Fantasy Grounds VTT

Fantasy Grounds is a huge disappointment for longtime users. They made the software totally free but slapped on a “loyalty program” full of niche third-party products — not even essential stuff like the D&D Player Handbook. No store credit, no meaningful compensation, just junk most people will never use. The learning curve is brutal. A VTT is supposed to make playing easier and faster, but Fantasy Grounds makes everything slow, confusing, and frustrating. On top of that, the interface feels outdated compared to modern VTTs. Early adopters paid big for this platform, and what we got in return is insulting.

"Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy (grounds)?" -- Freddie Mercury, level 20 bard

The Play Now button is actually only linked to another Installer, so if you want to leave a review, you have to let the Installer run for a while. Why use Steam if you're not ever going to use Steam? Having the install button just lead to another installer is worth a thumbs down on its own, let along having the Play Now button not pointing to the actual program. Hope you remember where you eventually installed it because it didn't appear in the Recently Added Start Menu items. It's not even showing as installed when I search for it! This is all kinds of sussy baka. *Edit: Found it, but the 'program' is called FGUpdaterEngine and greets me with the following: [quote]Welcome to Fantasy Grounds! It looks like tou have not entered your username and password. If you don't already have an account at [/quote] The rest is totally blank, with no place to enter login or password. Just tried to uninstall and, of course it didn't because Steam is only pointed to AN INSTALLER

At the time of this review, I have roughly 3500 hours on Fantasy Grounds Unity (or Fantasy Grounds VTT as it was updated to), roughly 2800 hours on Fantasy Grounds Classic, and then around another 1000-3000 extra hours individually on both whilst using the software off-steam, so needless to say I have a lot of experience with the program and have been through quite a bit of the ups and downs. To start with the pros of the software: Firstly, the automation here is beyond strong - if you're on a well-maintained game system (I'll get to this later), EVERYTHING is automated to an insane quality. Status effects, stats, rolls, enemy stats, you name it and it's probably already handled for you. The automation in the software is so good and is such a selling point that it has made me accidentally forget rules entirely and slowed me down in my personal home-games as I needed to relearn some things that were automatically taken care of in Fantasy Grounds. Secondly, the book system in Fantasy Grounds is VERY useful. Most VTTs have something like this - effectively for any content that you've purchased (or made yourself), you're able to open, access, and keyword search through entirely cover to cover. You effectively get an in-software PDF copy of whatever content that you buy. Again, this feature does exist in most VTTs however it feels especially usable and easily searchable through Fantasy Grounds. Thirdly, Smiteworks is responsive and listens to the community constantly. I've had many conversations with Smiteworks employees as well as community members and managers, and in every instance they've been nothing but polite and have responded within no more than an hour ever and tend to trend in response time towards less than ten minutes. Now for the cons, there are a few major ones, and depending on the system that you're looking to primarily play or run, these will either be a non-issue or completely damning: Firstly, not all systems are created and managed equal, and it definitely shows - D&D is the king and is likely the highest revenue for the company, and thusly is managed far greater than basically every other system, which is mostly okay, it's the most popular system after all so if all you and your group plays is D&D, you're good to go. For some of the lesser-played but still popular systems like Call of Cthulhu and Savage Worlds, this is still mostly a non-issue, they're regularly updated and managed and outside of a few occasional post-update grievances, they work basically flawlessly. However, once you get to the niche options stuff gets really dicey, with some systems being effectively abandoned as they no longer have developers to support them, with the best example I can give being a system like Symbaroum which hasn't really seen an update in years. My understanding is that many of the systems and settings for Fantasy Grounds are handled and managed via community managers / developers, and if it's a niche system, a developer leaving the project is effectively a death sentence as a new one will never come by to pick it up. Secondly, in my personal opinion the communication between the developers and the community is... sometimes confusing at best. For example, a major complaint that Fantasy Grounds regularly receives is that the software is complicated, and whilst I have never felt that way, it's a pretty reasonable complaint to have, what Smiteworks does to alleviate some of these pains is two-fold, they have pretty rapid responses through either their forums / Discord as well as uploading semi-frequent tutorials on their Youtube channel. This is just awful - whilst they've always been pleasant with me and everyone else I've seen them interact with both on Discord and the forums, and they've always been super quick to respond, this can also be a pain in the ass and is time consuming ESPECIALLY in heat-of-the-moment situations. As far as the Youtube channel goes, man it's the worst thing ever - most of the "tutorials" are either several hour long ramble sessions of community figures explaining things poorly (which I don't totally blame them for as they're just trying to help and aren't usually presenters or content creators in their personal life) or they're 1-5 minute videos of a team member saying something along the lines of "to play, press the play button :D" which... well. Regardless, this could mostly be solved via some decent documentation, which to be fair Fantasy Grounds DOES HAVE, but it's off-application and also as confusingly laid out as humanly possible. What it genuinely needs is an in-game easily referenced bit of documentation, which could easily be there via the book/module system that they have in place. Thirdly, the website is awful. This isn't a HUGE deal for most things and the grand majority of it is actually fine, but stuff like the Forge for instance, has the least amount of filtering and sorting as is possible and whilst it's an invaluable resource, it's also filled to the brim with bloat. I DO NOT want to sort through like 80 pages of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ token packs and icon packs just to finally potentially stumble upon something that is hopefully still functional and updated. Genuinely if any complaint of mine can get addressed within my lifetime I want it to be this one - either add more filtering options to the forge or just straight up ban the 9000000000 token packs that are sitting on the forge, they're hardly any quality either, they look like just a bunch of AI images with a circular crop and a token border added. Fourthly, the UI is getting better, but isn't all the way there. To give Smiteworks credit, they have REALLY been addressing this issue over the last several years and I do think they've made great changes. but there are still some features that I'd love to see to really fix or smooth out some stuff. For instance, I'd love snapping or tiling if either were possible so that I dont have a billion different windows to manage overlaying one another when I'm GMing a system with a little crunch to it. A smaller thing to add onto this, sometimes game systems will receive overhauls or updates to things like the character sheets and most of these are good, but man when they're bad (Call of Cthulhu 7th edition), those changes REALLY feel awful. Now, despite my complaints, do I recommend Fantasy Grounds? Yes, absolutely and I'd go so far as to say it's still the best VTT on the market. It does have some roughness around some of the edges, none of which are totally damning in my opinion and if you're able to get past the few flaws, it's some of the strongest software you'll use. None of that will stop me from blaming Damned or Moon Wizard or any of the other team members during a string of bad rolls though (all in good fun of course).

