MNblockhead
A Title Much Cooler Than Anything on the Old Site
I've been with Foundry for over 5 years. Prior to that I was using Map Tool for an in-person digital battlemap and then online with a shared screen in Google Meet. Before going with foundry I spent a lot of time testing various VTTs: in particular Roll20, Fantasy Grounds, and d20pro.
I was really leaning on Fantasy Grounds at the time because it is great not only for online play but also in-person and I wanted something that could be used for both. I found the learning curve to be frustrating, but any full-featured VTT is going to have a learning curve. Most of the learning curve had to do with creating homebrew stuff. I was only interested in running D&D 5e on a VTT at the time, so I can't talk about other systems in FG. But I liked the automation in FG, especially with purchased, official content. I didn't like that all players had to download a client, but that wouldn't be a problem with my players. I also liked how I could have a huge amount of digital game assets (maps, tokens, etc.) on my game computer and could pretty quickly find anything and get it into the game. Not as quick at Map Tool, but comparable.
The main reason I didn't go with FG is that I was working overseas at the time in part of the world where I had limited Internet bandwidth and (probably more impactful) high latency between there and the USA, where my players were. It was just unusable for me, even using Fantasy Ground Unity's Cloud Service mode. Keep in mind that this was just after FGU came out of beta and I'm sure things have matured and improved since then.
Roll20 was great in terms of performance for the most part. It would sometimes get laggy with large complicated maps. But I've run games and joined many games on Roll20 when I was abroad and never had any major issues. I am not a huge fan of the interface, and like any full-featured VTT there is a learning curve, but it certainly required the least lift in terms of getting started with and running games of the big three VTTs. What kept me, and continues to keep me, from not using Roll20 is the storage limits. I tend to run multi-year campaigns and want to have a lot of content available and prepped without having to constantly deal with storage management.
So I went with Foundry, which did require some compromises. The main one was lack of core support for manual fog of war. There is a community module but it has gone for long period of not work when support for it lagged and every upgrade seems to bring issues. This makes heavily sandboxed, on-the-fly GMing more difficult with Foundry. Yet the majority of the Foundry communitiy, especially Patreon backers, who are the only ones who can vote on new features, are heavily into the highly prepped map experience with all the cool audio/visual and automation effects. I've waited years and have given up on manual fog of war becomming a core feature.
Also, it may only be a one-time $50 license, but I find the experience to be superior using a hosting service. I use The Forge, which I've been very happy with. It was a necessity when I was overseas. The Forge uses a purpose-built, globally distributed asset network (CDN + S3-style storage + optimization) to ensure every map, token, and theme music loads fast and smoothly—no matter where your players are. I've been a player in paid games (either online conventions or with Start Playing) with GMs running Foundry in Europe who are running it from their computer and the experience can be frustrating. It may not matter if you and your players all have good bandwidth and in the same country. If you plan to only spend $50 and not use a hosted service, I highly recommend you test it out with your players during the trial period.
Other then the networking if you are not using a hosting service, I disagree that Foundry has a high learning curve. I think the GUI is very user friendly. The complexity comes with the game system you are running and when you start adding a lot of mods. Start bare bones and add mods slowly. The now-official D&D 5e game system is pretty user friendly, especially if you are already familiar with the game. Other game systems are more or less complex and well designed.
The thing with all of the big three is that your experience is going to depend on the game system you are using with that VTT. For D&D 5e, all three are going to be good. For Pathfinder 2e and Warhammer Fantasy 4e, Foundry wins hand down. If you don't need automations and in-VTT character sheets, all three are fine. If you don't care about fancy map effects like dynamic lighting, regional sound, etc., something like Owlbear rodeo is just going to a simpler experience.
Another note - for map creation, you are probably going to need another tool or service. All three of the big VTTs are good for taking existing maps and prepping them with walls, lighting, etc. But none are great for making maps from scratch. Foundry, with certain community mods is probably the best among the VTTs, but it isn't a map creation tool. One nice thing with found, however, are that many map making software and service will export into a Foundry-friendly file that will automate the creation of alot of the walls, etc.
