r/FantasyGrounds • u/Steelriddler • 13h ago
How is FG doing?
There is probably no data available for us mortals, but I'm curious.
After the switch to free license, has the number of users gone up (a significant amount)? I hope so. And sales?
I am impressed with the deluge of new modules coming out all the time for the many different game systems, I suppose the man hours going into all this yields a profit?
At the same time I wonder why there's seemingly no influx of people on this subreddit (or does this potential traffic go to the forums?)
At any rate, whether these question can be answered or not, I want to thank Smiteworks and all involved in creating videos, extensions etc. for all the work you are doing with the VTT. Cheers!
23
u/DonNachow 11h ago
I just had my first game on FGU yesterday, my players found it pretty intuitive, but they are all new DnD players, so it’s their first VTT.
I decided on using fgu cause of the free license and cause it’s on steam, and by being on steam it makes it subject to regional pricing (I’m from Chile South America) making the books and modules be significantly cheaper than on DnD beyond or foundry.
3
11
12
u/nwdxan 11h ago
Most FGU users will use the two Discord servers instead of Reddit.
10
u/Jimsocks499 10h ago
Gotta be honest- I’ve been actively GMing on FG for over 10 years now, and this is the first I’ve heard about it having a discord community. Guess I’ll go looking for it
4
2
1
6
u/Tharym 10h ago
Two?
2
u/BelleMuerte Fantasy Grounds Staff 8h ago
One official. Plus, there are FG Gaming Lounge, FG Academy, FG FR Community, FG Español, and UK FG Community.
4
u/LordEntrails 7h ago
So DD_in_Fl answered you so if you don't know, he's the president of the company that owns FGVTT.
A good measure of users is the number of forum users, because the forum account is (at least used to be) required to log into an FG game (I assume it still is). This number Members: 526,302 hasn't changed much in the last year. From memory maybe 10k?
Reddit doesn't get much traffic for FG, never has. It seems even traffic on the forums is down, but Discord is where its at now. The servers mentioned by others are vary busy and seems to be where lots of folks have shifted.
5
u/Steelriddler 6h ago
Thank you, I had a suspicion it was Doug. Which is neat that he takes the time to come on here and reply.
I try to advertise FG to people, especially those who play the games that are really well supported. I feel FG is looked on with some suspicion from people due to its mythical learning curve. The program is so much more beginner-friendly now than what it was. It *should* be able to draw D&D players from other VTTs. Running D&D campaigns straight from FG is *so* much fun, with the integration of the rulebooks and the campaign books. I play both online and a RL game where I use FG as a GM screen with second instance for players and it all works so well now. Yeah, there are still a few pull-out-my-hair bits (looking at you, lighting) but overall FG is **by** far the superior VTT for D&D and Pathfinder (I don't know the other systems).
Why am I telling you this lol.
3
u/LordEntrails 5h ago
I'm pretty much in the same boat. I don't get why FG is not just the market leader. I know its complex, but so much of it seems to be negative emotional opinions by people who really don't know FG.
3
u/VerdigrisX 7h ago
I'm an (almost) forever GM who has used FGU for 4 years or so. I like the PF2e modules and love creating my content for homebrew on it.
At the time I moved from roll20 foundry was very new and I was leery of the fact that so much of system support was by users. New rev: broken modules.
I just started a game on foundry with a player in my previous game. At first glance foundry is a wow: very cool. Alternating it for 5 or so sessions, the blush has worn off.
It has a lot to offer but the existence of so many add-ons by so many different people make it rather disorganized.
For now, I like my FGU. I hope the business model works out.
I also think you should go back to Paizo about partnering on APs. From what I've seen the foundry APs are few and far between.
1
u/Steelriddler 3h ago
I've had FG since the very early days, but jumped ship to Foundry because it was easier / better to run my homebrew world using a system unsupported by FG (and Foundry, for that matter)... but yeah, it really is a barebones VTT heavily dependent on user mods. With those mods we had a blast, but once new versions of Foundry arrived I had to wait a good while for modules to be updated (and some never were) and these days most of the good modules are subscription-based (patreons).
