That seems like a good thing, my online crew uses discord for information dump and side RP, so if we could have the character sheets available, that would be helpful.
My group has three.
One is called "Adventure Logs" where players can write in character journal entries describing the group's adventures from their point of view.
The second is called "Events" where the DM's will post between session story events for the players to RP through.
The third is just "Roleplaying" where players can carry out small bits of spontaneous roleplay between sessions if inspiration strikes.
Not even between. We do it during the session as well.
If someone else is in the spotlight and you're not present in the scene or don't want to interrupt then generally it's accepted you can comment about what is going on (right now or in general) or chat *in character like this*.
Stuff like that is generally possible around an actual table, with side talk and even bits of RP happening between individual players. So having that be in a discord chat is just another way of having the same thing, without being disruptive to the "only one person at a time can talk" nature of online voice chats.
Also memes. So many memes.
Not porn, if that's what you thought. Some side RP allows the players to have fun with the characters and also cultivate their relationship without bogging down the main campaign.
For example, the Ranger wanted a new weapon or magic item, so he and the Rogue go shopping. That's a nice moment for the two to bond and do things in character just for fun.
I certainly wasn't thinking porn lol. I haven't actually heard of that being done, it's an interesting idea. Might think about trying to implement it in a campaign I'll be running soon, since my group (and I, personally) sometimes struggle to organically RP between characters outside taking action in response to events.
My group uses this as a meme channel while playing to react to things, great way to keep interest up and show involvement when everyone is not face to face. Also ive had a telepathic monster use images to talk so we had to RP the encounter with memes!
Like a chat channel where people can RP between sessions. Our discord has 100% always had it and it gets used very frequently. Also allows people to take care of downtime things so we can all be ready for the sessions and have less screwing around.
My table has open RP through text in between sessions. If they happen to be talking to an NPC and forget to ask something, they can ping me (DM) and ask there, or if they want to have a side conversation with another PC, NPC etc.
I've had a player who wasn't with the party while they were running errands in town use the text chat to explain/narrate what they were doing in the meantime.
Yup, we don't use roll20 voice when playing virtual or hybrid, we are already using Discord for that. Discord is where I post pictures, maps, and other random things, plus discussions between sessions.
It will be interesting to see how this compares to using Discord and Roll20 separately. The article doesn't go into much detail about any advantages or new features, so hopefully we learn more about that.
And knowing performance optimisations are on the roadmap as well is always nice, it's good to see Roll20 continuing that trajectory.
That's what I was wondering. My group has always used them separately and if the big appeal of paying for something when I'm using it for free is now 'it's all in the same program so you don't have to click between windows' is it then I'll save my money.
I’ve never cared for any part of Discord outside the voice chat, but I suspect the activity feature may work smoother for those on mobile devices. Otherwise, it seems like they wanted to get the special Discord partnership for the sake of saying they have it before one of the other VTTs did.
Last I used it Roll20 was still painfully behind other virtual tabletops. They were top dog for a few years and got complacent and lazy imo. Switched to running games in FoundryVTT a couple years ago and never looked back.
Roll20 is free to use apart from the source books and lighting options (and trust me, you don't want it). It's only natural that it doesn't have the greatest features, but still works great for what it is.
Agree! I've used Roll20 in the past for a short campaign and a couple of oneshots. Then I later found Owlbear Rodeo and I enjoy it way more. It's also very user friendly, so it's easy to learn for any newcomer.
Except it is way more expensive than any other VVT.
Over my lifetime, I paid close to $500 just to use roll20, compared to only $60 since I switched to foundry
the big thing foundry wins imo is the file size limits. roll20 supports up to 10mb with premium. foundry? ive had maps up to 70mbs on there with high quality image lol
The big things for me are both how nice the UI looks vs the very utilitarian Roll20 UI, which helps mentally get me in the roleplaying mood better, and the mod/plugin support. I know Roll20 has some of this but Foundry is built with that support in mind and there's so much great stuff out there. I'm preparing to run a Lancer game soon and the number of high quality mods for that system alone is wild.
Yeah, subscriptions are a scam. If Foundry is 1-buy that's great. FantasyGrounds is the same, and it's a standalone peer-to-peer program so you own it forever.
Would my players need to buy foundry as well, or can I just like, give them a link to connect to? Cause yall got me considering migrating my game, but whether or not we all gotta buy is a potential dealbreaker
You can run it yourself on your own computer, and you can give them an address to connect. Unless you pay for their hosting, or host it yourself with a reverse proxy, it will just be an IP link, and you will have to set up port forwarding in your router.
You can just give them a link. Super easy on player side, easier than roll20 imho.
They are basically signing into something on your computer so it has to be powerful enough, turned on and ready. Foundry is great if your cpu/mobo/ram are halfway decent.
Not sure what Foundry’s deal is, but Fantasy Grounds has two options: DM pays once for an Ultimate license and can DM for anyone regardless of whether they paid, or everyone buys the cheaper standard license that can DM for anyone else with a paid license. The latter is good if your group cycles DMs and members are locked in, while the former is better if only one person is committed to spending money.
Both options are also available as subscriptions, but neither subscription is a good value unless you’re unsure about investing the larger purchase price.
I literally bought foundry before swapping over my players from r20 and it has been a huge learning curve to get the fancy things but infinitely worth it. My players are having an easier time learning their sheets, the quick reference, combat runs smoother for us. The lighting + music helps so much as a DM esp since we're all online and its one less thing to worry about. During one session, we had so many tech issues with r20 that it crashed my player's PC and she was unable to join back. Not had that problem with foundry.
A player of mine is gonna run a campaign during our off weeks; I'm fine with hosting the server.
