I had a previous post extolling the virtues of my favourite Virtual Table Top (VTT) – Fantasy Grounds.

http://blog-of-holding.ca/2024/02/03/my-favourite-virtual-table-top-vtt/

Now would be a good time to follow up and provide a little more information as to why I love the platform so much as what distinguishes Fantasy Grounds from other VTT platforms. I won’t mention line-of-sight and Fog of War functionality as most other VTT’s have that functionality as well. I’ll try to focus on the other features that made me choose and love Fantasy Grounds

1. Combat math and initiative tracking – This is where Fantasy Grounds really shines over other VTTs. From tracking initiatives to adding all the modifiers in combat including Saving Throws and the effects on damage and other effects. This makes the gameplay so effortless without having to worry about the math. In addition, Fantasy Grounds also automates the application of effects and their effects on attacks and advantage/disadvantage. It basically takes care of all the math so you can just focus on combat strategy and role playing.
2. Experience and Gold awarding – The ability to have one click to distribute and award all experience and gold makes it easy on the DM and players. Another way to save having to do division is a big bonus in my books.
3. Short and Long rest awarding – The automation realized from one click awarding of short and long rests is a real time saver. No longer do you have to update characters with hit points regained, spell slots regained, or any other effects, This once again allows for time to focus on role-playing and other events that can happen around taking rests.
4. Ease of enhancing purchased adventures – Fantasy Grounds does have the ability to create a homebrew adventure from the ground up as you can create monsters, stories, dialogues, encounters, parcels, battlemaps, and items. But to be honest this can be a lot of work to stitch all these components together. In particular, I’ve never been eager to create my own battle maps with line-of-sight. But where Fantasy Grounds shines is the ease to augment existing purchased adventures! It is so easy to enhance encounters, add dialogue, and items to customize the adventure to your party. In addition, the dialogue can be displayed in the chat so that players can read long passages themselves and have it for reference. (And the Fantasy Grounds store has a wealth of adventures available for purchase – one-shots and epic campaigns)
5. Hot Keys and Icon based – Every object in Fantasy Grounds has an icon that you can drag and drop into other objects for quick reference via links. One example of this is the Hot Key functionality. There are 12 hot keys slots at the bottom of the screen you can drag icons to for easy access. This is a god send for Dungeon Masters prepping for a session. I can easily add links for quick reference the battle maps, story chapters, and dialogue.

I could go on and on about Fantasy Ground but I’ll stop here. The functionality it provides just lets you focus on gameplay without having to worry about tracking things and doing math. This becomes especially valuable as you play with higher level characters with multiple modifiers and effects. I honestly don’t know how I would do it with out current Rise of the Drow campaign.

There is also nothing quite like the rolling of the cadre of dice that everyone can see for themselves for fireball damage!

Check it out if you haven’t already!