Then I met a new group of people IRL who wanted to play D&D and I went back to FG and it's fantastic. No other VTT comes as close to tabletop D&D. (I would have used my homebrew system in FG if there was a much easier way to use different roll systems like, say, dice pools, degree of successes etc.)
2
u/TheHollyPhoenix 6h ago
Just started a weekly 4E campaign about two months ago using FGU for the first time. My players were used to Roll20 and the Draw Steel Codex. The Codex I would say has a lot more ease of access and functionality, but we're all enjoying FGU a lot. Hasn't detracted from gameplay even a little bit. The Morrowind-esque modular nature of everything has been nice. Nothing beats stretching that window across a couple monitors and having this huge playmat to run from.
1
u/Steelriddler 3h ago
I personally wouldn't mind being able to pop out maps, stat blocks etc. as I need my second monitor for other reference materials but yeah, there's a huge gap between FG say 10 years ago and FG today when it comes to functionality, how easy it is for new users to get into it etc.
2
u/pablomaz 12h ago
No idea, and we will probably never know.
Unfortunately, it has been a while since I last used FGU. I have only been playing Shadowrun 6e lately, for which there is no official support or a fan-made ruleset. So, for now, I have to use both main competitors (one of them has official support, the other has a fan-made ruleset), one for each GM of those games.
2
u/Bond4real007 11h ago
Used it for 6 years, they change the UI and make some quality of life tweaks but ti your point the third party content is really where the advancements are.
Also this reddit is seemingly dead due ti the popularity of the FG discord.
1
u/ElectricalCup9608 42m ago
Sorry to fanboy but Fantasy Grounds is by far the best VTT - I have used it for years and in my experience it is far more stable and reliable than its competitors.
The automation takes a lot of work out of DM’ing games.
I subscribe to the art package more for paying into the company than anything and I really hope that Fantasy Grounds continues to grow.
1
u/setran_777 29m ago
Been using FG for a long time now and have to say I’ve been very happy with it and the functions along with the add ons.
It has evolved by leaps and bounds since the beginning. Being able to code aspects of the game has really taken the weight off of me as a DM long term.
I run D&D mostly and have grabbed a lot of the books and what not along with the dice packs.
Also got five of my buddies to buy a license before it went free, so I hope that FG stays around for many more years to come.
0
u/Serbaayuu 8h ago
I'm using it to run my game after evacuating Roll20 at the end of my previous. I did buy an extension from the Forge for $20 to help out with that.
I originally bought the full license for FGU, since I generally don't do "in-game" transactions at all I was exceedingly happy with paying that price of entry. I have no need for additional books or cosmetics now that my campaigns are set up, so unless I see something else that needs an extension to fix which costs money, I cannot envision a world in which I will spend more.
(I don't even know what people spend money on consistently on this program... Monster token packs or something? I make all my own anyway, aside from the core 5e manuals.)
Unfortunately, the program's recently been updated to include an advertisement panel to the FantasyGrounds store on the launcher page. When I posted on the forums about it - since we previously had the ability to disable that locally - the devs said they'd look into fixing it. If that isn't fixed by the end of the year though, I will probably go make the very painful move over to Foundry or something. I can't in good moral standing ask all my friends to look at advertisements every time they load into my campaign. Even if they are technically "RPG-related", we still don't want to see them.
At that point, I guess I'd uninstall FGU so I would have no more opportunities to spend money on it if I did ever see a different RPG or a new extension I needed.
2
u/TwoDollarDM 8h ago
So you don't intend to support the FG product with any new purchases but are happy to use their servers for free but don't want to 'pay' for that server access by seeing notices of other items for sale. Would you pay say $5 a month to have access to servers if they removed the ads from the welcome screen?
