D&D General Best VTT for the most players?

[cmad1977]

In your opinion is it worth the money for the subscription to have access these features? What's the learning curve for a DM to implement them? I just started trying to figure out the fog of war yesterday and today and noticed it seemed a little limited.

So...
I’d say it is worth the subscription IF you will be using Roll20 for a significant time. I’ve been using it with the same group of people for some time now: I’ve found the lighting, storage space and API scripts( pretty easy to install and add some cool functionalities)to be worth it. However, if you’re using a VTT as a stopgap I’m not certain a subscription is strictly necessary. My players LIKE the extra stuff(especially apparently the dynamic lighting)...but would totally play without and not care either way. If performance was an issue for one them we’d play without the lighting to accommodate them.

The learning curve of lighting/fog of war:
The dynamic lighting isn’t hard to set up I don’t think. You just lay lines on a ‘lighting’ layer that prevent light from passing through them. I’d say that the trickiest thing is making sure the token a player or npc uses has the settings right.

I have a couple other “tips” regarding the lighting that I learned by doing it “wrong”:
Don’t use both FoW and DL: it seems to get reaaallly slow. Maybe not for everyone but when I have both the DL and the FoW active everyone’s performance takes a hit. I do really like the combination of the two and I know Roll20 is working on combining them now so we’ll how that goes.
Don’t use it on EVERY map! Seriously.,. Not every tavern need fancy lighting effects. What was I doing?
Used a separate line and color for the doors on the lighting layer. So you can remove them when players open the doors. Also, add a little hook or bend at one end of the ‘door line’. Makes it easier to grab .
If you CAN (not all published maps are built for this) recess the “wall” on the lighting layer slightly behind the edge of the wall on the map. This way the PLAYERS actually see a bit of wall instead of a sudden black void.

 

[R_J_K75]

So...
I’d say it is worth the subscription IF you will be using Roll20 for a significant time. I’ve been using it with the same group of people for some time now: I’ve found the lighting, storage space and API scripts( pretty easy to install and add some cool functionalities)to be worth it. However, if you’re using a VTT as a stopgap I’m not certain a subscription is strictly necessary. My players LIKE the extra stuff(especially apparently the dynamic lighting)...but would totally play without and not care either way. If performance was an issue for one them we’d play without the lighting to accommodate them.

The learning curve of lighting/fog of war:
The dynamic lighting isn’t hard to set up I don’t think. You just lay lines on a ‘lighting’ layer that prevent light from passing through them. I’d say that the trickiest thing is making sure the token a player or npc uses has the settings right.

I have a couple other “tips” regarding the lighting that I learned by doing it “wrong”:
Don’t use both FoW and DL: it seems to get reaaallly slow. Maybe not for everyone but when I have both the DL and the FoW active everyone’s performance takes a hit. I do really like the combination of the two and I know Roll20 is working on combining them now so we’ll how that goes.
Don’t use it on EVERY map! Seriously.,. Not every tavern need fancy lighting effects. What was I doing?
Used a separate line and color for the doors on the lighting layer. So you can remove them when players open the doors. Also, add a little hook or bend at one end of the ‘door line’. Makes it easier to grab .
If you CAN (not all published maps are built for this) recess the “wall” on the lighting layer slightly behind the edge of the wall on the map. This way the PLAYERS actually see a bit of wall instead of a sudden black void.

Thanks I'll take these suggestions into consideration. At this point we are playing for 2-3 hours on Wednesdays and sometimes on Saturdays. I like the VTT for the visual aspects, and the option to experiment with the FoW, etc. I also like just logging on to play, not having to set up my living room or clean up the mess afterwards. Besides myself, theres 3 other players, all who live within 2 minutes from my house so travel time isn't a factor in our game. There is something that's lost in gameplay when not face to face but we're weighing the pro's and cons and deciding what we are going to do once we can get back together. I have a feeling we may play at my house some games and then use the VTT others. I'll most likely see what a subscription entails and maybe try it.

 

[R_J_K75]

A lot of the time that happens to me there is a small setting in the token that needs to be set. OR I changed the setting and forgot to link the new token to the character sheet.

Im guessing there's little nuances that Im not doing as well such as trying to change setting but not completely following through as required so they don't work.

