I have the ultimate license, so that anyone can play in my games without having to pay a dime (they can use the beta version). It took me over a year to get the courage to try out the program, as it seemed very intimidating, but after I looked at tutorials online and tried it out for myself with some friends, I found that it is very easy and fun to use.

I have used this and Roll20, and I must say that Fantasy Grounds is far superior for a number of reasons. First is the price. With Roll20, the free version is okay if you're just a player, but as a DM, you need to upgrade. With Roll20, you don't buy the program and it's yours. Instead, you must "rent" it by the month or year with a subscription. With Fantasy Grounds, once you buy it (at once, or through monthly payments), it's yours to keep. One thing I will say about Roll20 is that as it uses Google Hangouts, you can see and hear each other in chat, where Fantasy Grounds does not have a chat function yet. My group uses Razer Comms, a free team voice chat program by the company who makes gaming peripherals. One of the many cool functions is the ability to speak in a racial tongue, and the words will be seem by others who speak the same language. Those who don't will only see strange glyphs which match the language. For example, Dwarvish and Elvish match the runes that were on the code wheel from the original SSI Gold Box game, Pool of Radiance(!). It's got a very nice combat system, where players can simply drop their attack die onto an enemy, and the program will automatically add modifiers, know if they hit, and even deal damage and conditions. It can even do the critical hits and fumbles for you.

Something else to keep in mind is that if you want to be the DM, you will have to have at least the $39 version of the game. With that one, you can play in games with others who have paid for the $39 version, as well. If you get the Ultimate license for $149, then you can play in anyone's games, and you can host the game for people with the free demo version. Also, you'll need to purchase the rulesets for the games you want. For example, You can get the D&D 5E basic rules for cheap (or maybe free), but you're better off getting the full core books to get all the races and classes. At about $40 - $50 apiece, it isn't cheap. Also, the official modules cost around $35 each. I will say, as I own all the offical books and modules, that it's worth it in the end. Sure, it's easy to make your own adventures with PDFs and understanding the format, but all the work is done for you with the purchases.

All-in-all, it may seem a little costly and intimidating at first, but me and my group who live thousands of miles away are having a blast every Monday night. Your best bet is to get the free trial, watch some of the videos online, and jump in someone's game as an observer. You'll be hooked. Just remember that it isn't a "video game" of D&D. It helps keep track of rules, and it's still just a tabletop for playing with friends. Definitely recommended, if you have the extra money.

This thing took 26 attempts before it finally downloaded all of the components for the basic version. No tutorial. No software support. No community. As far as I can tell it doesn't even do what it advertises. Wasted almost two hours of my life trying to start a campaign with absolutely NO results. The official website must be serviced by one 1600 baud modem. Connection time outs and resets all over the place. No help or information there at all. Searched YouTube and watched several long winded "how to" videos that told me nothing but how to compile the finished adventure or how to run a premade one that you buy. This software will NOT simplify your adventure writing life. All I wanted was to create some maps and it was so user unfriendly that I gave up. Hopefully my refund come through quickly.

OK, so please read the full review instead of just taking note of my thumb down vote for this game. That was a tough choice to make. This program is a very mixed bag, some wonderful things in here that are blended together with some horrible design decisions.

Context: I use this program as a face-to-face tool for my gaming group, no outside connections. So this review will ignore any feature dealing with that. Also, will not be comparing this to any competitors. My setup is a dual screen PC, with two instances of the program open. One (GM) on my monitor and the second (Player) on a TV laying flat. Players are using miniatures and real dice, while I am using tokens and the program's dice.

I'll start with the good. This program is POWERFUL! I can sit down and create almost everything I need with this. If I want to add a weapon type to my game, I can. If I want to change the way a spell works, I can. Edit text in a purchased adventure, create custom classes or races, add a grid to a random overhead map pulled off of google, build an adventure from scratch... all doable. It takes time, but from what I've experienced not much more time than if I were doing everything using a notebook and pencils. One thing I am especially grateful for, is that I can enter any dice roll manually, I don't have to use the program to do it.

