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Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Fantasy Grounds Virtual Table Top Officially Licenses Dungeons & Dragons 5e - There Can be Only One


Now it all makes sense.

Yesterday I received 3 enquiries about Fantasy Grounds, anything from "where can a get a spoofed key?" (can't help you) to "how does it play compared to Roll20?" (FG has a heavier load for the GM to lift in prep, at least last time I checked.) Today, I woke up to an email letting me know that Dungeons & Dragons 5e had been officially licensed by Smiteworks for use with Fantasy Grounds.

Holy shit. It looks like WotC figured out a way to associate a viable VTT with their product.

We are proud to announce that we are officially licensed to sell D&D source material and content inside of Fantasy Grounds! This is the beginning of a great new partnership between SmiteWorks and Wizards of the Coast that will benefit gamers worldwide. 
You can purchase the D&D Complete Core Class Pack with all the class, feats, spells and equipment or you can purchase individual classes only. You can also buy the monsters in packs or as the D&D Complete Core Monster Pack. These products have been converted to work really tightly with Fantasy Grounds to give you the best possible gaming experience - we know you're going to love them. They contain all the great artwork and content from the official products and all the smarts and integration to work with Fantasy Grounds. Not only will you get the same content that can be found in print, but you also get an exciting new Fifth Edition theme, adventures and content customized specifically for ease of play inside of Fantasy Grounds. 
For Dungeon Masters and players on a budget, you might pick up a Player Customization Pack and one or two Class Packs of your choice. Dungeon Masters can often get by with just the Adventure of their choice and one or two Monster Packs.
Don't forget that players can gift purchases through Steam for Dungeon Masters who have linked their license on Steam. 
To read up a little more on Fantasy Grounds and the different license options available for the core software product, please follo w this link to take a tour.
See all the Wizards of the Coasts products available in the Store
D&D Complete Core Class Pack (49.99) In this module, you get all twelve core character classes converted for play in Fantasy Grounds. You get the class description, special features, spells and abilities used by your class and general character customization options such as equipment and feats. You also get: 
328 Character Portraits
Players Handbook custom theme
Random Tables
All feats from the PHB fully configured for Fantasy Grounds
Equipment tables fully configured for Fantasy Grounds
Weapons lists fully configured for Fantasy Grounds
All Spells from the PHB fully configured for Fantasy Grounds
Automatic addition of new class features when you drag class links to your character's level summary
You get all of this and much more
D&D Complete Core Monster Pack (49.99) The entire collection of core monsters from the D&D Monster Manual is now at your fingertips. Dungeon Masters can use this module to create encounters and combats within their campaigns. NPC records have been lovingly entered and organized for ease of use and reference during play. This pack includes:
273 monster images to share with your players
366 monster tokens for use on tactical combat maps
Full descriptions for all monsters in the D&D Monster Manual
Full stats for all monsters in the D&D Monster Manual
The complete reference material from the D&D Monster Manual
Searchable monster indexes by CR, type and in alphabetical order
You get all of this and much more - [ read more ]
D&D Lost Mine of Phandelver (19.99) Lost Mine of Phandelver is an adventure for four to five characters of 1st level. During the course of the adventure, the characters will advance to 5th level. The adventure is set a short distance from the city of Neverwinter in the Sword Coast region of the Forgotten Realms setting. The Sword Coast is part of the North--a vast realm of free settlements surrounded by wilderness and adventure. This product includes:
the entire contents of the Lost Mine of Phandelver adventure
image handouts that can be shared with players
5 pregen characters to get you going quickly
maps containing Dungeon Master (DM) information with all locations pre-linked to story entries, boxed text, encounters, images and treasure parcels
player and tactical combat maps
You get all of this and much more
Ain't cheap. The Basic Rules however, are $2.99.
* The content from this module is included in the Complete Core Class Pack
Set in a medieval fantasy world, D&D allows you to experience stories and adventures full of endless possibilities and amazing surprises. The Basic Rules for Dungeons & Dragons is a PDF that covers the core of the tabletop game. 
As Mike Mearls explained in Legends & Lore, the Basic Rules for Dungeons & Dragons is converted from the PDF (over 100 pages, in fact) that covers the core of the game. It runs from levels 1 to 20 and covers the cleric, fighter, rogue, and wizard, presenting what we view as the essential subclass for each. It also provides the dwarf, elf, halfling, and human as race options; in addition, the rules contain 120 spells, 5 backgrounds, and character sheets. All of these features have been compiled into modules specifically formatted for ease of play on Fantasy Grounds at the table or over the Internet.
The PDF that this product was based on is available for free from the Wizards of the Coast website. 
This purchase includes the following items:
-A custom theme derived in the same style as the Player's Handbook
-Random tables for rolling background bonds, flaws, ideals, origins, etc.
-Equipment tables containing items that can be dragged to character sheets, treasure parcels or NPCs for ease of reference, encumbrance calculations and ease of disbursement. The searchable lists contain all items listed in the Player's Handbook (Adventuring Gear, Tools, Armor, Weapons, Mounts, Tack and Harness, Vehicles.)
-Draggable weapons that auto-enter the inventory, weight, attack type (melee, ranged, thrown) and the damage (with damage type.)
-Reference material and artwork which is not specific to any one particular character class
-A list of spells from the D&D Basic Rules, ready to drag and drop to your character sheet
-The class description from the Player's Handbook for all 4 basic core classes: cleric, fighter, rogue and wizard
-Details and features from levels 1-20 for the 4 included classes
-Automatic addition of new class features when you drag the class link to your character's level summary
-This product is licensed from Wizards of the Coast. Dungeons & Dragons is a registered trademark. Unauthorized use or distribution is strictly prohibited.

