New to FG - need some guidance/tips on setup

[Mitroram]

Hello everyone,,

I've been DMing my own campaign/world online session for about 2 years now, using a mix of Skype+Teamviewer+CorelDraw+Word+Google and although it has been working lovely I thought it was time to try to step up to dedicated software particularly for the combat part as it is currently players pointing on teamviewer and me moving their characters, and with a very limited common to all players FoW/LoS.

Also, my style of DMing revolves a lot around exploring and I give players full freedom to wonder the land (0 railroading). While the world has moving plots and stories, players may completely ignore or miss to participate in any number of them, and whichever choices they make... the world keeps spinning. So in practical terms, sometimes there are only "gridless macro maps" and my imagination to deliver a good session.

So I was wondering if it would make sense to use FG only for combat/dungeon exploration and sharing images... and not use all the other tools like Notes, Quests, Items, etc, as I've been organizing my campaign content in Word docs per "area" (some bigger, some smaller), using web layout and headings navigation, which makes it rather easy to navigate content (notes on everything from plot info, encounters, notes, etc).

Does anyone have any opinions/suggestions on this? The last thing I'd want is to ask my players to wait while I take time bringing up things mid session. I'm a stickler for immersion and full RP :P

The one thing I do miss is a better way to search for references like rechecking how Grapple works, finding a spell description, etc.
I do have the physical books but they don't match up to a good search box :P currently I just google for "5e <keyword>" to find rulings if I really need to (although often I'll say "let's do like this for now, I'll check on that after the session").

I also use three monitors with the following setup:
- left (horizontal): Skype
- middle (horizontal): Maps with Coreldraw (detached, no UI) shared over Teamviewer (will now become FG instead)
- right (vertical): Word in Web Layout with Headings navigation + Corel with other assets + Spotify (which I inject with Voicemeeter banana over VOIP)

Furthermore, I'm considering asking my players to have their character sheets on d&d beyond because it seems to be really good and give them an awesome digital overview of their characters... any thoughts on that in relation to FG?

I am just another spammer

So any suggestions on how to fit FG into my setup and DMing style would be most welcome I'm a total FG noob ^^

Cheers!!!!

[Zacchaeus]

Hi Mitroram welcome to the forum.

I'd really suggest that you take out a subscription for and Ultimate Fantasy Grounds License ($10) and have a play around with it to see what it can do. If at the end of that period you decide it's not for you then you can cancel the sub and Smiteworks offers a full 30 day money back refund so you can get your $10 back.

For combat and character creation and organisation FG offers everything you really need. For your campaign you can organise your information into stories and pin those to your maps for easy retrieval. For finding information in books such as the Player's Handbook; it's fully indexed and has a search function. You can pin specific pages to the quick bar and retrieve that quickly during a session.

I'd also suggets two more things - first have a look at some of the videos linked in this thread https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?27296-Guides-videos-and-other-helpful-information and also head over to the FGCollege (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?40020-Join-Fantasy-Grounds-College-Learn-Fantasy-Grounds-learn-D-amp-D-and-then-play!) and take a couple of classes there.

It really is better to get a hands on feel for the software rather than someone try8ibng to explain it.

[LordEntrails]

I too will suggest you jump in. Read the manual and take a free class at FantasyGroundsCollege.net. you can play almost exactly like you do now. But add the character sheets in FG rather than DDB so you have the combat automation benefits. Later nm on you can organize your story content and move it from Word to FG if you want. Lots of strategies and techniques for doing that and people here can give you their experience and ad CV ice as well.

Jump in! Hope to see you around :)

[4wire]

Hello everyone,,

I've been DMing my own campaign/world online session for about 2 years now, using a mix of Skype+Teamviewer+CorelDraw+Word+Google and although it has been working lovely I thought it was time to try to step up to dedicated software particularly for the combat part as it is currently players pointing on teamviewer and me moving their characters, and with a very limited common to all players FoW/LoS.

Also, my style of DMing revolves a lot around exploring and I give players full freedom to wonder the land (0 railroading). While the world has moving plots and stories, players may completely ignore or miss to participate in any number of them, and whichever choices they make... the world keeps spinning. So in practical terms, sometimes there are only "gridless macro maps" and my imagination to deliver a good session.

