What's your VTT of choice?

[Kichwas]

Agreed, Roll20's Find a Game service is still one of the best ways to find games online. I've used it many times. Mostly for one shots. Either just because I wanted to be a player for once or because I wanted to try a system I've never played, usually both.

That depends on the tRPG you're looking to join.

It's pretty bad for RPGs that mostly exist on other VTTs; which should be somewhat obvious as it'd be kind of weird to post an ad on roll20 for a game you're running on a competitor.

For Pathfinder folks, Discord is the key to finding groups. There are two big Pathfinder 2E discords (one is both 1E and 2E, the other just 2E) and both have active subchannels for free games, one also has a subchannel for paid games.

I suspect Warhammer and Savage Worlds people have something similar going on, since their games are officially on Foundry.

It looks like DnD games will soon mostly be inside the DnDBeyond ecosystem with that new Sigil VTT, but time will tell. I understand it's free at present and mostly or wholly not-monetized. Folks expect that to change, but they were very smart going free for now. If it does monetize later - how well they handle that will determine where people land.

 

[Kichwas]

I'm very surprised that this poll is favoring Foundry as of my typing this on March 1st, 2025 by a margin of ~16% over the next entry.

While there aren't that many votes, this forum has always seemed to be extremely pro-DnD and semi-hostile to other games. Every Pathfinder thread for example always seems to be half posts bashing the game (which is not too weird - in Pathfinder communities every thread is people half bashing DnD. That's fandom).

So I figured Foundry would be disliked here as Roll20 has always seemed to be the place to be for DnDers, with DnD Beyond working to take those folks away. By this poll DnD Beyond has had little impact here, and for some reason DnDers are picking Foundry. One of my former Pathfinder 2E GMs went back to DnD (two of his players refused to try any tRPG other than 5E DnD, which is how I ended up in his group for a year and a half), and as I'm still in his discord I've watched as they keep having to pay for things whose Pathfinder versions were free and included in Foundry. That's just made me question why he stuck with Foundry when he already had those things inside of DnD Beyond and some of them in Roll20.

As in, if I was a DnD DM; I might second guess my preference for Foundry. I'm curious why it's doing well with DnD DMs.

 

[Hex08]

I bought licenses for Fantasy Grounds when I moved away from my gaming group back in 2010. It does everything I need and my group is familiar with it so I see no reason to change. There was a time where I spent too much money on Pathfinder 1E content that it didn't make financial sense to change but since I have moved on from that game it's not much of an issue now.

 

[MNblockhead]

I'm very surprised that this poll is favoring Foundry as of my typing this on March 1st, 2025 by a margin of ~16% over the next entry.

While there aren't that many votes, this forum has always seemed to be extremely pro-DnD and semi-hostile to other games. Every Pathfinder thread for example always seems to be half posts bashing the game (which is not too weird - in Pathfinder communities every thread is people half bashing DnD. That's fandom).

So I figured Foundry would be disliked here as Roll20 has always seemed to be the place to be for DnDers, with DnD Beyond working to take those folks away. By this poll DnD Beyond has had little impact here, and for some reason DnDers are picking Foundry. One of my former Pathfinder 2E GMs went back to DnD (two of his players refused to try any tRPG other than 5E DnD, which is how I ended up in his group for a year and a half), and as I'm still in his discord I've watched as they keep having to pay for things whose Pathfinder versions were free and included in Foundry. That's just made me question why he stuck with Foundry when he already had those things inside of DnD Beyond and some of them in Roll20.

As in, if I was a DnD DM; I might second guess my preference for Foundry. I'm curious why it's doing well with DnD DMs.

I think that the reason for this is that while Foundry didn't have official licensed content for D&D until recently, there were several very good mods for importing your D&D Beyond content in Foundry. The D&D 5e game system in Foundry was functional enough and that explains the system support for D&D in most VTTs and certainly browser based VTTs. Fantasy Grounds has long had the best mechanics support amoung all VTTs, but many groups don't want all players to have to download software and many people just don't like its interface (I never had a problem with FG's interface, but I read many people complaining about it in VTT discussion threads).

