New user not sure if I want to invest in another eTools.

[GTGizra]

I downloaded the demo version off of Steam to try out and see if it is worth buying to switch all the user inputted data I have in eTools into a different computer aid for running my 3.5 D&D campaign that I have been running since AD&D in 1981. I am happy with how 3.5 works for my campaign and have invested heavily into it and do not want or am able to afford any newer edition books so don't suggest it. I have been using eTools to track and prepare my campaign since the time version 3.5 came out. Unfortunately the company lost their license when Hasbro decided to try forcing the player base to switch to newer versions by pulling all support for 3.5 in 2006 and I have been adding to the database of my copy as I have incorporated later 3.5 rules into my game. Codemonkeys kept assuring everyone they were going to make a new application that could be used by multiple game formats as eTools had just about reached the end of it's useful life and was limited in it's capabilities by the original company that created the program for Wizards of the Coast by using access database for their source code and to progress meaningfully they would have to go back to square one and build a whole new program, unfortunately it's 14 years later and it never appeared. Sorry for the rambling but my main concern is can Fantasy Grounds be used to track characters and world events and create adventures that can be played at the gaming table in an old school gaming set up with battle mats and miniatures as my RPG group are heavily invested in miniature figures and have no wish to stare at a computer screen for their time off?

[Karnas]

Wow, e-tools, that takes me back...


my main concern is can Fantasy Grounds be used to track characters and world events and create adventures that can be played at the gaming table in an old school gaming set up with battle mats and miniatures as my RPG group are heavily invested in miniature figures and have no wish to stare at a computer screen for their time off?
Well... I mean it sure can, but if you already have minis and battlemaps, then exactly it would be different from just keeping your notes on paper on laptop? FG offers a virtual tabletop mainly to play online with a powerful automation features to track initiative, health and stats in combat, but I've seen people make special gaming tables to translate virtual tabletops into actual real tabletops to get the best of both worlds, beautiful jpeg maps with real minis on them and keeping their charsheets in the Roll20 or FG. Although you probably still can do it with Map Tool too, or MOTE, although mote I've heard had died...

[Valyar]

It seems that you are looking at campaign organizer mainly. Fantasy Grounds can do that, but Realm Works is the right choice for that.

[Trenloe]

...but Realm Works is the right choice for that.
Maybe, if it was being actively developed and has a sure future...

@GTGizra - you can use FG for what you describe. After all it is designed to track campaign data, characters, etc. when playing online - replacing the face-to-face gaming table with a virtual table. FG's strengths can be a lot more than your average VTT, with tracking all sorts of data. Is it designed to be a fully fledged campaign management software? No, not really in it's base form - there are a number of community written extensions that provide additional functionality around this area.

For D&D 3.5E this is a ruleset (framework for playing, entering data, etc.) and OGL data modules with classes, items, spells, monsters, etc. from the 3.5E OGL. You'll be able to see all of this in the demo version - activate the 3.5E data modules.

For face-to-face gaming I use Fantasy Grounds to track data and to display digital battle maps. I love using minis and scatter terrain, so I display the maps on a flat screen TV and we still use mins, roll physical dice, etc..

[Valyar]

Maybe, if it was being actively developed and has a sure future...
True, LWD dropped the ball on that and the future is uncertain, but still the tool is one of the best. At least, if your criteria is like mine - no subscriptions, no online requirements and extensible schema of the content you are using it for. For now is in maintenance, but this does not mean it is unusable.

I would actually recommend to use Fantasy Grounds as the front-end during sessions and Realm Works for all the prep work, campaign tracking and rule reference.

[damned]

nothing near the capabilities of RealmWorks but this tool gives you a few extra tools for fleshing out your world.
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?54284-Player-Agency-Extension

[notrealdan]

If you are looking for a way to organize campaign notes electronically for local play and don’t need other VTT features, Microsoft OneNote is very good for that and is free. This site has some good D&D templates for OneNote:
https://www.cryrid.com/digitaldnd/

I use Fantasy Grounds for this instead since I run both local and remote games and only want one tool. My local game has transitioned to remote for now and the transition was seamless since we were already using FG anyways.

[GuernseyMan]

I would actually recommend to use Fantasy Grounds as the front-end during sessions and Realm Works for all the prep work, campaign tracking and rule reference.

Exactly what I'm using. They're a good complement to each other.

[LordEntrails]

Looks like you are similar to me, in that when you chose a tool you not only want it to be the right one at the moment, but one that has a long future and you don't want to be switching to another after a few years.

FG has been around since about 2004. It was the first to get a license from Wizards for 5E content and is the only one I believe that has a license for 'D&D Classics' (AD&D and 2E). In my view its one of the top digital tools AND its one of the only ones where all your content resides on your computer. You have complete control over it so if one day SmiteWorks goes out of business, you will lose very very little.

Good luck in your search, and certainly feel free to ask more questions.

[GTGizra]

Looks like you are similar to me, in that when you chose a tool you not only want it to be the right one at the moment, but one that has a long future and you don't want to be switching to another after a few years.

FG has been around since about 2004. It was the first to get a license from Wizards for 5E content and is the only one I believe that has a license for 'D&D Classics' (AD&D and 2E). In my view its one of the top digital tools AND its one of the only ones where all your content resides on your computer. You have complete control over it so if one day SmiteWorks goes out of business, you will lose very very little.

Good luck in your search, and certainly feel free to ask more questions.

