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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MNblockhead" data-source="post: 8106295" data-attributes="member: 6796661">The right attitude.I'm not trying to be cure here--well, maybe a bit--but it is true. I have spend a lot of time and more money than I should have diving into various VTTs over this past year.  The one gold truth that I learned is that whatever tool you use, you don't have to use its every feature. Almost any tool can be easier to use if start with just the basics.Also, there is "prep time" and there is "learning curve" for how to use the tool. Some tools can drastically reduce prep time, but have a very high learning curve. For example, I found a lot of people using Roll20 for on-the-fly games, but I found I had to invest quite a bit of time in learning the tool before I could start throwing together a game on the fly or improvising through a sandbox session in Roll20. Another consideration is there the best way to save prep time is to pay for someone to do all the prep for you. If you are running official WotC adventures or if the third-party system and adventure material is available to purchase for the VTT you use, well, that certainly take away a lot of the prep time. Because I am not running material that I can just buy ready to play in a VTT, I wanted something I could run my games in without hundred of hours of data entry and graphic design. Here is my journey through a forest of VTT offering and how I got to where I am today. Maybe useful for you.After a few years of running my own home-brew campaign, work was getting to be too demanding and I decided to purchase adventures and campaign settings. I used RealmWorks to manage my campaigns and to share maps. When I no longer had time for all the data entry, I just used the books, but put all the maps in Realm Works. Then I had to work over seas. I would display the players view of the maps in RealmWorks, shared using Google Meet. Everything else run pen and paper.  But I was spending too much time just loading maps. Also, I couldn't load a map on the fly quickly enough to run my sandboxy adventures and I didn't have time to enter all my maps into RealmWorks. Then Lone Wolf Development stopped developing RealmWorks. At the same time I was running my games I would play one-offs using the Roll20 find a game feature. So I played a lot of games using Roll20, usually with Discord. So I got an account and tried running games in Roll20. But the space limits, the time to prep maps, just wasn't as fluid as I wanted. I probably didn't give Roll20 enough of a chance. I am grateful to Roll20 for giving me a platform where I could find games when away from my gaming group in countries with poor and censured internet. But I just never like to DM in it. It seemed like too much work and I never got to the point where I was comfortable running a game in it for my players. I ended up cancelling my account after a few months. So I went to MapTool.  Networking issues, due to the security controls of my employer's internet (which I used in the employer provided housing while working abroad) made it a impractical to actually host as a normal VTT.  Instead, I would run two instances of Map Tool.  A DMs instance and player instance. I shared the player instance using Google Meet.  This worked very well. With Map Tool I can quickly filter from hundreds of maps, open one up with Fog of War, then filter through thousands of tokens and quickly add them to  map. The 5e frameset provides some quality of life features for 5e DMs, but for the most part, I was just sharing maps, revealing areas by painting away the "fog" and throwing tokens on the map.  The main issue was that the players were not able to control their own tokens, which is not as satisfying. Also, all map reveal was done manually. So, little to no prep time, but more work for the DM in play. That said, Map Tool does support full VTT functionality with many lighting and reveal features that are more advanced than some of the commercial tools.   The main issue for me was that I didn't have the time or interest in trying to come up with a way to figure out the networking given my situation. At the same time I was running games in MapTool, I tested Fantasy Grounds.  I participated in some virtual convention games that used Fantasy Ground Classic. The only way I could get it to work when abroad was to us my Google Fi 3G connection on my phone with a VPN running on my phone, then join my phone's hotspot from my computer. It was just barely acceptable as a player, but I wouldn't be able to run games this way. But I though I could use it like MapTool and run locally, with a GM and a player's instance and share the player instance. With FG you can use online and for local play.  FG Unity had just been released so I did the $10/month subscription to test it out.  While I liked that I could have hundreds of maps and thousands of tokens and fairly quickly find them, it took a bit more time to get things ready on the fly. But my main issue with FGU is that it kept hanging. I tried to use it to run games but ended up having to give up on it and go back to Map Tool.   I liked the idea of the automations but I would have to rebuy D&D content I already bought in book form and on D&D Beyond.   I also found the interface had a high learning curve. There are great learning resources for FGU and great support, but I didn't have the time to spend many hours at FG College (and acutal site/service they offer) just to run my D&D Games. Map Tool was doing the job. I tested d20pro. Really liked it. Like Map Tool and Fantasy Grounds, it is locally installed so easy to reference large libraries of maps and tokens.  It offered a much easier interface than FGC or FGU and is targeted to d20 games. But it didn't have the fog of war reveal tools I need for my low-prep games. I looked at Astral VTT, but it is online only, so there are storage issues. But the real killer is that it only supported lighting, line-of-site prepped maps, or just sharing the entire battlemap. It didn't have the manual fog of war application and reveal I was looking for. The tool that ended up convincing me to move from Map Tool was Foundry. It offered everything I wanted with the caveat that I had to install some community modules to get it that way. In particular, Simple Fog, so that I can easily apply and reveal fog of war manually. Also, unlike FG, Map Tool, and d20pro, my players do not have to install any software. They just interact with the map using their browser.  Because of my work travel situation and the areas I have to work, I'm hosting my license of Foundry on virtual machine online. But if I were only running games from my ample home connection, I could easily just run the game from my laptop. Loading maps and assets are a bit more involved than Map Tool or Fantasy Grounds, but all the other features and advantages are good trade off for the extra couple minutes it would take me to set up a battlemap.  In particular with with third-party modules I can import my DnD Beyond purchased content and I can apply a variety of automations that make running the game easier. And expanding it with modules, I find is much easier and more smooth than customizing Map Tool. Another tool I am Kickstarting is "Role."  If you have basic needs.  You just want a web meeting tool with gamer features.  I.e., voice, video, text, an easy to reference character sheet that gets out of your way when you are not using it, and a basic battlemap that you can drop tokens on, as well as a dice rolling app, then this could be the tool for you. Unfortunately, you'll need to wait until it is released. Currently there is just an early access release for backers.  For more info, see: <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/role/role-a-new-kind-of-platform-for-the-rpg-community" target="_blank">Role: A New Kind of Platform For The RPG Community</a></blockquote>

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