Fantasy Grounds |
2020 update Fantasy Grounds Unity seems close to release
Summer 2019 update: Fantasy Grounds created a Kickstarter for a version made in Unity which was successfully funded. Beta for kickstarters planned to start December 2019.
Cursory Review 2018: Very active development/community, official licence for various editions of Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder, Savage Worlds, Call of Cthulhu, Chaosium, Rolemaster, and Castles & Crusades. Community has also created unofficial versions for many other systems, and players can also create fully custom rulesets.
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Fantasy Grounds is an application acting as a virtual online gaming table primarily intended for pen and paper style narrative role playing games. It's designed to perform many of the things you can do while playing at a conventional gaming table and move it online. Run games as the gamemaster or take part as a player, the application provides all the necessary tools to communicate, manage information and perform tasks such as rolling the dice or creating drawings.
A user interface specifically designed to capture the spirit of pen & paper roleplaying. The Gamemaster can hand out sheets, maps, and notes for any or all players to interact with. Role playing is easy with dedicated chat features. Access all traditional paraphernalia available at the gaming table. These include dice, drawings, character sheets, portraits, tokens, and rulebook reference material.
Visualize tactical scenes using maps rich with features or create them on the fly. Draw on the virtual paper or reveal parts of maps prepared beforehand and place tokens to indicate player characters and NPCs. The Gamemaster can create and keep track of all in-game information. She can also customize game assets and user interface elements to accommodate house rules. Interactive fully realistic 3D dice.
Price
- Free
- Standard(3.99$/month or 39$ once)
- Ultimate(9.99$/month or 149$ once)
Links
- Store for official rulebooks, adventures and assets for D&D and others.
- Wikipedia page
- Tutorials
- Fantasy Grounds review 1
- Fantasy Grounds review 2
- Fantasy Grounds review 3
System Requirements
Windows
- Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7 with DirectX 9.0 or better
- DirectX 9.0 compatible video adapter
- Pentium 3 500MHz or equivalent
- RAM: 256 MB
- Video memory: 32 MB
- Hard drive space: 100 MB
- Internet Connection
Linux/Mac
- Linux or Mac with Wine 1.1.28 (or higher) or other Wine based cross-platform software such as CrossOver Mac
- DirectX 9.0 compatible video adapter
- Core 2 Duo processor or equivalent
- RAM: 512 MB
- Video memory: 64 MB
- Hard drive space: 100 MB
- Internet Connection
Fantasy Grounds Unity
Fantasy Grounds Unity is a project started around 2015/20161, and was Kickstarted with $509,343 in 2019.2 It has a plan to release in Q1 2020.3
Feature(plan)
- Native support for Mac, Linux and Windows PC
- Paint with images, such as walls
- Animated image effects
- Backward compatibility with all existing campaigns and DLC from FGC
Price4
- Standard $39.99
- Ultimate $149.99
- Standard to Ultimate Upgrade $110
- Upgrade FG Standard to FGU Standard $31.99 (20% off)
- Upgrade FG Ultimate to FGU Ultimate $89.99 (40% off)
Aside from a host of fan-made and free content, there are currently 16 active publishers who licensed their products for conversion to Fantasy Grounds. This resulted in 86 new add-on products getting produced in 2010 and 17 so far in 2011. The system also has the most reported users with over 20,000 licensed users to date.
There are 39 systems in total supported by either a commercial or a fan-made ruleset or extension to date. You can see the list here: http://oberoten.dyndns.org/fgwiki/index.php/Category:Systems
Fantasy Grounds II Full License $39.95
Fantasy Grounds II Lite License $23.95
Fantasy Grounds II Ultimate License $149.95
Fantasy Grounds II Ultimate License Upgrade from Full $115
This may be the best of the bunch so far. Very simple, very intuitive interface. Right-click with mouse to get a menu of choices in a radial format (not too big on that myself, but I'm old-fashioned about drop-down menus, so it's a personal things, not a design flaw). Lots of tooltips on just about everything. Dice rolls are done in chat window, I presume so that all participants can see rolls.
Supports quite a few rulesets, but unfortunately did not support the one used by AEG for Legend of the Five Rings. Because I am not a programmer/coder and have no wish to spend all my hobby time doing so, I can't use this program for what I need it for. However, if I run something it supports (D&D 3.5 or GURPS, for example), I'd use it in a heartbeat.
Big kudos to the guys that made it. Quite a good program. (Of course, I'd be happy to come back and pay for a full version once L5R rules are ready, wink wink, nudge nudge…)
There is now a monthly subscription option that lets you get an Ultimate for $9.99 a month. Your group can all connect for free and you can start and stop your subscription without losing any of your creations. The single-user license is also available for a $3.99 / month subscription. The one-time purchase options are all still available.
Rulesets now included with purchase or subscription: D&D 3.5, D&D 4E, D&D 5E, Pathfinder, Numenera, FATECore. D&D 3.5E and Pathfinder both include library modules of pre-entered spells, monsters, abilities, etc.
All licenses also come with built-in maps, tokens and portraits. You can add your own or buy more from the store.
The Fantasy Grounds Unity beta began on October 29, 2019. There are 8500 beta testers (those that backed the Kickstarter), and there were a dozen or so of us on the alpha team (higher Kickstarter backers).
It's all very exciting with the addition of dynamic lighting and in-game map-making on the fly. There are MANY more new features.
The scheduled release is year's end.
For more info, drop by their forums or Discord server.
fantasygrounds DOT com