D&D 5E Foundry Gets Official D&D Support

Joining Roll20, Fantasy Grounds, and WotC’s own VTT plans, the Foundry virtual tabletop is getting official D&D support. You can se their announcement video below.


This will give yet another way to play D&D and that's some very good news.

 

[SteveC]

I want the core rules of the game to be available on Foundry when an announcement goes out that the game has official support? I don’t really understand whats odd about that. 5e has been out a decade.

It's important to note that this is what's available. The SRD contains all the rules to actually play the game. I know you can 100% play just using the SRD materials because that's what I'm currently doing on Roll20. I play in two games where one has bought all the extra rulebooks and the other is using just the SRD. Both are playable. In fact, we were using just SRD content for both games until the players all got together and purchased the DM the rulebooks.

What we do in the 100% SRD game is just add the material that isn't in it. So I'm playing a Hexblade/Sword Bard and I entered the spells and class abilities that I use that aren't in the SRD. You can do the same thing with Foundry because I have done for several characters it to test 5E via Foundry before the 3.0 update.

What you're really asking for is the rules content that isn't in the SRD, and it doesn't look like you're going to get that until the 2024 game is actually released. Waiting for that drop is 100% your call, as is writing off Foundry because they haven't put their limited resources into creating material that will be out of date and not used in six months. The D&D Beyond solution is one way to get around this, and people have been bringing it up to try and be helpful.

I think the thing you need to keep in mind is that WotC hasn't done the thing that Paizo has and released the whole game free of charge. If you're using the PF2 module on Foundry, you have the entire game with all the classes, spells, monsters, and magic items included. WotC didn't do that, so the Foundry team had to make a call about what to do. Honestly I think they did the right thing, since this will only be an issue for a few months.

The most important thing is that if you want to play 5E right now, you can, you just need to do work for material that's not in the SRD. If that's a dealbreaker to you, I think you're going to have to hold off for now.

 

[TheSword]

It's important to note that this is what's available. The SRD contains all the rules to actually play the game. I know you can 100% play just using the SRD materials because that's what I'm currently doing on Roll20. I play in two games where one has bought all the extra rulebooks and the other is using just the SRD. Both are playable. In fact, we were using just SRD content for both games until the players all got together and purchased the DM the rulebooks.

What we do in the 100% SRD game is just add the material that isn't in it. So I'm playing a Hexblade/Sword Bard and I entered the spells and class abilities that I use that aren't in the SRD. You can do the same thing with Foundry because I have done for several characters it to test 5E via Foundry before the 3.0 update.

What you're really asking for is the rules content that isn't in the SRD, and it doesn't look like you're going to get that until the 2024 game is actually released. Waiting for that drop is 100% your call, as is writing off Foundry because they haven't put their limited resources into creating material that will be out of date and not used in six months. The D&D Beyond solution is one way to get around this, and people have been bringing it up to try and be helpful.

I think the thing you need to keep in mind is that WotC hasn't done the thing that Paizo has and released the whole game free of charge. If you're using the PF2 module on Foundry, you have the entire game with all the classes, spells, monsters, and magic items included. WotC didn't do that, so the Foundry team had to make a call about what to do. Honestly I think they did the right thing, since this will only be an issue for a few months.

The most important thing is that if you want to play 5E right now, you can, you just need to do work for material that's not in the SRD. If that's a dealbreaker to you, I think you're going to have to hold off for now.

Of course it’s a dealbreaker? The SRD is a skeleton and I can’t imagine many players who have been enjoying the game for 10 years being willing to strip back to such limited choice.

I understand that any non SRD material would come at a charge. I just don’t understand why they are releasing adventure modules before having core rules - the rules from the core books - available. That seems to me to be priority 1 of any VTT system launch. Otherwise no amount of great effects will make up for the fact that I can’t play the standard game on it.

I could live without Tasha and Xanathar. They’re icing on the cake. But the core PHB? Nah. I really hope they reconsider.

 

[Ondath]

Of course it’s a dealbreaker? The SRD is a skeleton and I can’t imagine many players who have been enjoying the game for 10 years being willing to strip back to such limited choice.

