Today I did a session of 5e using Fantasy Grounds.
I own the license, I bought it during a sale earlier this year, or possibly end of last year. One of those things that I thought could be useful but had never got around to using.
I am not a 5e fan, I tried it and didn’t particularly like it. I generally prefer rules light, or if not rules light, then fast at the table. Hero System for example is far from rules light but when you are playing it the game runs fast and furious.
Side note: I have shelved my Hero System rules. Hero Games do not allow you to publish rulebooks, which is what solo rules would fall under. So my rules will have to stay for personal use.
But could the Fantasy Grounds client be used to solo play games that are normally rules heavy and slow to play by shifting the effort away from the game session and front loading it into preparation?
Once you have a stock of created NPCs you can name and rename them easily enough, change spells around if you wanted. All the monster stats were already in there and so on. Fantasy Grounds then becomes an extra pair of hands when you want to play the game session.
Using FG as a helper application is a real possibility, seeing as I already have the software. What I need to look into is either how can I get rulesets for some of the games I play, as these seem to be the most useful time saving element. Or how to create a ruleset.
It is my understanding that I can just drop a ruleset into the right folder and have it work locally, just for me, which is an option once I know how to make them and if they are not available to buy.
My copy of FG seemed to come preloaded with a load of D&D and PF rules. I have never played PF because of its reputation for ten million rules.
Having said that, I just took a peek in the Fantasy Grounds store and Savage Worlds, a game I am exploring at the moment, is only $9.99 as a ruleset. I have the PDF rules which I am using at the moment but the problem with soloing SW is that there are too many edges, hindrances, advantages and abilities and everything else. I am having to write everything out longhand and then try and commit it to memory or any dramatic scene becomes terribly slow.
The burden of the system is making an otherwise simple solo system hard work!
A Brief Solo Savage World
4 or more is Yes, below 4 is no. The likelihood increases the die, very unlikely d4, unlikely d6, 50/50 is d8 and upwards for more likely. Critical success and fails for more extreme answers. This is coupled with a 54 card improvisation prompt system
From the box above you can see how simple the oracle could be, but I need to get a handle on how to make the rules themselves easy to remember and not let something get forgotten.
There is of course more to my Savage Worlds solo system. My favourite part is the improvisation Action Deck, but getting an solo bennie system was probably the biggest challenge.
I am interested now to see if using Fantasy Grounds could solve the problem of remembering everything I need to play the game solo.