Which VTT offers the most fluid experience?
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Thanks I’ll give it a look. When you say miniatures does that mean that’s it’s a 3D map or is it more like tokens on a 2D map?
3d tokens on a 2d map, but the DM can create 3d walls on the fly.
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Foundry VTT is the best on the market right now for my two cents. If your players find using it confusing then I'm really not sure what other VTT they wouldn't find confusing. The player side of things is pretty straight forward.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Foundry sounds like the winner so far. I love that it is a purchase and I have the option to self host if that’s what I want.
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If you're playing Pathfinder then Foundry is hands down the best option in my opinion.
If you're running D&D 5e then Foundry with an addon named plutonium followed by the word that may or may not be import is the best option (you may have to dive into Discord to get it downloaded, but I promise it's the best VTT for D&D 5e.. yarrr).
After those, Roll20 is okay. It works, it's alright.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Word of warning, do not go to the foundry discord with anything related to plutonium. Don't mention it, don't have any screen shots showing it, pretend it doesn't exist. They are a WOTC partner and will not tolerate distribution of copyright material without a license.
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If you're playing Pathfinder then Foundry is hands down the best option in my opinion.
If you're running D&D 5e then Foundry with an addon named plutonium followed by the word that may or may not be import is the best option (you may have to dive into Discord to get it downloaded, but I promise it's the best VTT for D&D 5e.. yarrr).
After those, Roll20 is okay. It works, it's alright.
I've been hosting 5e on Foundry for my regular group for years and have used it both as a player and as a GM (with both premade modules and my own custom setting). It's pretty great, but can be a bit overwhelming as a GM at first. As a player it's pretty intuitive but it doesn't hurt to run through a tutorial video or something to become aware of the non-obvious controls.
I'm hoping to run a Pathfinder game later this year (when oir current DM decides to promote himself to player) and after playing with the setup in a sandbox I'm pretty excited about it.
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Foundry sounds like the winner so far. I love that it is a purchase and I have the option to self host if that’s what I want.
Self hosting is super easy too, I just run it via docker alongside an nginx proxy manager container and it's flawless.
Foundry also seems to have the most community support at the moment, tons of creators making compatible content, youtube videos and blog posts explaining advanced techniques, etc etc.
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I bet this question gets asked a lot. I have been DMing an in person group for a couple months now. My first game back since around 2008 or so and I'm hooked again. The downside is that we're all parents and scheduling is a nightmare (per the norm). We are only meeting once a month or less.
So I want to look into running another game online. I tried roll20 with a one shot that I wrote for the purpose and being that it was my first time using the platform it just kind of got in the way. I want to pick one platform (roll20, Foundry VTT, or whatever) and really do a deep dive to learn it so I can run an online game with a steady group. Setting up the self hosting of Foundry is no problem for me but I've read that players can find it confusing to use. I want players and myself to be able to manipulate the platform as seamlessly as possible.
Before I keep rambling on forever, what in your opinion is the easiest VTT to run and to play? I would like perspective from players and from DMs.
wrote last edited by [email protected]The only one of these I've ever used was Roll20 because one of the players in our group had a premium subscription to it (and we all just shared when it was our turn to DM). Before that we used some others that aren't even around anymore. Compared to those, it has been fantastic and never encountered a time when I wanted to do somethijg fancy and couldn't. But I don't know how it compares to the others mentioned here.
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I bet this question gets asked a lot. I have been DMing an in person group for a couple months now. My first game back since around 2008 or so and I'm hooked again. The downside is that we're all parents and scheduling is a nightmare (per the norm). We are only meeting once a month or less.
So I want to look into running another game online. I tried roll20 with a one shot that I wrote for the purpose and being that it was my first time using the platform it just kind of got in the way. I want to pick one platform (roll20, Foundry VTT, or whatever) and really do a deep dive to learn it so I can run an online game with a steady group. Setting up the self hosting of Foundry is no problem for me but I've read that players can find it confusing to use. I want players and myself to be able to manipulate the platform as seamlessly as possible.
Before I keep rambling on forever, what in your opinion is the easiest VTT to run and to play? I would like perspective from players and from DMs.
Our party uses Roll20, but mostly due to sunk cost of content, it works fine.
We tried Foundry VTT but from.time to time there were connectivity issues. I'd say be sure your connection is very stable and you understand how to work your network/firewall/proxy settings before hard committing to Foundry. That said, it is a pretty nice system overall.
Now a couple of options you should be aware of are AboveVTT which is an extension that converts D&D Beyond into a full VTT people really like, good if you already rely on D&D Beyond.
