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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheSword" data-source="post: 8188799" data-attributes="member: 6879661">[USER=6888829]@Yenrak[/USER] I think this is part of the problem. A Half dozen posts from strangers and a half dozen different answers. How on earth do you make a decision in those circumstances, when there are costs upfront.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Make a shortlist of platforms.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Watch a couple of you tube videos to pick up mechanics.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If there is a free version of the software give it a try yourself and see if it isn’t too fiddly.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Work out what is and what isn’t supported. It all very well saying it’s a perfect system but if the rule set isn’t built into the game youve got to write every monster and NPC from scratch. Compendium support for me is massively helpful and I can share the compendium with my players.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Work out the cost and decide if it’s within your budget.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Start looking for maps. I would recommend Patreon as a source. A couple of dollars gets you in some cases thousands of VTT quality maps. I recommend Neutral Party, Seaforge Games, Czepuku, Sea, Afternoon Maps, Heroic Maps (though in there case you don’t get access to the back catalogue). Deviant art is a good place to find originals that artists share, along with their tumbler pages etc. I usually use Pinterest to search for artists I like and then search for their patreons or web pages.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Make a few tokens... I use <a href="http://rolladvantage.com/tokenstamp/" target="_blank">Token Stamp</a></li> </ul>I shilled for Roll20, because it was the biggest brand name, I knew it was supported, it has an excellent character generator, it’s drag and drop, the campaign pack packs are released when (or before) the book releases happen, and while it does do a lot you don’t have to use it all. I love the fact that every 5e monster in a product I’ve paid for, can be dragged onto the screen and be ready to use in 5 seconds with a character sheet. I ignored a lot of functions in the first six months and slowly brought stuff on line as I became more comfortable with it. It’s not cheap, but to be honest my time is a more limited resource than money... certainly at the moment without having been to a restaurant in 4 months.By contrast a lot of people were raving about this developmental software called Foundry and how much more it can do... and yes there were some nifty features... but not worth finding out that I had to either open my computer as a server, through another piece of software (which I was uneasy about and didn’t work for all my players either) or sign up for a separate hosting system and keep uploading information across, which again some of my players found difficult to access. Had I known this stuff I probably wouldn’t have invested in Foundry.I know that Roll20 when a player clicks launch, they’re going to be able to get into the system and see what I want them to see.</blockquote>

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