Which Online Virtual Tabletop Do You Use?
MNblockhead
A Title Much Cooler Than Anything on the Old Site
I don't know what fate dice are. I can say that d20pro is designed specifically for d20 system games. It is not trying to be all things for all games. That's another reason I'm still seriously considering Fantasy Grounds, which seems like it can better support more, and very different, game systems.
Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
We started using roll20 recently. It’s okay (just okay). One of the other members of my group ran Call of Cthluhu, and I’ll be moving my Pathfinder 2e campaign to it starting this Saturday.
That’s a concern I have as I work to put my stuff into roll20 for my game. However, there’s a rewrite in the works, so maybe it’ll get better soon.
LordEntrails
Hero
Check out www.fantasygroundscollege.net. They are probably new since you last tried FG. They offer all sorts of free classes to get people up to speed and even into advanced topics in FG. Another aspect of the great FG community.
Discord. Or Teamspeak if you or a friend are willing to run a server.
As other have said, they sell lots of content and try to get people to pay for upgraded features. And of course, it always reminds me of the saying; "When something is free, it's because you are the product."
I always struggle to load custom maps in Roll20. Getting them to fit and getting the grid on them is always a struggle for me even after I followed several tutorials. Never had that challenge with FG except for when grid size is not a whole number of pixels you end up with drift. MapTools should be easy, but never explored it.
The_Dagda
Villager
Had the same experience and impression with Astral and you piqued interest in Realmworks. Thanks for the post.
Sorry your Foundry experience wasn’t great. My group is moving there from Roll20 chiefly BECAUSE of the high definition performance. Roll20 can’t handle highrez maps and it’s performance crawls with complex dynamic lighting and light sources (I feel you re: the polygon shapes). I’ve been running ultraHD animated maps (can’t do that on R20 or FG) from Dynamic Dungeons and 100+ shaded light sources and dynamic lighting hasn’t complained with 4 characters.
Hope the version 1.0 is dropped soon and the documentation gets a boost. Encourage you to check again when it does.
MNblockhead
A Title Much Cooler Than Anything on the Old Site
Currently I've settled on running Map Tools and sharing the player map via Google Meet. I have the 100+ maps from my Rappan Athuk campaign, and tokens for all MM maps easily available and searchable from Map Tools. I just go to my Rappan Athuk maps folder, search for the battlemap image I want, right click on it and select new map. It opens with Fog of War. Sizing the grid is a little finicky but not hard and is pretty quick. Then I just drop the party tokens on it.
It offers rectangle, diamond, polygon, and freehand reveal. I can easily drop monster tokens on for encounters.
It is easy and reliable. No freezing. No crashing. I reveal the map as the party explores, moving their tokens around and throwing monster tokens on the map during combat encounters.
The downside is that running a Map Tools server that my players can access to control their own tokens is too much of a hassle to bother with. Also, it would be too much work to create the macros and data enter monster stats to have any of the automations that make Roll20, d20pro, and Fantasy Grounds nice.
I'm still paying $9/month for Fantasy Ground Unity Ultimate (Early Access), because it is what I would most like to work. I've just found it to be unusable in practice.
It consistently and repeatedly freezes when I simply try to repeat what I do in Map Tools in FGU. I thought I was starting "simple". But everything is less convenient and less stable than Map Tools for what I'm trying to do.
I have all my maps and tokens for my characters in the campaign folder. I pull up a map by going to the images widget, which simply takes longer to navigate and search than Map Tools. Then I have to open the Maps widget. Create a new map and then add the battlemap image to the background layer. Seems like an unnecessary number of steps (why not just right click on an image and select "create new map"?), but is not that difficult and can be done quickly once you know what you need to do.
Sizing the grid in FGU is the simplest of any VTT I've used.
Adding tokens is pretty strait forward.
Panning around the map is one thing I don't like for FGU. In other VTTs, you can hold the right click on the mouse and drag the map around. In FGU you can to click on an special icon on the map and drag it to move around the map. Not a big deal, just not as fluid and simple as Map Tools.
Opening another instance and connecting via LAN for sharing on a second screen for in-person play or via Google Meet, etc., is about the same process as Map Tools but it takes a lot longer, uses more system resources, and software inevitably hangs and freezes, making it unusable for play.
I'm going to do more testing with FGU using two computers and connected using the cloud server. Maybe if I'm only running one instance it will run better. Ultimately, of course, I want to get to the point where my players can run FGU on their computer and control their own tokens. But I'm not going to bother them with that until I know I accomplish simple tasks as displaying and manually revealing maps.
Also, it is important to note that with VTTs that are installed on your local computer and connect to the company cloud servers, like FGU, d20pro, and Foundry on The Forge servers, they don't work in many countries. I started my testing when I was working abroad in the mideast and it is unlikely I'd be able to host games using most of these tools as I can't access their cloud servers. That was one big thing in favor of Roll20 and if I were not running such a map-heavy campaign, I would consider Roll20, even if it is not a great tool for in-person games.
