Hello fellow Hivers & Roleplayers!
It's been almost 10 days since I last posted anything, but I was kinda busy (and still am), but I know consistence is important around here. If you forgot who I am or don't know yet, KNOW ME!
With this blog post, I will try to share my VTT experience with you guys, I hope it helps people who wants to play Tabletop RPG online, or improve their online play. Let's do it step by step!
What the hell is VTT?
VTT is an acronym for Virtual Tabletop, refers to a digital platform which can help you organizing and running tabletop roleplaying games easier.
I can hear some saying "What about our Discord game sessions?", and all I can say is I feel sorry for you, guys. Big time. Because Discord dice bots are not useful all the time, and when you share info, image and stuff, it's kinda waste of time to find it back and move between images or notes. And, when you want to use a battlemap, it's a huge facepalm.
VTT gives you a big opportunity to reach multiple stuff simultaneously. You can share whatever you want with whoever you want, you can keep your GM notes to yourself, you can track combat, organize the battle map AND everything is on ONE. SIMPLE. INTERFACE! That's it!
So, how can you find a good VTT? Which one is a better suit for you? Let's find out!
Roll20
Roll20 is the most popular VTT, based on a web browser. But, is that all? NOPE. I will quickly give you pros and cons:
Pros:
- Supports an extremely huge variety of game systems, as well as their character sheets on action.
- Supports music sharing, so you can adjust your playlist before the game, and listen with your players.
- Sells Roll20 versions of some rulebooks and adventures.
- You can use it freely, with no cost. (And this is the main reason of its popularity)
Cons:
- You will need storage, so you have to pay monthly or annually to keep that storage.
- Does not support mobile web interface, supports tablet interface if you have PRO account.
- Recently released a mobile app, but it doesn't support GM roles.
- When your story goes further, you will have to organize more "scenes" for transition, which means more work load on GM side.
- Tracking combat is so pain in the butt, which makes using pen & paper more practical.
If your game does not need much details, and if you play your games mostly as Theater of Mind method, you can stick with Roll20. And if you can do a little research as a player, you can find lots of useful macros for your character.
Foundry VTT
Foundry is a huge step to bring most of the stuff further, but practically it's kinda behind of Fantasy Grounds. But still, have better features than Roll20.
Pros:
- Uses your PC as a server, and supports web interface for players.
- Supports mobile interface and works well on mobile.
- Has great line of sight features, weather and lighting effects.
- You can improve your gaming experience like there's no tomorrow, with mods.
- You can give GM permissions to anyone you want, and they can run games by using the web interface.
- Has the best designed and customizable interface.
Cons:
- Does not support much official contents, like D&D core rulebooks and supplemental books.
- When you give GM permission to someone, you still need to keep your software open, because of servering reasons.
- You have to spend hours and hours to make your game actually good.
- No automation.
- Has a weird learning curve.
Foundry is kinda good, if you like visual modification more than anything. It costs 50$ as a one-time price, and if you don't suffer time issues, it can be a chill activity to create your game. I don't have much time for it, because I currently run 7 games a week, and I read PDFs and do video edits when I don't run my games.
Fantasy Grounds
Fantasy Grounds is the best there is, according to my very own GM and player experience. I'm using it since late 2016 and still using it for my paid game sessions. It has two versions, old one is called Fantasy Grounds Classic, and new one is called Fantasy Grounds Unity. After a year FGU had released, they announced that they will not support FGC anymore. Think it like FGC as 3.x version, and FGU as 4.0+ version of the software.
Pros:
- You can get it on Steam, which means you can buy it with a localized price if USD is expensive on your currency.
- Technically you can add everything you want by writing manually, or you have the option to buy them as a DLC.
- Everything works as drag-and-drop, so you don't need to worry about much of the stuff.
- You can open every info and images in their own little windows, can minimize them to a little buttons or drag them into macro bar on the bottom of the screen for later use.
- Battlemaps of official scenarios have all notes, encounters and images pinned on it, and encounters are already organized for instant fight.
- Combat tracker is pretty useful.
- Has different kind of rulesets for different game systems, so every ruleset is system-specific. Like when you play D&D, you can check HP, AC and stuff, while when you play Call of Cthulhu, it becomes Characteristics, Sanity, Luck and stuff. And dice rolls give result according to ruleset, like critical attack roll on D&D and applies the critical damage, while when you fail on Call of Cthulhu it reminds you to spend your luck points to convert your fail to a success.
- It has line of sight, party vision, lighting, some weather effects.
- You can do more stuff with mods, but doesn't have much mods like Foundy has.
- You can read DLCs of books almost like you read a PDF by using its Reference Manual.
- You can export what you wrote manually as a module (.mod) file.
Cons:
- Interface is useful but not so beautiful. There are theme files but they're not so beautiful aswell.
- It doesn't automate everything. In D&D, you have to put class abilities and racial traits manually to the action tab to use.
- If you want to be a GM, you have to buy 2 licenses. One is the Standard License, technically buying the software, and the other is Ultimate License Upgrade which lets your players join even with DEMO version of FGU. It's a good thing that they don't have to pay anything, but still GM has to buy 2 license keys.
- It doesn't get more than 20% of discount on Steam. Like NEVER.
- If you mess up anything while doing drag-and-drop for creating characters, you cannot undo anything. You have to create it from the beginning.
- Doesn't support much game systems. But it supports almost every version of D&D up-to-date, Call of Cthulhu, Vampire: The Masquerade V5, and some Free League Publishing games.
Summarizing all, I use Fantasy Grounds for D&D and whatever ruleset they support officially. For other games, either I use Foundry VTT or Roll20, and keep them as "Theater of Mind" method, instead of more technical/strategic gameplay.
I hope you find this post useeful and it helps you improve your online games. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.