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View Full Version : DM Help Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds Decision



Holy Goat
2020-05-08, 08:55 PM
Hello all! I am hoping to pick y'all's brains about whether Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds would be better suited for my needs as a new DM. I know that this sort of question can be a bit like asking whether I should get a PlayStation or XBox, the answer really depends on the situation and what I want out of it, I have done enough research to know that much. But I am hoping to get some more specialized advice from people who have used them. So here is a bit of background info to help you understand where I am coming from.

I have a group of online friends who have been throwing around the idea of starting a D&D campaign online, but no one ever took the initiative to start it, so I decided that despite not having any actual DMing experience, I would just bite the bullet and do it. I know quite a bit about 5e (that's the system I'll be using for the foreseeable future), but I have never actually DMed before. Because of that, I decided to start off easy and run Lost Mines of Phandelver (which is free on both platforms) to get my feet wet and then go on from there, hopefully designing my own campaign at some point.

I have played on Roll20 a couple of times as a player, and I do find the interface pretty confusing. That's probably a matter of just getting used to it, and I understand Fantasy Grounds will probably be equally as confusing as I learn it.

I understand there is a lot of discussion surrounding the different prices for each platform as well, and the consensus seems to be that Roll20 has better totally free options but gets more expensive down the line. Whereas FG is more an upfront cost, but cheaper over time. Money isn't a huge issue for me at the moment (I am incredibly lucky to still be working full time and not a lot of ways or reasons to spend). So I don't mind some upfront cost. Also on that note, I would definitely be getting the Ultimate version of FGU so none of my players incur any costs. I also would probably be buying the core modules for whichever I chose because time and convenience is a lot more valuable than the cost right now.

I did go ahead and download Fantasy Grounds Unity and play around with it a little bit to see how it felt and honestly, I was pretty dang confused by it as well. Like I couldn't even figure out how to open a battle map and add tokens to it. Again, this might just be something I have to get used to. But the confusingness of it did put me off a bit. Though like I said, Roll20 seems like it could be pretty confusing as well.

I also understand that Roll20 is more versatile in regards to different systems or even homebrew content. I don't think I really plan on doing too much else besides 5e, maybe down the line tweaking or houseruling somethings, but I don't expect to go in and tinker too much with the core rules.

I did see that Fantasy Grounds has some really interesting fan modules, which is a real plus to me I think. Not really sure how Roll20 operates or if there's as much of that sort of thing for it.

Ultimately I think what I am mostly wondering is which one makes putting down a battlemap and moving things around on it best? I don't really care too much about being able to just click a box and have it figure out what all dice to roll and whatnot. Part of the fun of tabletops for me is going through the process of thinking "Ok, I need to roll a d20 with disadvantage, and if successful roll 1d10+2 plus 1d4 necrotic damage". But maybe having just one button to click to do a lot of that work for you is the sort of quality of life my players, and even eventually I, would appreciate?

Part of me is leaning toward Roll20 because that's what some f my players are already used to and I've used it a little bit, but I am a little concerned that down the line I might get tired of some of its quirks. But I am really hesitant to make a decision, because I know that with the upfront cost of both of them, I'm going to have to just stick with whichever I choose. Because of some personality flaws/quirks of mine, if something becomes too tedious or frustrating, I'm likely to burn out on it, and I *really* want to be playing D&D consistently.



TL;DR: Help! I can't decide if I should pull the trigger for either Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds Unity as a new DM and it's holding me back from getting stuff prepped for my campaign.

Azuresun
2020-05-11, 06:46 PM
I did go ahead and download Fantasy Grounds Unity and play around with it a little bit to see how it felt and honestly, I was pretty dang confused by it as well. Like I couldn't even figure out how to open a battle map and add tokens to it. Again, this might just be something I have to get used to. But the confusingness of it did put me off a bit. Though like I said, Roll20 seems like it could be pretty confusing as well.

I found Roll20 to be a bit confusing and unintuitive. Fantasy Grounds worked better for me, and I'm running two games on it for the duration of my current confinement. I've found that it's best learned by just fooling around when it's just you in a room, and seeing what different buttons do.

For the task above:

--Go to the "Images / Maps" folder on the right-hand side of the screen. If it's not there, you can go to "Library" at the bottom right and customise what buttons appear.

--Click on "folder" to open up the folder on your computer where FG images are stored. Copy / paste any images into that folder.

--If you want to add folders for images, the brown circle is the symbol to edit a list, then the plus symbol, then drag and drop the images from the All folder. You can also make a shortcut for an image by dragging it onto the bar at the bottom.

--If you want your players to see an image, rightclick on the entry and then the "make public" icon, on the right.

--If you want to add a grid to the map, rightclick on the image, go to Layers at the bottom right, then set the size of a single square, from which the grid will be produced.

--To add tokens, click on Tokens on the right, then Modules. Then "load" in every token set you want access to.

--Then click on the bag representing a token set, to open it. Drag the tokens you want onto the map.

--To edit token side, use Ctrl + mousewheel when hovering over the token. Then rightclick and lock size, so it doesn't rescale when someone zooms.

--If you buy maps / tokens from the FG store, using Update on the start menu will add them to your available modules, but you'll need to load them in before you can access them.

I think that's about everything. Again, play around with it and see what happens. FG has a lot of features, but I seldom felt anything was more complex than it needed to be, unlike Roll20.

Anxe
2020-05-13, 10:30 AM
I use Roll20 all the time. I could help clear up things you're finding I unintuitive. With my players is usually that they missed a hot key or something that makes whatever process they were trying easier.

I haven't used Fantasy Grounds so I can't speak to that. I came to the same conclusion you did though for price. More upfront cost.

Making Roll20 maps is easy as long as you're not layering a ton of images on top of each other. Just plop your map in and size it correctly by changing its size like you would in any image editing software. I usually pull maps from the battlemaps subreddit and use those. You can also just draw on the map. You only need to make sure your in the map layer or move stuff there when you're done.
Tokens can be anything you want, so my players usually give me a piece of art they found online and I turn that into their character's token.

Man_Over_Game
2020-05-14, 04:47 PM
Roll20 does have the means of doing things simply, although it may mean you need to do some setup beforehand.

For example, on the Roll20 official Character Sheet, you can click on one of your listed Attacks on the Character Sheet. Doing so will roll the Attack Roll on the main chat. Under the Attack Roll is the stats for the relevant damage for that attack roll that's saved in the Character Sheet.

So, for example, you can have an Attack called Fire Bolt that attacks with 1d20 + Spell Mod (which you can specify for that attack). In the Chat, under the roll, you can click on the word "Firebolt" to roll its damage if the DM says it's an attack, which clicking it would roll 1d10 (unless you added some bonuses to the damage roll in the character sheet).

You can also do things like create a Goblin creature in your Journal, associating the Goblin journal entry with your Goblin.png token in your Token library, and now dragging your Goblin creature from your Journal onto the map will generate a Goblin Token. Double Clicking on the Goblin Token on the map will open up all of the information associated with the Goblin's journal, which may include things like Monster Manual info or whatever else you decided to put in its journal.

It might take a bit of setup beforehand, but it does mean you can have 20 tokens on the board and just be able to doubleclick on one to find its specific info rather than having to reference what the token is with what the handbook says about the monster.