I am watching this thread - I am looking for a VTT to get into. Have plenty of experience with Roll20 but find that prepping multiple maps for a session or short adventure (have not even attempted a long campaign) can take a while.
This is an issue with all VTTs. Before dropping Roll20, think about whether you need to use all the features that is taking up your time. Keep in mind that there is an often frustrating learning curve when adopting a new software product. The grass is always greener and all that.
Here is how I rank the tools for 5e compatibility:
1. Fantasy Grounds
Easy number one choice. You can buy all the official material, both rules and adventures. For rules, this means that all the macros and configurations are done for you. Which is a huge time time saver. I've found with systems that require me to create the macros myself or do a lot of data entry in order to get the automations, I don't bother because the prep work is just not fun for me. 5e isn't that complicated. I can run it pen and paper and just use the VTT for moving tokens on a map.
Having the adventures all prepped is great if you run official WotC adventures. You get all the maps pre prepped and all the content in the system. You don't really need the book or D&D Beyond if you have it in FG. But I still like to have the book.
If you don't run WotC adventures and the third-party adventures you run are not available for FG (or you home brew), it can be a lot of work to create in FG. Some people like it, I would rather spend my time in other ways. I've spent a lot of time entering adventures in campaign-management tools like RealmWorks in the past and I have World Anvil now. I prefer these tools for entering info myself when home brewing. For published adventures, however, unless the work is done form me, I would rather just run from the book. I don't want to make a hobby out of data entry.
Problem with FG right now is that Fantasy Grounds Classic is stable and awesome but will be deprecated soon as they are rolling out Fantasy Ground Unity. I did not have a good experience with FGU. It was laggy and crashtastic. I never got to the point where I could run a game in it. It was a major disappointment as I was all ready to go full into FGU and buy all the 5e stuff, even though I already have the books and D&D Beyond. Even through there is a high learning curve, I was willing to put the time in because I saw how great it could be to run 5e games in FG as player using FG Classic. But my experience with FGU was frustrating and I cancelled by ultimate sub after several months of $10 a month.
I do, however, have to call out how amazing the help and learning resources for FG are. FG University is great and the community is very helpful.
2. Roll20
Like FG, Roll20 has officially licensed content, so you can get all the stuff, not just SRD. I don't have experience with how combat automations and such work in comparison to FG because as a player I never had a DM that really made use of them. But it is nice that you can get all the official content in the VTT so you have everything you need for your game in one system.
3. d20pro
Often overlooked. If all you are playing is a D20 system like 5e, seriously consider d20pro. You can get the core books, so you are not stuck with SRD only. But they don't have all the content. Still, if you home brew or use non-WotC content, I would consider it. d20pro has BY FAR the best combat experience for d20 systems than any VTT I've used. It is just so easy to move your token, target enemies and apply damage. It is fun and has a really low learning curve, especially for players.
The d20pro community is also active and helpful and the developer is highly engaged and responsive. Probably the most supportive developer of all the VTTs I've used.
4. Foundry
Nothing official. But there is a very active community that develops the 5e system, so you can get all the SRD stuff. There is also and awesome mod that will import charactersheets, monsters, spells, items, etc. from D&D Beyond. So, while there is more prep work for 5e games needed than with FG, Roll20, or d20pro, it is still pretty easy to prep 5e games. The automation POTENTIAL is amazing, but not mature. You have to make sure that things are calculating properly. I don't really use the automations much. But I do like how character sheets and stat blocks are handled in Foundry. I like it much better than any other system I've used. Very easy to read and roll dice from, especially with mods. I'm still learning how to make full use of combat features and mods. Because it is so customizable, the learning curve is higher. But there are active 5e discussion groups for Foundry on Discord and Reddit. The community is amazing.
5. Map Tool
There is a newer community-developed 5e Framework that is pretty cool. I still love Map Tool. I may still use it for quickly throwing up maps in in-person games, but Foundry has pretty much replaced it for me. If you are technically inclined and like to roll your own customizations, Map Tool may be for you. Foundry is even better, but if you prefer open source, then Map Tool is the best open source VTT.
Don't know what this means for you. For me, it means:
1. I can find and add a map quickly and on the fly
2. I can size the grid quickly.
3. I can apply fog of war easily
4. I can put tokens on it easily and share with players quickly
For me, I would order the VTTs in this order for easy map integration:
1. Map Tool
I have hundreds of maps in a directory structure nested up to 5 levels deep on my laptop, sync'd with Google Drive. I just point Map Tool to that folder and in its interface I just tick the "include subfolders" and start typing and it filters my hundreds of maps as I type. I select the image and click the option to make a new map from it. Resizing the grid is a little wonky but after a few minutes of practice you can get the grid sized to a map quickly. Under a minute for me to find a map out of hudreds, open it, apply fog of war (I just make it default to have FOW applied to all new maps), add tokens, and display to players.