Combat is easy. As GM, I simply drag attack dice onto the player I wish to target and release. The program rolls the dice, checks the result against the appropriate defense (including saves), and calculates the result. Damage works the same way, including automatically changing to crit damage on a natural 20. As players, we do it the old fashioned way - they roll, I tell them if they hit or not. For their damage, I just add their damage to a "wound" field in the NPC's sheet, and the program adjusts the current HP for me. HP can be displayed in several ways, "xx/xx", colored circles, etc. There is a "Combat Tracker" that lets me do most of the work from just that one window. It handles attacks, iniative order, HP, etc.

I am using one of the prebuilt adventures, Lost Mine of Phandelver. We've only had a couple sessions, and are still very much in the "OK, wait a moment while I figure out how to do this" stage of the game. There is a lot of clicking, and a lot of windows open at any one time. I haven't decided if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but mostly I think it will be good once I get used to it. The story is subdivided into very small parcels, which sometimes overlap. I've learned the reading several pages ahead is vital. Each page will contain any combination of description, shareable maps (both GM and Player), preloaded encounters (both roster and map placement), pictures, GM Text, and (likely) more that I haven't seen yet. The adventure appears to be word for word, picture for picture, exactly what is being sold for traditional gameplay. And so far, it works very well for taking an inexperienced group and immersing them into the adventure.

Now, for the things that I don't like. Let's start with the very, VERY obvious issue. Price. This program is expensive, there is no way to sugar coat it. For starters, you need to pay $40 for the program. This gets you the basic license, and the core framework that makes the program run. For MY needs, the basic license is all I need - you can host, and connect a second instance using the same computer. For any groups where each player has their own computer, they also need to spend $40. Alternately, the GM can buy an ultimate license, for $150, and then other players can connect to his game for free. They cannot GM, only play. Now, this includes everything needed to play... technically. If you want to DO anything, like create a character, you have two options. You can spend hours at the kayboard doing data entry, copying everything from your Players Handbook into the program. Or, you can buy a players handbook addon... for another $50. Want the DM Guide? $50. Want the Monster Manual? $50. These will add themselves to your base install, but they do not come with a physical copy or a PDF. Physical copies, ironically, are about half this price on Amazon. Premade adventures cost $20-35, which is about the same as buying the physical book.

The next thing bad about this program is the support. If I have a question, I know I will need 20-60 minutes to search through forums posts (or write my own), an outdated / semi-broken wiki, or YouTube tutorials (MANY of which are made by their customers). By and large, that is what the community expects new customers to do. There is no handholding here. In fact, while many forum members welcome newcomers with open arms, many more view Fantasy Grounds as their only child... anyone saying anything less that praise will be immediately attacked.

Missing features, bugs, quirks... Fantasy Grounds has them. This program was not developed with Industry Standards in mind. Fantastic examples: Alt F4 does not exit the program. There is no way to print a character sheet from the program. Adding a weapon to inventory automatically adds attack data, but adding armor does nothing for defense - must manually edit the AC data. Adding a character's background during creation will add everything associated with it, languages, proficiencies, etc --- but changing/removing the background doesn't remove anything it added. It is actually quicker to delete the character and start over than it is to manually search through and fix it.

Finally, there is the talk of revamping the program to run on Unity. Talk that has been going on in the forums since at least September 2014. This has been used as a reason that features/bugs are not being addressed, since their focus is on the new system. As a new customer, I fear that this is like chasing after a Duke Nukem game or Guns'n'Roses album... where there is a very real chance that if it DOES happen, it'll happen far too late to be of any relevance to most of us.

Bottom line, this purchase is a gamble. This is not a single person game, you're relying on your group to be able to play it. At the bare minimum, you are shelling out $110 (base program, character classes, 1 premade adventure) or $40 plus days of programming the races, classes, monsters, equipment, etc into it. What makes it worse, is that you must research exactly what you do / do not need. The DLC total was well over $2,000 last time I looked, which is intimidating. The learning curve is very steep, with a lot of frustrations along the way.

That being said, I'm glad I bought it. I'm confident that in time, I'll become proficient enough with it that it will an amazing benefit to my gaming group. Remember, this thing is POWERFUL. Despite the very valid downsides I've pointed out, this program does 95% of what I want it to do, and it does that well. I don't regret buying it. On the flip side, your mileage will vary, so I cannot in good conscience recommend it blindly.

