Software: Fantasy Grounds?

[Rob Knotts]

Somebody recently pointed me to a software application called Fantasy Grounds (http://www.fantasygrounds.com/). It's an online interface intended to let people play tabletop games without all being at the same table, similar to the online service WotC is planning for 4e.

Of the three people I game with, two of them live around 30 miles away from me, and being able to run games for them online would be a big help. It wouldn't replace getting toghether around the same table sharing pizza & caffeine, but it would gaming more regularly a lot more practical than it is now.

So I'm curious, anybody else out there ever use Fantasy Grounds? Is it particularly suited to just one game system, or is it pretty well open-ended? Has anyone tried any other similar interfaces? Since it's basically my responsibility to get gaming materials for both myself and the other players in our group, I'd like to get as much feedback as possible before having to buy downloads for each person in our group.

[Yvanehtnioj]

I used it with my friends before. It is open-ended and worked great with the d20 system, as we used the program for dnd.

I also liked how people can sent chat msgs to each other. The dm can too, and also privately. (i.e. for a given language, or to let you know you spotted something the other char's didnt see.)

It let us make maps and use markers to show where we went. It had several things to reference for players / dm's. Specifically, the core rule books, as from the SRD.


Okay, the one thing I did not like: I thought that the dice rolling part was not fun. I like to roll them in my hand, but even though it was a flexible system, I did not like how the same numbers kept showing up. It was annoying.

Overall, it probably is a good system. But, if you use it to dm, you will have to play around with it and learn how it works.