D&D 5E Most User-Friendly VTT? (Dice Games In The Time of Covid)

[Asgorath]

Yep, the Beyond20 app is a nice perk and works very smoothly.

Yeah, we just started using Beyond20 and it makes things very simple for all my players. I've been using Roll20 as the DM for quite some time and so am used to all the quirks (though I recommend VTT Enhancement Suite to improve the Roll20 UI), and Beyond20 means that I'm really the only one that has to interact with Roll20 directly.

 

[LordEntrails]

Im in south florida & there are plenty of them in the major metro areas around here. They make the majority of their money from comics, collectibles, & tcg* sales/tournaments, but they all devote plenty pf space to rpg game books/accessories , but that doesn't stop them from making some decent extra cash charging 2-5$/head for AL & stuff on the other nights. The 80's style flgs with nothing but books went away or evolved.

*Ie magic the gatthering/pokemon/etc cards

We've got lots of comic books and game stores. But those that sell more than a single shelf of RPGs or actually have tables and truly support RPG game play are only the couple I can think of. It's a large ass city, driving a half hour outside of rush hour. Yea, not going to happen for me.

 

[tetrasodium]

We've got lots of comic books and game stores. But those that sell more than a single shelf of RPGs or actually have tables and truly support RPG game play are only the couple I can think of. It's a large ass city, driving a half hour outside of rush hour. Yea, not going to happen for me.

I was talking about the decent sized ones yea. Florida is kinda strange with how population is distributed & cities marked out(the urban parts especially) because of how many of them were created in the late 1800s/early 1900s when cars were a thing by government grants to residents who met criteria like living here year round & farming it to get a few hundred acres granted to them. They would then parcel that up into lots & sell them to well off would be vacationers so driving half an hour south on 95 for me would go through at least 6 cities I can think ofbefpre I get from next to west palm beach to boca raton . The cities people use as landmarks all have at least one good sized game store though. The one I normally run/ran games at has a room with usually 4-6 tables of 6-8 players on d&d/pf nights & even more on tcg nights plus the main store

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Sure, if you pay up front for the whole year. Otherwise it's $6 for 12 months or $72.

But, let's go with everyone having the low tier and paying at the best discount rate. You've claimed there are millions of subscribers, which makes the DDB segment of the RPG market $50 million dollars at a minumum. Given that the RPG market is actually valued ar only $35 million, and if we assume that's only printed rules products (to be as fair as possible), your claim is that DDB is almost 2/3's again the size of that.

So, my point that it seemed unlikely to advance the discussion on FLGS closures when you were speculating wildly on DDB sub rates seems to be holding well. I wonder what nitpick in reply it will be this time.

lol you accuse me of nitpicking while typing all of that? Seriously?

Really!?

 

[Ovinomancer]

lol you assume me of nitpicking while typing all of that? Seriously?

Really!?

I'll take that as acknowledgement that your assumption of the number of DDB subs was incorrect. If, instead, you actually meant I wrote too many words, let me know the upper limit and I'll try to rephrase. I don't want you to feel as if you're at a verbosity disadvantage.

Interestingly, when presented with the $72/year figure for DDB expense, your immediate (and so far only) response was that you that was too high and there are cheaper options -- in a discussion on the cheapness of gamers where you've taken the contra position. Just a bit ironic.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I'll take that as acknowledgement that your assumption of the number of DDB subs was incorrect. If, instead, you actually meant I wrote too many words, let me know the upper limit and I'll try to rephrase. I don't want you to feel as if you're at a verbosity disadvantage.

Interestingly, when presented with the $72/year figure for DDB expense, your immediate (and so far only) response was that you that was too high and there are cheaper options -- in a discussion on the cheapness of gamers where you've taken the contra position. Just a bit ironic.

Not ironic at all, actually.
Do you even have a source for the 35 million figure, that isn’t quite old? Because that was true in 2017, and I figure we know that the market has grown dramatically since then.
In fact, I know for a fact it’s at least 45m, but I can’t recall if that was ‘18 or ‘19. Nor do I know if that counts dndbeyond, roll20, etc.