 

[Nebulous]

Roll 20 and discord for me I tried both R20 and Fantasy Grounds, I found roll20 more intuitive and Fantasy Grounds a lot more difficult to get to grips with. But I know of others that think the opposite . They are both free to try so worth playing about with both before you start to invest in all the bells and whistles.

I see people again and again saying that one or the other is difficult to come to grips with. I have both, I really enjoy Roll20 but have a terrible time wrapping my head around FG. It's kind of weird actually.

 

[Nebulous]

If you CAN (not all published maps are built for this) recess the “wall” on the lighting layer slightly behind the edge of the wall on the map. This way the PLAYERS actually see a bit of wall instead of a sudden black void.

I know this is subtle, but you're absolutely right, if you're adding your own dynamic lighting, it will NOT look right unless you give a bit of room between the line and the drawn wall.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

This is going to be a tricky aspect, as I know that Roll20 doesn't allow the use of mobile devices unless the user has a subscription (the app is terrible). You might want to consider Fantasy Grounds, as an Ultimate Subscription covers all the players in any game you run. It's pricey, but it might provide your needs.

Yeah the app is a total fail. It's non-functional. Roll20 certainly seems to work on tablets though, without any subscriptions.

We're using Beyond for our characters, Roll20 for the VTT, and Beyond20 to hook the two up (the DM has to make "shell" characters which you just need to manually fill in the AC and initiative mod on).

It was more to do with the dynamic lighting than anything. Sometimes I dropped an icon and hit ctrl+L and things were groovy. Even the human could see the small fire off in the distance. Other times ... just black. Same map, same settings, just doing a final check to see if the I have the PC's icons set up correctly.

Probably just some id10t error on my part.

We don't have dynamic lighting, but a few times we've had the DM update something, and only some of the players can see it - everyone has to refresh their browser (F5 on PC) and that fixes it, pretty reliably.

 

[Quickleaf]

I want to use a VTT but I wan’t to pick one that can reach the most players. I think I need one that will work across most peoples computers/tablets/phones or whatever. I wan’t to start running many more virtual games for virtual conventions and I’ve seem a few notes about folks not being able to run the the DM’S VTT of choice or with all the features enabled.

So anybody have an advice on that front?

I think it means I need to run Roll20 with most of the options turned off, but I’m not sure and I’d like to hear from a few other folks.

Hey darjr, I highly recommend Cyanomys' Guide to Playing RPGs Online. Cyanomys is a Reddit user who has stayed current (last edited ~10 days ago) with multiple VTT platforms, voice chat / video chat options, and a few microphones being used by gamers. It's a comprehensive document and, IMO, very earnestly compiled.

I'm not sure which has best support across Windows, Mac OS, iOS, and Android. Definitely not Fantasy Grounds / Fantasy Grounds Unity which is software that works only on Windows & Mac. Probably not Roll20 either which I recall has had problems working on iOS tablets & doesn't work on phones at all back in late 2019, and given the glacial pace of their development and the pay-to-develop model they seem to subscribe to, I wouldn't be surprised if it hasn't yet been resolved. You may find some tips in Cyanomys' Guide, but the smaller VTTs are being developed so quickly & intensively that it's hard to keep track. For example, the Astral Tabletop video tutorial on YouTube from 2019 is already out of date.

My sense of the VTT market is that you're not going to find that perfect solution which works on all devices yet. The market still feels very much like a wild frontier and unbiased comparative information is difficult to come by. I was fortunate to stumble upon Cyanomys' guide while having conversations on the r/DMAcademy subreddit and the Discord servers for Astral Tabletop and TheFoundry.

Finally, there are 2 options I saw that Cyanomys listed as on his "to review" list for mobile devices, though I have no personal experience with either: The Calamus and RPG+.

 

[MNblockhead]

DELETED. The Cyanomy guide does discuss MapTool.

 

[darjr]

@Quickleaf thanks! Will check that out!

 

[cmad1977]

Im guessing there's little nuances that Im not doing as well such as trying to change setting but not completely following through as required so they don't work.

Make sure the player tokens have “has sight” checked.
And make sure you save THAT token to the sheet.
So many times I’ve changed stuff and forgot to remove the token from the sheet and then save it.