Want fantasy grounds, already own all DDB content. Mixed presence game. Advice?

[malnourish]

This is not a complaint post. I understand why FG can't simply let me import all my content natively/have it for free and I understand that D&D Beyond (at least currently) doesn't support automatic exporting.

Situation

I have a weekly game with a handful of players in person and one player online. Previously, we played using Roll20 maps on either a projector or a laid-flat monitor. For reasons I don't need to get into, I would like to stop doing that.
I'm now looking to put the maps/images/video of our remote player on my 4k tv and we sit around the living room table.
The players still want to roll physical dice (I'm all for it -- chase your bliss) and seem fine with having their figures represented on screen.

I'm going to be DMing with a laptop running two instances of FG, one for me as DM and one displayed on the TV as a player view.
I also plan on having my other laptop (a chromebook) run FG and the players will either designate one person to move them around or they can pass the laptop around to move on each of their turns.
The remote player will join using FG.
(I know FG doesn't run natively on a chromebook but it works in crossover and I'll turn on dev mode and install linux if needed)

All of the above has been tested with the demo version.

My questions are:


Is this totally ridiculous?
How easy is it to run player + npc combat all on DM side (for all players except the remote)
Can I still create PCs with at least a semblance of rules without buying all the sourcebooks? I would like my remote player to enjoy a bit of automation
Is there any way of importing content (even manually) from D&DB or am I SOL? By content I mostly mean enemies and class rules and features. I have already tested adding maps in the demo
Will the images and maps I add to the campaign from my desktop transfer over to my laptop if I copy the campaign folder using e.g. google drive? I know not put the data folder in a cloud provider.


I would be getting the Ultimate package so my remote player can join as a guest. I'm currently in the back half of a LMoP game and I anticipate running that right into a SKT game.
Even though I already own the Legendary pack on DDB I would consider picking up SKT on FG for all the content and maps premade.

Also I really like the combat tracker. I could do mostly what I want by combining various online tools, but FG ostensibly seems the way to go for me.

I know this question has come up a few times and I'm aware of some tools for importing content to FG, but it's still a bit of a mystery to me. I'd appreciate any advice.

[JohnQPublic]

You'll have access to the 5e SRD content which is most of what you'll need. You'll have to manually create the stuff that's not included in SRD that you want to use.
The monsters in the SRD use 'ugly' tokens - just letters, not images - so you may want to use your own tokens, but that's easy enough to do too.

All in all, the prep work will be a bit more than if you had the content natively in FG, but it's more than do-able.

[Zacchaeus]

Hi mainourish welcome to FG.

You can certainly do what you want to do. Some further reading in this post and there are links to other posts too which are worth looking at https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?30464-Using-Fantasy-Grounds-at-the-physical-table-top

As John says above you will have access to the SRD, but I would recommend that you at least consider the purchase of the Player’s Handbook. This will make class creation much easier and will give your players many more options. If you are buying the SKT module you won’t need anything else since it contains all of the NPCs, treasures and items and is fully optimised to run in Fantasy Grounds.

[damned]

Check out these videos.
Add only the content you need.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV0vH1eeUZM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYdl0sUYbUw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTtaC2Tz79U

Videos by Zacchaeus

[LordEntrails]

My questions are:


Is this totally ridiculous?

Not in my opinion :)



How easy is it to run player + npc combat all on DM side (for all players except the remote)

It's not bad at all, the thing is if you set up all the PCs as full FG PCs it will make it easier in the long run, but take more setup time.



Can I still create PCs with at least a semblance of rules without buying all the sourcebooks? I would like my remote player to enjoy a bit of automation

Sure. Without the FG books you will have to type in all the info you want. So if you want all the class/feature/ability info you would have to type it, but other than the name and the effects, I don't see why you would need it (though you might want it...)



Is there any way of importing content (even manually) from D&DB or am I SOL? By content I mostly mean enemies and class rules and features. I have already tested adding maps in the demo

There is a post around here somewhere with someone making a tool for importing DDB characters. But it is still early beta from what I remember.



Will the images and maps I add to the campaign from my desktop transfer over to my laptop if I copy the campaign folder using e.g. google drive? I know not put the data folder in a cloud provider.

Yep, and you might consider making an FG module so you can reuse the content in future campaigns.


Even though I already own the Legendary pack on DDB I would consider picking up SKT on FG for all the content and maps premade.
You may find it's worth your time since all the NPCs and items etc will already be setup.

[dberkompas]

Or do what a few of us here have done.

Legendary on DDB
Complete bundle on FG

As well as a few of the hard-covers.

I love the feel of the hard-covers, and absolutely love the search feature of DDB, just wish DDB would give us an API or XML output for character sheets.


Welcome to the boards @malnourish.

Oh, you may also want to check out the Discord channel for Fantasy Grounds College.

https://www.fantasygroundscollege.net/


Dave

[malnourish]

Thanks for all the responses everyone, I'm going to go through and check all the links out.

[owensd]

Or do what a few of us here have done.

Legendary on DDB
Complete bundle on FG

As well as a few of the hard-covers.

I love the feel of the hard-covers, and absolutely love the search feature of DDB, just wish DDB would give us an API or XML output for character sheets.

Yeah... that's what I ended up doing (Leg on DDB, most of the bundle here), but honestly, I kind of regret purchasing the books here on FG as I thought I'd be able to just pull out the data that I want from the modules. I find it a bit annoying trying to filter through the content I have for my campaign and all of the other stuff coming in from modules, but I'm still new to FG so it might just take some getting used to.

[dberkompas]

All the other stuff coming from modules?

Please tell us you're not loading multiple adventure modules, that's just plain crazy.

Once play starts, the only modules I have open are PHB, DMG and the specific adventure I'm running.


Dave

[owensd]

None of the adventure modules, those are actually the only ones I didn't get. However, my players have races and class options from the various supplements, so I have Xanathar's, Volo's, Sword Coast, etc... all of these bring in things under maps and images that make it a bit challenging to sort through the content I care about vs. what's coming in from elsewhere. Groups can help, but I need to move my campaign details out into a module so I can import it in to better utilize the group filter; that will probably help a bunch.

[Bidmaron]

Welcome to forum, owensd! Your module idea is the way to go if you are confused but you have to admit the problem is no worse than you would face with the hard copies. And you wouldn’t practically be able to make a module from hard copies.

[owensd]

So what I was originally planning to do, before I found out that WoTC files are encrypted and don't allow for exporting out, was to create a module with only the classes and race options that we were going to be using. Alas, it was not to be.

[Trenloe]

So what I was originally planning to do, before I found out that WoTC files are encrypted and don't allow for exporting out, was to create a module with only the classes and race options that we were going to be using. Alas, it was not to be.
See here for details on how to make your own modules containing just the info you want: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?44213-Consolidating-Modules&highlight=Module+export+copy
And here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?44609-Module-Modifications&p=396266&viewfull=1#post396266

Additionally, for your issue of finding information, you may find accessing the data lists from within the library a little bit easier to work with. These give you direct access to the data specific to that module only.

[owensd]

Ooh, thanks! I thought I tried copying items before and it wasn't working. I'll try it out again and see.