What's your VTT of choice?

[UngainlyTitan]

Hmm. Since most of the discussion I've seen is recent, its possible that it was only referring to Unity (I still remember being very confused the first time I saw someone referring to it as FGU, but that's showing my age...)

From their support page if one uses the LAN setting for the machine hosting it looks like the application can be run without the using the cloud brokering service.

 

[LordEntrails]

FG is a single developer. One thing to update, no conflicts. Foundry VTT is the core platform, 300+ game systems, and 3000+ modules,

No. FG has a very active community of unofficial developers like Foundry does. You can check out the FG Forge at Fantasy Grounds Forge All of those are not created by the FG developers (SmiteWorks). If you use extensions or rulesets (code modifications) from the Forge, you can run into the same problems as happens with Foundry modules.
It's just that FG has a lot more base automation and DLC content that is officially supported via the FG Store, Fantasy Grounds Store - VTT modules

Just to make sure we're talking the same thing, I'm referring to the VTT needing to access nothing but itself, the Net itself, and the other machines in use. Is that what you're saying? Because if so, that's literally not only not come up a single time before, I've seen conversations that seem to imply quite the opposite. This is not me suggesting you're lying or incorrect, its just me being boggled this is the first time I've seen suggestions of this.

(To be doubly clear--does it even need to "phone home" on startup?)

So I'm not totally clear what your understanding is.

So FGU is installed local to the GM/Host computer. There are two ways the host can set up for players to connect. Either through Cloud brokering (i.e. a semi-public server that does the match making and negotiates the connections between the clients and the host), or via a direct LAN mode where port forwarding might be needed depending upon host networking.

The Cloud brokering does need access to the FG servers to broker those connections, but if it is able to establish a direct peer to peer connection it does, and then it does not handle the traffic etc.

Now, the other time that FGU connects to the FG servers is to validate licenses. This is only done when a free/demo player connects and only at the time the game is joined. If a licensed player connects, not license validation is done.

So, if you are running on a stand alone network (no internet) then you need to use a LAN connection and all players that connect need to be licensed since license validation won't work. I know of several regular gaming groups that run this way on naval ships and such where no internet is available.

Does that clear it up?

 

[LordEntrails]

From their support page if one uses the LAN setting for the machine hosting it looks like the application can be run without the using the cloud brokering service.

Correct.

 

[Thomas Shey]

From their support page if one uses the LAN setting for the machine hosting it looks like the application can be run without the using the cloud brokering service.

Is that remotely or only locally?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Does that clear it up?

Yes, thank you. That's considerably more complicated a picture than I'd had the impression in the past, possibly because the people involved didn't know about some of the options.

 

[MNblockhead]

I haven’t used Map Tool in 10 years. Maybe longer. I was also using it for in-person games. I’m curious how it’s changed…

It has also be years since I've used it. But even with the feature set it had when I was using it, it would still be more than functional to run an in-person game.

 

[MNblockhead]

Started with Fantasy Grounds in 2015. Tried Roll20 in 2017 and could stand the company's treatment of its customers and found the UI lacking and features missing. Late 2020 tried Foundry and couldn't deal with it's instability and the need for community mods. With all the recent upgrades to FG, haven't seen any reason to switch and I have tons of homebrew content in FG I wouldn't want to have to migrate or re-create.

I've never found Foundry core to be unstable, but conflicting or outdated mods can certainly create a lot of issues. The modability of Foundry is both a blessing and a curse.

 

[MNblockhead]

This sounds like a great observation about Foundry. When I looked at it some years ago, I didn't want to deal with any of that. To go back to dealing with Port Forwarding, ugh! It seems to me that all the Foundry supporters are techies or at least.. shade tree techies ? who like poking around and doing things under the covers. (i.e. not Apple users!)

Another good question would be: did you play Skyrim? Yes, okay, did you mod it until you had a character who could fly, travel around with a gang of NPCs, had an airship stronghold, and used console commands? No. You just played the game? I'm not sure Foundry is for you. ;-)

That said, I run Foundry on a mac.

 

[MNblockhead]

I think the need to tech things in foundry is pretty overblown. Everytime I begin to start coding something, I find somebody has already done it. Search, download, activate.

Yeah, but mod management and troubleshooting is one of the biggest frustrations less-techie folk encounter when diving into Foundry. Don't get me wrong, I love how much you can mod Foundry and love the mod community the grew around foundry. But for new people, I always recommend using it without any mods for a while (except Dice So Nice!, which really should just be integrated into Foundry core by this point).

 

[MNblockhead]

And, honestly, I can't imagine that the basics isn't fine if you don't expect a lot of automation.

Exactly this. But I have a dream. A dream that one day I'll have a VTT where I can select a large group of tokens and reliably apply area effects and have persistent effects smoothly tracked. If the wotc VTT handles this well, that would be enough for me to switch to it for D&D games.