FG (DND 5e) Token Problem

[Mytherus]

Good Afternoon All,

I'm getting ready to run my first gig as DM with Fantasy Grounds and I feel I have a decent handle on everything and I'm good to go *EXCEPT* one thing that eludes me..... tokens / portraits.....

First are tokens and portraits inter-changeable? (Can I use a token as a portrait, a portrait as a token?)

That might be my main issue is not understanding that simple fact alone.

I have several "sacks" (referring to how FG displays the collections) of tokens from my purchases of the PHB, DMG, MM, SCAG, Xan's, etc. etc. --- on my FG I have them all available for any mock characters I make and it seems to let me use them as portraits* (*this is why I was wondering if tokens = portraits and vice versa)

I have a separate test FG account (which is just the freebie version) and a second computer to simulate a player logging into my game -- on my "simulated player" workstation I have no access to the portraits I have on my GM station. The modules that have the "little bag icons on them" are shared to players, so I don't know what gives.

Right now any player that logs into my game -- will have only like 12 portrait options (the base ones that are built into FG apparently).

That's rather lame, so I was hoping there was some way to fix that. Ultimately my thought is "What's the point of having all these sacks of portrait options if my players have no access to them?"

Thank you.

[mattekure]

Tokens and portraits are located in separate folders. in your Fantasy Grounds data folder, portraits are located in the ./portraits folder while tokens are in the ./tokens/host or ./tokens/shared directories. You can add images to those directories directly, or you can also load both tokens and portraits from modules. Portraits are usually jpg files, while tokens are usually png files to take advantage of the transparency capabilities in that format.

Players will only have access to portraits that they own or add to their own portraits folder.

[LordEntrails]

The DM can add the portrait to the character as desired and the player should see it. Some DMs will take screen shots of their tokens/portraits folder and let the player chose from there.

As you noticed, tokens are not shared along with content. I'm not sure about the offcial DLC, but if you had made a token module you could share that module with the players and they could load that. You can also try to have the "player" load the teokn module, via the Tokens UI (not the library UI) and see if that works.

I suspect someone else will jump in soon with exact details and other suggestions, but that's what I know at the moment

[Trenloe]

Portraits and tokens are different. Portraits are used to assign the main image for a PC (you can't add them to NPCs). Tokens are used to represent a PC/NPC on the map - dragged from the combat tracker.

Where there is a slight overlap is when you assign a portrait to a PC, it will auto create a token for that PC, local to the campaign, based off the token graphic. Or, if you've changed the token (by drag/dropping a new token to the PC sheet), you can drag/drop the portrait on the PC sheet to the token placeholder on a PC sheet.

As has been mentioned, portraits are stored locally and available to the player/GM based off what they have on their computer. If the GM has a lot more tokens than the players, then the main work around is to take a screenshot of their token page/s and share those with the players (through the usual image sharing functionality), the players can indicate the portraits they'd like and the GM can add that to the relevant PC. Not ideal, but it's a work around that allows the players to use the portraits the GM has.

[Trenloe]

...but if you had made a token module you could share that module with the players and they could load that.

You can't share token modules with players. And, has been mentioned, tokens are different from portraits - you can't use a token as a portrait, but (as mentioned above) you can generate a token from a portrait on a PC.

[Mytherus]

Thanks all, as usual this forum's response time with relevant answers continues to impress me. I wish FG had better functionality to tackle the issue other than the screenshot workaround, but at least the answers given will stop me from going insane over why my "PC test" account couldn't access the same portraits on my "main/paid" account.