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

[clearstream]

In addition to the poor UI experience, OP must also understand that using ANY virtual tabletop software will greatly increase DM prep time: it requires you to only to prep the adventure as normal but also all the electronic side of the VTT; depending on the features used this is a serious commitment.

If op anticipates only being virtual for the duration of the pandemic then adopt the most light weight solution possible.

I think this claim needs to be taken with a grain of salt, or firmly contextualised. When I am using a published adventure that is replicated on Fantasy Grounds, the encounters (maps, creatures, loot) are all set up. So for published adventures, prep time is less.

For homebrew adventures (and off-piste additions to published adventures) the prep time could be more because you'll need to set up your encounters.

 

[Hussar]

Depending on your VTT, even homebrew can be less.

If you have the books for 5e, for example, everything is simply drag and drop. Once you get into the swing of how to create encounters, you can bang out encounters as fast as you can click and drag.

My biggest time sink is the art, to be honest. While I am still a harsh critic of Fantasy Ground's UI (it's spectacularly bad), the DM tools are top notch. You cannot possibly do any better. Open a story window, drag and drop the encounter, drag and drop the map link, click into the tables to randomly generate a treasure and poof, instant encounter, fully statted.

You could not possibly stat out an adventure by hand as fast as you can by Fantasy Grounds.

 

[Vendral]

My group and me are quite tactically minded and we have always used miniatures. Normally I use a lot of 3D elements to represent the dungeon or wilderness their encounters take place.
With the pandemi we have dicided to try to do our gaming without meeting in my game room.

I am using Open Office Impress (similar to power point) with small colored circles (size locked) representing the PCs which I am sharing over Google Meet with my players.
Initially I was drawing the map on the fly using the different shapes available in impress to visualize the encounter area to my players.
Recently I bought DungeonDraft to get maps that are more visually appetizing. I import the map to Impress and put a lot of white rectangles blocking out the part of the map that the PCs can't see. This seem to work well for us.
I would like to use a proper VTT to get individual Fog of War liht sources and other stuff in place to enhance the experience. I have been trying both Roll20 and Astral and even though I can figure out how to draw in those tools I still do not understand how I can import the map I did in DungeonDraft. From my point of view these tolls are far from intuitive and I will most likely stick to Google meet and Impress with imported maps until we can start playing together at my home again.

/Vendral

 

[Ovinomancer]

My group and me are quite tactically minded and we have always used miniatures. Normally I use a lot of 3D elements to represent the dungeon or wilderness their encounters take place.
With the pandemi we have dicided to try to do our gaming without meeting in my game room.

I am using Open Office Impress (similar to power point) with small colored circles (size locked) representing the PCs which I am sharing over Google Meet with my players.
Initially I was drawing the map on the fly using the different shapes available in impress to visualize the encounter area to my players.
Recently I bought DungeonDraft to get maps that are more visually appetizing. I import the map to Impress and put a lot of white rectangles blocking out the part of the map that the PCs can't see. This seem to work well for us.
I would like to use a proper VTT to get individual Fog of War liht sources and other stuff in place to enhance the experience. I have been trying both Roll20 and Astral and even though I can figure out how to draw in those tools I still do not understand how I can import the map I did in DungeonDraft. From my point of view these tolls are far from intuitive and I will most likely stick to Google meet and Impress with imported maps until we can start playing together at my home again.

/Vendral

Dungeondraft looks nice. Can you not save the map you create as a jpeg? Then, to import to pretty much any VTT, you just upload the jpeg. Unless the file size is large, in which case you'd have to run it through a compression tool, but Microsoft Pictures can do that in a pinch.

 

[Vendral]

Dungeondraft looks nice. Can you not save the map you create as a jpeg? Then, to import to pretty much any VTT, you just upload the jpeg. Unless the file size is large, in which case you'd have to run it through a compression tool, but Microsoft Pictures can do that in a pinch.

It is the "just upload the jpeg" I get stuck on. I can't seem to figure out how to do that.
It might be that jpeg file is to large since I have drawn a pretty big map of a Catacomb complex with a number of details on it. I should probably have split the map into a number of samller maps, but as someona earlier stated the way we play are pretty dynamic and encounters could happen more or less anywhere..
I am not sure if I misunderstand how to upload or if it is that the file is to large and I get no feedback/error message.
To sum it up I got too frustrated to continue,e specially since the soultion with Impress works fairly well.
I will however most likely create a smaller map eventually and give it another go...

/Vendral

 

[Guest 6801328]

I'll acknowledge there's a learning curve to roll20, but it really is worth it.

