5e Fantasy Grounds Training Class

[rhammer2]

Thank you for donating your time to the class. It was very useful.

- Robert

[jh79]

My pleasure Robert, was a good time and glad you found it useful.

[BBGaming]

Arigato Gozaimasu jh79!!

Thank you so much for the great class. I learned a lot and even had the chance to put some of it into practice tonight while GMing for the first time.

It was very kind of you to offer your time like that. Very informative.

I enjoyed meeting my fellow classmates and wish you all well in your future games!

Take care everyone.

[jh79]

BBG, that is great you were able to use it right away, makes it all worthwhile for me!

[Art Wendorf]

BBG, that is great you were able to use it right away, makes it all worthwhile for me!

Oh, I'm using the class, too. I'm going through my first adventure Module and tweaking it so it works/flows better. Well, worth the time. Thanks again!

[jh79]

Cool guys, music to my ears

Also, want to give a plug for BBG Gaming's (Robert's) youtube channel, I just realized I'm subscribed to his channel . He has some cool solo playthrough's which I find very useful to see if I want to buy the products he is featuring or not.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv9...OCy63rKvjK7n5Q

Also BBG/Robert, not sure if you figured out your connection issue from Japan, but if you need help testing it out, just send me a PM, I'll throw up my server and you can work through connecting to it.

[jh79]

Hello everyone, the DM Workshop Class list just keeps growing and growing! With so many new people on the list, I have decided to run one class a month.
1. To keep my sanity,
2. To still be able to give it my all, for my players campaign experience.
3. So my other half doesn't smite me! .

However I will bump the class to 6 people instead of 4. We had 5 in the first class, after a surprise visitor showed up, and it still went very smooth, so I don't see an issues with making it 6 people, which is a full party of a D&D game anyways. Everyone was very respectful, so I foresee any problems at all.

So Workshops will be the first Saturday of every month, approximately 8am ET, I may change it slightly if we have enough people close to the same time zones by coincidence, but that 8am ET time is to accommodate everyone from around the world, so just plan for that.

The first class was already given, the second class will be June 6th. The third class is almost full and will be July 5th. I'll let the participants know the time in a PM. So if you are new, and want a thorough 3 hour workshop of how to use Fantasy Grounds, learn the interface as a DM, combat, targeting and combat tracker, learn all elements of building a full module, I would sign up as early as possible to secure your spot. I will send out reminders to scheduled participants as the time draws nearer to their Workshop date.

[Larac]

Thanks again!

[damned]

jh79 would you be able to share the list of things you go thru in your session?
i have run similar but shorter sessions on Castles&Crusades and would like to see what you cover in yours.

[jh79]

Well, I can give you a list from what I remember, since the classes are 3 hours long. This should also answer the questions from the other guys that want to make videos. I found that in each subject I covered, at least one or two people learn it for the first time.

I try and do as much as possible in that 3 hour time frame. This also may be a good to do/learn list for people that can't attend an actual class. Watch videos from our great video people on the subjects below and you will have a good grasp on FG.

So starting with the splash screen:

I show the settings button and show them how to switch between the test-Live servers, and explain why each is good, for certain situations.

Then I jump over to Manage Characters, and show them how to have their players roll up characters, or use the point buy system. The point buy is a little trickier to setup, and found not many people know how to define the point buy ranges. I also show them how to import and export characters from the Manage Character Tool.

I then quickly show them how to join a game, and how it works with the IP, alias, and tell them how to setup the port for their routers, and what to set it to, if someone doesn't know. Then I have them run the test to see if they have Success.

Once inside FG, I show them how to build a player character sheet from start to finish, everyone fills in every line of the character. I also show them how to use the little circle buttons, so they can add/delete items on the character sheet. Not as intuitive as you might think. Found people saying, ohhh, that's how you add something.

I show them how to add powers, effects, spells, weapons, ect. I suggest to them to either parse their own modules or buy them, because it is much faster to drag and drop all the items from the PHB, MM and DMG from a parsed book, but show them how to do it manually.

I then show them how to create a campaign from start to finish. We all create a test campaign. Once we all do that, I start teaching them how to build one step by step. I explain all the buttons down the right hand side, and go into detail on each one.

After the explanations of the right side main buttons, we manually start to build out a test campaign together, as I feed them text from TeamSpeak, and they follow my lead; with all the buttons on the right hand side, in this case starting with the Story button. Then...

Show them how to add images.

Show them how to manually build an NPC from the NPCs button, (How to write out the attack strings),

Show them how to build items and parcels, add tokens, ect.

I then show them how to re-link all that stuff back to the story in the story button. They then have a good grasp on how to build a module from that point, because they just did it and they have the test module to refer back to whenever they want.

I show them how to do all text and make it look nice like in modules in The Story button. How to do red-headers, bold text, ect. how to make box text and have it appear in the chat window for the players. I go through it thoroughly and make sure everyone has that part down.

I then show them how to /export modules, /commands - show them how to build an empty shell and bring in parts of the story/modules into that empty shell. I explain the empty shell is just for the overland maps, and the player characters, and to bring in the story parts they built in separately by activating them in the library, instead of having one big module mess.

I show them each GM option, in the options.

I then show them each of those 9 buttons, (top right) and show them how to use each one.

I show them little gems I've learned along the way like sharing text or images with only one player, not the whisper command... little things like that.

After we have done all that in our own GM Clients, I log them over to my server for a live demonstration of everything just learned.

We then have a mock battle encounter where I show them how to target, un-target, and how to roll the dice so the attacked creature shows it was hit in the chat window, show them several ways to do that.

I show them how to be an evil DM and have Hill Giants throw boulders at first level characters

How to setup a grid.

How to setup masks, (fog of war) and how to erase it as players move through an area.

How to use all the pointers on the map.

How to re-size and sync and share the map.

How to move the map to different sections of the map with the move tool.

Fully explain the combat tracker, and every button in it.

I then explain how to use the party sheet, marching order, give out XP, loot, parcels, ect, and have FG divide it out to the players itself.

I show them the bars at the bottom of FG, and how to drag things that are used a lot, like weapons, ect, so it's easy access and one click.

Show them how to add Modifiers.

Show them all the 5e buttons, Advantage/Disadvantage buttons.

How to add effects and take away effects.

Show them extensions available.

I know there's more we go over, but that is the gist of it off the top of my head, but I basically try to cover everything so we can groom new DM's and grow as a community. Hope this helps everyone that had questions.