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.

 

[Morrus]

Maps and tokens. Basically, the 'tabletop'.

Everything else, you can easily handle yourself. You can roll your own dice, track your own initiative, use a character sheet, chat through Zoom etc. The basic thing that you can't easily do on your own is a shared battlemap and tokens. That's the basic premise of a VTT--everything else is bells and whistles. Awesome bells and whistles, of course, and very nice to have, but the basic function of a VTT is the shared tabletop.

 

[kronovan]

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...

Well that would be true if it was a poorly designed VTT, but both Fantasy Grounds and Foundry have free core systems that give you a mimimal set of features. For FG there's 2 called CoreRPG and MoreCore and for Foundry there's the Simple World Building System. They provide a base set of core VTT features and you can build upon both if you so desire. To get the features I listed as my minimum, you have to purchase a ruleset (FG), a game system module (Foundry), or homebrew your own. So no, provided the VTT was designed properly, it won't be constrained "into suporting just a limited number of game systems", in order to also support more advanced features.

That said, I'm only familiar with FG, Foundry and roll20. So it might very well be that there are VTTs out there that were architected in such a way that they do not support both simple and advanced features. I'd for sure stay far and clear of them, if there were.

 

[SteveC]

For me the bare minimum is something that I'm just not going to use. I play via VTT a lot, and I want it to handle the things that are difficult because we're not in the same spot. So that's a map and tokens, yes, but so much more. I play a 5E game every week and the fact that you can roll the dice and calculate correct results is sooooo clutch. Not because players are going to cheat, but because we have some who can't consistently get the rules right or add the correct numbers.

And beyond that, if I'm at a computer, it's taking up a lot of my space, so I want to have the rules available for reference.

I played part of a recent Daggerheart game on Discord entirely theater of the mind, and we needed to cobble something more together to make the game playable.

There are definitely players who are satisfied with different amounts of automation or information handled by the VTT but I'd say anything that makes it easier to play a character is going to be a net plus.

 

[SableWyvern]

If I was going to run online for some reason, all I would be after is a whiteboard and video + voice.

 

[Lanefan]

If I was going to run online for some reason, all I would be after is a whiteboard and video + voice.

Voice, but not video. Too glitchy, and the VTT providing maps and tokens etc. is fine.

One annoying thing we've found with roll20 is that it won't support any other means of drawing on the map except dragging a mouse around, which is a pain (fingers on a touchscreen is even worse). A VTT that supported digital artboards, where what you draw on the artboard appears on the screen, would IMO be essential if the VTT itself only provided a whiteboard.

 

[overgeeked]

Voice, but not video. Too glitchy, and the VTT providing maps and tokens etc. is fine.

One annoying thing we've found with roll20 is that it won't support any other means of drawing on the map except dragging a mouse around, which is a pain (fingers on a touchscreen is even worse). A VTT that supported digital artboards, where what you draw on the artboard appears on the screen, would IMO be essential if the VTT itself only provided a whiteboard.

Something like GameScape?

GameScape

Maps. Together. Online.

gamescape.app

 

[Koloth]

Bare minimum? A TV/monitor laid flat on the table with the map showing on the display. Use real minis and physically move them. Good for in person play only. But it is a virtual table top.