Using fantasy grounds an estimate?

[JohnD]

Everyone knows the GM dictates the game to a large extent.

What's better (I know which wouldn't get me interested as a player...)?

A.
Hey guys I just found a way for us to keep playing Rolemaster without flipping through books and pages and each round of combat taking 30 minutes. Plus, we can meet on-line so the fact that Bill lives 3 hours away isn't an issue anymore. Even better, because I bought the license I did, none of you are out of pocket for the software! One thing though is the learning curve... we're going to all have to go through it together, which might make things a little painful in the short term, but once we figure out how to do something once, we'll rarely stumble over it again. Let's start by you connecting to me and generating your characters - it's quick and relatively easy because the software does a lot of work for you, except for Bob because he's a Paladin... Bob will have some extra entry work to do. Combat is a breeze compared to pen-and-paper because the software automatically applies all criticals and adjustments to the appropriate rolls - we can just concentrate on the game and not flipping through endless books!

or,

B.
Hey guys sucks none of us live close to each other. I got this piece of **** software that takes some learning to use. Imagine that. It's a huge burden to learn how to use and by God you have to use your mouse and actually enter some information. Worse still, we have to learn how to use the program to manage the game. Lucky for you all, because I was a moron and paid for the top license, you can all play for free, but I can't imagine why you'd want to because it's such a crap program. I could try to mitigate the learning curve by taking up someone on their offer to give me a walkthrough, one of these people is even the person who programmed the most up-to-date version of the rules we'd be using, but I can't imagine that would actually accomplish anything.

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Seriously, FG is so very powerful with respect to the Rolemaster rules, especially with the latest iteration programmed by Dakadin. But, I've said all I'm going to here on this particular topic... time is too valuable. Offers of assistance were/are on the table - you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink and all that.

[Olodrin]

Well then, let me the first to say that FG2 is awesome; my college group got back together after 10 years, and has stayed together for 5 years now, despite our membership spanning Portland, DC, Ottawa, Bangkok and Dusseldorf. For the price of a few RPG books, we have built an integrated DMing/playing tool that we all use to run all of our virtual and real tabletop games.

Is it perfect? No, that's why software has version numbers. But it has an active, welcome, tremendously helpful community that loves to play, and has enabled me to spend 100s of hours pursuing my most beloved hobby with people I would otherwise have little chance to spend time with.

Beware of Trolls!

[Tiqon]

Beware of Trolls!

Especially the cave trolls.

[Olodrin]

Ech, they're the worst - fire and acid is the way to go.

[Marc B]

1 hour to do that impossible. I will give you $100 if you can do it in 1 hour. The way the interface currently stands I was thinking over 50 hours to get all that entered.

[Trenloe]

1 hour to do that impossible. I will give you $100 if you can do it in 1 hour. The way the interface currently stands I was thinking over 50 hours to get all that entered.

Depends exactly how big your adventure is.

If you have it already prepared and the data can just be copied and pasted into Fantasy Grounds then it will take between 30 minutes and 4 hours depending on how much information you are entering.

Seriously dude - you are way underestimating the impact of the interface on productivity. You need to take the time to learn it, once you learn it (and that doesn't take long if you want to learn it) it is no more clunky or inefficient than most other interfaces.

Yes, the first time you build an adventure in Fantasy Grounds it will take time - the next time you enter an adventure it will take less time and the next shorter still.

Watch Xorne's excellent "Campaign Entry Basics" video from the "Archived Video Tutorials" section in the download page: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/downloads/

Use normal keyboard shortcuts: Copy: CTRL+C, Paste: CTRL+V, Bold: CTRL+B, Italic: CTRL+I, Underline: CTRL+I for text entries in formatted text control.

For a good example of how to lay out your adventure in Fantasy Grounds have a look at Ardem's cool RMC module Goblin Raiders: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...Goblin-Raiders This is commercial quality, you probably won't need to go to this level of detail when entering your own adventures.

[Andraax]

1 hour to do that impossible. I will give you $100 if you can do it in 1 hour. The way the interface currently stands I was thinking over 50 hours to get all that entered.

Maybe you should learn to type with more than one finger?

Seriously, I just created an adventure module. What took the longest was the drawing the maps in GIMP - that took a couple days. After that, entering the text, the encounters, pre-placing the tokens for the encounters on the maps, for about a dozen encounters with 5 major NPCs and a few dozen minor creatures took me about a half an hour. (Text was written up ahead of time, I just had to copy / paste it in the story editor and do a little bit of formatting.)

[Callum]

Well then, let me the first to say that FG2 is awesome; my college group got back together after 10 years, and has stayed together for 5 years now, despite our membership spanning Portland, DC, Ottawa, Bangkok and Dusseldorf. For the price of a few RPG books, we have built an integrated DMing/playing tool that we all use to run all of our virtual and real tabletop games.

Is it perfect? No, that's why software has version numbers. But it has an active, welcome, tremendously helpful community that loves to play, and has enabled me to spend 100s of hours pursuing my most beloved hobby with people I would otherwise have little chance to spend time with.

This. 100% this.

As for the original question, I'd say 1 hour is an underestimate, while 50 hours is a wild overestimate. My guess would be around 4 hours. It depends a lot on exactly what you're putting in, and how you're doing it.

[damned]

No way I could enter it all in a single hour.
1 hour to do the characters maybe - and you dont have to do it all. Create the characters stick in the core stats and let the players finish uploading their info.
For the campaign - could be another hour could be quite a bit more - certainly not 50 unless you have a lot of data to enter. t will probably take you twice as long as you can type the data - once you get used to it.
BUT - if you are using Voice you only have to upload your maps (1min) and your characters.
If all your material is in hard copy you still read and refer to this as you guide your characters in and out of strife.

Do I know how to use everything in FG? Nope. Do I know how to use everything in Outlook or Word? Not even close.

You are obviously struggling to get past some initial hurdles. Why dont you put the project aside for a week or 3 and join in on a couple of fg-con games - bring your players along too! See how it feels from the other side of the table - see how much some GMs have everything prepared within FG and others use a mix of FG and external material. Just like at the tabletop some GMs have lots of handouts, play music, have tonnes of awesome maps while others use less physical material.

Dont give up yet. There is plenty of goodness in this product.

[Marc B]

Ok so based on what you guys are saying I have 3 choices and included is that I shouldn't say anything about stuff that is never going to be fixed. To me the software is in an unusable state because of a time consuming cumbersome interface. So use the $65 I spent on the software and extras and fix one thing in the UI. It you have the best application in the world and its 10x harder to use you are limiting the number of your end users. Nothing else I can say. I showed the software to one of my players and he says the same thing its way too cumbersome.

and as far as writing my own software I have been using an excel spreadsheet which handles my combats and here is an example of some adventure stuff I have created.
https://postimg.org/image/9qsw4n973/
https://postimg.org/image/oz1l06zc7/
https://postimg.org/image/shiv3kzp9/