Also, I suspect from looking at their methodology that some of their data is leaving out types of products that are part of the TTRPG market, like dice bags and various other game aids on and other stuff is just hard to categorize any way but as it’s own thing, like cosplay. No one is gonna put “D&D related cosplay” in “TTRPGs” rather than in its own thing.

But hey, we could also look at individual kickstarters, and the idea of gamers being cheap becomes silly. A cheap group of hobbyists spent over 3 million on a single minis campaign? Really?

You know the fans of Critical Role are primarily also part of the rpg market, right? That campaign made over 7 million.

Colville’s KS campaign for a book about a niche campaign type made over 2 million.

As for DDB, I’m fairly certain that I conflated “users who have purchased as least the phb” with “subscribers”. In general, I don’t have much respect for folks who hound on stuff like that, though. Makes it seem like you’re trying to “win” something.

Take a look during a normal year at how many people pay to be in a theater for a live game of one of the popular streaming shows. Or how many shows are able to make a living just from streaming. If TTRPG players were cheap, you’d expect that number to be 0.

So, yeah, all your nit picks aside, the idea that the hobby is full of cheap people is completely asinine.

 

[Oldtimer]

First, skype is going away (supposedly) in about 3 months in favor of MS teams.

I thought that was Skype for Business (a.k.a. Lync), not regular old Skype.

 

[DND_Reborn]

I thought that was Skype for Business (a.k.a. Lync), not regular old Skype.

Hmm. That very well could be. Next time I talk to him I'll have to ask.

 

[MNblockhead]

Really? Does no one else use MapTool?

After a couple months and many many many often frustrating hours testing MapTools, Roll20, d20pro, Fantasy Ground Unity, Astral VTT, and Foundry, including paying a for the Foundry Patreons for two months, and now into my second month of FGU Ultimate subscription, I am running my games in Map Tool.

It is the only tool that I am easily able to search through over a hundred map images, select one and open it as a new map with FOW, throw the party tokens on it, and progressively reveal the map using rectangular, diamond, polygon, and freehand reveal. I have hundreds of monster tokens that I can easily search through and throw on the map.

I run two instances on my laptop that has an extra screen connected. I run one instance as DM and the other as player. I share the screen showing the player view with Google Meet.

I don't both with combat macros, or connecting with players over the Internet. Too much work and data entry to set up for having all the monster stats and combat automations set up. Also, trying to do the networking with Map Tools is not easy, especially if you are not always playing in a location where you have admin access to the internet router and firewalls.

But for simply displaying a map with fog of war, progressively revealing it, and moving tokens around, Map Tools is great. It is stable, responsive, has reveal tools that none of the paid options have, and Map Tools is free.

 

[MNblockhead]

Yeah, I've thought of doing that as well. But I don't really care for TOTM for combat, so I need at least a minimal battle mat. I'm considering trying zoom and a camera pointed at a real battle mat/minis but not sure I can pull it off.

OOFTA, from other threads and I think you and I have somewhat similar GM styles. I bet if I spend 15 minutes with you showing you how I use Map Tools and Google Hangouts, you would have an easy and free way to do everything you want. If you want to more advanced character management, combat automation, and official content accessible in the tool, then Fantasy Ground, Roll20, and maybe d20pro may be better choices.

If you just want to share maps, progressively reveal them, and throw some tokens down during combat, it is hard to beet Map Tool for the price (free), stability, and performance.

As for web conferencing, I've used most of the major tools out there over the years. Most recently, the most common tools I use are:

Google Meet / Hangouts (personal G Suite subscription, but you can use Hangouts for free, no need for Meet unless you need dial-in numbers).
Zoom (various professional organization meetings and my children's school classes during the covid self-isolation)
Microsoft Teams (work, love it, better than Skype, but probably only makes sense if you already have Office 365)
Discord (Gaming and Game Publisher and Game Software communications and support)

I use Google Meet / Hangouts for my personal games because it is easy to use and has given me good consistent performance from all over the world.