IF IT AIN'T BROKEN, DON'T FIX IT! BRING BACK THE OLD LAUNCHER, IT WAS PERFECT!!! I HATE THIS NEW LAUNCHER!!! I CAN'T EVEN LAUNCH MY CAMPAIGN NOW!!!

I personally like the new launcher for I can finally search within extensions and themes! This is my kinda VTT. I tested them all before. I even used a TTRPG vault in Obsidian. Nothing works for solo mode better than FGU. Not to mention best solo support is in here. Aside from all the functionality. automation, and even some unique ruleset-specific mechanics, we have; * Full Mythic GM Emulator v2 with variations, [in the Forge] * Almost all Paul Bimler solo toolkits and adventures; The Solo Adventurer's Toolkit and TSAT 2, Spelljammer version, TONs of Choose Your Own Adventure style gamebooks for D&D 5E [in dmsguild], * SoloDark and Solo Adventures for Shadow Dark RPG, * Cyberpunk RED Single Player Mode, * Star Trek Captain's Log Solo, * Fallout 2d20 Solo Module, * Lots of free adventures in the Forge that can be Soloed with Mythic, * The list goes on... [Guide] Free Content for FGU: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3634708338 I actually love the Neverwinter Nights style UI, and Im all for it. Most importantly, I never saw any CEO of any company personally answer questions with patience and stay honest in business. Except in SW.

Fantasy Grounds VTT isn’t a traditional game you can simply pick up and play. It’s a virtual tabletop platform designed for running online role‑playing campaigns—Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder or whatever system your group prefers. If you’re willing to rely on community‑made rulesets and content, it’s actually easier to use than many other VTTs, and it becomes quite versatile once you understand its workflow. I think the learning curve isn’t a curve. It’s a cliff. Expect to spend time watching YouTube tutorials, browsing the forums and searching for guides online just to get comfortable. Mastery doesn’t come quickly and many new users bounce off long before they understand how the system fits together. Cost is another factor. The core engine isn’t cheap, and once you add the content modules— the packs, Dungeons and Dragons handbook, Dungeons and Dragons monster manual and Dungeons and Dragons master’s guide —the total easily exceeds $140 AUD. The old saying applies: you rarely get what you pay for. Most “free” VTTs will still require you to purchase the same licensed content anyway, so the cost isn’t unique to this platform. Even with well‑developed rulesets, you’ll still need to tweak things to automate tasks properly. Third‑party extensions can lighten the load, but the good ones usually require additional investment. Between the complexity and the setup time, it’s no surprise that many players feel overwhelmed early on and quit before they ever see the platform’s strengths.

Incredibly difficult to use, nothing is where you'd expect it to be. I absolutely hate fantasy grounds, I've tried to like it but even after hudreds of hours of use it's so hard to use for me. I've stopped playing games I loved because the DM would only use fantasy grounds and I couldn't bear to use it anymore.

would have 4 months ago however with recent changes and syntax alterations my tables archive is utterly borked and the tidal wave of errors overloading my players computers is unplayable WTF FG