18 months on : FG vs. Roll20 vs Foundry

On the plus side of this surreal collection of posts coming in this past week by someone claiming to not be defending Foundry, but who then would write lots of stuff in defense of Foundry, I thankfully became aware of the existence of this thread (due to it showing up as recent posts in the forums).

I have been using Roll20 for the past two years with a group that games about once a week and we wanted to "kick the tires" on some other options for VTT play (FGU and Foundry being two). Without a large investment of time, it's not easy to make a comparison of 3 different VTT systems (nor is practical for most people to get their group to agree to switch for a bit to try a new system), so being able to point my friends at the comparisons at the start of this thread will be very helpful. Thank you for taking the time to write those detailed comparisons!

I am my gaming group's "volunteer" to try to get familiar with FGU, so I recently took advantage of the Humble Bundle Pathfinder deal for a bunch of content on FG (Pathfinder 1st edition being our game of choice). For the past month or so I've been trying to get myself educated on creating and running a Pathfinder campaign using FGU. Coming from Roll20, FGU was initially extremely overwhelming - to the point that I almost gave up. I initially told my friends that FGU was looking way more complicated than I expected and it would be a while before I would be able to host a one-shot campaign for the group to try a sample session with FGU. The biggest hurdle for me initially when trying to create a campaign was understanding the organizational model FGU used with gaming content - the focal point being the "story" section to organize and link everything together.

It's all very obvious now in hindsight, but when FGU first launches, to a first time user, the help system (or breadcrumbs leading to the help system) is somewhat lacking. If I view the "Basic Guides" that is presented as one of the main options for links to help within FGU, the fact that is is listed in alphabetical order is not very helpful. There isn't an obvious place to start reading in the help system on how to go about creating a campaign (other than, click on the "create campaign" button). The giant "Quick Start Guide" link from the main splash screen takes me to a web page that again links to the "Basic Guides" wiki, as well as suggesting visiting forums or discord. But nothing along the lines of, "if you are player looking to join a game, click here for a guide" and "if you are trying to create a campaign or want to know how to GM a game, click here for a tutorial". It was more like, "Here's an encyclopedia that describes everything, starting with the A section."

I was eventually able to figure stuff out (I am still here a month later, afterall, and I liked what I gleaned enough to buy a FGU ultimate license :-) ), but as someone who likes learning by reading (I'm not a great learner from watching videos), it took a while to find the material I needed to get going and most of the information I did eventually find offering tutorials were not produced by Smiteworks. But it's possible I just wasn't looking in the right places in the Wiki or my google searching skills were off.

That said, now having used FGU over the course of the past month to port over a physical Paizo one-shot module I own (as a bit of way to get familiar with creating all sorts of content in a FGU campaign), I like FGU quite a bit and really really want to convince my group to at least give it a try.

So far I've only hosted some test sessions with a second FGU instance on my own computer to better understand what a player sees vs. the GM, but the whole combat tracker thing with automatically calculating hits and taking into account effects and such (even better with some extra extensions from the Forge), combat is night and day different from Roll20. I spent a lot of time writing Roll20 combat macros for my character, but what FGU offers is sooo much better, being able to handle dynamic effects or conditions on the fly in a fairly straightforward way via the UI.

I plan host a game with my friends running my ported-into-FGU one shot module, likely within a month or two (when we have an off night where everyone can't make our regular night). Once I do this, I'll try to post some feedback on how it goes along with our impressions vs. our regular use of Roll20.

Cheers,
Brian

I would have found a step-by-step written tutorial for the GM (and players) very useful too, Brian.

I might see if I can put one together.

Cheers, Hywel

See video five here https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...112#post492112

Also clicking on the query icon at the top right of any window will take you to the wiki article about that window,

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MostTornBrain

On the plus side of this surreal collection of posts coming in this past week by someone claiming to not be defending Foundry, but who then would write lots of stuff in defense of Foundry, I thankfully became aware of the existence of this thread (due to it showing up as recent posts in the forums).

I have been using Roll20 for the past two years with a group that games about once a week and we wanted to "kick the tires" on some other options for VTT play (FGU and Foundry being two). Without a large investment of time, it's not easy to make a comparison of 3 different VTT systems (nor is practical for most people to get their group to agree to switch for a bit to try a new system), so being able to point my friends at the comparisons at the start of this thread will be very helpful. Thank you for taking the time to write those detailed comparisons!

I am my gaming group's "volunteer" to try to get familiar with FGU, so I recently took advantage of the Humble Bundle Pathfinder deal for a bunch of content on FG (Pathfinder 1st edition being our game of choice). For the past month or so I've been trying to get myself educated on creating and running a Pathfinder campaign using FGU. Coming from Roll20, FGU was initially extremely overwhelming - to the point that I almost gave up. I initially told my friends that FGU was looking way more complicated than I expected and it would be a while before I would be able to host a one-shot campaign for the group to try a sample session with FGU. The biggest hurdle for me initially when trying to create a campaign was understanding the organizational model FGU used with gaming content - the focal point being the "story" section to organize and link everything together.

It's all very obvious now in hindsight, but when FGU first launches, to a first time user, the help system (or breadcrumbs leading to the help system) is somewhat lacking. If I view the "Basic Guides" that is presented as one of the main options for links to help within FGU, the fact that is is listed in alphabetical order is not very helpful. There isn't an obvious place to start reading in the help system on how to go about creating a campaign (other than, click on the "create campaign" button). The giant "Quick Start Guide" link from the main splash screen takes me to a web page that again links to the "Basic Guides" wiki, as well as suggesting visiting forums or discord. But nothing along the lines of, "if you are player looking to join a game, click here for a guide" and "if you are trying to create a campaign or want to know how to GM a game, click here for a tutorial". It was more like, "Here's an encyclopedia that describes everything, starting with the A section."

