The most frustrating thing I have ever spent money on ...

[HalfOrcHeavyMetal]

Dear sweet God in Heaven, why did I buy this thing?:mad:

The UI is counter-intuitive and distressingly clumsy, the 'how to' videos are mostly useless and I've spent two hours yelling at the screen trying to make a basic trial character.

I mean, I can't even get the point system to work for assigning stats. You are literally putting it in by hand, try to get the next function put into place and it deletes the number you put into the first part! This is just absurd! I'm trying to get this going so the group can trial doing our games online given we're all pushing into our thirties and between kids, shifts and partners, none of us have the free time to all go to somebody else's house for a few hours and this is ... just a nightmare!

Please tell me I'm just being a grognard here and there's a simple and elegant way to put the stats together other than having to manually enter all of them myself? This is absurdly fiddly madness with no real support!

[Zacchaeus]

Welcome to FG.

Yes you have to enter your ability scores manually. Click the box and type in the score for that stat.

You’ll find a bunch of videos on character creation here. https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?46965-New-Character-Creation-Videos

And a ton of videos and written guides here. https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?27296-Guides-videos-and-other-helpful-information

You may also want to join the FGCollege Discord Group where you’ll get advice and they also run classes. https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?40020-Join-Fantasy-Grounds-College-Learn-Fantasy-Grounds-learn-D-amp-D-and-then-play!

And there is an official Discord group too where there are plenty people who can help. https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?36377-New-Official-Discord-Server

[LordEntrails]

Welcome Grognard! :)
(I hope you take that in the humorous way its intended! And actually a lot of us our much older than you young 30 somethings *G*)

What resources other than videos are you trying to use to learn FG? Personally videos are a horrible way for me to learn anything. I prefer written words. Have you used the User Manual (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/filelibrary/FantasyGroundsUserManual.pdf)? What about the forums here? Have you used one of the write ups for character creation? I don't know what ruleset you are wanting to play, but how about this one for 5E; https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?39993-5E-Detailed-Step-By-Step-Character-Creation-Guide-with-Screenshots How about a totally free class at www.fantasygroundscollege.net? Or how about jumping online of the Discord servers when you have an some time to ask someone to help walk you through?
Official FG Discord https://discord.gg/VKbhkSt
FG College Discord: https://discord.gg/Ew6nYyw

And though I really think you will love FG once you get past this initial hurdle, you can always get a refund within 30 days if you purchased through the website here (Steam has its own refund policy), jut reach out to [email protected].

[Talyn]

Welcome to Fantasy Grounds and the forum! :) Hope you stick around, it's worth it in the end.

Yes, FG has a learning curve. So does every other VTT I've attempted to use. Once you overcome that initial hurdle and have that lightbulb moment, it's smooth sailing from there on out.

As Zacc and LE mentioned, I'd highly recommend checking out the Fantasy Grounds College Discord. They'll give you a guided tour of the functionalities.

In most rulesets, character creation only has basic-ish automation. That's because the focus has always been on being a virtual tabletop to play the games, not being a character creation tool like HeroLab or PCGen.

[Aircop]

I would also recommend FCG great resource, a lot of good people willing to help you there. https://www.fantasygrounds.com

[mattekure]

I would also recommend FCG great resource, a lot of good people willing to help you there. https://www.fantasygrounds.com

I think you mean Fantasy Grounds College (FGC) Its a group of fans who help people learn how to use the software. https://fantasygroundscollege.net/

[Three of Swords]

Welcome to Fantasy Grounds!

I once read on these forums: An Interface is like a joke. If you have to explain it, it's not a very good one.

That definitely applies here. However, once you 'get it', it's worth it. The power and automation in some rulesets makes it worth the warts. My friends and I migrated here from Roll20 and all but one of us vastly prefer FG (the one slightly prefers Roll20, but he's a big-time grognard and doesn't feel automation belongs in a tabletop RPG).

Good luck, and hopefully you enjoy your stay once you get past the learning curve.