So I was wondering if it would make sense to use FG only for combat/dungeon exploration and sharing images... and not use all the other tools like Notes, Quests, Items, etc, as I've been organizing my campaign content in Word docs per "area" (some bigger, some smaller), using web layout and headings navigation, which makes it rather easy to navigate content (notes on everything from plot info, encounters, notes, etc).

Does anyone have any opinions/suggestions on this? The last thing I'd want is to ask my players to wait while I take time bringing up things mid session. I'm a stickler for immersion and full RP :P

I don't think you need to suffer downtime too much, you seem to be well prepared so I would assume that you would prepare your game sessions in FG as well. You could preload all you think would be relevant. The clients will not need to preload that themselves. We use notes as players to keep ongoing campaign info. As a DM I rarely use notes, putting ideas/reminders straight into the story pages.

Items are cool, especially using the advanced effects. You need to account for less things as FG does it for you.


The one thing I do miss is a better way to search for references like rechecking how Grapple works, finding a spell description, etc.
I do have the physical books but they don't match up to a good search box :P currently I just google for "5e <keyword>" to find rulings if I really need to (although often I'll say "let's do like this for now, I'll check on that after the session").

The search function is there but it is slow. If what you are looking for is "itemized" in a dynamic table or item, ability, spell, etc it is much faster but running a text search on the reference books is not efficient. I often go back to pdfs or just google it.


I also use three monitors with the following setup:
- left (horizontal): Skype
- middle (horizontal): Maps with Coreldraw (detached, no UI) shared over Teamviewer (will now become FG instead)
- right (vertical): Word in Web Layout with Headings navigation + Corel with other assets + Spotify (which I inject with Voicemeeter banana over VOIP)

FG uses one main window element. If you go multi-display, you will have to stretch the app over all screens. It works well but sometimes has a side effects of new windows poping up in the middle of two screens which makes it hard to read so you often have to move things around. It's also better if all screens have matching resolutions.


Furthermore, I'm considering asking my players to have their character sheets on d&d beyond because it seems to be really good and give them an awesome digital overview of their characters... any thoughts on that in relation to FG?


I would just use FG. Otherwise you will lose most of the combat automation which is the best part of FG.


So any suggestions on how to fit FG into my setup and DMing style would be most welcome I'm a total FG noob ^^

Cheers!!!!

You should give it a try for sure. The more we use it, the more we like it. There is a learning curve, you do need to add extensions but it's paying off with less accounting and more actual play and RP!

[H2Os]

I use beyond in conjunction with FG. It's nice for players to be able to see thier characters without having FG running. I usually keep thier characters up to date.

Edit: it is also nice when it comes time to level up.

[Dallas Adams]

there are bunches of videos you can watch on this site and youtube that give you a full play through look from the dm's view. i havent started on fg yet, im still researching few things but i am truly impressed with how intuitive the user interface seems to be. adding monsters to map encounter spots is seamless and easy fog of war, player movement items etc etc. ive watched a 4 hour video and a 2 1/2 hour video of full game sessions and i have trouble seeing things they could improve much as far as ease of use. watch a few videos and see for yourself man, your going to be impressed.

[AznBran]

I too use DDB for my character management, that said I use this tool to import the .XML info into FG and it works great! The only issue I found was that it didnt import all of my Wizards spellbook, but you can just drag and drop the missing spells into their character sheet.

https://ai6k.com/dndbeyond/

[damned]

Just another spammer

[Griogre]

We might need to put a number of post limit on being able to post links :(

[tamahandy]

- middle (horizontal): Maps with Coreldraw (detached, no UI) shared over Teamviewer (will now become FG instead)
- right (vertical): Word in Web Layout with Headings navigation + Corel with other assets + Spotify (which I inject with Voicemeeter banana over VOIP)


As somebody who likes to share a lot of pictures and maps for flavour and immersion and above sentence make me assume that you use a lot of high res pictures, FGC and FGU have a certain 1MB "limit" on file size for images you share as these file will be pushed through your upload bandwith to all the other players, while sharing these via Teamviewer will just share what is on your screen, so the file sizes of the image is not limiting and you can easily zoom in and out, while when you share large high res images these files can freeze your players when they connect as the complete files will be transfered.

Otherwise the recommendation of all the others is pretty solid :-).

[damned]

the 1MB limit is a guide and not a hard limit.
and the OP is a spammer and has copied/pasted his post from elsewhere

[CaptainNorway]

Hope you're enjoying. Just started on FGU from other VTTs and loving it so far, even with a little learning curve.