Foundry VTT Year in Review 2026: Most Popular Game Systems

[Thomas Shey]

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.

That was why I made my comment earlier; its a game that can actually benefit from a VTT, rather than, say, just playing via Discord.

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.

Honestly, for that style of game, just having a decent map and token support system can be really helpful, and that's even true for people who don't suffer from my degree of aphantasia.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Honestly I would never play Pathfinder 2e in person, way too many fiddly bits like status conditions and different modifiers. I still think PF2 is too over complicated for its own good after playing it for the past few years but at least Foundry automates a lot of that away.

Eh. The conditions are pretty extensive, but the number of releavant modifiers are always limited because there's less than six kinds. I've played far more complicated games, its just that PF suffers from the common disease of the D&D sphere, too much special casing; those more complicated games didn't do that.

 

[plecostomus]

My thoughts on the stats:

• D&D - I'm both surprised and unsurprised that D&D beats Pathfinder. Surprised because Pathfinder is 100% available on Foundry for free while D&D you need to buy the PHB and MM if you want all the classes and monsters without having to homebrew. Also surprised because dndbeyond exists and has WAY MORE 3rd party content than on Foundry. Unsurprised because for new folks to the hobby TTRPG == D&D

The D&D Beyond Importer module was already mentioned - because of this Foundry blog, we also know the module's install rate is 22.9%. So it's pretty significant, though not quite half the install rate of the system.

I'm a little curious as to what's happening with users who are both not using the Importer, and also not buying the core books. Are they really playing with just the SRD? Are they manually programming what they need? Are they pirating? But these are certainly not easily aggregated patterns of use, so it'll probably remain a mystery.

My GM for one game did have us play a session of the Pathfinder Beginner Box and I agree it's a nicely made implementation on Foundry. After reading the Foundry anniversary blog posts he is now looking at the Crucible system, so he'll probably be watching their gameplay showcase tomorrow. Or rather he'll be watching the recording, since we are playing tomorrow.

 

[SteveC]

My GM for one game did have us play a session of the Pathfinder Beginner Box and I agree it's a nicely made implementation on Foundry. After reading the Foundry anniversary blog posts he is now looking at the Crucible system, so he'll probably be watching their gameplay showcase tomorrow. Or rather he'll be watching the recording, since we are playing tomorrow.

I've run the Beginner's Box five times on Foundry. Once you get people to understand this is a "teach people to play PF2" adventure, and they should suspend disbelief a little, it's awesome. There is a new box out, and I'm going to pick that up as soon as I can to see if it's even better.

Edited to add: the new beginners box requires version 14, so it will be a while before I pick it up.