New to FG - need some guidance/tips on setup

[morunas]

Hey everyone!

I've been DMing my own campaign/world online session for about 2 years now, using a mix of Skype+Teamviewer+CorelDraw+Word+Google and although it has been working lovely I thought it was time to try to step up to dedicated software particularly for the combat part as it is currently players pointing on teamviewer and me moving their characters, and with a very limited common to all players FoW/LoS.

Also, my style of DMing revolves a lot around exploring and I give players full freedom to wonder the land (0 railroading). While the world has moving plots and stories, players may completely ignore or miss to participate in any number of them, and whichever choices they make... the world keeps spinning. So in practical terms, sometimes there are only "gridless macro maps" and my imagination to deliver a good session.

So I was wondering if it would make sense to use FG only for combat/dungeon exploration and sharing images... and not use all the other tools like Notes, Quests, Items, etc, as I've been organizing my campaign content in Word docs per "area" (some bigger, some smaller), using web layout and headings navigation, which makes it rather easy to navigate content (notes on everything from plot info, encounters, notes, etc).

Does anyone have any opinions/suggestions on this? The last thing I'd want is to ask my players to wait while I take time bringing up things mid session. I'm a stickler for immersion and full RP :P

The one thing I do miss is a better way to search for references like rechecking how Grapple works, finding a spell description, etc.
I do have the physical books but they don't match up to a good search box :P currently I just google for "5e <keyword>" to find rulings if I really need to (although often I'll say "let's do like this for now, I'll check on that after the session").

I also use three monitors with the following setup:
- left (horizontal): Skype
- middle (horizontal): Maps with Coreldraw (detached, no UI) shared over Teamviewer (will now become FG instead)
- right (vertical): Word in Web Layout with Headings navigation + Corel with other assets + Spotify (which I inject with Voicemeeter banana over VOIP)

Furthermore, I'm considering asking my players to have their character sheets on d&d beyond because it seems to be really good and give them an awesome digital overview of their characters... any thoughts on that in relation to FG?

So any suggestions on how to fit FG into my setup and DMing style would be most welcome I'm a total FG noob ^^

Cheers!
morunas

[rob2e]

Welcome to the community. I've used FG for the "full" online experience with ALL of its features and also just the combat tracker and maps/images at the kitchen table. FG can certainly be used exactly as you described (making use of as little or as many of the features it has). I'm sure others will weigh in with their experiences, but you're defintiely on the right track. And once you use Fnatasy Grounds, it'll become like an extension of you. Have fun!

[Valyar]

Fantasy grounds is the right choice in your situation. All your stuffs can easily be migrated into the application and once you try it, you will never return to Word-like style of keeping the campaign organized.

I use Realm Works + Fantasy grounds for example.

[morunas]

Thanks for the super fast replies

Should I migrate all the existing campaign content to FG, is there any guides on how to best structure it?

For example it would be great to be able to pull up all resources related to an area/place (maps, encounters, important NPCs, plot details). Is there a way to do that?

What I've seen so far is that I'd have to create groups with name composition like "continent - macroarea - place" to be able to sort things properly... but create them on every different feature (NPCs, images&maps, encounters, etc), which is becomes really cumbersome. In other words... how do you advise grouping assets, per feature, for one big campaign?

I must admit I dove in without checking tutorials but I kinda wanted to get the feel of it as it seemed to be somewhat intuitive/well organized.

Cheers!

[Zacchaeus]

A lot depends on how you intend to run things. For example most adventures assume that you are going to be using a battlemap shared with the players. All locations which are important will then have a story entry pinned to that location and the story will have links to all the details needed to run the story for that location, such as encounters, treasure parcels, important NPCs, quests etc.

If you use this method then it almost doesn't matter what order the story entries are in but nevertheless stories are usually grouped by chapter and then by number (Group - Chapter 1: Story - 01.00 Start, Story - 01.01 Second page etc).

It sounds like your adventures are less structured but you will likely find that pinning stories to maps is a good method of organising a campaign.

Getting stuff into FG is going to be the biggest grind if you want to have everything in FG. Many people read text from a PDF (or whatever) and just put encounters, NPCs and treausres into FG.

[morunas]

@Zacchaeus

Thanks for the feedback yes it would be a bit cumbersome to add all existing assets manually.

The pin to image/map detail seems to be a really really good way to keep things structured so that maps can be used as the main indexing, and everything else is plugged to them.
Also cool on smaller maps to use the pins as "things to check for". For example one or more pins named things like "Perception DC12" would allow me to quickly refer to passive perceptions, as well as other checks coooool ^^

I guess what I'll do is go step by step... start by bringing in the maps for the "most likely for next sessions" and populate them with existing+new content and pin everything to each map


Also... once I found I could pin a map... to a map... I just smiled :P and was 100% happy that I bought the ultimate license xD

Thank you all for the feedback

[damned]

Dont feel like you have to use everything in FG.
And definitely not straight away.
Start with Character Sheets.
And a few maps.
Do combat next.
Add story when you can.
Use the Calendar - it would be nice if players could add to teh calendar but they cant.
Totally, totally use pins.
For your type of sandbox consider the DOE Locations and DOE Organisations extensions.

Take your time with it and just use the bits that make sense to use straight away.
When you and the group are ready use a few more features.

[Trenloe]

Yep, do as damned mentions. Don't try to do everything before you start gaming - as you'll more than likely change your mind of how you want to use FG/enter data/organize/etc. as you get more experience with using FG in a game situation.

[morunas]

Ok I will do that! I shall heed the advice of thine ancestral wisdom ^^

And thanks everyone for the super fast replies

Cheers!