Let's talk Virtual Tabletops!

[Thomas Shey]

I'm an actual developer and I find it easily 10x less productive than pretty much any scripting language. As far as releases go, yes I have seen the minor point releases. They're just that, VERY minor bug fixes and such. Even those come out with glacial slowness. Not to complain, it's OSS, but when I reviewed the code base my core conclusion was that it's pretty much a mess of huge proportions. Given that the rest of the world has moved on from desktop apps it just doesn't feel worth sorting out. There's a huge amount of really serious functionality there but the form factor just isn't compelling.

Given some of the change in functionality I've seen in the last two years, I'm afraid I'm not going to count the three full point releases as "minor", nor have any of the other people I know of who use it. And if other people want to be dependent on web apps, that's on them, but I have no interest in such whatsover.

 

[heruca]

There are probably many more VTTs listed here that aren't included in the OP.

Battlegrounds: RPG Edition (aka BRPG) is one that somehow got missed, despite being around since FG Classic was just making its debut.

 

[GothmogIV]

I am just now exploring Quest Portal (I am a Roll20 user and occasional Foundry player), and it is astonishing. Level Up A5e has a character sheet on there, and there are a few compendiums (all searchable by AI). Heavy on the Chaosium, but from what I've seen, I'm really impressed.

 

[MNblockhead]

I am just now exploring Quest Portal (I am a Roll20 user and occasional Foundry player), and it is astonishing. Level Up A5e has a character sheet on there, and there are a few compendiums (all searchable by AI). Heavy on the Chaosium, but from what I've seen, I'm really impressed.

Looks very cool! I'll have to play around with it over the weekend. I don't think I'd sub right now, no matter how I like it as I'm in the middle of a long Warhammer campaign. But I'll bookmark it to check out when I'm ready to start a new campaign in another systems.

 

[Doc_Klueless]

The plan is to use Owlbear Rodeo for my friend's and mine AD&D1e game. We don't need automation, just a place to put tokens. But it's got lots of other stuff that I didn't know about. Very excited.

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

I only GM via VTT, and my primary system is Savage Worlds with home-brewed campaigns. Despite being a humanities guy who's shamefully non-techy, I'm very happy with Foundry. There are lots of community made mods for various degrees of automation etc, and the commercial cores and companions for SW on Foundry is great, so no deep code fiddling is necessary. The same goes for most other systems I use, like Dungeon Core Classics.

The one bad thing about Foundry is when I want to play a system that isn't well implemented or non-existent on the VTT. Since I can't code anything from scratch or do necessary heavy adaption of a current system on the platform, I just can't play it. Currently the only system I miss is Mongoose Traveller 2e, but the word is that they are about to launch Foundry adaptions, so all is well.

As for other VTTs, I used Owlbear v1 for a couple of years, it's great at what it does. Before Foundry I tried Roll20 for a bit, but I simply didn't get that platform at all, I don't mesh with its logic. Which probably is a me thing

 

[Cergorach]

The one bad thing about Foundry is when I want to play a system that isn't well implemented or non-existent on the VTT. Since I can't code anything from scratch or do necessary heavy adaption of a current system on the platform, I just can't play it. Currently the only system I miss is Mongoose Traveller 2e, but the word is that they are about to launch Foundry adaptions, so all is well.

Have you looked at "Simple World Building" or "Custom System Builder" with something like "Freeform Sheets"? Combine that with "Dice So Nice" and "Dice Tray" and you should be able to run just about any pnp RPG.

People get overwhelmed by the 3000+ modules of FVTT and when there's no ready made solution for this version of FVTT they think you can't run it of FVTT. You can, just not with the level of automation or polish of something like PF2e or WFRP4e with Foundry. Sometimes less is more...

 

[Thomas Shey]

I just want to note again, and I realize probably most people discussing this realize it, there's a vast difference in people who expect a VTT to do a lot of the mechanical heavy lifting and those who just expect it to do what it says on the tin. I could probably use virtually any VTT for most games because I expect it to support maps, move tokens and throw some dice. Its nice if we can get a little fog-of-war and manage initiative, but neither is necessary. Other people feel very differently.

 

[MNblockhead]

Have you looked at "Simple World Building" or "Custom System Builder" with something like "Freeform Sheets"? Combine that with "Dice So Nice" and "Dice Tray" and you should be able to run just about any pnp RPG.

People get overwhelmed by the 3000+ modules of FVTT and when there's no ready made solution for this version of FVTT they think you can't run it of FVTT. You can, just not with the level of automation or polish of something like PF2e or WFRP4e with Foundry. Sometimes less is more...

I was going to post this. I mainly use them to create custom character sheets for non supported systems and just a bit of fiddling for some dice-roll calculations. The kinds of games I've done this for tend to be more rules light so I don't bother diving into the deep rabbit hole of getting automation and various mods to work--don't need need and don't have the time for it. For crunchy systems, I just stick to those systems that have well-designed game systems in Foundry with good support. Currently, for me, its WFRP4e.

I made a custom character sheet for InSPECTREs PCs and franchise, just to start with something simple. By InSPECTREs is a game best played in person. It loses so much of its normal energy and fun if played remotely. And the rules are so simple that electronic character sheets just get in the way. But it did help me figure out how to get dice pool calculations that would trigger table rolls and update other field values figured out.

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

Yes, one can build bare bones system support in Foundry. But:

For my group using VTT play with Discord video and voice is a necessary compromise with a handful of downsides, it will never replace the full experience of in person play.

To party compensate for that, good VTT automation allow us to play crunchier games with the crunch automated away, hence giving us more session time for roleplaying and fun stuff. WFRP4e is one system that benefit massively from that, MgTraveller2e with many subsystems engaged might be another.

So the problem isn’t rules light games.