D&D (2024) Looking for VTT (Foundry or Roll20) campaigns for my next (5e) campaign

[MNblockhead]

My current campaign, which I've been running over three years will come to an end in the next few months and I want to put together some ideas for the next campaign to discuss with my group. Looking for suggestions if you'd be kind enough to share.

I've been running 5e since 2014 but I've run only three campaigns in that time. Also, prior 2014, I hadn't played a TTRPG since 1989/90.

My first campaign was a homebrew world with a mixture of 100% homebrew adventures and published adventures adapted to my campaign.
My second campaign was WotC's Curse of Strahd.
My current is the mega-dungeon Rappan Athuk.

I run an 8-hour sessions once per month. Work demands make it difficult to spend huge amounts of time in prepping. I would like to spend more of my prep time on getting to know the setting, NPCs, plots, etc. Less on having to create everything from scratch or huge amounts of time prepping maps in the VTT.

My players are long-time D&D players. At least one regularly DMs other groups (mostly Pathfinder 1e). They enjoy tactical combat but we mix up and enjoy the various pillars of play. We've had entire sessions with no combat. We've also had 8-hour-long combat sessions. At least one player is really into magic users and I'm not sure a low magic setting would be appealing.

We are in different countries and I have to run our games in a VTT. I have put a lot of time into testing and playing in a lot of VTTs. The only two that really work for my needs are Foundry and Roll20.

I have a huge amount of material for the Lost Lands (Frog God Games) but I just don't want to have to prep another of their huge adventures.
I'm open to any adventure that is fully and well prepped for D20 or Foundry. I would be interested in hearing from people who have imported whole WotC adventures into Foundry using Mr. Primate's or a similar mod. Seems like Roll20 would be the better choice for official content.

Most third-party materials I see in Roll20 seemed to be focused on settings and a few short adventures. I guess it is not profitable for them to prep large adventures. Foundry especially has a dearth of prepped adventuring material from third-party publishers. It seems that an official WotC adventure is the way to go if I want to limit VTT prep time. The the adventure I choose imports in Foundry well enough, I'll stick with Foundry. If not, I'd probably suck it up and buy everything I need to run it in Roll20 if it means everything is prepped well.

For 5e, I'm leaning toward Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel. I like how it would support my long sessions and give a very different experience every session or two.

But what adventures have you run in Roll20 or Foundry that worked really well for you?

 

[drl2]

My current campaign, which I've been running over three years will come to an end in the next few months and I want to put together some ideas for the next campaign to discuss with my group. Looking for suggestions if you'd be kind enough to share.

I've been running 5e since 2014 but I've run only three campaigns in that time. Also, prior 2014, I hadn't played a TTRPG since 1989/90.

My first campaign was a homebrew world with a mixture of 100% homebrew adventures and published adventures adapted to my campaign.
My second campaign was WotC's Curse of Strahd.
My current is the mega-dungeon Rappan Athuk.

I run an 8-hour sessions once per month. Work demands make it difficult to spend huge amounts of time in prepping. I would like to spend more of my prep time on getting to know the setting, NPCs, plots, etc. Less on having to create everything from scratch or huge amounts of time prepping maps in the VTT.

My players are long-time D&D players. At least one regularly DMs other groups (mostly Pathfinder 1e). They enjoy tactical combat but we mix up and enjoy the various pillars of play. We've had entire sessions with no combat. We've also had 8-hour-long combat sessions. At least one player is really into magic users and I'm not sure a low magic setting would be appealing.

We are in different countries and I have to run our games in a VTT. I have put a lot of time into testing and playing in a lot of VTTs. The only two that really work for my needs are Foundry and Roll20.

I have a huge amount of material for the Lost Lands (Frog God Games) but I just don't want to have to prep another of their huge adventures.
I'm open to any adventure that is fully and well prepped for D20 or Foundry. I would be interested in hearing from people who have imported whole WotC adventures into Foundry using Mr. Primate's or a similar mod. Seems like Roll20 would be the better choice for official content.

