Foundry VTT Year in Review 2026: Most Popular Game Systems

[Reynard]

Yeah I’ve read about this on Reddit and it’s really too bad how restrictive the Daggerheart licensing is. It feels like Darrington is screwing over some of their most dedicated fans.

I would take the reddit gnashing of teeth with a grain of salt. As usual with reddit, much of this is exaggerated by always online, overly invested "fans" that seem to hate what they purport to love. The DH license is not as open as some others, but it is more open than, say, the Shadowdark one.

 

[Parmandur]

Daggerheart being 9 and Draw Steel being 27 despite the games coming out part way through the year is super impressive.

Cosmere at number 19, as well.

 

[Thierry-Advent]

Dragonbane at 22! Not bad at all, only -3 for the past year. With two settings back to back could probably rise in 2026-27. (I'm not a VTT user.)

 

[500 Toads]

I was surprised that Lancer was that high (although a distant 3rd) when it came to "users for whom it was the most played", but on reflection, less so -- FoundryVTT being at the heavyweight end in terms of complexity and automation capabilities would make it more useful for systems which are at least moderately crunchy and have a lot to potentially automate.

For a game like, say, Delta Green, one could run that perfectly well with just Discord, sharing images assets and using voice chat and a dice bot (unless everybody has their own dice, ofc), and maybe sharing character sheets on Google Drive or w/e. It's perfectly fine to run it without a battle map and doesn't need a detailed combat tracker with automation for a dozen different conditions and effects. But if I'm running something with crunchy detailed tactical combat (say, Pathfinder 2E), having all that tooling matters. In my case, I use a different high-complexity VTT (FG), but the reasons are similar.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I do wonder how much of the popularity in some cases is because a number of those game system at least benefit strongly from a battleboard in play?

That would almost certainly be why Lancer is ranked the way it is.

 

[Voidmoji]

I do wonder how much of the popularity in some cases is because a number of those game system at least benefit strongly from a battleboard in play? (Though there are obvious exceptions).

Warhammer 4e is up there for a similar reason. 4e is often called a bit overly complex and fiddly in combat, but people rave about the automation and usability of the official Foundry module. It is often cited as a masterclass in how to do a Foundry system right.

I own the the official module and some additional official content, and while I've never run it, I can see the quality when playing around with it.

 

[Reynard]

I love the idea of crunchier systems coming back because good VTTs can do the fiddly bits for you

 

[Voidmoji]

I love the idea of crunchier systems coming back because good VTTs can do the fiddly bits for you

I haven't run a game with it, but the GURPS module is supposed to be quite good. It has a very active development crew. Plus, it can directly import characters from GURPS Character Sheet (GCS). GCS is an amazing free tool for building characters.

I'm currently running two games of Weird Wizard via Foundry, and it's module isn't that great. It's a one man crew, so I keep that in mind. But knowing what I know now, I might have considered a different system, with a better Foundry implementation.

 

[500 Toads]

I love the idea of crunchier systems coming back because good VTTs can do the fiddly bits for you

I was reading the original Traveller rules (Book 6, Scouts specifically) and marveling that the rules included actual math for such things as computing a world's average local temperature based on greenhouse effect, albedo, stellar luminosity and distance to the star. There's actual math.

At the end of Book 7, Merchant Prince (1985), there was an ad for a BASIC text-based program for the Apple II to help manage and track commerce, regarding such things as freight availability, time passage, payroll, maintenance etc. If I were running a Traveller game and esp. a commerce-heavy one I'd definitely want software tools to track such things, ha.

 

[Thierry-Advent]

I haven't run a game with it, but the GURPS module is supposed to be quite good. It has a very active development crew. Plus, it can directly import characters from GURPS Character Sheet (GCS). GCS is an amazing free tool for building characters.

Awesome sauce! I'll install it this weekend.