If we divide the functionality into two groups, Maps and Character Sheets, you can really do a lot with just Maps. That is, have people keep track of stuff on their paper character sheets, and just roll dice using the VTT.

Adding dynamic lighting really makes it great. You can give folks with Darkvision a "light souce" that only they can see, and you can give folks with actual light sources a light radius that others can see. Plus you can sprinkle fixed light sources around your dungeon. Then you trace the walls of your map, and other objects like columns, with the dynamic lighting tool, and as players move around the shadows move, and they can only see what they could actually see.

Adding in character sheets is nice because you can click on abilities and it prints nicely formatted output to the chat log. Instead of endless dice rolls, it becomes a log of character actions. But it's absolutely not necessary.

 

[Oofta]

I'll acknowledge there's a learning curve to roll20, but it really is worth it.

If we divide the functionality into two groups, Maps and Character Sheets, you can really do a lot with just Maps. That is, have people keep track of stuff on their paper character sheets, and just roll dice using the VTT.

Adding dynamic lighting really makes it great. You can give folks with Darkvision a "light souce" that only they can see, and you can give folks with actual light sources a light radius that others can see. Plus you can sprinkle fixed light sources around your dungeon. Then you trace the walls of your map, and other objects like columns, with the dynamic lighting tool, and as players move around the shadows move, and they can only see what they could actually see.

Adding in character sheets is nice because you can click on abilities and it prints nicely formatted output to the chat log. Instead of endless dice rolls, it becomes a log of character actions. But it's absolutely not necessary.

The problem I have with Roll20 is with the maps themselves. I just want to draw a few lines on a blank page and drop on some icons for simple stuff like trees, rocks or buildings. I don't want to spend hours getting every map just right. My games are just too dynamic for that.

I don't use published mods and while I don't mind spending a little money on things, nothing is as simple as I want.

I can see how it would be awesome, not sure it works all that well for me. Or at least not as well as I would like.

 

[Guest 6801328]

The problem I have with Roll20 is with the maps themselves. I just want to draw a few lines on a blank page and drop on some icons for simple stuff like trees, rocks or buildings. I don't want to spend hours getting every map just right. My games are just too dynamic for that.

I don't use published mods and while I don't mind spending a little money on things, nothing is as simple as I want.

I can see how it would be awesome, not sure it works all that well for me. Or at least not as well as I would like.

It has freehand drawing tools, too. You can absolutely treat it like a battlemat and dry-erase marker.

What part hasn't worked for you?

 

[Ovinomancer]

It is the "just upload the jpeg" I get stuck on. I can't seem to figure out how to do that.
It might be that jpeg file is to large since I have drawn a pretty big map of a Catacomb complex with a number of details on it. I should probably have split the map into a number of samller maps, but as someona earlier stated the way we play are pretty dynamic and encounters could happen more or less anywhere..
I am not sure if I misunderstand how to upload or if it is that the file is to large and I get no feedback/error message.
To sum it up I got too frustrated to continue,e specially since the soultion with Impress works fairly well.
I will however most likely create a smaller map eventually and give it another go...

/Vendral

It's not really the size of the map, as in how much area it covers, but the size of the file. There's a 5mb cap on the free version, and a 10mb on the paid ones, per file. I noted that Dungeondraft outputs in .png, which is a size intensive format. That means you'd have to compress it or change it to .jpeg to get it under the file size cap.

I think the last time I accidentally uploaded too large a file I got a message to that effect, but I also know that I haven't at times in the past and I had to diagnose the issue on my own. It just sat and then failed. So, I can totally see that as an issue. Pretty sure Impress doesn't have a file size limit at all.

I'm actually very happy you have something that works for you. Please don't take my posts as trying to convince you to use Roll20 (or any other VTT), as they're just meant as help trying to resolve a problem, if you're interested in doing so. And Dungeondraft does look neat, so thank you for that pointer.

 

[Ovinomancer]

The problem I have with Roll20 is with the maps themselves. I just want to draw a few lines on a blank page and drop on some icons for simple stuff like trees, rocks or buildings. I don't want to spend hours getting every map just right. My games are just too dynamic for that.

I don't use published mods and while I don't mind spending a little money on things, nothing is as simple as I want.

I can see how it would be awesome, not sure it works all that well for me. Or at least not as well as I would like.

Yup, Roll20 is not a friendly drawing tool, at all. It's not terribly friendly for building maps from pieces, either.

Have you looked into the many good shared whiteboard apps out there? There are a few that are decent and free, but some of the paid (low cost) ones are very nice. I'd suggest looking for tutoring aids as well, as some of the whiteboards show up there. If you just need a nice, shared presentation that you (and your players) can draw on easily to represent things, that's a strong option.