Fantasy Grounds is quite honestly the best virtutal tabletop software. I've tried several, but I run campaigns exclusively on this now. This software has a massive learning curve. You can get the basics quickly, but to master it takes a while. It is so feature rich that you can automate 90% of the DMing with enough planning and set up. My players love the system - other DMs that play in my campaigns want to switch over.

Combined with other software (map designing, photoshop, ect) you can create excellent and wonderful campaigns loaded with graphics built upon a fantastic under-the-hood ruleset system which takes the technical (mathematical) aspects comepletely from the game so you can have lightning quick combat encounters and focus on roleplaying. Of course the combat traker is wonderful if you want to have a combat heavy hack-n-slash campaign and only makes combat more enjoyable.

The story design part of the game is great. You can pin combat encounters, NPCs, story elements, loot, exp, and more directly to the map. Experience can be awarded on command. Loot can be dumped into the party inventory automatically and the players can divide it themselves.

Character creation is simple and easy. All of the math is again automated here. Just drag items to your inventory. Same with spells, but things get more complex if you multiclass, but its just part of the learning curve.

Some will complain about connectivity issues. Port-forwarding is a simple thing to do, but VPN software can get around it. Mac -> PC does have some issues. I only have one Mac user in my games, but he has the majority of the technical issues. Tech support is very fast as well, but I've only had to use it once.

Overall, I can't recommend this software enough. I have had hours of use with it.

I did alot of research before investing in this software. I must admit I had some hard times figuring everything out in the beginning, mostly with parsing my homebrew. The good news is that as long as you play a supported system you need no parsing. The software does what it promisses and I like that there's no full automation as it allows me to change values and add my own houserules.
I recomend ppl intrested in this software to not look at the guides at first (atleast for me it was confusing in the beginning) but instead look up ppl on twitch/youtube who use Fantasy Grounds, I would recomend looking at 5e or Savage Worlds campaigns.
Also take full advantage of the forum and meet the great community, there's alot of help, mods, extensions, tips and fun over there.
For me this software is simply the best software investment I've made in recent years and have become a necessity that I play around with even when I do not play a game. Just letting my fantasy flow and creating adventures or having a parsing session.

My comments are strictly from the perspective of a D&D 5e DM.

Prior to getting Fantasy Grounds, I reviewed other options primarily because FG is fairly expensive - or so it seemed. As I started pricing it, it became obvious that the D&D components were priced the same as full priced retail manuals - since they come with the full text and in-game functional tables, this makes sense.

Once I saw it as a licensing issue and understood that this really was an electronically functional version of the game manuals, I was on-board - I wanted the real rules and the full text to be available to me. Since none of my players had an FG license, I also elected to carry the burden and nabbed an ultimate license.

One thing that you will hear is that Fantasy Grounds has a learning curve. This is true. I was 12 hours in before I felt comfortable with it and it was another 12 hours before I realized that I could have done a better job on some things. As time has gone on, I have realized that I want things structured a little differently to better facilitate online gaming - things that don't become clear until you are actually hosting a game.

To learn Fantasy Grounds, I recommend finding a PDF module that you want to use and then 'port' it as a module. Create a campaign just for the module and start moving the text, creating encounters, and building parcels as needed. There is a lot to learn, so use youtube and ask questions in forums when you get frustrated.

At the time of this writing, I've DMed a pair of 4 hour sessions via Fantasy Grounds and have had a blast. My players are satisfied with the visual and rules assistance provided by FG and I am thrilled to be DMing my first campaign since 1989. I anticipate putting over 1000 hours into this software and appreciate what it allows me to do.

I have both played and DM-ed using this FG2 interface, and this is a great gaming interface. I like it so much, I actually use it during table-top D&D to show the maps, images, take notes and track hit points. As always, it's a huge amount of work for the Dungeon Master. I leared to use their PARSE tool so that I create my own add-on modules for the adventures with it's own creatures, items, token, and images. The game lets us focus on role playing and talking smack while it takes care of most of the tedius tracking stuff.

It's not the same as when I played with pen and paper in the same room with my friends 20 years ago, but now that we moved all over the country and all have families, this is the next best thing. I payed for the full DM license so that my friends all just need the free version.

Now that AD&D 5E is available, this has gotten even better, since that's the rule set we're using.