I understand that any non SRD material would come at a charge. I just don’t understand why they are releasing adventure modules before having core rules - the rules from the core books - available. That seems to me to be priority 1 of any VTT system launch. Otherwise no amount of great effects will make up for the fact that I can’t play the standard game on it.

I could live without Tasha and Xanathar. They’re icing on the cake. But the core PHB? Nah. I really hope they reconsider.

I kinda missed the last 3 pages of discussion, but doesn't the announcement make it clear that they didn't want to sink development time on 2014 core rulebooks that will be obselete later this year? This probably means the 2024 rulebooks will be available quite soon after their release. Would you have preferred that nothing became available now and official FoundryVTT support started only once the 2024 core rulebooks were released?

 

[TheSword]

I kinda missed the last 3 pages of discussion, but doesn't the announcement make it clear that they didn't want to sink development time on 2014 core rulebooks that will be obselete later this year? This probably means the 2024 rulebooks will be available quite soon after their release. Would you have preferred that nothing became available now and official FoundryVTT support started only once the 2024 core rulebooks were released?

Yes, whether 2014 or 2024 give me the core ruleset. Not just the McNuggets.

In the immortal words of Toby Ziegler…”Don’t come in here with half a thing and not be able to, you know, after you’ve walked me to the brink, and say we’ve got to do this it’s amazing, though we have no earthly idea how. Like one of those guys who buys a big new thing but doesn’t really know how to get the most out of it.”

Get out, come back with a finished article.

[Edit: Expanded the answer]

 

[Ondath]

Yes.

Alright. I do think that's a silly opinion since you can actually sell months' worth of books with the free SRD + any adventure released until the 2024 core books are out with the current model, and why should you leave money on the table? It looks like WotC and FoundryVTT also made the same bet. I guess time (and sales figures) will tell if their method makes more sense than yours.

 

[TheSword]

Alright. I do think that's a silly opinion since you can actually sell months' worth of books with the free SRD + any adventure released until the 2024 core books are out with the current model, and why should you leave money on the table? It looks like WotC and FoundryVTT also made the same bet. I guess time (and sales figures) will tell if their method makes more sense than yours.

To be honest I don’t accept the premise of the question. Money is being left on the table.

 

[Ondath]

To be honest I don’t accept the premise of the question. Money is being left on the table.

I'm assuming you mean money that they'd get from selling the 2014 core rulebooks. But again, those will be obselete by the end of the year, and you probably need a couple of months of development time to implement everything properly. So while yes, they are not getting any of the potential 2014 core book sales, they're also not spending considerable time and money for developing the 2014 core rulebook modules. They probably made a cost/benefit analysis and decided they could wait a few months for the 2024 books to arrive. Which, again, I think is the more reasonable course of action to take. And I say this as someone who is not looking forward to the 2024 core rulebooks and will probably stick with either the 2014 5E or its offshoots (Level Up, Tales of the Valiant etc.).

 

[MNblockhead]

Foundry looks amazing but I'm having a real problem with the learning curve. And then I would have to teach it to five other people.

There is a learning curve with any VTT, but Foundry can seem even more intimidating because of the great amount of community mods available.

My advice for GMs new to Foundry is to play the system without adding any community mods.

My other advice is that if you just want to have a very simple battlemap without lots of bells and whistles, excellent digital character sheets, and a decent encounter building, just use DnD Beyond. The new maps feature on DDB is great and very simple to use. If you don't want to spend a lot of time doing prep work and tweaking mods, and don't care about dynamic lighting, etc. then DDB maps are likely all you need.

For players, I think Foundry is very easy to just log in and start using. But there are some gotchas, like making sure you have hardware acceleration enabled on your browser. Targeting in Foundry is rather clunky out of the box without mods. Other than that, I found it to be very player friendly. The learning curve is mostly on the game master side.

 

[SteveC]

To be honest I don’t accept the premise of the question. Money is being left on the table.