Most third-party materials I see in Roll20 seemed to be focused on settings and a few short adventures. I guess it is not profitable for them to prep large adventures. Foundry especially has a dearth of prepped adventuring material from third-party publishers. It seems that an official WotC adventure is the way to go if I want to limit VTT prep time. The the adventure I choose imports in Foundry well enough, I'll stick with Foundry. If not, I'd probably suck it up and buy everything I need to run it in Roll20 if it means everything is prepped well.

For 5e, I'm leaning toward Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel. I like how it would support my long sessions and give a very different experience every session or two.

But what adventures have you run in Roll20 or Foundry that worked really well for you?

I'm in a similar situation - I've just finished up a 5e campaign of close to 3 years, all in Foundry, but in my case in a homebrew setting with bits and pieces grafted in from all over the place... and yeah, I'm tired of all the work involved even though I want to start a new campaign.

Instead of going the route of trying to import/adapt something from DDB, though, I'm seriously considering a switch to Pathfinder 2e. By most accounts the PF2e system for Foundry is amazing, and now that it has official support I'll be able to just buy an adventure path and drop it in with all the maps pre-made, pre-lighted, actors created, etc. I'm not overly enthused about either of the two adventures currently available (an undead-heavy horror-ish series and a megadungeon, which from your post above it seems you've already done), so I'm watching to see what comes next... but I might just go for the Abomination Vaults and give it a try.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I've only ever used Roll20, but I have bought several official WotC adventures there. I'd say they've been a mixed bag. It saves time buying them and I like that Curse of Strahd and Waterdeep Dragon Heist both gave me large libraries of character tokens that I can use in all my adventures (it's not like it's hard to make or find a Roll20 token, but having a bunch of varied ones on-hand to populate spaces with random NPCs is convenient), but the overall implementation into Roll20 was pretty bare bones all things considered, especially given that there tend to be so many fan made versions of maps for 5e WotC adventures just a google image search away. Because the later 5e official modules switched to black and white maps, the official version of Dragon Heist's battlemaps are in black and white, and while I can appreciate the clarity and economy, perhaps even minimalist beauty, in DM facing materials, for something the whole group might spend hours staring at I'd rather just grab some fan made version with detail and color off of the internet and set it up manually.

Lost Mines of Phandelver, not only came with limited art assets (albeit still in the full color, detailed maps era), but didn't even bother picking out stock art for many of the major NPCs. Sildar Hallwinter is designed to be a possible medium-term party NPC and likely the first non-hostile NPC players ever meet and they just made up a token with the words "Sildar Hallwinter" and a handout with no picture. And this is for an adventure where someone or other online has made up a battlemap for literally every location even alluded to.

That said, the adventures do consistently come with area or region maps that have location lables set up to be shown to players as they are discovered, battlemaps that have secret doors or traps that can similarly be made to appear, and handouts for all the NPCs, items, and monsters ready to show to players. It is possible, in some cases simple to implement all these things on your own in Roll20, but they are all somewhat tedious to implement on a large scale.

 

[Greg Benage]

For 5e, I'm leaning toward Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel. I like how it would support my long sessions and give a very different experience every session or two.

I own JttRC on Roll20 and can't recommend it. Briefly, the mini-settings and NPCs are good to great, but the adventures are not and they'll actually give you a very similar experience every session or two. YMMV.

I've had to add significant content to all the Wizards campaigns, except CoS and DotMM.

Maybe Kingmaker with the 5e compendium on Roll20 (not sure if it's on Foundry)? If you go that route, let me know if it's good.

 

[Retreater]

Since I'm assuming you want to stick with 5e D&D adventures, my commentary will be limited to adventures/campaigns I've run on Roll20.

I've used Foundry for other systems including Warhammer Fantasy, Forbidden Lands, and currently Pathfinder 2e. If you want my take on those, let me know. Since I don't purchase content on D&D Beyond - I don't have access to 5E material on Foundry VTT. Thus I run 5E exclusively on Roll20.

Official 5E adventures I own on Roll20, with a ranking based on the implementation on that site (not necessarily the quality of the campaign itself.)

