor there. Anyway I stopped playing in 2005 and always missed it. Fast forward to 2016...My kids (I have three) and my nephew expressed a great interest in playing D&D so I obliged. I didn't have any of my stuff anymore. I think it all was confiscated by my ex and my ex best friend (again neither here nor there...lol). So I bought the 5e Players and the MM. I did some research on the DMs rules and we started playing. Man, it was like I never stopped. My kids and nephew were really good and it brought back so many great memories. I converted some of my favorite modules (I don't guess they are called modules anymore) and we played. All has been good. Only a few things were lacking.

Our game was bogged down with a few things. I was pleasantly surprised that my kids were very tactically sound. It is probably because of all the strategy video games that all of them play. Anyway, we use miniatures (plastic army men) and a dry erase battle map. I don't have the steel trap of a mind I used to so I forgot which enemy was wounded and who wasn't. It really was a slow process so I decided to try some old school theater of the mind encounters. My players (my kids) did not enjoy it as much even though it streamlined play (I still had the steel trap issues too).

Now I am running a converted version of Desert of Desolation and it was one of my favorites. After that I want to run Against the Giants and, hallelujah, Tales From the Yawning Portal has Against the Giants! So I purchased the Ultimate. I have at least a year to get my crap together with FG and then we will all go digital. My players (my kids) all have laptops and they are a very computer savvy (much more than I) so I am hoping for some help from them. I really believe that playing on FG will make things much easier and free me up for roleplaying and description.

Speaking of help. I am sure I will need some so I am hoping that these forums will be a resource to me. I have already overcome, with no computer knowledge, the issue of 1802 porting and my oldest son and I ran some practice stuff today. I think it will be awesome. I am pretty stubborn but I will probably relent and ask a few questions here. I am sure they will be greeted with real help from the good people here.

If you read all of this, thank you. I look forward to interacting with all of you either in game or out of game. I will be looking for a game that I can play in to get acclimated to the system and get some ideas how to run a game on FG. And shamelessly steal some DMing tips so look out for me.

Rob (LocustPoint)

JohnD
March 9th, 2018, 02:23
Welcome Rob!

dberkompas
March 9th, 2018, 02:25
Welcome Rob. I have two words for you.
Fantasy Grounds College
https://www.fantasygroundscollege.net/

Join us on discord and get personalized training on everything FG.


Dave

LocustPoint
March 9th, 2018, 02:30
Thanks JohnD!

LocustPoint
March 9th, 2018, 02:31
Thanks Dave!

Procurator
March 9th, 2018, 02:50
Welcome!

LocustPoint
March 9th, 2018, 03:01
Thanks Pro!

mlesnews
March 9th, 2018, 04:30
Welcome aboard Rob, you have come to the right place. The FG community and FGC (Fantasy Grounds College) are wonderful and great assets for learning.

LocustPoint
March 9th, 2018, 04:55
Thank you mlesnews. You are in my time zone. Hope to see you!

Bro.T
March 10th, 2018, 00:21
Welcome Rob! Keep on the borderlands was my first "production" module as well! I had the red box. :D Still have 4 of those original dice with the crayon still in the number grooves. Anyway, like Dave said, check out FGC. It's a great resource.

Thegroo
March 10th, 2018, 01:17
Welcome to (in my opinion) the best community and (in my opinion) the best software to play d&d

Grommit57
March 10th, 2018, 06:11
Excellent choice. I just upgraded to ultimate. I find I can answer almost all my questions by just reading the forums. FGC is good. Lots of tutorials on the wiki.

LocustPoint
March 10th, 2018, 17:46
Thanks news!

LocustPoint
March 10th, 2018, 17:48
Thanks Grom. Hope you find great adventure!

LocustPoint
March 10th, 2018, 17:50
BRO, yes a long time ago!

Erin Righ
March 11th, 2018, 18:13
Hey Rob, welcome to the community. If you took the plunge and bought ultimate, I highly doubt it will take you a year to make the transition. I bought my first ultimate sub in May '16 and we started using it at the table almost immediately. The more I learned about the capabilities of the program, the more I relied on it. Within 6 months I was using it almost exclusively for character organization, battle maps, automation, and rules lawyering. I use Hero Lab by LWD for character creation, which ports (mostly ok) into Fantasy Grounds for Pathfinder (which is what I play). For a free alternative and a powerful character generator, you can also check out PCGen, I believe it supports 5E? Nylanfs will be on soon to correct me if I am wrong. The automation for 5e in FG simply can't be beat, I am told. Anyway, check out FGC they will have you going in no time.

LocustPoint
March 11th, 2018, 19:20
Thank you Erin. I will check it out!

LocustPoint
March 11th, 2018, 19:22
I miss my old dice Bro! Thanks. Hope to see youa

LocustPoint
March 11th, 2018, 19:23
Thanks They too! It looks like it will help me!

Nylanfs
March 12th, 2018, 01:35
Yep PCGen totally does. And it's fairly easy to add your own homebrew info into it. :) see link in sig.

Mortar
March 12th, 2018, 03:40
Welcome, and I'll add another vote for PCGen....frickin awesome tool!

Caelen
March 14th, 2018, 21:14
Welcome to the party, Rob! It's good to see people getting into D&D, both returning and new. I think you'll get a lot out of FG, especially with remembering which monsters/players are wounded and which aren't, since FG handles all of that automatically for you.

LocustPoint
March 14th, 2018, 21:34
Thank you all for the onsight