Are the 5E rules supposed to be incomplete? [ANGRY RANT]

[The High Druid]

I think expecting all the automation to be built-in is expecting an awful lot from your $30 PHB (which is frequently cheaper on sale). The (not amazon) price for the book is a lot higher, and that's just the text, your fantasy ground module already does a lot more for a lower price. (it also does a lot more than the PHB available on dndbeyond or roll20 - so well done you, you already got it from the best place). The modules are very much digital books with quite a few extras thrown in, and very much not software to play the game for you.

While I understand some of the frustration of "buying the books twice" (in my case I never bothered buying the physical books for 5E and have done everything through Fantasy Grounds) it's important to realise you are paying for time here. You can happily play 5E on fantasy grounds without them, if you are willing to devote the time to copying all the necessary data from the books yourself. But are the hours it would take to do that worth more to you spent on other activities, and if they are, the modules are very good investment.

Edit: this post from Zacc will be very useful getting character abilities working:
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...l=1#post432115

[Ludd_G]

{Sorry, just read this post back and I think it came over very much more belligerently than I intended, so I've deleted it}

[Trenloe]

It's an interesting discussion and you can see where people are coming from. Please keep this in mind - SmiteWorks provide a good framework and toolkit to allow all of the community/DMs Guild products you see out there. All of that is possible with the open ruleset (for some, but not all rulesets) and published API. Does it then mean that SmiteWorks should suddenly spend a lot of their limited developer resource on coding up what others have spent a lot of time coding? Or spend lots of money buying those developed products, and spending even more time making them work with the coding level expected of a Smiteworks product (there is a very wide range of coding ability out there and so it's not just a case of buying some code and using it as is). And also, what if people don't want to sell their code and want to keep selling it on DMs Guild - should SmiteWorks push them out by developing the same code? All of the DMs Guild products are possible because of the open aspect of the 5E ruleset and FGs API, is it right to effectively take away someone's revenue stream for their hard work if SmiteWorks decide to spend time developing "stuff" people see on DMs Guild but expect it in the base FG product/s?

There are a lot of things to consider here - the development environment, especially as DMs Guild has muddied the waters as to what SmiteWorks are expected to do, what they should do, and what they can do; and some people release code under licenses that mean SmiteWorks can't use their code in their products.

I know the SmiteWorks internal developers are looking at improving some coding as they come out of the developer sink that FGU has been so far (and will continue to be). But as I have outlined above - it's not just a case of spending hundreds of hours doing stuff that's been done by community developers (or something similar) - there are a lot of things to consider. Not least what these high expectations do for the official product converters - the people who convert products for you to use. A lot of these converters never get more than beer and pizza money from their many hours of work (frequently in excess of 100 hours per product). If SmiteWorks introduce a tighter expectation that these converters (frequently not very technical) have to do a lot more pseudo coding, or whatever, when SmiteWorks add a new feature; then I can guarantee that you'll see less and less converted products - especially for the non-mainstream publishers and products. And that would be a huge shame.

SmiteWorks is not a massive company with million of dollars to throw at dozens of developers. They rely heavily on external converters who get paid a small commission for their work - significantly increasing a community developer's work without increasing their recompense would mean much less converted products - and for the big publishers SmiteWorks don't have much wiggle room to give those converters more money because the publisher takes a big chunk of it. Just as an example - it will be interesting to see how many converters go back and add LoS to their already released products. SmiteWorks have to balance all of their development tasks along with their budget, their licenses, the DMs Guild/community environment, ongoing conversion of existing products and upcoming conversion of new products, etc., etc.. If the product base was completely static then it would be a lot easier, but it isn't.

A lot of the automation in the 5E ruleset is possible because WotC use very repeatable phrases that the 5E ruleset is programmed to recognise and extract relevant actions and effects. A small number of these in the base product don't work correctly, and have been programmed into the 5E ruleset - but such an approach isn't viable for all of the products out there. It will need a new automation subsystem (for lack of a better phrase) that less technical people could use, but would allow converters to build higher levels of automation/power recognition in the product they're converting - but, like I mention, this will increase the converter's workload. I know that SmiteWorks have tasked one of their internal devs to look at options for this.

On a side note, I'm the main community developer for the Pathfinder Second Edition ruleset (PFRPG2). I don't work for SmiteWorks and rely on converting Paizo products to get my beer and pizza money - I get a very small amount of commission for being the main ruleset developer, it's not much all things considered. I spend over 100 hours each month (on top of my day job) coding new features, fixing bugs, helping other developers get up-to-speed, supporting people on the forums and discord, etc.. We've had similar expectations/complaints about the PFRPG2 ruleset - mostly exposed because Paizo don't use the same level of reproducible phrases like WotC do, so the ruleset can't do best guess parsing to the same level as the 5E ruleset. It's interesting that some of the complaints are that PFRPG2 is not as good as 5E and it's the poor stepson by comparison - the perception being that more time has been spent on the 5E ruleset and products to get to the level of automation 5E has (ironically, the level that some people in this thread feel is not good enough). I recognise that things can be better, and have started implementing an automation subsystem to allow more coding of abilities and actions - but, as mentioned above, this still requires people to do it - be it a converter or a GM doing their own stuff. If anyone's interested, there's some details of the first steps, with PFRPG2 NPC automation in this thread (especially post #3): https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...quot-live-quot

So, TL;DR - SmiteWorks, and other devs, do recognise that things could be better, and are working to improve things. But, it won't happen overnight, and (this is very important) due to the forever changing nature of RPG systems (new products coming out, etc.) it will never, ever, be possible to have 100% automation of everything. In the 5E ruleset, SmiteWorks already have a high level (80% or more), but the remaining 20% can cause angst for some people - and this has bred a cottage industry of developers who sell the results of their efforts on DMs Guild. The situation, and how to move forwards from here, is not simple - due to the emergence of this cottage industry, SmiteWorks current commitments to their licensed products and their community developers, and the simple fact that they don't have inexhaustible resources. But there are plans being discussed and things afoot (more than just games, Watson)...

[TMO]

A lot of the automation in the 5E ruleset is possible because WotC use very repeatable phrases that the 5E ruleset is programmed to recognise and extract relevant actions and effects. A small number of these in the base product don't work correctly, and have been programmed into the 5E ruleset - but such an approach isn't viable for all of the products out there. It will need a new automation subsystem (for lack of a better phrase) that less technical people could use, but would allow converters to build higher levels of automation/power recognition in the product they're converting - but, like I mention, this will increase the converter's workload. I know that SmiteWorks have tasked one of their internal devs to look at options for this.

IMO, this alone says it best. I was trying to say the same thing, but not nearly as clearly or competently.

Software development is my day job and our company uses a tookit that is very flexible and extensible...not unlike what Fantasy Grounds is for VTT. Our community often discusses "what we think the tookit should do out of the box" but we also realize the tookit vendor, like SmitWorks, is a relatively small company with limited resources. They are busy keeping their tookit compatible with the rapidly changing environment of operating systems. Knowing that, it helps keep our expectations in check yet it also incentives companies like ours to develop 3rd party add-ons. Compared to our primary software development and consulting revenue, the money we get from selling our 3rd party add-ons (which includes a huge library of freeware) is barely "beer and pizza money". We sometimes begrudge the vendor for not providing the same tools we feel forced to write, but at the same time we've also benefited greatly from the reputation we've received from our contributions to the developer comunity. As such, this has generated new software development work. So, it's a win for us either way.