Basically had everything I needed to run the game. No complaints in the execution at all. Solid adventures to boot...
1) Curse of Strahd
2) Tomb of Annihilation

Had some formatting issues, but nothing I couldn't figure out...
3) Tales of the Yawning Portal ("The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan" adventure only) - some of the traps and the maps were confusing
4) Dragon Heist - you have to choose the "season" (the villain of the adventure); it's kind of confusing to figure out the order. Also the map of Waterdeep is insufficient to run the adventure - at least in my opinion. I had to scan in a PDF map from Volo's Guide to Waterdeep and use it to reference locations. Also, the dungeon maps are ugly & hand-drawn - inadequate for a virtual tabletop experience

Big gaps of incomplete material...
5) Rime of the Frost Maiden - the scale of several maps were wrong (10 ft. squares were 5 ft, they used the wrong layers to put information on the overworld map, the grids were sloppy; no maps at all for key encounters/scenes)
6) Dungeon of the Mad Mage - ugly & hand-drawn maps (like Dragon Heist) but all the worse because the dungeon exploration is sort of the entire experience. The dungeon has lots of "the DM can add extra rooms here" sections, so you're going to be adding a lot of extra content from ... somewhere? (assuming you have the time)

 

[MNblockhead]

I own JttRC on Roll20 and can't recommend it. Briefly, the mini-settings and NPCs are good to great, but the adventures are not and they'll actually give you a very similar experience every session or two. YMMV.

I've had to add significant content to all the Wizards campaigns, except CoS and DotMM.

Maybe Kingmaker with the 5e compendium on Roll20 (not sure if it's on Foundry)? If you go that route, let me know if it's good.

JttRC isn't prepped yet for Foundry anyway, I've learned. Candlekeep Mysteries is, but it seems like that may suffer from the same issue you describe with JttRC.

Kingmaker looks interesting, but one of my players DMs Pathfinder and I'm sure he's run Kingmaker and some of the other players may have played it. Also, I'm not the Pathfinder folks in my 5e group would be happy playing a Pathfinder AP in 5e. They haven't even moved to PF 2e. But I'll still check it out and bring it up with the players as an option if it looks like something I'd be comfortable running.

Have you run Kingmaker in Pathfinder and in 5e? Do you think it holds up in 5e?

 

[MNblockhead]

Since I'm assuming you want to stick with 5e D&D adventures, my commentary will be limited to adventures/campaigns I've run on Roll20.

I've used Foundry for other systems including Warhammer Fantasy, Forbidden Lands, and currently Pathfinder 2e. If you want my take on those, let me know. Since I don't purchase content on D&D Beyond - I don't have access to 5E material on Foundry VTT. Thus I run 5E exclusively on Roll20.

Yeah, I would love to run other games, but I need be realistic. I just don't have time to learn a new system. But I'm still interested in hearing your thoughts about how well designed the game systems are for those systems in Foundry. I know Pathfinder 2e is incredibly well supported in Foundry. But other systems I've checked out seem very basic. 5e support itself is lackluster in Foundry without engaging in the side-hobby of testing and configuring mods--and hoping half of them don't break when Foundry is updated.

Official 5E adventures I own on Roll20, with a ranking based on the implementation on that site (not necessarily the quality of the campaign itself.)

Basically had everything I needed to run the game. No complaints in the execution at all. Solid adventures to boot...
1) Curse of Strahd

Already ran it with this group. The only WotC game I ran. But that was in-person. I bought the Mike Schley map pack and printed them all out with a plotter printer. I only used a VTT for the Castle Maps using a great set of VTT-optimized maps I found on DMs Guild. The remade maps from Roll20 were okay, but not great.

2) Tomb of Annihilation

I would love to run ToA and it is good to know that that it is well prepped in Roll20. Only issue is that I'm pretty sure some of my players have already played through it in other groups. But I'll double check. If they haven't, this could be a good choice. I see that it is also complete for Foundry/DDB Importer, so I'll check that out first as there would be no extra cost to me as I already own it on DDB. But if it seems flaky in Foundry, good to know that it is done well in Roll20.

Had some formatting issues, but nothing I couldn't figure out...
3) Tales of the Yawning Portal ("The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan" adventure only) - some of the traps and the maps were confusing

Thanks. I'll keep this in mind for one shots. I like TotYP, but not for a longer campaign.

