What's the bare minimum for a VTT?

[Ulfgeir]

Bare minimum would be:

• Must work regardless of browser/operating system
• Ability to upload maps/quickly draw one, and add notes attached to it. Grid/hexes with scale are nice-to-have, but optional.
• A second layer for placing of easily movable tokens for characters and opponents. Reason I say second layer, is so the placement/movement of said tokens don't affect the map.

Not deal-breakers, but very much needed.

• Ability to upload documents that the players can look at; can be background stuff for the campaign, homebrewed rules, images of what a scene looks like and other handouts.
• Text-channels direct between a GM and a player for secret stuff. Assumes you communicate publically with the whole group in another way.
• Ability to maintain multiple campaigns and keep them separete, with access control to who can see what and object permanence. So say we have a group of players. GM 1 rund campaign A, and B.. In campaign A players 1, 2, 3, 4 are playing and in campaign B players ,1,2, 3, 5 is playing etc, so you need to keep them separate..

Useful stuff, but not needed.

• Voice channel(s). Other things like Discord handles this niche.
• Text-channels that everyone can see, and use. Can be used to have out of game-discussions etc.
• Ability to upload character files, preferrably with a version control system, so you after every session can upload the latest version of the character sheet. Gets rid of "I can't find my character..."
• Ability to have fog-of-war on maps.

Luxuary stuff:

• Dice rolling
• Background sounds
• Tools for helping create digital character sheets
• Tools to help enforce the rules, as like automatically calculating damage for weapons.
• Video channels if you want to see the face of the other players. Again can be done with discord or other software.

 

[Kichwas]

I want sheets, and I want a die roller that is configured into the game system we're using well enough that it will tell me the result of an action that used a die roll.

So tell if an attack hit, tell me if a lock was picked, tell me if I got hope or fear, tell me how many successes I rolled, tell me how much STUN and how much BODY was in that 14d6 damage roll (anyone remember Champions?), etc.

But then there is too much.

For me the question isn't just what is the minimum for a VTT, but what is the maximum. Fortunately even a VTT that can do full on automation comes with the ability to dial it all down.
- So that's another thing a VTT MUST have. The ability for me to dial it all up or down to match my style. And my style evolves over time.

Right now I'm on a theater of the mind but with action roll results presented kick. That's what I want in my VTT.
A few months ago I wanted full on tactical maps with animations.

Foundry can do both of these things, because I can dial in or out whatever mods best fit my mood.

Another big ask is the ability to have it on my own machine. Presuming my network allows it, which it does. If my network did NOT allow it I'd still want the ability to run it locally while messing around with it, then upload things to where I was hosting them. Which I did for a while with Foundry through Forge.

 

[aramis erak]

No need for shared dice rolls as I trust the players and rolling physical dice is always faster.

Depends upon the game. Tunnels and Trolls, where it's common for the rolls to be 3-12 dice per player, rolled and totalled, and also checked for 6's, and GM's can wind up rolling 30-100 dice... the roller is often faster. Same for WEG Star Wars, where 4-10 d6 are not uncommon player rolls, especially when using sheet automation.

 

[kronovan]

Depends upon the game. Tunnels and Trolls, where it's common for the rolls to be 3-12 dice per player, rolled and totalled, and also checked for 6's, and GM's can wind up rolling 30-100 dice... the roller is often faster. Same for WEG Star Wars, where 4-10 d6 are not uncommon player rolls, especially when using sheet automation.

Yep, when at TTRPG features buckets of dice rolls a VTT is going to speed things up. Regardless of that, any VTT that features auto calculating of To Hit and Damage, is going to do that faster than a player does.

 

[tetrasodium]

I'm surprised that six pages in nobody has mentioned the importance of use cases in regards to shaping what the minimum needs are. A vttt chosen for online play and a vtt chosen for in person at the table play are going to have some overlap and even more wildly different "pfft that's totally unimportant to me" differences.

A couple good examples of that spectrum are owl bear and arkenforge.

§tgry fill a similar minimum niche for an online game. I've used both, but neither fits my needs .owlbear rodeo and roll20 have various features that are unquestionably nice quality of life features for an online game, but for an in person game where I can reach across the table and say " let me see your sheet" without needing a voip session or character sheet manager many if not all of those features pale in comparison to the value of one PC (mine) and a touch panel enabled tvbox being able to support anyone at the table being able to move a token by touch and all three support rolling dice if needed. Arkenforge has an editor light years more advanced than the other two and the touch support for in person play not provided by the others