Worth it for pathfinder?

[taimaishu4]

How big is the pathfinder player base in FG? It's hard to find a game that works with my scheduel. How does one look for group in FG compare to Roll20 that I've been using?

The 20% off right now looks tempting, should I wait a bit until summer sale arrives for higher discount?

[Tiqon]

depends on what you want really. If you want to join a game, you will not need the any modules beside FG. Only the GM NEEDS the books. And if you get a GM who has the ultimate version of FG you dont even need FG. Only the demo.
Player base? well I cant tell you how hard/easy it is to find a game, but have a look at the official forum, there you will have a better chance to find a game, though it can take some time I'm told (I only play with RL friends). http://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?40-LFG-Looking-for-Group

Every year we get to see what people play with FG and you can see the statistics here http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?3385-Fantasy-Grounds-Usage-Stats-Are-In-5E-Pathfinder-3-5-Savage-Worlds-then-Star-Wars%21#.VyN8FmP5zUI

It's worth noticing that PF have a fair share of the cake ;).

Good luck finding a group that fits you :).

[Smiteworks]

There is a custom forum location set aside for Pathfinder Society games and there is a pretty good following for Pathfinder. While we don't have official support for fully ready-to-run Paizo adventures, there are a bunch of third-party Pathfinder compatible adventures available. For the official Paizo stuff, we have a large collection of community generated content that contains most of the content that has been marked as Open Gaming Content by Paizo and this can be freely shared. Some examples of this are entire lists of feats, spells, NPCs, etc. from the various books.

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?16074-List-of-Modules

[Smiteworks]

Also, you can buy here on Steam and play with others who play on Steam and those who bought outside of Steam. Basically, you can pick up a copy wherever it is most convenient for you.

[Jeshbaal]

From what I understand, Roll20 has a good following, has surpassed 1 mil followers (not all belonging to Pathfinder, though). Also, Roll20 is free. What isn't free is far more reasonably priced. I just joined R20 and it looks much clearner, and appears much easier to use. I'd look into R20 before you purchase this. Fantasy Grounds is a money pit. The prices are extremely high and unreasonable. See my review, it might help your decision.

[Tiqon]

What you meant Razzey, was that this HOBBY is a money pit right? I bought FG a looong time ago. I have bought two extra things for FG, Rolemaster and Savage worlds. I have GM'ed those two AND Pathfinder for a while. I have never had the need to buy anything else. Nothing. No adventures, no extra tokens and no subscription! I DO have spend WAAAAY to much money on RPG books, dice and minatures though. Its only a moneypit if you make it one yourself.

[damned]

Everyones experience will be different. Some people will prefer what they get from Roll20 or D20Pro or even MapTools. Each platform has its own benefits and weaknesses.

Id be happy to work thru some of the things you (Razzey) found challenging with FG. There are so many options it can be daunting at times.

There are many excellent add-ons to FG that are completely free (Star Wars Edge of the Empire, Malestrom RPG, Trail of Cthulhu, ShadowRun, DCC RPG to get you started) and many commercial products with hundreds of pages of resources for very little money ($5 Fate Core, $10 Castles&Crusades, Savage Worlds and $15 for Call of Cthulhu 6 which are fantastic value).

For Pathfinder and D&D 5e and 3.5e there are stacks of SRD/PRD resources either included or available for free.

There are many adventure modules starting from $1 and going up $30 but none of them are required unless you want to save the prep time.

[Smiteworks]

Because Pathfinder releases almost everything as Open Game Content, the List of Modules I linked to are all 100% free add-ons and extensions with pretty much every NPC, spell, feat and more from the Pathfinder game. FG comes with battlemaps and a few hundred tokens as part of the purchase price and then you can use any freely available tokens you can find on the web or on our forums. In addition, we sell add-ons just like Roll20 and the prices for these are the same wherever they are available on both platforms.

The big difference is that Fantasy Grounds has a lot more relationships with actual RPG publishers and companies that produce books and PDFs so that you can buy fully ready-to-run adventures that work with Pathfinder and other systems. These are primarily priced at the same price as the PDFs from those publishers and it contains 100% of the content of the PDF but set up for you in advance. Razzey is ultimately complaining about the prices that actual RPG publishing companies charge for products. If you already own the PDF or print product, you can build everything directly within FG for these. With FG, you just have the option to get all the content and all the work done for you for the same price.

Both Roll20 and FG have shared our usage stats with ENWorld on how many Pathfinder and other games are actually being played. A sign-up on a website is not necessarily and indicator of an actual human being, much less a dedicated player.

You can try both systems for free and compare the functionality between the two. They each have strong points and weak points, but I think you'll see that Pathfinder plays excellent on FG and features the most robust and ready-to-run play experience.

This is an older video but I don't think you'll get this level of functionality out of the box with another VTT choice:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHRBeO6lUWo

The Feature list for Pathfinder on FG is very large:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=302768878

and the PFRPG ruleset guide
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=257835787