Sorry for the long post, hope it is helpful.
I was really leaning on Fantasy Grounds at the time because it is great not only for online play but also in-person and I wanted something that could be used for both. I found the learning curve to be frustrating, but any full-featured VTT is going to have a learning curve. Most of the learning curve had to do with creating homebrew stuff. I was only interested in running D&D 5e on a VTT at the time, so I can't talk about other systems in FG. But I liked the automation in FG, especially with purchased, official content. I didn't like that all players had to download a client, but that wouldn't be a problem with my players. I also liked how I could have a huge amount of digital game assets (maps, tokens, etc.) on my game computer and could pretty quickly find anything and get it into the game. Not as quick at Map Tool, but comparable.
The main reason I didn't go with FG is that I was working overseas at the time in part of the world where I had limited Internet bandwidth and (probably more impactful) high latency between there and the USA, where my players were. It was just unusable for me, even using Fantasy Ground Unity's Cloud Service mode. Keep in mind that this was just after FGU came out of beta and I'm sure things have matured and improved since then.
Roll20 was great in terms of performance for the most part. It would sometimes get laggy with large complicated maps. But I've run games and joined many games on Roll20 when I was abroad and never had any major issues. I am not a huge fan of the interface, and like any full-featured VTT there is a learning curve, but it certainly required the least lift in terms of getting started with and running games of the big three VTTs. What kept me, and continues to keep me, from not using Roll20 is the storage limits. I tend to run multi-year campaigns and want to have a lot of content available and prepped without having to constantly deal with storage management.
So I went with Foundry, which did require some compromises. The main one was lack of core support for manual fog of war. There is a community module but it has gone for long period of not work when support for it lagged and every upgrade seems to bring issues. This makes heavily sandboxed, on-the-fly GMing more difficult with Foundry. Yet the majority of the Foundry communitiy, especially Patreon backers, who are the only ones who can vote on new features, are heavily into the highly prepped map experience with all the cool audio/visual and automation effects. I've waited years and have given up on manual fog of war becomming a core feature.
Also, it may only be a one-time $50 license, but I find the experience to be superior using a hosting service. I use The Forge, which I've been very happy with. It was a necessity when I was overseas. The Forge uses a purpose-built, globally distributed asset network (CDN + S3-style storage + optimization) to ensure every map, token, and theme music loads fast and smoothly—no matter where your players are. I've been a player in paid games (either online conventions or with Start Playing) with GMs running Foundry in Europe who are running it from their computer and the experience can be frustrating. It may not matter if you and your players all have good bandwidth and in the same country. If you plan to only spend $50 and not use a hosted service, I highly recommend you test it out with your players during the trial period.
Other then the networking if you are not using a hosting service, I disagree that Foundry has a high learning curve. I think the GUI is very user friendly. The complexity comes with the game system you are running and when you start adding a lot of mods. Start bare bones and add mods slowly. The now-official D&D 5e game system is pretty user friendly, especially if you are already familiar with the game. Other game systems are more or less complex and well designed.
The thing with all of the big three is that your experience is going to depend on the game system you are using with that VTT. For D&D 5e, all three are going to be good. For Pathfinder 2e and Warhammer Fantasy 4e, Foundry wins hand down. If you don't need automations and in-VTT character sheets, all three are fine. If you don't care about fancy map effects like dynamic lighting, regional sound, etc., something like Owlbear rodeo is just going to a simpler experience.
Another note - for map creation, you are probably going to need another tool or service. All three of the big VTTs are good for taking existing maps and prepping them with walls, lighting, etc. But none are great for making maps from scratch. Foundry, with certain community mods is probably the best among the VTTs, but it isn't a map creation tool. One nice thing with found, however, are that many map making software and service will export into a Foundry-friendly file that will automate the creation of alot of the walls, etc.
Sorry for the long post, hope it is helpful.