I find this honestly hysterical. The team that is working on this project is, if the names associated with the updates are any indication, five or six people. Now let's compare that with the ... hundreds (?) that are working on D&D Beyond and the WotC tabletop. And the small group that's doing this is working on other systems as well, systems that also have a paying customer base. In this case, that would be me as well. The notion that they should take someone's time from, say, the latest Pathfinder AP and put them on this project is something I don't understand. I say that because that Pathfinder AP will still be selling some amount years from now. And also because I just bought Rusthenge, a stand-alone level 1-3 adventure that I can use to bring my group of experienced gamers into PF2 instead of the Beginner's Box. The 2014 PHB isn't going to have hardly any sales in six months.

It seems to me that they made a choice to come out with a product now, since there are people who are using Foundry to play 5E today. Improvement in it is going to drive sales of the new module that just came out. I know this because I bought it. And that's about all I can say about it, I guess.

 

[Cergorach]

Foundry looks amazing but I'm having a real problem with the learning curve. And then I would have to teach it to five other people.

It needs a bit of getting used to, playing around with it helps a lot watching a ton of the right videos helps a lot too. What I've done is the week before the session is to setup meetings with everyone one-on-one and go through how things work. You can completely go their speed, answer their questions, etc. Also gives you room to research open questions you don't know the answer to.

As I'm a player in the current party, besides having open a player session, I also have a GM session open so I can assist the GM with technical stuff (he doesn't prepare the adventure in Foundry VTT, so everything except the PCs is being done ad-hoc). I also manage/mitigate some of the other players issues during the session. There's a LOT more power in Foundry VTT if your DM/GM is into this kind of tooling and has some technical expertise!

’t really understand this. Anniversary is very carefully backwards compatible why would they not put in the stuff from 5.0. It’s a mystery to me?

During the live presentation on Twitch the owner/founder mentioned that WotC has a very straight forward pricing scheme for these products on other platforms, so we can expect the same $30/book/expansion. And that holds true for the first expansion: "Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk". When I look up the PHB/DMG/MM on Roll20, each of those costs $30, so $90 for the bunch.

My speculation is that WotC expects a $30 pricetag on each book that's converted to Foundry VTT. The missing content from those three books isn't really all that huge, especially when you ask $90 for the whole bunch. I also expect WotC to want another $30 for each of the new books. Spending $180 on the complete D&D rules is going to be a tall order for many. Especially when existing 'solutions' already offer this for 'free' via either via a 3rd party module giving access to D&DBeyond resources or using module '94'... More speculation from my part: I also wonder if WotC would allow the old PHB/DMG/MM to be sold as a digital module for Foundry VTT after the release of the 'new' version... From a personal perspective, I would prefer the completionist route, but from a business perspective I could understand why they would prefer something that has more appeal to future customers then a rulebook that most people mostly have for free already, that's being replaced in six months...

Is it a lot of work to expand the SRD to core rules? Or add the stuff from Xanathar/Tasha’s? They would presumably make money from that...

Probably not, if you do it barebones, but if you did it that way, would you pay $30 for each core book? Treating the core books in the same way as they did the campaign, I expect that they would put a lot of effort into the modules, giving people 'worth' for their money. The question is also, how many would it sell at this point and in the future?

But why the heck would you want to move from WFRP (4e?) to D&D5e (old/new) anyway? You have something that works, something that has extensive support from the publisher and already has a whole range of products available of Foundry VTT. D&D currently has one official product, a ton of other 3rd party products, but only one official product.

Also keep in mind that making a Foundry VTT version of a product takes time. When I asked them how much and how many people, it was months (doing this, the main Foundry VTT v12, and other projects), all the people of the team (they added to it), plus a bunch of contractors. Even if they were willing to massively expand their team and/or outsource everything (keeping quality in mind), they would still need to cough up a TON of money they would need to earn back somehow. #1 the money needs to be available, which I doubt. #2 something might sell, but does it sell enough to make it worth the amount of time and money, which they obviously doubt. "Leaving money on the table." is a very good option if the money on the table isn't worth your effort.