First Experience With Fantasy Grounds

[bjordan]

I'm starting to run 50 Fathoms using Fantasy Grounds. None of my players are familiar with Fantasy Grounds, or Savage Worlds, so it has been an adventure.

Why is the Fantasy Grounds user interface so radical? Many of my players just looked at the interface, and were ready to quit. I really had to persuade them to stick it out. The round menus are not intuitive, and the icons are very obscure.

It would be REALLY nice to be able to print characters. I've seen some posts on the forums that that would be difficult, but it would REALLY, REALLY be nice!

Is there any way to lock characters? Now that characters are created, it is just too easy to screw them up. If you accidently drop a die on the character, or drag/drop some text, you can mess up skills, inventory, weapons, anything!

We are having a real fight with the player libraries. I've set 50 Fathoms Players Guide, SW Quick Reference, and SW Players Guide to must download, and I make sure that all of the books are open. But players see only some, or none of these in their library. If they go to their modules, they will see some (but not all of them), but when they try to open the little book, it closes again automatically. I've tried making the modules optional, opening and closing the book. The results for the players seem random at best. Any suggestions?

Bill

[Griogre]

Welcome to the forums, Bill.

FG simulates a tabletop in a RPG so it is not a very stardard interface but it makes it easy for people who have been around the table top to understand, usually. Most buttons do have tool tips and I do agree some icons are not real intuative like the color wheel one.

There is not any way to lock the default character sheets. However, the more you play the game and make use of Hotkeys the less you will have the character sheets open.

Printable character sheet is a feature many would like to see and it has been suggested to the developers, though I don't think it is one the current wish list. You can see this list here and you might want to add the printable character sheets to it if they aren't on there: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8625

On the 50F and Savage Worlds there seems to be some problem with common modules and the patch for FG that was released last Friday. The player modules in 50F and SW are common modules and you seem to be experiencing the the bug. There does seem to be a work around of creating a new campaign and copying the old files over the new campaign files. You can read about the bug/wierdness here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8985

So you know I think setting all the player modules to "Force Load" is the simplest option and it means the players need to do nothing but open their library and click on the book.

Last, so everything is above board - I made the 50F setting. I like it alot, I think it is an interesting setting with a good plot point campaign that you can take or leave as your group likes - and it plays to strengths of the Savage World rules. If you have further questions, you can always check out Savage World Online: https://www.savageworldsonline.net/ or e-mail DA's tech support.

[bjordan]

I'll try creating a new campaign. However, I'm a little confused by those directions. What is the order of events?

Create a new campaign with the Savage Rules set. Then what? Set the module properties to "download", then let people connect? How do I copy the characters over to the new campaign? How do the players get access to their old characters? Do I have to go through character creation all over again? What prevents the same problem from occurring again?

Bill

[Griogre]

Ouch, written communication is so easy to mess up (I only converted 50F to FG2).

First I'm assuming you have updated FG to version 2.2.0 because of the nature of you problem. If I'm wrong let me know. With that out of the way let me give you a step by step.

1) Created a new Savage World campaign by starting FG2 then selecting Host a Game as a Gamemaster, then press the Create a new Campaign button selecting the Savage World Ruleset. I'm going to assume you have the Savage World Ruleset (the instructions should work with the Shaintar ruleset too). Press the little Create button at the bottom of the middle pane which should put the campaign on the list in the first pane and select it. Then with your new campaign selected, press the Start button to make sure everything is made and go into the new campaign. After the new campaign finishes loading, exit FG.

2) Open FG2's data application folder. You can do this by pressing the Start button then selecting All Programs -> Fantasy Grounds II -> Application Data Folder. This should pop up a window of the right folder. Look for the campaigns folder and open it. You should see a folder for your old 50F campaign and a folder for the new campaign you just made.

3) You want to copy everything in your old campaign folder to the new one, overwriting everything in the new campaign. I would make a copy of your old campaign folder on the desktop just for a backup before you do this.

4) Load the new campaign and activate the SW Player and 50F Player guides as well as any other modules you wish. Drag the lighting bolt icon (force load) onto the SW Player and 50F Player modules.

Hopefully that will solve the player load problems. If you have any other questions or need more detail just post and I or someone else should be able to help.

[Valarian]

If you copy the db.xml file from the old campaign, this will bring the characters over to the new campaign.

[bjordan]

Thanks for the responses.

I don't have FG here with me at the moment, but if I recall correctly, the version is 2.2.2. It was 2.2.1 when I created the campaign.

I've got the Savage Worlds Ruleset, the 50 Fathoms Setting, and the 50 Fathoms tokens.

Griogre, did you do the 50 Fathoms tokens too? I'm wondering why they are all so much larger than the standard tokens.

Thanks,
Bill

[Griogre]

I'm not an artist, so no I didn't do the tokens. As there is no real standard for token sizes (though many use 50 pixel squares for medium size creatures) it is better to make larger tokens available than smaller ones because typically you can shrink tokens and still have them look good while having to make a picture larger than it’s original size often makes it look horrible.

If you wish to re-size your tokens I would suggest you use IrfanView. It can batch resize all the pictures in a directory and it is free. IrfanView can’t deal with transparency, but I don’t remember the 50F tokens having any.

[bjordan]

Thanks.

I also obviously got the version numbers wrong. I'm using 2.2.0. I originally started the campaign at 2.1.0.

Bill