Rulesets bought elsewhere - what to do?

[HeckoX]

Long stort short:

Playing Starfinder, and I - probably like many others - bought physical copies long before I ever learned of FG.
Like 90% of Europeans, I bought them through Amazon or in a local store, because shipping, VAT, fees, etc. would inflate the price of a book to 3 times its American retail price.

Now comes my issue;
Because I didn't buy these books through FG or Paizo, I'm unable to load any core rule modules to even do something as simple as create a PC to completion.
Am I seriously expected to shell out in excess of $200 on books I already own, just to be able to GM a session (or $60 to even create a PC) through FG..?

[Trenloe]

Welcome to the FG forums.

The Starfinder products in the FG store are complete Fantasy Grounds conversions of the base product - these take many hours to convert and maintain. Think of these as completely new electronic products on a new platform - there are various licensing fees, community converter commission, etc. to be paid to allow these products to be on Fantasy Grounds. Purchasing the FG product will also get the PDF, or the cost of the PDF taken off your purchase if you already own the PDF.

So, yes, if you want to have these products in Fantasy Grounds then you will have to purchase them for Fantasy Grounds. Or, you can manually enter all of the data you need yourself - which will make things a lot slower, but it will save you money. It's basically how much you value the convenience and speed provided by having the full Fantasy Grounds products available to you in your FG campaign.

[HeckoX]

Thanks for the clarification - I will take this into consideration as to whether or not I'll go forward with using FG, but it makes perfect sense.

Just as a FYI though:
This may just be because I'm inexperienced with using the system, but there were many places data could simply not be entered or created.
Manually adding data therefore doesn't seem like a viable option, since the fields are locked, and you'll end up with character sheet that's only 80% filled.

[Kelrugem]

Hi

Not sure about Starfinder but when a field is locked for whatever reason then it can normally be manipulated somewhere else (like with fields next to it with "Misc." and so on). Also when there is some little icon in some corner of a box (like a plus in 3.5e, not sure again about Starfinder) then move your mouse pointer over that, press CTRL and use your mouse wheel to adjust the value Alternatively it can also be that there is some magnifying glass (often right to it) onto which you can click to get a box for manipulating the numbers

There are different ways to manipulate numbers, depending also on the ruleset, but I am sure that you normally should be always able to manipulate your sheet, simply due to providing customization in FG But that may need some time to learn the possibilities

[Kelrugem]

I just opened Starfinder to look a bit. To give an example of the magnifying glass: When you're wondering how to change saves like Fortitude on the main tab then you can see that magnifying glass in the upper left corner next to the SR field. Clicking on that opens another window where you then can change your saves

[LordEntrails]

Its your inexperience

Check out some of the online resources on character/class/item creation. Though most are written with 5E D&D in mind, the concepts are fairly universal. Let us know if you need links to the User Manual or various videos or FG College, etc.

[damned]

If buying on the Fantasy Grounds website (as opposed to Steam) you get a full 30day money back guarantee for any reason.
You can test drive the product for a couple of weeks and get a better feel for it that way.