D&D 5E Most User-Friendly VTT? (Dice Games In The Time of Covid)

[Azzy]

For instance, if I pay a sub, and buy a module or asset pack, can I just lay down a building and the lighting and FoW just works?

I picked up the adventure "Frozen Sick" because it was free. After scratchng my head for a while, I figured a few things out.

The adventure includes all the info, monsters, tokens, magic items, etc. It also has player handouts. If you click on the "Page Toolbar" icon at the top, righthand side of the screen, you can go between different maps and such. The battlemats are loaded with all the monsters and encounters.

I don't know about lighting and fog of war because I haven't tested it. Roll20, like you and others have said, isn't very intuitive. It took me about 10 minutes to discover the Page Toolbar (I was expecting some sort of menu to select from).

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I picked up the adventure "Frozen Sick" because it was free. After scratchng my head for a while, I figured a few things out.

The adventure includes all the info, monsters, tokens, magic items, etc. It also has player handouts. If you click on the "Page Toolbar" icon at the top, righthand side of the screen, you can go between different maps and such. The battlemats are loaded with all the monsters and encounters.

I don't know about lighting and fog of war because I haven't tested it. Roll20, like you and others have said, isn't very intuitive. It took me about 10 minutes to discover the Page Toolbar (I was expecting some sort of menu to select from).

Yeah honestly just a revamped UI that is at all intuitive would help. Astral eats a lot of CPU usage, but at least I can easily find things in it.

Still, it’s underdeveloped, and I don’t think it quite gets where I want.

But if my fellow DMs end up liking either one, orFG, or whatever, and it works well in play, I’ll happily be the one DM not using a VTT, and help them pay for assets and stuff.

 

[Azzy]

If you want to give Roll20 more of a look around and see how prefab content looks, you can get the adventure Frosen Sick for free.

 

[Nebulous]

But first you have to give them permission to move it. And if it's a token that represents their character, then you probably want to link that token to their character sheet. And unless you want to go through those steps on each map, then you also want to associate their character sheet with that token (which is not the same as linking a token to their character sheet). All of this takes time to do and time to learn. And it's not exactly intuitive.

This is true. It is NOT intuitive at first. Anybody says that Roll20 is "easy" probably has experience already with a similar CAD or is not using any advanced functions. For anyone coming into it fresh it is a pain the ass. It took me weeks of daily tinkering to get familiar with Roll20, but I was also determined to use dynamic lighting and fog of war and all that crap. However, once I got the hang of it you find yourself gradually adding more bells and whistles and watching more youtube tutorials and when the macro-coding clicks and you realize you can just copy and paste the work from other coders, then you start to realize how powerful the system is.

But I still would not call it easy.

 

[Nebulous]

Yesterday I figured out how to load full motion video and audio into Firefox and stream the battlemap from Dropbox. This particular map now has the Aliens soundtrack blasting over it. There is so much motion with clouds and masts moving that it almost gives you vertigo. Getting other players to see and interact with the map though without any hitches was another hurdle

But once I have gotten over the hump in Roll20 of all the fiddly bits being such a pain the ass, I actually find it oddly fun getting new things to work now.

 

[Nebulous]

Anyway.

Anyone know if you pay for roll20 stuff, can you get to a point where the features are all set up for you and you can just play? Or is there another program where that is the case?

For instance, if I pay a sub, and buy a module or asset pack, can I just lay down a building and the lighting and FoW just works?

If you buy a module they already have dynamic lighting done for you, but as in it's already embedded in the maps, but you as the DM will still need to understand how it interacts with character tokens or layers or you won't be able to take advantage of it. It was really hard for figuring out that aspect of Roll20. Even now a few weeks later I still find myself stumped time to time when a feature doesn't function the way I expect it to in the lighting layers. But I've made so much progress since the first few days where I was actually pissed off and depressed that I would never be able to understand the software. I just don't learn new stuff easily, so it took a while, but I'm glad I stuck with it.

I'm learning Fantasy Grounds too. I like both systems, they work completely differently and both have strengths and flaws. Right now I'm leaning toward liking Roll20 more, but that's mostly because I enjoy the fog of war and dynamic lighting and FG Unity doesn't have that implemented yet.

 

[MNblockhead]

I don't find any VTT "easy" and I don't really expect any to be. The easiest for me has been d20pro because it is focused on d20 games it can focus features and UI to be optimized for that game type. The problem with d20pro is that it doesn't have all the official materials available. If you stick to PHB and DMG and MM core, though, it would be great.

If I were to run published modules from WotC I would probably go with Fantasy Grounds as I could make full use of all its cool features without having to put up with the drudgery of lots of data entry, map prep, etc.

One problem that I have with both d20pro and Fantasy Grounds is it is difficult to get the networking set. I'm currently overseas in country that many servers block, using employer provided Internet. I was able to get Fantasy Grounds Classic working to play in a GaryCon Virtual game the other day, but I had to run a VPN on my smart phone, connect to a 3G network with my Google Fi account, and then pair it to my laptop. It took a while for the initial assets from the DM to load and there was a lag for maps to initially load, but other than that it ran well. But I can't image it would work well for DMing.

The nice thing about Roll20 is that you don't have to deal with router settings, port forwarding, etc. On the other hand, it just doesn't handle large maps. Also, managing large numbers of maps is much more cumbersome than FG and d20pro.

I've looked at Astral, The Forge, and Map Tools as well. None worked well for my needs or required too much investment of time to learn and configure.

At this point I'm down to Fantasy Grounds Unity and d20pro, I would just run a players instance via localhost and screen-share it on Google Meet. That does mean that I have to move all the tokens but I'm fine with that until I can to a better network situation. I'm looking for a tool I can use long term and am having trouble deciding between FGU and d20pro.

 

[CapnZapp]

Giving control of an asset is super easy too though. It's not like some complex "setup".

Nobody is arguing with you, I am letting people know what the level of complexity is. If you don't like that level of complexity, that's fine. But it looked to me like people could accidentally get the wrong impression of the complexity from your post.

Oh trust me, the notion Roll20 is clunky as hell doesn't just come from that one poster.

 

[CapnZapp]

Roll20 isn't simple, or user friendly.

QFT

 

[clearstream]

So, my group obviously isn't going to not play dnd. None of us really want to train a new tool proficiency just to play on roll20. Fantasy Grounds is expensive. Found one that looks slick but is kinda buggy called Astral. Apparently there are several others.

The question is, are literally any of them actually user-friendly? I remember using the beta 4e vtt and really liking it even in unfinished state. I didn't have to master a new skill to use it, it just worked, IIRC.

Anything around that is just easy to sit down and use? I'm fine with less features or whatever, I just want the thing to work without a steep learning curve. Video-chat is a plus, but we can do without it.

I find Fantasy Grounds + Discord very effective. It's especially good for crunchier games (I guess for fluffier games one could simply use Discord).