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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MNblockhead" data-source="post: 9699862" data-attributes="member: 6796661">1. I run long campaigns. My current one will go at least until the end of next year. So I'll be looking for another game system at that time. I like the Crucible Game System, but it currently is half baked and development has been slow, which brings me to point 2...2. To support Foundry, and especially Crucible development. Foundry is a great VTT, and it is great that you can get a perpetual license for $50 that only the GM has to buy. But continued support means continued development. Foundry has a Patreon where supporters get to vote on new features. But over the years I've learned that my needs and wants do not match the majority of foundry customers, or at least the majority of whale customers and patrons. The customers putting the most money into Foundry and its ecosystem seem to be those looking to push the boundries of the VTT experience, but mostly that is focused on eye candy. I don't mean to be dismissive of that, but I just want something that "just works".  I stopped backing Foundry on Patreon a while back because I just wasn't getting what I most wanted for my extra money. Backing Ember not only allowed me to back the creation of fun-looking campaign designed from the ground up to work with Foundry, but also allowed me to support the development of the Crucible game system. As I wrote in my previous post, I'm more interested in a VTT experience that just works without lots of effort configuring the systems and implementing and troubleshooting community mods. 3. I'm hardly "settled" with my current Foundry setup. It has, hands down, the best game system of any VTT for Warhammer Fantasy RPG, but it is still finicky. Putting aside game systems and automation challenges, it lack what I feel should be core feature of any VTT, especially a "top tier" VTT and that is manual Fog of War. Foundry just isn't a great VTT for low-prep, on-the-fly, sandbox play styles. I had a better experience with Realm Works and Map Tools. Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds are also better for that style of play. If I were to run a published WotC game with D&D 2024, I would just use D&D Beyond. DDB's Maps feature is slick, fluid, and its manual FoW works great. The encounter builder is a decent combat tracker. DDBs character sheet provides a much better experience than Foundry's D&D character sheet. I might stick with Foundry for D&D if it better supported automation, especially for resolving saves and damage on AOE attacks and condition tracking, but after many, many, MANY hours of playing around with community mods I've always ended up returning to more basic, manual routines. I went with Foundry originally because I was running a years long campaign tied to a mega-dungeon (Rappan Athuk). It had over 100 maps with complex interlinking. The time I spent setting up the maps for dynamic lighting, regional sounds, some occasional cool special effects, and exceptionally useful (community mod) feature that allowed me to instantly move PC tokens to an area (e.g. beginning of tunnel, top of stairs) to another area on another map (e.g. end of tunnel, bottom of stairs) made running the game easier and fun and gave a good experience to the players, but was only worth the time and effort because it was a campaign that lasted about five years. But, to be honest, I'm getting tired of VTT configuration and session prep being a second hobby. If Ember meets its promise as a fun campaign that also makes my life as an on-line GM easier, it will be my next campaign. If not, I'll probably go back to D&D on DDB.</blockquote>

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