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

[Oofta]

I would say that "expensive" and relative. If you have a group, all you need it DndBeyond. If 7 people chip in, it's less than $4 per year if you just do the basics that let you create as many PCs as you want. Add in a little for the base 3 books (I don't remember how much that was) and hobbies don't get much cheaper.

Now that does assume people have internet access. You can easily spend more if you want and many people do so. But per hour of entertainment? I think it's pretty dang cost effective.

Don't have internet? Buy the 3 base books, players don't need anything but the PHB or even just the free basic rules for 80% of what they need.

 

[Nebulous]

Use your phone? Most have a camera that's good enough.

But yeah, I'm glad I ran out and got a new headset with mic a couple of weeks ago.

I ordered a new headset today too. With a mic.

 

[tetrasodium]

Bit late, but arkenforge put this guide together for their great offline meatspace tabletop software Figured I'd post it since it's the software I use with a tvbox for weekly games normally.
edit: it also has a discord here

 

[Ovinomancer]

A cheap hobby? Not IME. People drop a lot of money every year on gaming aids, both in form of Kickstarter campaigns and FLGS purchases.

Interesting choice of response. As for cheap, I suppose your experience is why there's lots of successful Fine Local Gaming Stores? Rhetorical question, they're actually failing all over because people don't buy enough product, or, if they are going to buy, look for discount sources like Amazon. Because, well, cheap.

I mean, take how much you spend on average in a given year, heck, take your best year of expenses. How many hours of proficient programming would that buy? How many hours of decent artists work? Would you be willing to spend that much on only buying a VTT designed as you want? In this very thread there are many comments about not wanting to pay $10/mo for the duration of the current crisis, let alone long term.

 

[Oofta]

Interesting choice of response. As for cheap, I suppose your experience is why there's lots of successful Fine Local Gaming Stores? Rhetorical question, they're actually failing all over because people don't buy enough product, or, if they are going to buy, look for discount sources like Amazon. Because, well, cheap.

I mean, take how much you spend on average in a given year, heck, take your best year of expenses. How many hours of proficient programming would that buy? How many hours of decent artists work? Would you be willing to spend that much on only buying a VTT designed as you want? In this very thread there are many comments about not wanting to pay $10/mo for the duration of the current crisis, let alone long term.

But ... but ... it's on the web! It should be free!

I think people underestimate how difficult voice/video chat really is. It's slowly getting better, but when people expect it to work seamlessly on every device despite connection quality ... it's asking a lot.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I have said this before in another thread. I have some experience in FG Classic, I have FGU but no real experience. But you have specific queries, feel free to PM me. I will try to help and maybe I could stream a tutorial on Mixer for the individual in question. I operate in British time.

 

[Matchstick]

I find Fantasy Grounds + Discord very effective. It's especially good for crunchier games (I guess for fluffier games one could simply use Discord).

That's what we've done as well, with TeamSpeak before Discord came out. I find FG a lot more intuitive than Roll20 (and I was a Roll20 Kickstarter backer). There's just something about Roll20 that doesn't click with me, even though I've tried and tried.

Plus I can't stand subscription fees. Everything FG I've purchased I've paid one flat fee for and never looked back. I've had core FG since 2006 and gotten every patch and upgrade they've released and it's cost me nothing extra. Roll20 free? No problem. Roll20 (or anyone) subscription? No way.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Interesting choice of response. As for cheap, I suppose your experience is why there's lots of successful Fine Local Gaming Stores? Rhetorical question, they're actually failing all over because people don't buy enough product, or, if they are going to buy, look for discount sources like Amazon. Because, well, cheap.

I mean, take how much you spend on average in a given year, heck, take your best year of expenses. How many hours of proficient programming would that buy? How many hours of decent artists work? Would you be willing to spend that much on only buying a VTT designed as you want? In this very thread there are many comments about not wanting to pay $10/mo for the duration of the current crisis, let alone long term.

Evidence that game stores are failing at a rate greater than the average specialised retail business failure rate?

there are always cheap people, no matter the product or service or industry in question. Often, they’re loud and persistent.

That doesn’t mean they’re the norm.

D&D nerds spend absurd amounts per year on kickstarters.
Hero Forge is bustling and just finished a very successful KS campaign.

DDB has multiple millions of subscribers for a service that you can use free and manually add stuff instead of paying for it if you have the time and patience.

DND sales are higher than they’ve probably ever been.

I’m curious what market info points the other way, even in simple general terms.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Evidence that game stores are failing at a rate greater than the average specialised retail business failure rate?

there are always cheap people, no matter the product or service or industry in question. Often, they’re loud and persistent.

That doesn’t mean they’re the norm.

D&D nerds spend absurd amounts per year on kickstarters.
Hero Forge is bustling and just finished a very successful KS campaign.

DDB has multiple millions of subscribers for a service that you can use free and manually add stuff instead of paying for it if you have the time and patience.

DND sales are higher than they’ve probably ever been.

I’m curious what market info points the other way, even in simple general terms.

Well, this is an interesting side discussion, but I'll be honest I can't take it very seriously when you're asking for evidence that FLGS are in trouble while claiming DDB has millions of subs.

 

[LordEntrails]

Cheap? Yea I think RPG gamers are cheap. It doesn't mean we don't spend money, but we do so in very strange ways.

Where I live there are over 3 million people in one of the top 5 urban areas in the US. Want to know how many RPG game stores we have? 3, assuming the Games Workshop place hasn't closed.

A million people per FLGS? yea, crazy.

But then when folks would rather pirate a pdf than pay $10 for an official PDF, or expect their local store to provide Amazon prices for a hard copy. Or complain about a VTT that costs less than $1 per hour of use.

But they are happy to buy a $40 or $100 bottle of alcohol for game night or spend $50 at a bar for a couple hours while they use their pirated PDFs on their tablet...

Maybe we are not cheap, but we sure have a funny way of spending our money to support those that create content for what we say we want to support.

I get it that models have changed, I haven't bought dead tree RPG in years, and I very rarely buy PDF. But I do buy VTT products and their DLC. And I support Patreons and others that provide content I wish to support. And I don't wine about prices because I know the tens of thousands of hours that go into such things.