Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="MNblockhead" data-source="post: 7943136" data-attributes="member: 6796661">[USER=99786]@Eyes of Nine[/USER] - since my last past I've put even more time into testing different VTTs, adding Fantasy Grounds and The Forge to those I've been testing.  I've downloaded d20Pro but haven't tested it yet. To keep it short, I don't know what your particular needs and preferences are but my conclusion is that there are good reasons Fantasy Grounds and Roll20 lead the pack. Unless you are technically oriented and like messing around with betas, I would avoid Astral and The Forge until they are more fully baked. Based on my experiences as both a player and DM, when recommending VTTs, I generally recommend one of the three, based on your needs, with some follow-up thoughts about VoIP/Video Conferencing:1. Roll20Probably the easiest to get started with. If you play major systems, especially 5e, you can can buy adventures and rulesets all configured and ready to play, which is a HUGE time saver and helps with the learning curve. It also has an excellent system for DMs to advertise games and players to find them. It has voice built in, but many groups use a third-party tool like Discord or Hangouts for voice. If you are mostly looking to run games online, Roll20 is by far the easiest VTT to get up and running with.2. Fantasy GroundsIf you have more patience with learn curves and don't mind a bit more effort, Fantasy Grounds offers a powerful set of tools with an amazing community. You can buy all the 5e stuff and material from other publishers and other systems all prepped and ready to play. Also, it is a great solution if you want to use a VTT for in-person play. E.g., if you have a digital battlemap (i.e. horizontal TV or other display). Almost all DMs I see using a VTT for in-person games are using Fantasy Grounds.  But if you primarily plan to use it for online games, the big downside is that all your players must download and install the software. Also, it is more work to configure it and your PC firewall rules to serve games. 3. Map ToolsThis is the best free options. It has many features of the commercial tools, but you have to do all the work yourself in configuring rules, etc. Also, like Fantasy Grounds you're players will need to install it and you'll need to be comfortable configuring it as a DM to serve games. A NOTE ABOUT VOIP/WEB-METTINGSI've not had issues with Roll20s voice features, but I don't have a lot of experience with it because nearly every DM running games in Roll20 whose games I've joined uses Discord. Personally, I'm not a fan of Discord. I find the interface ugly and confusing and I've had a lot of issues with voice quality using discord. For games I run, I use Google Meet. I've found it to be the most solid web-meeting platform no matter what region of the world I'm in (having used it in the United States, East Asia, India, and the Middle East). Few companies have the data-center footprint and resources of Google.  Same thing with Hangouts, which is basically the free version of Meet. One advantage of Hangouts is that it has dice-rolling built into its chat. Microsoft Teams and Skype are also excellent but I only have that through work, so I don't use for gaming.</blockquote>

Verification