I was eventually able to figure stuff out (I am still here a month later, afterall, and I liked what I gleaned enough to buy a FGU ultimate license :-) ), but as someone who likes learning by reading (I'm not a great learner from watching videos), it took a while to find the material I needed to get going and most of the information I did eventually find offering tutorials were not produced by Smiteworks. But it's possible I just wasn't looking in the right places in the Wiki or my google searching skills were off.

That said, now having used FGU over the course of the past month to port over a physical Paizo one-shot module I own (as a bit of way to get familiar with creating all sorts of content in a FGU campaign), I like FGU quite a bit and really really want to convince my group to at least give it a try.

So far I've only hosted some test sessions with a second FGU instance on my own computer to better understand what a player sees vs. the GM, but the whole combat tracker thing with automatically calculating hits and taking into account effects and such (even better with some extra extensions from the Forge), combat is night and day different from Roll20. I spent a lot of time writing Roll20 combat macros for my character, but what FGU offers is sooo much better, being able to handle dynamic effects or conditions on the fly in a fairly straightforward way via the UI.

I plan host a game with my friends running my ported-into-FGU one shot module, likely within a month or two (when we have an off night where everyone can't make our regular night). Once I do this, I'll try to post some feedback on how it goes along with our impressions vs. our regular use of Roll20.

Cheers,
Brian

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Good to hear! Welcome aboard ��

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zacchaeus

See video five here https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...112#post492112

Also clicking on the query icon at the top right of any window will take you to the wiki article about that window,

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I think the review was especially about that there is no written form of a quick starter guide :) I am also more the type of reading person. Some reference guide just showing the pure basics to run a first game would be nice, like a check-list which one can look at (1. Import images, 2. ...) :) One could avoid the automation stuff in that guide, and reference that in the end with a note that this is then for more experienced users, but still mentioning its use. That may also be useful for new users who want to quickly know what FG offers :)

Bonus points if such a tutorial would be actually in-built, like a pop-up in FG which only pops-up at the first time (or if one forces it; many games offer a reset tutorial option) :D (So, like an extended thing like the already existing pop-up, but maybe also already a pop-up in the launcher itself)

Great feedback Brian..

Admittedly I haven't looked at them, but doesn't the wiki have two Getting Started guides? It's totally possible those are not sufficient, but if someone could take a look as I won't have a chance for sometime.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zacchaeus

See video five here https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...112#post492112

Also clicking on the query icon at the top right of any window will take you to the wiki article about that window,

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Actually, it was some of your videos and forum posts that helped me along the way and helped me get to the “aha” moment where the FGU model started to click in my head.

But again, these are all individual “how do I do individual task X”, but not a conceptual higher level view of _why_ I need to even need to know X. While I was stumbling along in my free time on nights after work, trying to build a decent mental map of how FG works conceptually, it was very tempting to just throw up my hands and give up and conclude FG wasn’t for me, which I now feel would have been a disservice to what FG offers.

I’m a programmer in real life (been my day job going on 35 years now) and the analogy for me would be learning a new programming language. A lot of people jump start with writing a “Hello World” application in the target new language - something that uses the language semantics to produce a message on the screen that says “Hello World”. By doing that simple task, one gets a quick idea of how to use the tools enough to at least get started and work through any issues with a small enough example where you don’t get overwhelmed or lost in too many details that are needed initially. Then, after you have a very simple program working, one can more easily expand and then have more specific ideas of how to do other things within the language, or where to look to learn more.

I’m thinking a tutorial on making a very simple campaign - like one map item, one encounter, an npc, a parcel, a story item, etc. and also a character to go along with it, then how to test it all locally with a second FGU instance (it’s not obvious how to run a second FGU instance on a Mac for example, but it is doable). I realize this is further complicated by all the different supported rulesets, but even one representation with any rule system would go a long way I think.

Again, maybe this already exists and I just somehow missed it. But the items I was able to find within FGU itself (like the ? help icons for individual UI features) were helpful if I already had an idea of what I was trying to accomplish, but they didn’t help at all with my initial lack of understanding with FGU concepts.

Cheers,
Brian

More getting started type videos here https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...l-Video-Series although the interface is very different now and those were made for Classic rather than Unity but the principles are the same.

I'm more video oriented than written but I get it that some people aren't. I think Smiteworks have engaged someone to do a series of introductory videos so those are probably in the pipeline. As for a written guide I think that's probably more difficult to do. There is the starter campaign for 5e but nothing as far as I know for other rulesets - but the principles would be the same. The starter campaign pretty much does what you are asking for as far as building a campaign is concerned.

Five hours later, here is my first attempt at a written Quick Start Tutorial. This is one for how the parts of FGU fit together to prepare an adventure to run.

If useful I will make another for GM's for character generation and for running a session.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

Cheers, Hywel

Quote:

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Originally Posted by HywelPhillips

Five hours later, here is my first attempt at a written Quick Start Tutorial. This is one for how the parts of FGU fit together to prepare an adventure to run.

If useful I will make another for GM's for character generation and for running a session.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

Cheers, Hywel

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Looks like you did a bang up job!