And of course, this doesn't include the price of the Fantasy Grounds software itself. Still, for the right group, this could be an excellent option,


12 comments:

  1. I'll be doing a full post tonight or tomorrow Eric, but this is what I can tell you right now. The drag and drop is awesome and fills everything with easy. Weapons auto populate to the attack/damage bind and so forth. Only problems so far are races are empty and that means nothing changes if dragged, dropped, or entered into the field and bonuses/extras based on race still need to be entered manually and need the off or physical book. Armor also doesn't auto populate and the sheet auto assumes the baseline ac 10 so a minor bit of math is needed when enter ing armor ac values for 5e. Otherwise a rather complete conversation.

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  2. Very interesting. I own an Ultimate Licence for FG, and have used it for GURPS with moderate success. Were I to run D&D5 I'd definitely go this route.

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  3. I had the 2nd version of this program and it was buggy as hell. I think that with internet and computer advances it might be ok, unless they kept upping the ante on what FG could do.

    In my opinion Fantasy Grounds was one of the best advertisements for MapTools I've ever seen.

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  4. As a player i loved Fantasy Grounds. Never could grok what i needed to do to run S&W and write my own adventures

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  5. March 2014 Blog Carnival wrapup on VTTs: http://gamingballistic.blogspot.com/2014/03/rpgba-blog-carnival-march-2014-vtts-and.html

    Initial impressions of using FG with GURPS: http://gamingballistic.blogspot.com/2014/04/alien-menace-introductory-session.html

    Interview with Doug Davison from last year: http://gamingballistic.blogspot.com/2014/03/gaming-ballistics-firing-squad-welcome.html

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  6. "Packs" and "cores" and "spoofed keys" mean nothing to me. I assume this was poorly translated from some other language.

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  7. Fantasy Grounds is the only VTT I've used and enjoyed, though the last time I ran anything with it was like 2006. This was a damned smart move on their part....you can even get Fantasy Grounds on Steam. Wow.

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  8. An update from my original comment: They pushed an update earlier today that fixed the "blank" races pin.

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  9. Very good news. I picked up the books (PHB, MM, DMG, HOTDQ, ROT, DM Screen, HOTDQ GM Screen, and the Box set, but other than take a read of them, I don't know if I"ll ever really play. With this news, there is a very good chance we'll take a break from our current campaign on Fantasy Grounds (running Castles & Crusades and going through the A-Series) and give 5e a try using the Lost Mines.

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  10. Hey Erik, I think it's safe to say that you called it a little while back. :)

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  11. Fantasy Grounds. It always makes me sad when people have a "Download Our Software" link and can't be bothered to say what their software runs ON.

    Welcome to the future since the second computer existed where there is more than one execution environment in the universe.

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  12. Well, Fantasy Grounds isn't a VTT I use, so oh well. It would have been better to offer the license to any VTT that wanted it. Then more people would have been exposed to the official content.

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