Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="MNblockhead" data-source="post: 8055752" data-attributes="member: 6796661">If it helps you, here is what I've recently decided on and why.I have experience with Map Tool, Fantasy Ground, d20pro, Astral VTT, Roll20, and The Foundry.For a while now, for the games I run, I've run them in Map Tool. Even when I had the Fantasy Ground Unity Ultimate subscription at $10 per month, I never ran a game in it and continued to use Map Tool.  Same with Roll20, loved being a player in Roll20 games, but never got further than experimenting with it as a subscriber. Never bothered to run a game in it.My MUST HAVES:1. Ability to QUICKLY pull up a map and run it without any prep.2. Ability to deal with (navigate, filter, and load) larger images, hundreds of maps, hundreds of tokens.3. Ability to use for in-person games4. Ability to use off-line5. Ability to have basic fog-of-war with ability to manually reveal areas to players6. Area-of-effect templatesMy STRONG WANTS1. I don't want my players to have to download and install software.2. I would like to have the advanced lighting, fog of war auto-reveal through player token movement, and line of sight features -- but NOT HAVE to use them3. Support for automating aspects of combat4. Ability to import character sheets from D&D Beyond5. Ability to run games online with players moving their own tokens.6. Support for multiple systems and ability to purchase published contentAfter spending a lot of time and some money testing most of the major products, I am not using The Foundry, hosted on The Forge.With some third-party modules enabled, the Foundry best meets all my must-haves and wants.The software is $50.  You can install it on more than one machine, but only run games from one instance per license.  You can run games from your local PC if you are comfortable with configuring port forwarding on your router and have a good Internet connect.  You can host it yourself on your own server via AWS, Azure, or other hosting service if you are comfortable with setting up a Linux server.  I ended up deciding that managing my own AWS server for this was too much like work and I ended up hosting it on The Forge.What makes The Foundry amazing is how it is designed to support developers creating modules to expand on its core functionality. You can customize it to make it work how you want it. Through a module, I can bring D&D Beyond character sheets, monsters, spells, and items into it.  Through another module I can integrate with with World Anvil.   With the Simple Fog module I can simply load a map with fog applied and use drawing tools to remove fog as the players explore. This is how I've been using Map Tool and allows me to use it with a very sandboxy campaign where players may go somewhere that I don't have maps and monsters prepped for in the VTT.I can have the full, advanced VTT experience with lighting, line of sight, weather effects, etc. Or just throw up a map on the fly.The 5e system support is not as advanced as Fantasy Grounds. But the combat tracker, character sheets, ability to import from D&D Beyond, meet my needs. And there is a very active community of modders who keep improving on the experience.Whether running it from your local PC or a server, your players only need a Web browser to access. No need for them to download anything.While I'm running it from a server. I also have it installed on my PC.  If I ever need to I can run locally and off line.While I'm a convert to The Foundry, its very customizability made it a more complex to get started with than other tools. If you don't want to bother with hosting it yourself, then you have to deal with two purchases. A one-time purchase from the developer for the software and subscription to whatever hosting server you select.As for the other systems, my recommendations are:Fantasy Grounds - if you want full support for official WotC content with everything prepped and automated.  High learning curve and a love it or hate it interface.  I really wanted to love it but Fantasy Ground Unity kept hanging an crashing on me. I could never get FGU to the point where I could run games in it.  Also, the hosting service doesn't work from some of the countries I work and travel in.  Just to play as a player with Fantasy Ground Classic during virtual Gary Con, I had to use a VPN and a cellular 3G connection.  The DM expressed having to do something similar to run games from China in the past. So despite really wanting to make FG work, it just never worked out for me and I cancelled my $10/month FGU subscription.Roll20. I'm a fan. Roll20 kept me sane when I started my new job and had to spend lots of time working away from home in countries with crap internet and from which many companies block connections. Roll20 always worked, no matter where I was.  Even when Internet wasn't great, I could still usually particpate in games, via a tethered Google Fi 3G connection if nothing else.  I love the find-a-game feature.  But as a DM, it wasn't for me. I subscribed for a few months but never ran a game from it. First, you HAVE to be online for it to be useful. But a bigger issue was that I'm running a multiyear campaign with hundreds of maps and most of the maps are large files.  I found it difficult to manage a large number of assets in Roll20.  When I did prep a larger map with lighting and line of sight, performance would suffer greatly.  It was just too difficult for me to use for the large sandboxy mega dungeon I'm running.But for most DMs, I think Roll20 is an excellent tool and it is the one I recommend the most.d20Pro - great tool for DMs running d20 systems like D&D and Pathfinder. Not so good for other systems.  By far the easiest to manage combat it. You can get some but not all official WotC content for it.  I passed on it mainly because I didn't find it convenient for throwing up maps on the fly.Map Tool.  Huge fan.  First, it is free. Second, it has more advanced VTT features than most of the commercial products. Third, there is an active community developing frameworks to customize it for your preferred game system.  The downside is that hosting games over the internet requires a good internet connection and ability to configure port forwarding on your router. I was unable to do that when working abroad so I would run two instances of it. The host instance and a player instance and I would share the player instance window using Google Meet.  I loved that I could quickly filter through hundreds of maps and many more hundreds of tokens and throw up a map and drop tokens on the fly. No other VTT tools I've used does this as well.But ultimately, I moved to Foundry from Map Tool because I wanted to host games where players could move their own tokens, even when in areas where I don't have good internet, and didn't want to require my players to download and install software to play in my games. Also, the Foundry is just a nicer tool to work in and customizing the Foundry with its module management system is much easier a less glitchy than customizing Map Tool.Astral - It is pretty. Great for line of sight and lighting. But terrible for low-prep play.</blockquote>

Verification