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Greetings heroes and villains! G-Rex here from the Fantasy Grounds Academy bringing you part one of a series on Organized Play using Fantasy Grounds.
A couple of years ago at the beginning of the lockdowns, I was looking to take advantage of my Fantasy Grounds Standard license, continue playing my characters, and running games as a DM on a weekly basis. The idea was to emulate what I experienced at my friendly local game store. I had some luck finding a, now defunct, FG Adventurers League (AL) Discord server. Games there were sporadic, didn't seem to include Paizo Organized Play, and there was no rhyme or reason on what was being offered. After a couple of games I moved on to the Fantasy Grounds AL sub-forums. Not seeing many games listed back then for AL I decided to try offering to run a weekly Wednesday night game of the Season 5 content. Wizards of the Coast had just released the entire season for free for a limited time on DMs Guild. For those that aren't aware AL modules are officially released by Wizards of the Coast to the DM's Guild. Additionally, the author has permission to list an FG .mod with the PDF. Many FG AL DM's get their adventures directly from DMs Guild vice the Fantasy Grounds store or Steam.
My experiences setting up and coordinating games are going to be covered in a future post. Suffice to say I started running more and more games using the forums to list games. I attracted players who had Standard or Ultimate licenses. I now have an Ultimate license but I ran on a Standard for months before upgrading. I never once felt I needed an Ultimate license to fill my table with players. Sure some players had to be turned down but that's the nature of the business model.
At one point I attracted a Fantasy Grounds Academy instructor to my table who goes by the name of Marcus Rife. He asked me if I would join him at the Academy and run games there for students while he taught character creation and DM classes. That's officially how I backdoored my way into the Fantasy Grounds Academy. I ran games for months and lurked in the faculty channel before I realized I had the chops to help teach what was being offered.
Organized play in the Fantasy Grounds community has been very rewarding for me. Playing with new people, making new friends and connections, and finding a way to volunteer my time while having to follow lockdown procedures for years really helped me with my mental health and outlook on life. This series is going to be a nod to those that helped me on the way and my way of giving back to a program that I dearly enjoy.
Future parts of this series will include the following topics:
Where to find and list games on Fantasy Grounds
Tools needed to help with organized play; extensions, websites, community support
Paizo Organized Play programs; Pathfinder Society and Starfinder Society
D&D Adventurers league
Convention play
Short "how to" video tutorials