D&D 5E Which Virtual Table Top are you using right now and what do you like best about it?

[darjr]

I used google draw with a shared map recently. Pulled resources from the net. It worked reasonably well in a pinch.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

MapTool wasn't included? That's the grand daddy of VTTs... I don't know how popular it is nowadays, but it was the go-to for 4e online play, and it certainly has equally good (or bad if you wish) support for 5e.

Never played 4e, but good to know. That's also why I included "Other"

 

[Pauper]

All the D&D games I played at GenCon Online were run in Roll20, which seemed to work OK for people who were familiar with it, and didn't take a ridiculous amount of time to explain for people who weren't. I wouldn't refuse to play in another Roll20 game, based on my experience.

When it comes to running a game, though, I definitely prefer Fantasy Grounds, mainly based on my own experience with the product. I really appreciate the extensibility of FG via Extensions (many of which are cheap on DMs Guild). 'Automatic Halfling Luck' has absolutely been worth the $1 I paid for it.

--
Pauper

 

[LordEntrails]

I guess I feel like there aren't too many choices, especially if you aren't wanting to spend much, and given the price point I'm not really complaining bitterly. It is just frustrating that D&D (RPGs in general) simply don't command the sort of market that would attract real development talent and resources to make something passable. So it goes!

Yep, even though D&D is the giant in the room of RPGs, it's a tiny little fish in the entertainment pool.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

I use Fantasy Grounds and I am the DM and I have even converted some modules which are now available on their store and in DMs Guild.

I use Roll20 occasionally as a player and I don’t like it nearly as much.

The automation in Fantasy Grounds really makes my life my easier as a DM, especially in large combats.

 

[Aylowan]

A few months ago, I find went all in with Foundry. The base program with a few plug ins meets all my requirements. I ended up hosting with The Forge since I didn't want to bother hosting myself. Having to buy the license and the hosting separately may confuse or annoy some people but overall once you are set up I find it no more difficult to get started with than any other VTT. One of the draws is its extendibility which allows you to expand and customize the program without having to know any coding. I have extensions that let me take in characters and other content from D&D Beyond and also connect it with World Anvil.

Foundry is also the VTT that finally got me into actually using lighting, line-of-sight, and auto-reveal features. I find it easier than other VTTs and actually use it for most of my maps now. But I can still pull up a map with fog of war and throw tokens on it quickly. Not as quickly as Map Tool, but quick enough. It is actively and rapidly developed with a very active modding community, several of whom have successful patreons that fund them. The main thing is is missing is official WOTC content if you care about that, though it does support 5e open game content. I would also like to see more automation like Fantasy Grounds for 5e. But that is a nice-to-have for me, not a must have. While I like all of FG's automations, there is a high cost and high learning curve to take advantage of them and I found I could really only take advantage of it if I stuck with official WOTC adventures. For third party stuff, I would have to do a lot of data entry that I have no interest in.

I also like how their is a growing community making very slick, fully-prepared adventures for foundry with all the lighting, walls, statblocks, adventure text, etc. preentered. I'm hoping this leads to a lot of content being developed by third-party publishers who can do so without having to contract with Foundry, use Foundry's shop, etc. If Foundry gains a big enough customer base, I think it would provide one of the more profitable ways to sell VTT-ready adventure content.

@MNblockhead Quoting you to say thanks for your posts a month or two ago where you covered a lot of this. Our group had been poking around at various Roll20 replacements for a while, and your posts helped get me off the fence enough to run a short (few sessions) adventure on Foundry. The whole group loved it -- especially our main DM -- and we switched our main campaign over to Foundry about 6 weeks ago.

It's been great, and our experience so far matches up with yours. We are also using Forge for hosting -- even though we have several folks in the group who could set up the servers, it's well worth it for us. Thanks again!

Edit: Even beyond the flashy stuff in Foundry, the thing I like best is that it has actually sped up our group's play. Our main campaign is at in tier 3 now and there were a lot of things slowing folks down. The speed up in mechanical/rolling/bookkeeping stuff has given us more session time for everything else.

 

[Hussar]

Sshhh! Don't say that out loud! How dare you imply that different people want different things.

Don't you know, one person's opinion is always correct and other's view on user interface are not permitted

Yep. There are two opinions. Mine and the one that's a steaming pile of donkey poo that is so ludicrous that I assume the person that posted it is just trolling.

Wow. Whodathunk that criticizing the all mighty FG would drag out the usual ardent defenders.

Ok, let's talk. We're looking at a program without drop down menus - a standard on EVERY program in the world. A program without tiled windows. A program where the font cannot be changed. A program where the font size cannot be changed without changing the entire UI. There are no native color options - everything has to be changed through plugins which may or may not work with the next upgrade, causing the entire program to crash and the possible loss of your entire campaign.

These are options available in Windows 95. I could adjust all these things in OpenRPG in 2002. Radial menus? Yeah, that was fun in Planescape Torment for my Windows XP machine, but, kinda out of date in 2020.

But, sure, I'm just trolling. I'm soooo sorry for thinking the FG UI is ugly and saying a single negative thing about the program in the same post where I was defending the program. I'll just go back to pointing out that Fantasy Grounds, for the most expensive option on the market, lacks basic functionality that has been around for TWENTY YEARS in free options.

 

[Oofta]

Wow. Whodathunk that criticizing the all mighty FG would drag out the usual ardent defenders.

Ok, let's talk. We're looking at a program without drop down menus - a standard on EVERY program in the world. A program without tiled windows. A program where the font cannot be changed. A program where the font size cannot be changed without changing the entire UI. There are no native color options - everything has to be changed through plugins which may or may not work with the next upgrade, causing the entire program to crash and the possible loss of your entire campaign.

These are options available in Windows 95. I could adjust all these things in OpenRPG in 2002. Radial menus? Yeah, that was fun in Planescape Torment for my Windows XP machine, but, kinda out of date in 2020.

But, sure, I'm just trolling. I'm soooo sorry for thinking the FG UI is ugly and saying a single negative thing about the program in the same post where I was defending the program. I'll just go back to pointing out that Fantasy Grounds, for the most expensive option on the market, lacks basic functionality that has been around for TWENTY YEARS in free options.

Wow. You really can't tell when something is a joke? You know ha ha? Poking fun at myself? Jocularity?

Good grief.

 

[LordEntrails]

We're looking at a program without drop down menus - a standard on EVERY program in the world.

That is a blatantly false. Please stop making false statements.

I'm just trolling

Since you said so, please stop doing that as well.

 

[Nilbog]

When the pandemic hit and we realised that it was a long term fix we jumped onto the roll20 band wagon, however due to its lack of support we had to abandon our pf2e campaign that I was running and my friend started up a 5e campaign, and it's been pretty good, considering only the DM currently pays for it, so as a free service hats off to it, yes it's a bit clunky and lacking in some areas but it does the job. I hasten to add we use twitch for audio/video chat which helps.

In the meantime loathe to abandon my pf2e campaign I did some research and was pointed in the direction of foundry, and it's an amazing piece of kit, so much customisation available and pretty much a plug in for everything, technically it's head and shoulders above roll20, but with it there is an extra degree of complexity and learning curve and it's takes more time than roll20 to get into, but it's worth it