It does not come with voice, so you do need a seperte voice server (like Mumble) to talk to each other.

oh boy!!! a $40 2 MB program that does nothing that any free program like it does not, which also strangles your ability to homebrew unless you have extensive knowledge of XML files, and otherwise forces you to do every ounce of the legwork when it could easily do it itself if only the developers put a trivial amount of extra effort into it?! WOW WHAT A STEAL! HHKKKKKhhhkkkjfjgggg :fmad: $$$$$$ remember to buy our special ruleset DLC, unless you want to invest significantly more time and effort than it would take to just homebrew something with actual pen and paper! boy do we love your nerd money!!! $$$$$$

EDIT: since some people have, justifiably, called this a nerd rage review, allow me to expand, particularly upon 'well what ELSE does this and that?' and the greivances i have (this comes from my response to Smiteworks in the comments to this review). Roll20 does all of the things FG does, and does not come with a forty dollar pricetag. Roll20 does not ask for a pile of cash because Roll20 did not acquire meaningless licenses to things that players could have and would have created and distributed for absolutely free, and Roll20 did not slap a massive pricetag on it based on that. what if i don't want to just change spells and monsters? what if i want to have the All Flesh Must Be Eaten's Unisystem rules in place? i will have to MAKE it myself using the world's least user friendly formats- XML, LUA, as Smiteworks has stated- or wait for someone ELSE to do it- or for Smiteworks to release it as a fifteen dollar DLC. Roll20 instead hands all the tools and most importantly FLEXIBILITY i need to customize my campaign's rules right off the bat- i could have a standard 3.5 high fantasy game or AFMBE campaign on my own terms at my own whims. forgive me if this comes off as a cashgrab to me and i can't give it a serious review.

This is a really good program. We've been using FG for over three years now to run Paizo's Kingmaker Campaign Path. Several of us are in China with the rest of our players in North America, and combined with Hamachi (to get around the Great Firewall) and Skype (for the live talking part), it's as close to a face to face game as people who live on opposite sides of the planet can get.

Fantasy Grounds isn't always the easiest program to use, admittedly, but once you get over the learning curve it's an amazingly robust program. As the GM, the ability to create (or in my case, input from the Campaign Book) the stories and fill them with handy links to maps, npcs, encounters, treasures, and everything else imaginable is incredible. Even if I was running a face to face game I'd use FG just to organize my notes. No more need to have reams of paper around or to flip through books. Just click a link and the thing you need is right there, right away. It also allows you to keep track of xp earned, separated into story rewards and combat rewards. You can see what the players have received with just a quick glance.

Insofar as Pathfinder is involved, it has loads of free modules to increase this functionality, with everything from a complete list of spells to abilities, magic items, and the entire collected bestiary (including monsters and NPC's from the adventure paths!), all one click away. This means I'm free to use my planning time to improve on my campaign instead of flip through stuff looking for informaton.

Not only is this a great virtual tabletop, it's a splendid GM tool. My campaign would be worse if I didn't have all the organizational tools FG provides.

There might be other free programs out there, but nothing I've seen has the depth and robustness of FG. Along with tremendous dev support, I can't recommend FG high enough.

TL, DR; Great program, something of a learning curve. Great for GM's, which is great for players.

As a life-long D&D player (I am 42 and have played since I was 10, from the Basic Blue Book and Chain Mail to 5th edition) I was REALLY excited about Fantasy Grounds. And when it works, it works very well.

Unfortunately, "when it works" = not nearly consistently enough. My friends and I have been playing a 5th edition campaign using Fantasy Grounds and recently its been nothing but crashes to desktop CONSTANTLY. It seems to be a memory problem, where if Fantasy Grounds approaches using 4 GB of memory it shuts down.

First, this program has NO business using that much memory - its just sloppy code. I can play Witcher 3 and NOT use that much memory.

The networking code is also atrocious. Absurdly long load times on connection to a campaign, lag rolling dice, etc. Its just not well done.

I can't recommend this product to anyone. Our previous campaign, a 4th edition one, was run in Roll20, and we didn't have nearly the problems we do now using Fantasy Grounds. Fantasy Grounds is DEFINITELY more robust than R20, but that doesn't help when you can't use it due to stability and lag issues. Pity. Stay away.