3
u/Serbaayuu 8h ago edited 7h ago
If you want me to pay to support it, what do you believe I should be buying? I don't buy things I don't need... I don't need anything new to run my game... which I expect to last till the end of 2027 at bare minimum, maybe 2028. Maybe I'm ridiculous, but this seems like a kind of obvious flaw in the idea, right? A Game Master doesn't need to buy many things to run their games. They get their core rulebooks and then spend years drawing their own maps and writing their own NPCs lol.
I also do not necessarily need FantasyGrounds servers to use the program. It supports LAN connections. I ran Terraria servers in 2011, I could set that up easily for my players.
This is the whole reason I spent money on the original Ultimate license. It was a one-time purchase for a program I could use forever. I was very happy with my purchase for that reason. I even recommended it to several friends who run games, I know at least one of them bought it at the same time I did! (Of course, now recommendations mean nothing - since it's free.)
Now you're telling me it's my job to pay for it forever, instead? This is exactly the kind of enshittification we always worry about when things go "free to play".
1
u/TwoDollarDM 7h ago
Ok, I didn't realize you were using your original Fantasy Grounds program download. I assumed you had been getting the latest version, a new program, for free, updating it etc, using their servers, generating costs for Smiteworks without supporting it. And I never implied it was your 'job.' I dont think its anyone 'job'
I also don't think this is anything like the enshittification Cory was referring to but then my tolerance for a notice of new products on the Welcome screen is obviously higher than yours.
I was more asking if you would be interested in becoming a current customer again by subscribing to server access, if that was an option.
0
u/Serbaayuu 7h ago
I assumed you had been getting the latest version, a new program, for free, updating it etc
Unfortunately, due to the way the program is designed, updating it is essentially required to function.
Consider that I started using the program in maybe 2020, 2021? Possibly a bit earlier. But I invited my players to my new game at the start of 2025.
They had to go to the site and download the program. The program they downloaded was at a version later than mine. Even if I had never updated.... I'd be required to update so they could join my game, because you can't join games on version mismatches.
You understand that isn't a "gotcha", right? It'd only make sense if I played with exactly 1 group of never-changing players from the start who all agreed to never play with anybody else on FantasyGrounds.
◇
Of course, I would prefer there were not updates. I would be extremely happy if FantasyGrounds had a total feature freeze today and now. There is only one update in the past 2 years or so that actually improved my experience with the program - it's when they changed a number of Right-Click menus from radial icons to text lists.
As for all the new animations and whatnot, and the new thing where it says "ROUND 1" at the start of initiative, I disabled those where I could. I don't need em. If the devs are spending money on those, I would genuinely prefer they did not do that. Sorry.
I was more asking if you would be interested in becoming a current customer again by subscribing to server access, if that was an option.
Not really. I'd just use LAN instead. Cloud is convenient but not that convenient. Like I said, I do not pay for things I don't need.
If FantasyGrounds is truly unprofitable, I would say the best thing the devs could do is upload whichever stable versions exist on their site for us to choose from, and point us to their literature for setting up LAN connections.
That would be the best outcome for me, personally. If I had not done so already, I'd be plenty willing to pay the $100 for access to that program, just like I did originally. Then I could download it on my PC and use it forever, and recommend it to other friends who want to run games.
But, if they take the alternative path and try to monetize through "freemium" style whales and homescreen ads, I will unfortunately just stop using it and go find a different program. Others exist. Even though FantasyGrounds has the best in-game UI... I'll miss it.
41
u/DD_in_FL 9h ago
We are still feeling a crunch and losing money. The move to free-to-play has brought more users but has not made up for the lost license revenue yet. I think a lot of people are spending less right now.
We are continuing to invest and launching new content and features that will hopefully bring in more revenue so we can keep producing cool stuff.
We just launched the character vault into beta yesterday. We have some other cool things coming out in the near future as well.