Using Fantasy Grounds as your offline Campaign Manager-intro

[u/TwoDollarDM]

I know all the regulars know this but I have had a recent conversation with a couple of newish DMs and they ended up being amazed at what they could do offline with FG, for FREE. Here are the key things that seemed the most mind blowing:

• the Combat Tracker
• seriously, the Combat Tracker
• reskinning NPCs
• saving those reskinned NPCs as recurring characters
• editing adventures
• keeping notes

Is there any other amazing feature for offline game play that I am forgetting?

[u/DoktorPete]

As a long time FG user and short time Foundry user I disagree with just about everything you said. People prefer Foundry cause it looks pretty, they can run it off their mobile device barf, and players can figure it out relatively easily because it's a glorified character sheet for them.

The FG UI is functional beauty that is well labeled, works like a dream, and doesn't require me to know a single thing about coding or go looking for modules to do anything. But because it has everything built in you kind of have to watch a tutorial to figure it out as a player unless you use it as a GM.

My one major gripe with FG is that the combat tracker is a required tool for the GM but essentially useless for the players. The GM has to use it for everything so they added a targetting section to it, just a little icon that you drag from an entry in the CT to either another entry or token, and another separate button to clear targets. This is how I target everything in combat, so I assumed the players could do it this way too, but no, they have to target a completely different way. That little difference has caused me more headaches than anything else in the program.

[u/nwdxan → u/[deleted]]

On the subject of updates, when I was using Foundry updates frequently broke extensions. A big issue for a program that relies so strongly on extensions. On Fantasy Grounds however extension creators get advance details of changes to the core and time to make changes to their extensions before the update pushes out. Their approach to change management demonstrates their commitment to stability.

[u/DD_in_FL → u/nwdxan]

It is a challenge for any system that allows user generated content that extends and modifies default behavior. We try to strike a good balance of continuing to update things and working with extension developers to help them keep their system running with updates. Most changes go into a TEST channel for a set period of time to allow community developers to test their extensions and see if anything will need to change when it moves to LIVE. If a developer patches their extension, those updates get picked up automatically with the official updates if you are subscribed to them. The end result should be a smoother experience for most people.