Campaigns missing from selection

[valle1]

Hi guys, Im a new user (I have used roll20 so far). I have bought the campaign bundle with all campaigns, but only some of them are showing, even after updating... Also, Im having a hard time with the maps for a certain campaign. In roll20 its all made ready for you and you just select a map from the top and everything is done, like dynamic lighting and monster tokens put in and so on. Fantasy grounds seems really fiddly and unfriendly for users when compared but perhaps im doing something wrong?

[Zacchaeus]

Welcome to FG.

I think by campaigns you mean modules. Modules are accessed from your library button. Click on the library then on modules to open the module activation screen. Note that you’ll only see the first page of 20 or so modules and you’ll need to use the arrows on the window to scroll to the next page. To load a module into your campaign click the load button and that module will now show in your library and you can access the content from there or from the buttons down the right hand side.

You don’t say what ruleset you are using but in most cases the adventure maps do have pins on them which when clicked will open a story entry for that location and that story will have a link to any encounters in that location. By opening the encounter and clicking on the small down arrow at the bottom of the window it will place the NPCs on the map and onto the combat tracker. FG does things differently to Roll20 so some things won’t be familiar to you.

A good place to start is the user manual (click the link to it from the start page of FGU when you load it up), or watch a few videos here https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?27296-Guides-videos-and-other-helpful-information.

Or visit the college to get some classes. https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?40020-Join-Fantasy-Grounds-College-Learn-Fantasy-Grounds-learn-D-amp-D-and-then-play!

Or visit the FG discord for more immediate help https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?36377-Official-Discord-Server

[Nylanfs]

In Roll20 the Campaign is the module, in FG the campaign is your kitchen table and the module is in your library you just need to open it and bring it to the table. :)

[LordEntrails]

Also you will find that with FG you can open and close (load/unload) modules as desired. So you may start a campaign running LMOP, but then after finishing that you just load in the next module you want (like DoMM) and unload LMOP. You don't have to export characters, switch campaigns or anything like that. Plus, you can load a module in as many campaigns as you want, so you don't need to worry about how many campaigns you are using LMOP in.

Welcome aboard, lots to learn. Let us know when you can't find answers.

[valle1]

Thanks for your feedback... The part about having several campaigns open I like, since I am in the middle of combining lost mines with icespire peak. I have watched allot of videos, but one thing I notice is that the menu on the right with notes, encounters and so on, is different on every video I have seen. I dont have a button for tokens for instance. As an examble, the guy from taking20 made a video where he opened his tokens and he could then access a shared folder that could be used across different campaigns. I can find tokens, but they are in the assests folder, but I dont have that shared folder. So watching these videos can be a bit frustrating since when I try to copy what the person does, I cant.

Also, I tried starting mines of phandelver up with my son yesterday. We managed to make his character, and give it a token, but for some reason he cant see the map. I have put his token on the map from the encounter box and I have clicked the "share record" on the map in images.

[Lo Zeno]

The videos from the guy from Taking20 are 3 years old, if I remember right, and a lot has changed in the interface of Fantasy Grounds since then. Actually I think he was using Fantasy Grounds Classic, not Unity, even.
The menu on the right can be different for many reasons: version of the program, ruleset used, list of buttons activated... Speaking about D&D 5e, the first thing you'll want to do is to go into the options (the cogwheel button), click the "Sidebar" button in the Options window, and then click the "All" button: this will activate all the sidebar buttons, making them all available to you. From the Sidebar window you can activate and deactivate buttons as you need/want, useful if your screen is not large enough, but in general most people prefer to have them all available all the time.

The tokens are indeed in the Assets button now, they don't have a dedicated "Tokens" button anymore.
You can still have a shared folder between campaign. Once in the Assets window, you'll see you have four options at the top: Tokens, Portraits, Images, All. If you click Tokens and then click the Folder button at the bottom, it will open your file explorer to the tokens folder for the campaign you are running; but if you click All, then Folder it will take you to the base data folder for Fantasy Grounds: here you'll see a list of folders (cache, campaigns, docs, extensions, images....), if you go into the "tokens" folder that appears here, it's the shared token folder that taking20 was using.

When you say that your son couldn't see the map, what do you mean exactly? Nothing showed up when you clicked "share record", or did a window appear but he saw only black? Because in the second case, it might be because you had the lighting and line-of-sight enabled for the map, but your son's character has no torch or darkvision (two things that, when taking20 made his video, were not present in Fantasy Grounds yet). You can unlock the image tools (with the padlock icon), then select "Enable/Disable lighting" to see if that's the problem. Or, click the Effects button in the sidebar, and drag a Torch effect to your son's character in the combat tracker (the "encounter box").

If you want some more reliable videos to follow, try those in this post:
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?55797-How-do-I-in-Unity&p=492112&viewfull=1#post492112
I suggest you start from video 17, not video 1, since the lighting is the first thing you need to deal with when you open a new map.

[valle1]

First of all... Thank you for taking the time to write such a thourough answer. Ill check the things you listede when i get home. But regarding the map, there is No Black screen, just nothing. I can place his character and when i click him in player view, he has line of sight, so i works fine from My end. But on his computer there is nothing.

[Lo Zeno]

First of all... Thank you for taking the time to write such a thourough answer. Ill check the things you listede when i get home. But regarding the map, there is No Black screen, just nothing. I can place his character and when i click him in player view, he has line of sight, so i works fine from My end. But on his computer there is nothing.

Did he "take" the character, first? He can only see the map if "his" character is on it, so before playing he should click on the Characters button, then on the character (you'll see that in your screen it will be listed as "owned by: <your son's username>". He needs to do that only the first time he connects to your campaign, then every time he connects the program will remember that. After that, once you share a map where his character is present, he should see it.

[Trenloe]

But regarding the map, there is No Black screen, just nothing. I can place his character and when i click him in player view, he has line of sight, so i works fine from My end. But on his computer there is nothing.
All users (players and GMs) can have multiple maps open at any time - it's not like Roll20 only showing one map in the background.

The GM shares a map with their players - which will open that map in a window on their instance of FG - they can size it to whatever window size they want. They can even close it (and re-open it from their Images list). So, I'm guessing the player seeing nothing is they don't even see an image window? If so, the first step hasn't been done - right-click on the image and select the Sharing -> Share Record, or you can right-click on the image in the Images list and select "Share Record" there. You'll know if an image has been shared as there'll be a round "P" icon to the right of the image name in the image list - which means it's been made public (shared with all players). If this is not the issue then please describe exactly what you mean by "nothing" on the player side.

[valle1]

Ok, its fixed... This was the problem... I first thought that I should share the map after its loaded. I rightclicked, but no share option. I then tried sharing from the menu that shows all the maps available under images, and that had something called share record when I right clicked. I pressed that and a small eye became visable next to the maps name. But that didnt solve it neither. Then i pressed the map and in the small window, before pressing the arrow to make the map large I rightclicked, and this is where the solution was.