4) Dragon Heist - you have to choose the "season" (the villain of the adventure); it's kind of confusing to figure out the order. Also the map of Waterdeep is insufficient to run the adventure - at least in my opinion. I had to scan in a PDF map from Volo's Guide to Waterdeep and use it to reference locations. Also, the dungeon maps are ugly & hand-drawn - inadequate for a virtual tabletop experience

Dragon Heist doesn't interest me. I have the print book, but it is low on my list to run.

Big gaps of incomplete material...
5) Rime of the Frost Maiden - the scale of several maps were wrong (10 ft. squares were 5 ft, they used the wrong layers to put information on the overworld map, the grids were sloppy; no maps at all for key encounters/scenes)

That's disappointing. I have the print book and I feel like I could tweak it into a good survival/horror adventure. I see that it is complete for Mr. Primemate's DDB Importer. I'll check it out and see how well done it is.

6) Dungeon of the Mad Mage - ugly & hand-drawn maps (like Dragon Heist) but all the worse because the dungeon exploration is sort of the entire experience. The dungeon has lots of "the DM can add extra rooms here" sections, so you're going to be adding a lot of extra content from ... somewhere? (assuming you have the time)

DotMM is only partially complete for Foundry/DDB Importer. But I'm wrapping up a multi-year mega-dungeon campaign, so would rather run something different.

Thanks for your observations. I'll check out ToA in Foundry vs Roll20 and will check out Rime of the Frost Maiden on Foundry.

 

[Retreater]

Yeah, I would love to run other games, but I need be realistic. I just don't have time to learn a new system. But I'm still interested in hearing your thoughts about how well designed the game systems are for those systems in Foundry. I know Pathfinder 2e is incredibly well supported in Foundry. But other systems I've checked out seem very basic. 5e support itself is lackluster in Foundry without engaging in the side-hobby of testing and configuring mods--and hoping half of them don't break when Foundry is updated.

WFRP - the presentation is great. The first 4 (of 5) volumes of The Enemy Within Campaign are available (and each include the supplemental expanded material - so two books in each volume). I think the 5th and final chapter will be released soon. The fan-created module for WFRP was so good they brought the fan into the business and made it official. Lots of rollable charts, character creator built-in. Auto calculates success levels and opposed rolls.

Forbidden Lands - all the random charts are present, great tools for organizing exploration activities. Character creator built-in. The style of play is more theatre of the mind, so dungeons need a little work to make them usable for VTT. (What I did was draw some really basic walls around "zones" on the maps, and place tokens as needed. The maps were abstract but usable.) I guess a downside is that none of the short, side books are available (Spire of Quetzel, Crypt of the Mellified Mage).

 

[MNblockhead]

WFRP - the presentation is great. The first 4 (of 5) volumes of The Enemy Within Campaign are available (and each include the supplemental expanded material - so two books in each volume). I think the 5th and final chapter will be released soon. The fan-created module for WFRP was so good they brought the fan into the business and made it official. Lots of rollable charts, character creator built-in. Auto calculates success levels and opposed rolls.

Forbidden Lands - all the random charts are present, great tools for organizing exploration activities. Character creator built-in. The style of play is more theatre of the mind, so dungeons need a little work to make them usable for VTT. (What I did was draw some really basic walls around "zones" on the maps, and place tokens as needed. The maps were abstract but usable.) I guess a downside is that none of the short, side books are available (Spire of Quetzel, Crypt of the Mellified Mage).

Cool, I'll check it out. Really don't want to move to a new system, but WFRP has a special place in my heart. I left AD&D 1e for WFRP in the late '80s. Never followed any of the subsequent editions as I had a long hiatus from the hobby.

 

[reighndragon]

I really like the Zeitgeist campaign by ENPublishing. All 13 episodes have been converted to 5th edition and part 1 through 6 are available for roll20 in the roll20 marketplace. Part 7 should be available in januari, usually a new conversion to Roll20 is added every 3 months. It's a campaign with a complex plot in their own world. The adventure path is more roleplay focused, although it has some pretty interesting combats as well. Sounds like a perfect fit for your group.