What's the bare minimum for a VTT?

[nyvinter]

Character sheets for players and NPCs, a way to share handouts, and make notes on a map.

We mostly roll real dice, and we tend to do a lot theatre of the mind stuff so a scene where we can change images to fit the mood is great. Foundry is probably a bit overkill, but it's also the easiest to manage these things so...

 

[kronovan]

TBH, if a VTT didn't have character sheets with the ability to make dice rolls from them for things like attacks or damage, I wouldn't bother using it. I'd just save my money and use Discord instead with a freebie dice bot, a few channels for maps and Player Character stats and a 2nd Discord (PBT) account as a music player. Thankfully the 2 VTTs I own (Foundry and Fantasy Grounds) support such dice rolls.

So my base minimum would be: Dice, sharable Maps, sharable Images, Tokens, Character Turn tracking, Character Sheets (both NPC & PC), and with Dice rolls from character sheets with To Hit and Damage automated. The To Hit and Damage automation are important, because having used VTTs for over 5 years, I've come to realize the big time savers they are. Maps could be something I could live without, depending upon how well the particular TTRPG I'm using supports TOTM.

Not as much a base minimum, but I'm not always content with rules DLC. So I ideally want support for customizing it and preferably support for creating my own TTRPG character sheets and rules features. So not a must have, but I'm happier with a VTT that features something like Fantasy Ground's LUA and XML support or Foundry's JavaScript & HTML support.

 

[Lanefan]

TBH, if a VTT didn't have character sheets with the ability to make dice rolls from them for things like attacks or damage, I wouldn't bother using it. I'd just save my money and use Discord instead with a freebie dice bot, a few channels for maps and Player Character stats and a 2nd Discord (PBT) account as a music player. Thankfully the 2 VTTs I own (Foundry and Fantasy Grounds) support such dice rolls.

So my base minimum would be: Dice, sharable Maps, sharable Images, Tokens, Character Turn tracking, Character Sheets (both NPC & PC), and with Dice rolls from character sheets with To Hit and Damage automated. The To Hit and Damage automation are important, because having used VTTs for over 5 years, I've come to realize the big time savers they are. Maps could be something I could live without, depending upon how well the particular TTRPG I'm using supports TOTM.

The problem with a lot of that is that automating things like To Hit, Damage, and character sheets either forces the VTT into suporting just a limited number of game systems - or even only one - or forces the programmers to have to write bespoke subprograms for every system they want to support; and even then it doesn't help people using homebrew or non-standard rule sets.

Maps are vital, including the ability for both players and DMs to mark or amend or draw on them on the fly. Character and NPC/monster tokens are vital. The ability to show handouts is vital. The ability to type in chat or whisper rather than talk is very useful if someone's in a noisy environment or wants to say something in secret. Dice rollers are very useful.

All of that is system-agnostic; and as pretty much everything else after that starts becoming system-dependent, it's the bare minimum.