Exactly since that was the issue I had with eTools and I would rather not repeat that headache even though I am still using eTools today. It was and is a great tool for prepping and tracking a campaign but it has always been a little clunky and difficult to work with even with ETHelper a user created tool that allows for more thorough manipulation of the database beyond what is in eTools. Then Codemonkeys lost (or let it expire due to financial reasons) their WotC license and they never produced the successor they had promised. I am curious about this "Realm Works" that was mentioned in an earlier answer, anyone have a link so I can check it out as I am finding it more work than I want to input data into Fantasy Grounds from my home brew campaign world and unlike eTools it doesn't vet the data according to 3.5 rules unless I am dong something wrong in the demo and just haven't enabled that functionality yet.

[Nylanfs]

Speaking from knowledge of what happened, WotC canceled the license that CMP had with next to no warning. And the owners were working on a replacement, but the owners had some serious disagreements and the lead programmer left without supplying any of the code. Which killed the company essentially.

Realm Works link (https://www.wolflair.com/realmworks/) but unless things drastically change you will run into the same issue, read here. (https://www.wolflair.com/an-update-from-our-president/?fbclid=IwAR2sPQIULiUAS6ddJ3dkn91fk3ffAIET_XQu3RRq 3DWuTujyAWcSwUpwgHQ)

[GTGizra]

Speaking from knowledge of what happened, WotC canceled the license that CMP had with next to no warning. And the owners were working on a replacement, but the owners had some serious disagreements and the lead programmer left without supplying any of the code. Which killed the company essentially.

Realm Works link (https://www.wolflair.com/realmworks/) but unless things drastically change you will run into the same issue, read here. (https://www.wolflair.com/an-update-from-our-president/?fbclid=IwAR2sPQIULiUAS6ddJ3dkn91fk3ffAIET_XQu3RRq 3DWuTujyAWcSwUpwgHQ)

So from your signature am I to infer that PCGen still exists and is supported. Memory is a little fuzzy but I seem to remember that PCGen existed at the same time as eTools and CMP produced datasets that would either work with it or work with both applications? Never really looked into it at the time but I remember wishing I had of when eTools went belly up.

[LordEntrails]

So from your signature am I to infer that PCGen still exists and is supported. Memory is a little fuzzy but I seem to remember that PCGen existed at the same time as eTools and CMP produced datasets that would either work with it or work with both applications? Never really looked into it at the time but I remember wishing I had of when eTools went belly up.
PCGen is in archive mode; https://pcgen.org/2019/12/17/pcgen-entering-archive-mode/

[Nylanfs]

There will still be data monkeys making more material and books, but the core program we just can't get and keep code monkeys to work on.

[Tommycore]

[...]my main concern is can Fantasy Grounds be used to track characters and world events and create adventures that can be played at the gaming table[...]

Yes. I just got my license like a week ago, but I know that even after all this Corona business, I will at the very least be using FG to keep track of my campaigns.

It has a complete database for pcs, npcs, encounters, items etc., that you can either fill by buying the official datapacks, or typing it in by yourself (just don't distribute it(!)). Same goes for campaigns, adventures, quests, etc. Not to mention the calender functionality, that let's you enter and track anything in ingame time.
If you need a new type of element, say you want to implement pet-hamsters, you can do so.
If you want to customise character sheets, you can do that as well. Say you wanted to add a field to store pet hamsters for example - no problem. Just add it in the xml forms, and the db will keep track automatically. Same goes for any other element, items, npcs, etc. - you name it.
It's all linkable to each other, so cross-referencing is no problem.
Everything's saved as one big XML file. So at any time you can just take your saved campaign, read it out with a little bit of coding, and print yourself a complete pdf with everything in there. Or just the stuff you want. Your choice. It's just plain text in an ordered fashion, so that both humans and computers can read it. I wouldn't recommend trying to read it out manually though. Sure, you can, but if your campaign has that much content, it'll drive anyone nuts. I'm not sure, but I think there already exists a tool for that. At least for characters.
You can also bundle stuff up into modules, and choose which modules to load and unload at any time. So you'll never run into problems that your project just get SO bloated that you can't find anything and it completely eats up all your RAM. I mean, if you manage to get your DB just a few MB big, with text only, that would be quite impressive.
Now features - FG has a combat tracker that tracks initiative, health, effect-durations, and can be manually used as well, and just about everything can be used via drag'n'drop functionality. Plus a ton of features more. If you take a look around, you can find many extensions from the community, or you can write your own. I'll be honest - if you're new to coding, Lua (or any scriptinglanguage) wouldn't be my first choice. A proper programming language like C or it's derivatives is more restrictive, but that also means it's rather gonna throw errors than simply not doing what you expect it too. But hey - it's manageable.
Share your content with your players if you want to, for example to give 'em a copy of their character sheets, or let them look up certain items on their own, or whatever.
And like with the combat tracker, there's just about nothing you can't use manually, instead of having the computer roll/calculate/apply stuff. I mean, sure, the automation is sweet, but if it ain't your style, FG doesn't force you to use it.


That's just off the top of my head. It certainly can do a LOT for you. Just do yourself a favour and invest some time in watching a few tutorial videos. Once you get the terminology down and know where to find stuff, it's easy. But the beginning can be a bit confusing. Unfortunately the sale is already over. But if you're not planning on hosting a game, you don't need more than the standard license. And that is a more than fair price for such a mighty tool. You also won't have to upgrade to FG Unity any time soon. The added functionality is mainly features you probably won't use anyways, like real time line of sight, etc. ;)