Then there is the FOSS option MapTool, which is a full featured self-host VTT akin to Foundry, but totally free. If you like this kind of projected don't mind community built documentation, this is a legitimate contender.
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MapTool
This looks awesome, haven't heard of it. I wonder if I could get my Roll20 group to switch over and host our game independently...
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I bet this question gets asked a lot. I have been DMing an in person group for a couple months now. My first game back since around 2008 or so and I'm hooked again. The downside is that we're all parents and scheduling is a nightmare (per the norm). We are only meeting once a month or less.
So I want to look into running another game online. I tried roll20 with a one shot that I wrote for the purpose and being that it was my first time using the platform it just kind of got in the way. I want to pick one platform (roll20, Foundry VTT, or whatever) and really do a deep dive to learn it so I can run an online game with a steady group. Setting up the self hosting of Foundry is no problem for me but I've read that players can find it confusing to use. I want players and myself to be able to manipulate the platform as seamlessly as possible.
Before I keep rambling on forever, what in your opinion is the easiest VTT to run and to play? I would like perspective from players and from DMs.
wrote last edited by [email protected]After using Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds from both sides of the table, I landed on Foundry VTT and never looked back.
It's not free, but the value for the price is almost unheard of these days. Andrew and his team have a knack for finding a good balance between power, flexibility, ease of use, and beauty. Also, they engage with the community, and parts of the software are even open-source.
I would only suggest another VTT if the DM and players were all dirt poor, or if the DM had especially weak computer skills.
My only major complaint is that the official support channels and collective knowledge are locked behind Discord's terms and conditions, which means I am denied access to both despite having a paid license. Fortunately, I don't generally need support.
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I bet this question gets asked a lot. I have been DMing an in person group for a couple months now. My first game back since around 2008 or so and I'm hooked again. The downside is that we're all parents and scheduling is a nightmare (per the norm). We are only meeting once a month or less.
So I want to look into running another game online. I tried roll20 with a one shot that I wrote for the purpose and being that it was my first time using the platform it just kind of got in the way. I want to pick one platform (roll20, Foundry VTT, or whatever) and really do a deep dive to learn it so I can run an online game with a steady group. Setting up the self hosting of Foundry is no problem for me but I've read that players can find it confusing to use. I want players and myself to be able to manipulate the platform as seamlessly as possible.
Before I keep rambling on forever, what in your opinion is the easiest VTT to run and to play? I would like perspective from players and from DMs.
Honestly, when it comes to VTTs we've found that it's better with the simpler ones. With the fancy ones like Foundry and Roll20 with integrated rules we found that we were more caught up in trying to find out how to do something in the VTT instead of just doing it. At some point it stops being a TTRPG and is more like a video game with all the limitations that entails.
The helpers seem nice at first. Like counting how much you've moved in a round. Remembering stuff like advantage, sneak attacks, automatically rolling saving throws. But when it doesn't work for whatever reason or edge case you've found, then it stops the play and you're stuck trying to work around it.
A simple map where you move tokens around with the DM manually opening up what you can see worked much better for us in the long run.
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Honestly, when it comes to VTTs we've found that it's better with the simpler ones. With the fancy ones like Foundry and Roll20 with integrated rules we found that we were more caught up in trying to find out how to do something in the VTT instead of just doing it. At some point it stops being a TTRPG and is more like a video game with all the limitations that entails.
The helpers seem nice at first. Like counting how much you've moved in a round. Remembering stuff like advantage, sneak attacks, automatically rolling saving throws. But when it doesn't work for whatever reason or edge case you've found, then it stops the play and you're stuck trying to work around it.
A simple map where you move tokens around with the DM manually opening up what you can see worked much better for us in the long run.
I am really leaning towards Foundey at this point but you make the simple map format sound very appealing.
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After using Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds from both sides of the table, I landed on Foundry VTT and never looked back.
It's not free, but the value for the price is almost unheard of these days. Andrew and his team have a knack for finding a good balance between power, flexibility, ease of use, and beauty. Also, they engage with the community, and parts of the software are even open-source.
I would only suggest another VTT if the DM and players were all dirt poor, or if the DM had especially weak computer skills.
My only major complaint is that the official support channels and collective knowledge are locked behind Discord's terms and conditions, which means I am denied access to both despite having a paid license. Fortunately, I don't generally need support.
I am leaning towards Foundry at this point but it’s also starting to seem like yawing VTTs really well is like another hobby unto itself. Like painting minis.
I’m not sure if I have room for that in my life. I’ll still give it a go and see if it clicks.