Great lighting and line of sight tools for a free product. I didn't use these features in Map Tool much, but they seemed comparable to other products.
2. Fantasy Ground (Classic or Unity)
You have to copy all your maps to the folder for your game (boo!), but once you do you have easy access to your hundreds of maps. There is the ability to navigate the maps and search for them. Not as smooth and obvious as Map Tool, but after you figure out where to go to pull up maps it is easy. FG has its own way to organize things that is not intuitive to me, but once you learn the interface, it is easy enough.
Fantasy Ground has the best manual grid alignment of all the VTTs I've used. Very easy to load a map and size the grid. Takes me longer to get a map open, grid sized, fog applied, and tokens on the map than Map Tool, but not much longer.
Advanced lighting and line of sight features in FGC and FGU lag behind other tools, but are being aggressively developed in FGU.
3. Foundry
Similar to FG. Put your maps into the folder or upload them to the hosting site you use. Navigation is intuitive. Filtering, however, doesn't work through subfolders. So you have you everything organized into folders and subfolders, you have to click through them.
Foundry has the best auto grid sizing of any VTT. If you know the dimensions of the image and the pixel size of the grid it can often autoalign the grid. Unfortunately, many battlemap makers do a bad job optimzing their maps for VTTs. Manually aligning grids is quick and easy, but I had trouble figuring out what to do. The grid alignment features could be more intuitive.
Out of the box, Foundry didn't meet my map integration needs. But with the Simple Fog module, I was able to get the same experience I have with Map Tool. I take a bit longer to pull up and start using a map, because you have to create a scene and add the map as the scene background, but overall, it is quick to use.
I find adding walls and lighting to be very easy. Only VTT that compares in terms of ease of adding advanced lighting and line of sight is Astral VTT.
4. Roll20
I found Roll20 to be a bit wonky in terms of prepping maps for lighting and line of sight but sizing grids is easy. My main issue with Roll20 is I find it to become very laggy and glitchy when you have more complex maps with lots of walls, doors, and light sources applied. I really was unusable for my needs as a game master.
-simple UI - I don't mind a bit of a learning curve, but I don't want to mod anything and don't need real-spell effects or similar
d20pro. Hands down.
If you don't mind a bit more of a learning curve, and want more lighting bells and whistles, you may be better off with Roll20, especially since you already know it.
Astral VTT is dead simple to use. But is only good for maps where you will add walls and light sources. Astral VTT does not support just throwing up a map with fog of war that you manually erase.
FG and FGU have steep learning curves. But as a 5e player, it may be worth your time to figure it out. By far the VTT with the best 5e support.
Best dynamic lighting: Foundry and Astral VTT, but they may not meet your other requirements.
FG is playing catch up, but FGU supports or will support some pretty cool effects. I'm just not as up on FG's tools for lighting and line of sight.
d20pro support dynamic lighting and the interface for applying walls, doors, and lights is pretty simple to use.
Map Tool support some advanced lighting tools and was doing this better and earlier than the commercial products. UI isn't as slick, but it is free. I just don't generally recommend it because getting networking figured out for both DM and players can be difficult for many people.
-hand outs, journal, notices, character sheets, extra notes. Somewhere I can make a note of events or NPCs who may come up
For me: Foundry with the World Anvil module. I do my world building / campaign journalling in World Anvil. Foundry has worked with World Anvil to provide a module enabling importing and bidirectional updating of World Anvil content in Foundry. It is very cool. There are other modules that offer different handout and journaling functionality, but I find that Foundry's out of the box articles and the World Anvil module give me everything I need. But just about any way you want to work, there is probably a module to enable it.
Fantasy Grounds also has a full suite of products for this. But I found it to be complicated. I would use for purchased adventures where all the work was done for me. Entering it myself, yuck.
Map Tool - too wonky for me to use for this purpose.
I don't have experience to comment about whatever tools Roll20, d20pro, or Astral have for notes and articles.
-60/40 prep vs improvise. I will set up some set piece encounters and TotM many of the smaller ones. I still like to upload overview images (eg. still-image backdrop of a haunted forest) to keep a sense of where the players are.
Difficult to answer, because prep time can mean many things. If you buy FG and all of the official WotC content and are running WotC adventures, you don't have spend time setting up monsters, treasure tables, etc.
If you just want to throw up maps and some images and take notes, then most of the tools will work well for that.
For heavy improvisation and pen & paper combat I like Map Tool and Foundry.
For encounter and scene improvisation but having all the monsters, magic, character sheet mechanics, then Fantasy Grounds for the win, followed by d20pro (for 5e). But Foundry is up there if you also use D&D Beyond.
@MNblockhead your review has already been a huge help!
Glad to help.
