Where Do You Get Your Digital (RPG) Books and Materials?

[Voadam]

Currently mostly Drivethru.

I also regularly check out and get stuff from Bundle of Holding and Humble Bundle.

I have gotten a few charity bundles from Itch IO.

I have a bunch on Paizo, Kobold, and Frog God but it has been a while. I mostly stopped checking out Paizo stuff from their store after their PDF price increases a few years ago. I have still picked up Paizo stuff through Humble Bundle though.

I did a few kickstarters, but mostly in the past and not a lot.

I do not use D&D beyond, I have a free account with a few free offerings there.

My Fantasy Grounds stuff is mostly from Humble Bundle deals.

 

[CleverNickName]

In light of the recent (and ongoing) shenanigans with tariffs and printing/shipping costs, I'm bumping this poll to the top of the stack to see if anyone's stance has changed. Update your vote!

 

[CleverNickName]

(woops, sorry about the double poll option. I've got VTTs on the brain today, I guess.)

Looks like a full 95% of us buy our digital content from DriveThruRPG, with crowdfunding and direct-from-publisher nearly tying for 2nd and 3rd place, respectively. That made me curious: how many DriveThruRPG products are being produced for VTT platforms?

To find out, I went to DriveThruRPG, and did a search for "VTT." This was just a plain, unfiltered, unrefined search across all titles...rulebooks, supplements, add-ons, maps, tokens, everything tagged for VTT. It returned 20,056 titles. That's...a lot more than I expected to see. Like, quadruple. I swear the last time I checked (probably during the first few months of the pandemic lockdowns) it was less than 3k.

This is good news for folks who play online, right? I decided to dig in a little more. I wanted to know how many of these were platform-specific, and for which platforms?

So next, I searched for "Roll20." It returned 7,207 titles...which is about 36% of the total VTT matches. So if you play on Roll20, you will find about 7200 products on DriveThruRPG that claim to be compatible with your platform of choice. I think that's pretty awesome.

Then I searched for "Foundry VTT." It returned 3,200 titles. And since these two terms are often combined into a single term, I also did a search for "FoundryVTT," and got another 627. That's a total of 3,827 titles, or about 19% of the total VTT matches. So if you play on Foundry, and if you shop at DriveThruRPG (which nearly all of us seem to do, according to this poll), you'll find about 3800 products to use. Which is rad.

A search for FantasyGrounds returned 22 titles, and "Fantasy Grounds" returned 5371. That's a total of 5393 product matches, or 27%. I didn't expect to see FG have as many offerings at DriveThruRPG, but I'm not mad about it.

And of course there is going to be plenty of overlap here: products made for Roll20 aren't necessarily exclusively for Roll20 only, and things like maps and tokens (the vast majority of virtual products) can be used on any VTT platform for any game. This was just a plain, unrefined search of product tags and descriptions, not a scientific Anything. If you feel like your favorite VTT platform is being maligned or misrepresented here, I welcome (polite) corrections.

 

[Agamon]

(woops, sorry about the double poll option. I've got VTTs on the brain today, I guess.)

Looks like a full 95% of us buy our digital content from DriveThruRPG, with crowdfunding and direct-from-publisher nearly tying for 2nd and 3rd place, respectively. That made me curious: how many DriveThruRPG products are being produced for VTT platforms?

To find out, I went to DriveThruRPG, and did a search for "VTT." This was just a plain, unfiltered, unrefined search across all titles...rulebooks, supplements, add-ons, maps, tokens, everything tagged for VTT. It returned 20,056 titles. That's...a lot more than I expected to see. Like, quadruple. I swear the last time I checked (probably during the first few months of the pandemic lockdowns) it was less than 3k.

This is good news for folks who play online, right? I decided to dig in a little more. I wanted to know how many of these were platform-specific, and for which platforms?

So next, I searched for "Roll20." It returned 7,207 titles...which is about 36% of the total VTT matches. So if you play on Roll20, you will find about 7200 products on DriveThruRPG that claim to be compatible with your platform of choice. I think that's pretty awesome.

Then I searched for "Foundry VTT." It returned 3,200 titles. And since these two terms are often combined into a single term, I also did a search for "FoundryVTT," and got another 627. That's a total of 3,827 titles, or about 19% of the total VTT matches. So if you play on Foundry, and if you shop at DriveThruRPG (which nearly all of us seem to do, according to this poll), you'll find about 3800 products to use. Which is rad.

A search for FantasyGrounds returned 22 titles, and "Fantasy Grounds" returned 5371. That's a total of 5393 product matches, or 27%. I didn't expect to see FG have as many offerings at DriveThruRPG, but I'm not mad about it.

And of course there is going to be plenty of overlap here: products made for Roll20 aren't necessarily exclusively for Roll20 only, and things like maps and tokens (the vast majority of virtual products) can be used on any VTT platform for any game. This was just a plain, unrefined search of product tags and descriptions, not a scientific Anything. If you feel like your favorite VTT platform is being maligned or misrepresented here, I welcome (polite) corrections.

FG used to have a lot more on DTRPG, but a change in policy saw a good chunk of the content moved to FG's Forge.

 

[kronovan]

So next, I searched for "Roll20." It returned 7,207 titles...which is about 36% of the total VTT matches. So if you play on Roll20, you will find about 7200 products on DriveThruRPG that claim to be compatible with your platform of choice. I think that's pretty awesome...

Well there's no surpise there, as roll20 owns OneBookShelf (owners of Drivethrurpg). TBH it'd be a surprise if there weren't much more roll20 DLC than what's available for Fantasy Grounds or Foundry.

 

[CleverNickName]

Well there's no surpise there, as roll20 owns OneBookShelf (owners of Drivethrurpg). TBH it'd be a surprise if there weren't much more roll20 DLC than what's available for Fantasy Grounds or Foundry.

Huh. I didn't know that.

 

[The Soloist]

DTRPG, Itch.io and with the Brick & Mortar program when I buy a book from a local store.

 

[Emerikol]

My two biggest are Drivethru and Warehouse 23. I have bought from Paizo directly. I also get stuff on Kickstart/Backerkit on occasion. My default is Drivethru unless it's GURPS then WH23. My GURPS purchases though of late have equalled everything else.

 

[LordEntrails]

You do know you can search DriveThru by format right? And you can refine the search to the exact VTT you are interested in? No need to do word searches.

Though interestingly enough, the numbers it shows are a fraction of your earlier ones. Not sure why. I'm thinking your numbers might be more accurate...