Can I import a story without having to buy it?

[Paythos]

I'm sure this question has been asked before but a year ago me and my friends tried playing the physical version of Lost Mines of Phandelver but after a few sessions one of them had to move away.
Was introduced to Fantasy Grounds a few days ago and we decided to try and use it to be able to complete the story.

I was wondering if there would be a way to get the story into the App without having to buy the story pack off steam.

[Trenloe]

Welcome to the FG forums.

You can enter data needed manually - uploading/creating maps, importing/entering NPCs/Monsters, etc. - but this all takes time and knowledge of Fantasy Grounds. The Lost Mine of Phandelver is a good module, and only you can make the decision of whether purchasing the FG module makes sense from a time vs. money perspective. You'd need to source some digital maps if you are entering the data yourself.

There's a good video series on prepping for a game - it's for Pathfinder Second Edition, but the principals are the same: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3h0dIaiayC9keMUVeFw6pdxY1-4BKU1m

[Topdecker]

The short answer is yes, you can recreate any module you own. Having a physical copy will be the most difficult in the sense that you will need to get much of the text moved over to a digital format. If you look, you can probably find OCR for a smart phone, take photos of the pages, OCR it, and end up with a text file (that will almost certainly have errors).

I am pretty sure that most if not all of the creatures in that module are in the SRD - so you should have access to them and be able to create encounters without data entry.

Maps... There are probably 25 to 100 different recreations of each map, many of which are pretty good. Just search for the map by title - if you want to speed it up, add REDDIT to the search and you'll get good hits pretty fast. Once you have the map, you'll have to decide if you are going to rig the walls and so on.

Finally, I am going to say that it takes a while to get up to speed with FG. Use Youtube and watch some demos - but you learn the most by doing, and this is a good project to get you started.

[spoofer]

This might interest you...

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?71070-Lost-Mines-of-Phandelver-**FOR-BEGINNERS-ONLY**

[Griogre]

Also it should be noted you don't have to put everything in the FG module. You really just need maps, monsters, tokens, encounters, and treasure. If you use voice during the game you can just run off the physical copy for the room descriptions and read aloud text.