Swords & Wizardry Light - Forum

Monday, May 6, 2019

Kickstarter - Fantasy Grounds Unity

"Fantasy Grounds Unity - Help us Launch the RPG Virtual Tabletop of the Future"


I've been "invested" in Fantasy Grounds since 2006, when I picked up a bundle of GM and Player's licenses. When I met Rach I was a player in my second FG campaign. The first was a Dark Heresy campaign. The second was Castles & Crusades.

I wanted to use it as a GM but could never wrap my head around how to set it up with a homebrewed adventure. It seemed to need coding language, and that has never been my strong point. Then I went to using a Mac and Fantasy Grounds did not play well with it, and I found Roll20 and I stepped away from Fantasy Grounds.

Fantasy Grounds Unity may just bring me back.
Fantasy Grounds is a popular system for playing a host of different roleplaying games online.  It is used by more than 130,000 gamers worldwide to connect and play popular games such as Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder, Savage Worlds, Call of Cthulhu, and more.  This type of program is commonly referred to as a virtual tabletop, or VTT, due to their ability to emulate various part of an RPG session in a digital form. 
What makes Fantasy Grounds different than competitors is how we expose character sheets and automate large portions of gameplay specifically for each system we support.  This is done through rulesets.  Your experience playing Deadlands Reloaded will differ from D&D and will be unique to that environment, contain custom graphics, character sheets, and automation specific to that game system.   
One feature shared across most game systems is maps.  Some may use hexes while others use square grids and some may not use grids at all.  Facing is important in some and less so in others.  While FG has featured maps for many years, they have been primarily focused as reproductions of maps in existing adventure modules from our many licensed publishers. We believe that we can enhance these to provide dynamic line of sight, fog of war, and even map building support with painting and tiles.

What you get for backing this project will be a license for Fantasy Grounds Unity (or FGU). This new game engine has all the great features of current version of Fantasy Grounds (soon to be called Fantasy Grounds Classic) along with new enhanced features. 
Original Features Supported:

  • Multiplayer support for playing tabletop games of Dungeons & Dragons (2E, 3.5E, 4E and 5E), Pathfinder RPG 1, Pathfinder RPG 2, Starfinder.
  • Built-in content for D&D 3.5E, 5E and Pathfinder 1
  • Officially licensed add-on content available for D&D, D&D Classics (2E), Pathfinder, Starfinder, Savage Worlds, Call of Cthulhu, Basic Roleplaying, Castles & Crusades, Mutants & Masterminds, 13th Age, W.O.I.N., Traveller, and Rolemaster Classic
  • Generic system support through our CoreRPG ruleset
  • Brilliant Campaign Management
  • Integrated character sheets with lots of automation built in for playing and leveling (depending on ruleset and content owned)
  • Combat Tracking
  • 3D dice

Fantasy Grounds Unity Enhanced Features Include:
  • 64-bit support to allow for more content (quality and quantity)
  • Native support for Mac, Linux and Windows PC
  • Network lobby for easy hosting and joining of games (no port forwarding required)
  • Tile based map building
  • Enhanced Drawing Tools
  • Additional Dice Macros support
  • A new FGU only skin
  • Dynamic Line of Sight with enhanced toggle blockers
  • Paint with images, such as walls
  • Animated image effects
Backward compatibility with all existing campaigns and DLC from FGC
In addition to these features, we are now poised to add even greater functionality going forward. We have lots of ideas for new features and this rebuilt engine will make it easier for us reach those goals and deliver consistent updates for free. 
So yes, I'm very excited.

There are a ton of backer levels. Read them carefully. If you have a current license, you need to know when you purchased it to ensure you back at the proper upgrade level.

This is what I'll be backing at:


 As far as the funding is going, the Fantasy Grounds Unity Kickstarter is on fire!



3 comments:

  1. Strike One: No support for 1E.

    But why does it need to "support" anything? Why do I need "campaign management"? Let me run the effing game!!!!!!!

    Why can't I just have an online game that gives me voice and video, a dice rolling app, and maybe a white board? Why the fuck do I need to upload tiles, and icons, and data for my campaign, and all the rest of that blather? I want to play a tabletop RPG online, not play an online game with multiple people.

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    Replies
    1. the 2e ruleset has a free add on to make it 1e compatible (or so I've been told)

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  2. You've been told correctly. I wrote the ruleset and the 1e community extension and plan to continue to update the 1e extension as the ruleset is updated.

    We've also been approved for several adventures, the first one released is N1 and T1-4 should be released sometime next month. I prefer 1e adventures so those are the ones I wanted first. There are several more of this type coming.


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