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.
I am really leaning towards Foundey at this point but you make the simple map format sound very appealing.
After using both 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 make themselves accessible to the community, and parts of it 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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
I found Tabula Sono to be the most immediate and easy to use. The tutorials for players and masters are well done, it runs on your browser with no installation needed, and it’s lightweight and easy to use. You can add maps and miniatures as needed, too, which is great for customisability.
Downside is that it’s literally only a digital table with maps and miniatures. You’ll have to write your features and roll your dice elsewhere.
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.
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.
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.
Another point for Foundry.
I have never played Pathfinder. I’m mostly focused on D&D right now while I’m getting back into the hobby but I live to run a Cyberpunk Rd game at some point.
My money is on Foundry VTT. It is robust and still pretty easy to use. The pay model is also superior to most others. Try using it with Molten Hosting if you want an always-on server instead of hosting it on your local machine.
The pay model on Foundry is huge for me too. I love purchasing and owning things over subscriptions.
I use Owlbear Rodeo
It has maps, tokens, fog of war and some small tools like a pointer and a measuring tool for distances — everything I need.
If required you can install extensions but so far I do not really use that.
Good recommendation, I wasn’t even looking at Owlbear. Do you have a sense of the ease of use for the players?
It’s pretty easy for players. You can lock everything and give them access to their own token(s) only. The player can pan and zoom their own view, but when required you can sync all player views with your current view.
I’ve used Owlbear Rodeo in online sessions with co-workers that had never before played any ttrpgs, and it went great.
If you’re an experienced DM then you could get away with just Table Top Simulator, perhaps? At its simplest it’s just a virtual battle map but you can expand it.
Let players roll IRL if you trust them to not fudge. Or roll in the app but there’s something a bit less fun about that.
I’ve only ever been player though, so can’t speak to setup issues.
Another option maybe not considered is you could just use OBS, use 2 webcams and switch between your face and the physical map in front of you. You just use the obs output instead of your webcam directly. OBS is free too
I definitely want to try a VTT over just a map. Honestly, I wish there was a DM software that was like a VTT that I could use to organize my in person games and export sessions to a printable format.
