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View Full Version : My list of memories from 10 years with FG



spoofer
January 16th, 2021, 08:39
It has now been ten years since I started using FG. In celebration of my ten year anniversary, I decided to post a list of ten memories.

Hamachi. This application was how we got around the infamous port forwarding problem of FGC. It was great when it worked, but it often did not work, forcing us to cancel the session.

TeamSpeak. This was the voice software we used before Discord. The free version had a five-person limit (or was that Hamachi?). Either way, back then we could only play with five player groups.

Is there anyone out there? It used to literally take three months to recruit someone to join us in the Japan / Australia time zone. Now it takes three days, or three hours if you are recruiting in North American time zones. Times have really changed.

PAR5E. This was the community-written tool that we used to get the content into FG. The result was full of typos and mistakes. We are so fortunate to now have the next item in the list.

The official license! Can you imagine if none of the official WotC material was available? You literally had to type in your abilities, spells, etc. This alone changed FG far more than anything else, even more than FGU. It was like stepping out of the dark ages. And the best part is that more and more licenses keep getting added.

Pay to Play. This concept did not exist a few years ago. Now it is not so rare, and increasing. So very angry words were posted on the forums directly at people charging money. I am glad that players are now at least accepting of the idea, even if they are not willing to pay to play themselves.

Player confrontation. I used to not be able to handle difficult players. These players wrecked the experience for everyone, and I became very stressed. Over the years, I have matured and gained confidence. Now, I explain my expectations ahead of time. Violators get one warning and one more chance, no hard feelings. The second time, I kick them out. Everyone is much happier these days. The first time you kick a player out is really difficult, but you realize afterward how important it is to do so.

Friendships. Ten years ago, I met a guy living in China online. We decided to try FG together. Ten year later, we are still playing together, and have even met face to face once.

FGU. Everyone loves the line of sight functionality.

The community. Every time I have some problem or issue, someone quickly posts a solution. I have had such a positive experience here on these forums that I now try to help out others when I can.

Thanks everyone for ten awesome years. I am looking forward to ten more.

What are your memories from the early days?

Kevin

Valyar
January 16th, 2021, 09:27
I joined the Fantasy Grounds bandwagon relatively late (I think 3 years now?) when I moved to live and work abroad and all face to face games had to move to virtual. We didn't researched a lot of options and as you can imagine Roll20 was the easiest one to start. We used Skype then moved to Discord. I found out FG accidentally via friend of mine who invited me to D&D 5e game and I was intrigued by this product as I haven't really researched alternatives to Roll20 in the beginning and the limited automation I saw (he ran the game badly, not taking advantage of all cool stuffs, but back then I was not aware even of 20% of possibilities). Roll 20 also started to get in the way - subscription thing was extremely repulsive, lack of support and enhancements to the platform, close to no content and shitty way of managing assets (wow, harsh bash, but still fact 4 years later).

I was running Dark Heresy 2 campaign. Then I found out Paul Pratt's community ruleset and I was blown away. In addition to the people here that were really helpful to all my inquiries online or offline I was immediately in to explore this. After careful research I got the Ultimate and the whole wonderful journey has began. Not without issues, as I play games that didn't have or still don't have official content and ruleset, but damned's MoreCore solved those and still does.

I have nothing but excellent memories after I got Fantasy Grounds. To be frank playing online and FG managed to rekindle my love for the hobby and I haven't stopped running games for 4 years now few times per week. It is amazing. I really hope that Smite Works will keep the product competitive and ahead of the new players on the market for years to come.

I also changed my perspective on the "free" vs "licensed content". It is amazing journey and I managed to get many people along with me.