Best Virtual Tabletop

[ninjayeti]

Owlbear Rodeo is very simple to use, and you can get up and running really quickly. The base game is free, but the upcoming 2.0 version will charge like $3.50/mo for storage if that is what you want (you can also just store the maps locally and upload them when needed if you don't want to pay). It has basic fog of war but not the dynamic lighting that more advanced systems use. It would be the first thing I recommend checking out because it is free and easy.

Fantasy Grounds is great and if you are just using it offline as a map tool to project to a screen I believe you can use the "Demo" version which is free. You only need a license if you are connecting to other computers on the internet. So this is the cheapest way to get the dynamic lighting feature. I has a bit more of a learning curve, but lets you set up line of sight blocking, light sources that are static or attached to tokens, toggleable doors, etc. So all the bells and whistles you could want, but I will take some learning to get it working to its full potential.

Roll20 has a decent free version, but you have to pay the annual sub to use the dynamic lighting. So in the end it will be more than FG if you want the advanced features. It also requires a bit of learning to get all the features working.

I have not used Foundry, so can't comment one way or another.

 

[Celebrim]

For what its worth, if you want to give it a lookover anyway, here's the Wayback Machine's copy of the wiki:

RPTools Wiki

web.archive.org

That's worth a considerable amount. I should have thought of that. Thanks.

So by way of update, the size of the maps in question mean that I'd have no (real) choice but to use tilesets, and based on the discussion tilesets are also the way to go because I do have one player who cheats and wouldn't be able to resist cheating if given the opportunity to do so.

Ideally I'd want to just configure a tile once on multiple layers, so that I import a resource to a map once and thereafter - after fiddling with all the stuff - it knows the scale of the resource, the line of sight layer, what portion of the resource represents a togglable door, and then I can just start hooking them together on the grid without having to do setup on all the layers again and again and again. Even better if there is functionality for importing tiles from XML files or something with each layer having its own representation that I can set up externally.

What I don't want is to have to manually set up a vision blocking layer for a whole map after having laid all the tiles.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That's worth a considerable amount. I should have thought of that. Thanks.

So by way of update, the size of the maps in question mean that I'd have no (real) choice but to use tilesets, and based on the discussion tilesets are also the way to go because I do have one player who cheats and wouldn't be able to resist cheating if given the opportunity to do so.

Ideally I'd want to just configure a tile once on multiple layers, so that I import a resource to a map once and thereafter - after fiddling with all the stuff - it knows the scale of the resource, the line of sight layer, what portion of the resource represents a togglable door, and then I can just start hooking them together on the grid without having to do setup on all the layers again and again and again. Even better if there is functionality for importing tiles from XML files or something with each layer having its own representation that I can set up externally.

What I don't want is to have to manually set up a vision blocking layer for a whole map after having laid all the tiles.

I'm not sure that Maptool is going to give you what you want, then. While you can absolutely tiles with it, I haven't heard that vision blocking beyond the simple Fog of War I use is particularly trivial to set up.

 

[Celebrim]

I'm not sure that Maptool is going to give you what you want, then. While you can absolutely tiles with it, I haven't heard that vision blocking beyond the simple Fog of War I use is particularly trivial to set up.

Well, I never expected it to be trivial, but if I can't in play easily replicate the battle map experience, I'm going to be frustrated. That means fog of war and blocking line of sight and night mode using dynamic lighting. Done right it might could be more immersive than the battlemap experience, but if the time to set up is prohibitive then what would be the point.

Looking into it, Foundry seems to support more different types of line of sight without fudging things, and in particular has the ability for an object to be seen by default while blocking line of sight beyond it, which would be very useful for pillars and columns. Maptool doesn't do this.

 

[Zaukrie]

Well, I never expected it to be trivial, but if I can't in play easily replicate the battle map experience, I'm going to be frustrated. That means fog of war and blocking line of sight and night mode using dynamic lighting. Done right it might could be more immersive than the battlemap experience, but if the time to set up is prohibitive then what would be the point.

