Sure. Some people use paper sheets even when playing online. And some people use theater of the mind. There are free VTTs and there are free resources for those VTTs. There are also free character builders for 5E if you like that kind of thing.
I think if I was playing in person I would switch to D&DBeyond for my character sheet.
I've been a player in a Foundry game, and I found it to be a really good system. However, not only would I be unable to host it on my 10 year old laptop, I'm not computer savvy enough to know how. I think of all the paid options, it's almost certainly the best choice, but as I said... as long as I can successfully use Roll20 for free, it's unlikely I'll make the switch. If I have to switch, Foundry will almost certainly be my new system.
The Forge allows you to host online your foundry games. I beleive its like 40 bucks a year for the entry tier which gets you a few game worlds. I have put a ton of art and journals into my Traveller game.
These are generally my feelings too. Depending on what's offered on D&D Beyond and WotC VTT come the 2024 1D&D release I may be inclined to throw down some money for a month trial to give it a shot depending on the cost.
All depends on one's expected use case. When I see arguments about subscription services, versus purchased digital content, versus buying the physical material, I tend to see a lot folks talking past each other and not understanding where different people are coming from. When I really love a book, I will want a physical copy, even if that means I have to buy it twice in two different formats. I'm very glad I bought Volo's Guide in paper. It my favorite 5e book published by WotC. I'm also glad I bought it on DnD Beyond, because even though nobody can buy it now on DDB, I still have access to it and can share it.
I guess it depends on what your live table play is like. When I ran games in person, I was printing out battlemaps with a plotter printer and also had a lot of terrain and 2d and 3d minies. I have a paper cutting machine and made lots of paper terrain and paper standee minis. My D&D group is decidedly more on the tactical wargame side of the spectrum, more than TOTM. Actually, I first started using VTT or VTT like setups for my live game to save time and money. I bought an LCD TV and put it in a case to lay horizontally and display maps with fog of war, first in RealmWorks and then with Map Tool.
What free tools do you use? If you don't want a full-featured VTT, sure, very easy to run TOTM games for free.
At much as I like DDB, I never liked using it as a character sheet when playing in person. I find having everything in front of me on paper is still more convenient than tapping around on a phone, tablet, or laptop. I also find electronics take me out of the game.
Curious as to what you think of services that now rent terrain and minis. I've found them to be more expensive than I'm willing to pay. Even in-person, much cheaper and easier to just use digital battlemaps. But given how much you spend on terrain per month, perhaps you would save money renting--though I suspect that the painting and collecting are part of the appeal to you.
For $500 a year, it would have to be character building, rules and adventure content, full featured VTT with fully prepped maps and notes for the adventures, AND:
Well, in my experience, more like donate or give away. Even with board games, I've never found the money made worth the effort to sell them. TTRPG books are even worse. I feel much better, and it is much easier, to give to people who you know will enjoy them. Also my LFGS has a community game library. I've donated a lot of stuff to it over the years and it is nice to know that quite a bit of it will continue to be enjoyed by many other people. Donating to Goodwill or another charity may give me a tax write off, but never enough to make the extra effort and bookkeeping worth it. Besides, I think supporting the ability of the local community to enjoy games for free is a net good, even if that is a service provided by a pro-profit company.
I use the free tier of Roll20 but I’m not a pack rat with files. I don’t need to keep dozens of maps and tokens on their drives. A generic wilderness background, a generic town background, and a generic dungeon background are good enough. Any important details you can hand draw. Draw a few circles and tag them as enemies. It’s only when you get silly like thinking you need exactly the perfect map for every room, every hall, every town, and tokens for every NPC and monster that you run into trouble. Spending hours setting up dynamic lighting or worrying about whether the VTT has doors that open? Come on. You can run with butcher paper, markers, and tokens. No reason to get any more involved online simply because fancy tools exist. Save the time, save the money, and save the headache. The players can exercise a little imagination.