Between Roll20 and Foundry it really just comes down to which interface you like better, whether you already have paid for official content on DDB and don't want to buy it again in Roll20, how strongly you feel about not being locked into a single hosting provider and being able to download your content, and storage concerns.

The reason I went with Foundry over Roll20 was primarily due to Roll20s storage limitations at the time. Even at the highest tier, Roll20 didn't provide enough storage for me to have the well over 100 maps, some of them very large, plus the additional storage need to prep all of them, for my Rappan Athuk campaign. I also naively though I could automate a lot of 5e's mechanics in Foundry, which is something I've long given up on.

If Sigil can finally handle AOE rolls for saves, apply damage, and track conditions reliably, I will likely switch to it when I eventually run a D&D campaign again, even though I don't really care about 3D battlemaps and minis or animated effects.

 

[numtini]

I'm very surprised that this poll is favoring Foundry as of my typing this on March 1st, 2025 by a margin of ~16% over the next entry.

While there aren't that many votes, this forum has always seemed to be extremely pro-DnD and semi-hostile to other games.

I'd guess that Foundry tends to appeal to more hardcore gamers with roll20 having a much lower barrier to entry and more friendly to casual gamers. And I'd guess posting on a message board about RPGs probably also appeals to people who are more hardcore than average. Also, I'm a Foundry user and our community tends to be a little evangelical about the platform.

 

[LordEntrails]

I'm very surprised that this poll is favoring Foundry as of my typing this on March 1st, 2025 by a margin of ~16% over the next entry.

My take is a little different than @MNblockhead 's. I think ENWorld weighs heavily towards folks who like control. Who like to fuss with the fiddle bits of RPGs. Rule tweaks, optimization, etc. And I think Foundry appeals to them because of it's ability to do that.

I've always thought FG did that well also but their is certainly a long standing distaste for FG among lots of vocal people. So yea even though I see FG and Foundry as very similar in many ways Foundry has the wider appeal.

 

[Thomas Shey]

My take is a little different than @MNblockhead 's. I think ENWorld weighs heavily towards folks who like control. Who like to fuss with the fiddle bits of RPGs. Rule tweaks, optimization, etc. And I think Foundry appeals to them because of it's ability to do that.

I've always thought FG did that well also but their is certainly a long standing distaste for FG among lots of vocal people. So yea even though I see FG and Foundry as very similar in many ways Foundry has the wider appeal.

Its always possible FG is carrying water for its past sins, too. As noted earlier in the thread, I was under the impression it was necessary to dependent on their server to utilize it, and apparently that hasn't been true for some time at least.

 

[LordEntrails]

Its always possible FG is carrying water for its past sins, too. As noted earlier in the thread, I was under the impression it was necessary to dependent on their server to utilize it, and apparently that hasn't been true for some time at least.

Absolutely. And in many ways it's understandable.

Some that I'm most familiar with: Like the cost issue brought up before that was out of date. And I hear things like "Well Foundry has a thousand different mods I can get and FG doesn't have that." But FG has had extensions since day 1 and has had a community distribution system for extensions and other DLC for years. The interface, and I get that some folks don't like it and want menus but don't know their is a community extension to do that. Or the theme/color scheme or that their are several 'official' themes included and dozens more supported by the community, or that its pretty easy to make your own.

But it's a lot like my view of Sigil. How long am I going to have a distaste for it because of the install issues with launch? You can't keep up to date on everything, nor become an expert on everything. You know what you know and you draw conclusions from that. And you hold onto those opinions until something beats them out of you. Human nature.

 

[Thomas Shey]

But it's a lot like my view of Sigil. How long am I going to have a distaste for it because of the install issues with launch? You can't keep up to date on everything, nor become an expert on everything. You know what you know and you draw conclusions from that. And you hold onto those opinions until something beats them out of you. Human nature.

Yeah. As you note, if you hit a situation and it put you off, it may be quite some time until you know that situation has changed. If I hadn't mentioned my big issue (I have a few lesser ones that mostly have to do with what I'm currently using serving my purpose and already being over the big bump of the learning curve) in this thread and got corrected, what would have ever lead me to find out?