Looking into it, Foundry seems to support more different types of line of sight without fudging things, and in particular has the ability for an object to be seen by default while blocking line of sight beyond it, which would be very useful for pillars and columns. Maptool doesn't do this.

Foundry does all that. If you buy premade tiles, the walls will be built.....I host on the forge for simplicity....

 

[Celebrim]

Foundry does all that. If you buy premade tiles, the walls will be built.....I host on the forge for simplicity....

If I buy Foundry, do all my PC's also have to buy Foundry in order to play?

 

[Zaukrie]

If I buy Foundry, do all my PC's also have to buy Foundry in order to play?

No. Just one person.

 

[MNblockhead]

I currently use Foundry. I pay to have it hosted with The Forge, but you can self host. If you want line of site and like to tinker, it is great. Incredibly expandable and customizable. Two drawbacks for you may be: (1) Customizing character sheets is not that simple, especially if you want to build them from scratch. (2) No official manual fog-of-war-support. There is a community mod, but its been flaky. Generally, if you use Foundry you are at least tracing the walls for lighting and line of sight and fog of war.

Before that I used Map Tool. I used it for in-person games, not for online games. I can't speak to how easy it is to set up for online gaming. But no storage limits other than the storage on your computer or external hard drive. Very nice manual fog-of-war reveal. I played around with tracing walls for line of sight and lighting, but never really bother with it at the time. What I loved about maptool was that I search and open a battlemap image, apply the grid, apply fog of war, and drop tokens in minutes. It was great for low prep, sandbox, play. I ONLY used it to display maps. I'm not sure about its character sheet features or how easy it is to customize them.

I also like Role (app.playrole.com). It is primary and audio-video conference system for gaming. The audio and video is quite good. The charactersheets and dice rolling are easy to set up and use. It is quite easy to create custom character sheets for most systems. I created charactersheets for World of Darkness: MAGE the Ascension. The battlemap features are basic, but a good replacement to att-table Chessex mats or dungeon tiles. I doesn't support fog of war, though, so it is really best used for set-piece combats. No automations other than dice-roll calculations you build in the character sheets. Tokens are just images you can move around. I feel Role is best for more theater of the mind style games. I like that with Role you can have your audiovideo, character sheets, rolls, and battlemap all in one environment. You can with Roll20 and Foundry as well, but neither has been great for me and I use Discord for voice/video when I run games on line when using Foundry.

I've test many other VTTs, but the three above are the ones I have the most experience with. I recommend all three, depending on how you like to run your games.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Before that I used Map Tool. I used it for in-person games, not for online games. I can't speak to how easy it is to set up for online gaming. But no storage limits other than the storage on your computer or external hard drive. Very nice manual fog-of-war reveal. I played around with tracing walls for line of sight and lighting, but never really bother with it at the time. What I loved about maptool was that I search and open a battlemap image, apply the grid, apply fog of war, and drop tokens in minutes. It was great for low prep, sandbox, play. I ONLY used it to display maps. I'm not sure about its character sheet features or how easy it is to customize them.

I've used it for online play for about, well, oddly enough, three years now )), and as I noted it works fine as long as you don't demand too much of it (and that said, its capable of doing more than I use it for; I've just never cared enough to bother).

I'm always a questionable source on this because I know a fair number of people expect a VTT to do some degree of mechanical support, and I couldn't care less about that (not the least because I'm just as likely to be running a game that is off the beaten path its unlikely anyone would do that for me). I don't even bother with the built in die-rolling utility in Maptool.

 

[jdrakeh]

By the by, if I ever did switch from Maptool, everything I've heard so far makes me think I'd go to Foundry. But part of that is because I really, seriously don't want to be dependent on someone else's server.

And that's a great reason. The other thing that has me seriously considering a foundry purchase is that only the person hosting the game has to shell out for Foundry (your players can connect to your server for free).