In terms of its feature set, FGU is the holy grail for me, except that it has proven unstable to the point of being unusable and hosting doesn't work when I'm working overseas. I'll do more testing over this month as I just paid for another month, but it is looking like I'll just cancel my Ultimate subscription and use Table Tools for the time being and check it out again when it comes out of its "early release" stage.
It offers rectangle, diamond, polygon, and freehand reveal. I can easily drop monster tokens on for encounters.
It is easy and reliable. No freezing. No crashing. I reveal the map as the party explores, moving their tokens around and throwing monster tokens on the map during combat encounters.
The downside is that running a Map Tools server that my players can access to control their own tokens is too much of a hassle to bother with. Also, it would be too much work to create the macros and data enter monster stats to have any of the automations that make Roll20, d20pro, and Fantasy Grounds nice.
I'm still paying $9/month for Fantasy Ground Unity Ultimate (Early Access), because it is what I would most like to work. I've just found it to be unusable in practice.
It consistently and repeatedly freezes when I simply try to repeat what I do in Map Tools in FGU. I thought I was starting "simple". But everything is less convenient and less stable than Map Tools for what I'm trying to do.
I have all my maps and tokens for my characters in the campaign folder. I pull up a map by going to the images widget, which simply takes longer to navigate and search than Map Tools. Then I have to open the Maps widget. Create a new map and then add the battlemap image to the background layer. Seems like an unnecessary number of steps (why not just right click on an image and select "create new map"?), but is not that difficult and can be done quickly once you know what you need to do.
Sizing the grid in FGU is the simplest of any VTT I've used.
Adding tokens is pretty strait forward.
Panning around the map is one thing I don't like for FGU. In other VTTs, you can hold the right click on the mouse and drag the map around. In FGU you can to click on an special icon on the map and drag it to move around the map. Not a big deal, just not as fluid and simple as Map Tools.
Opening another instance and connecting via LAN for sharing on a second screen for in-person play or via Google Meet, etc., is about the same process as Map Tools but it takes a lot longer, uses more system resources, and software inevitably hangs and freezes, making it unusable for play.
I'm going to do more testing with FGU using two computers and connected using the cloud server. Maybe if I'm only running one instance it will run better. Ultimately, of course, I want to get to the point where my players can run FGU on their computer and control their own tokens. But I'm not going to bother them with that until I know I accomplish simple tasks as displaying and manually revealing maps.
Also, it is important to note that with VTTs that are installed on your local computer and connect to the company cloud servers, like FGU, d20pro, and Foundry on The Forge servers, they don't work in many countries. I started my testing when I was working abroad in the mideast and it is unlikely I'd be able to host games using most of these tools as I can't access their cloud servers. That was one big thing in favor of Roll20 and if I were not running such a map-heavy campaign, I would consider Roll20, even if it is not a great tool for in-person games.
In terms of its feature set, FGU is the holy grail for me, except that it has proven unstable to the point of being unusable and hosting doesn't work when I'm working overseas. I'll do more testing over this month as I just paid for another month, but it is looking like I'll just cancel my Ultimate subscription and use Table Tools for the time being and check it out again when it comes out of its "early release" stage.
MNblockhead
A Title Much Cooler Than Anything on the Old Site
My problem with Foundry is that it took too much time just to get it to start. To just install it and create my first campaign and load my first map took a couple hours of testing, looking for documentation, posting to the Patreon page, and finally getting a solution from the Discord channel that required manually applying a patch. I work in info systems, so I'm used to wrangling with software, but this just felt like work. I want to play D&D not learn 2nd-level IT support solutions.
Also, Foundry doesn't have licensed WotC content, so I would have to do all the data entry if I want stats, initiative tracking, combat macros, etc. I'm finding Map Tools offers everything I need in terms of displaying maps and tokens. It offers dynamic lighting etc. and has great FOW reveal tools. So I'm not sure what Foundry is adding to my experience, even if it wasn't so half-baked and undocumented.
Foundry also doesn't do anything to make it easier to host games. At least FGU and d20pro offer cloud servers as part of the subscription, so long as you are not in country blocked from accessing them. Map Tools and Foundry are just too difficult to host games on over the Internet. Especially if you travel and do not always have control over routers etc.
Once Foundry gets to the point of general release, I'll take another look.
CleverNickName
Limit Break Dancing
I voted Roll20, but I don't want that to sound like an endorsement.
We played two games of D&D this weekend on Roll20, and it was a bear. It was slow and laggy, with unreliable audio/video and glitchy lighting. We would be using a different platform if a superior option were available, but alas.
We played two games of D&D this weekend on Roll20, and it was a bear. It was slow and laggy, with unreliable audio/video and glitchy lighting. We would be using a different platform if a superior option were available, but alas.
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