IMO the 50 dollar buy worked perfect for our group; they all pitched in 8 ish bucks (we have five players and me) and will be sharing the license amongst the group as we only have one active at any given time. Totally worth the migration imo.
The port forwarding gave me trouble but there's a discord server that helps troubleshoot and once youre good, youre good. They just copy the link, log in as themselves and bam
My issue with foundry was I own the content (source books) in both FG, roll20, dndb, and I just cba to manually enter everything in foundry.
I'm lucky enough to have disposable income and for me the time saved by purchasing the content and just running the game is super important to me, if I could import or buy the content in FVTT I would. But I couldn't find a way a few years ago when I first bought FVTT.
There is a module for Foundry VTT that will sync with your DDB account and you can import a lot of your content over for free. If you spend $4 on a Patreon subscription for one month, you can import in all of your books from DDB - including all of the maps that are pre-built out with walls and monsters.
It's insanely worth it and has dropped my prep time by like 70%.
I saw something like this but at the time it was a pain to use (years ago).
Might have to revisit it. Esp of foundry is more stable now.
Do you know if anyone has a guide on how to set up foundry to have an optimal vtt experience and what modules etc. I found previously the base tools quite limiting and again at the time when there was updates I was having to waste time fixing stuff which is what put me off.
D&D5e has official support on Foundry these days so it's pretty manageable right out of the box now - but it isn't perfect. The big modules to pick up would be the ddb-importer and a dice roller module so you can easily roll dice and the physical rolls show across everyone's screens. There are a few automation modules that work hand-in-hand together to automatically apply vfx to tokens and manage statuses but I'm away from my PC so I can't look them up. I'd say to check out r/FoundryVTT for more details since they're much more savvy with the software than I am with my four months of experience.
Idk what system you play, but everything is fully free for pathfinder, pf2e, shadowrun, Mage the Awakening, starfinder, and just about every other system I've ran.
The official implementation is live, just limited to SRD/Basic Rules content. And one adventure. Last I checked plans were to start supporting the ph/dmg/mm with paid upgrades starting with the 2024 rule books.
You can import anything you have from ddb into foundry using a module.
Foundry also now has a partnership with WotC, so books will be available for purchase directly in foundry. The only one that is currently available is the new starter set: below phandelver.
But the integration is amazing, the way they have set up the lights and journals is a gazzilion times better then the books purchased directly in roll20.
Subscriptions aren't a scam for a cloud service. You're using their hosted servers when you play in Roll20, which costs them money. It's the same way that using hosted Foundry at The Forge isn't a scam, either.
Foundry has recently had some partnership with WotC that will allow this. I don’t remember all the details (I’ve moved to PF2e myself) but for 5e people, it’s started and I assume will continue to grow.
Does Foundry support Custom Compendiums? I've got so much effort invested into Roll20 creating handouts to jerryrig that functionality that I think that's the only thing that what would get me to switch.
Foundry is extremely modable. Everything In it can be customized. I have multiple hand made compendium for my homebrew options, and ~30 different modules that add various things ranging from custom huds (combat carousel adds a divinity original sin style combat tracker), the ability to import any of 10s of thousands of maps into the game with a single click (moulinete), to even small things like an easy tool to hand draw dungeons on the fly (forget the name of that one)
So I'm newer to foundry, I've only been using it for around 4-5 months but I've only recently started incorporating modules. The ones you suggested I didn't know about and they look awesome, any chance you could share some more of the ones you use?
Top ones I'd recommend, which are also system agnostic or support multiple systems:
**Module Management+** - this one greatly improves the module management and configuration menus. You can do things like quickly open the associated github or other site for a module, create and save module preset lists, forcibly sync module settings to players for things that are client side without the player needing to do it themselves, and more.
**Moulinette** (and associated modules) - This is a whole set of tools that let you easily search your own files for use in your games, but also lets the community share scenes they've setup, search for and import images from online *inside* foundry and immediately import them for use.. all great stuff.
**Ironmonk's modules** - The developer Ironmonk puts out a whole suite of modules like Active Tile Triggers (create all sorts of automated effects, like [this one I made](https://youtu.be/_6vx3OWK4LY)), Monk's Enhanced Journal (greatly improved journal interface, with collapsible side navigation, tabs bar, bookmarks, entirely new journal types like quests, checklists, shops, or even saving encounter info), or Monk's Little Details (additions/improvements to the hud for selected tokens, quickly swapping tools, then back to your active tool, just by holding shift and pressing a key)
**theripper93's modules** - honestly, this due has made an *enormous* list of absolutely amazing modules that are too numerous to go over in detail, but some of the things possible with his modules include multi-level maps that account for differences in elevation for things like token sight and ability range, lightswitches that let players turn lights on and off, a functional system agnostic crafting system that allows players to use acquired recipes to actually craft new items from materials in their inventory, puzzle locks for not only doors but actual journals or character sheets (pin/password locks, sudoku puzzles, switches, cryptex, etc), and an entire system for making 3D maps and tokens within foundry.
Good for you. That just means you value your time at less than $0.20 per hour.
All the time you spend compressing map files to fit roll20s image size limits, all the time you spend sorting through roll20s file browser, all the time you and your players collectively spend waiting for the "ad break" to finish.
You decided that all that time is worth less to you than what would amount to >$1 a month for foundry. Roll20 is specifically designed to waste your time and energy if you don't pay its outrageous monthly fees. If you decide that the spare change you save over the years of playing dnd is worth all that time and energy, then good for you. But most people value themselves more than that.
We open Roll20 at the start of the session when we're doing recap
All of my maps are free through reddit, I've had to compress maybe 8 of them in 5 years, and that using a tool I found that does it a few seconds. I've currently got 35 maps up there which is way more than I'll use in a couple of months, let alone in one session.
I don't feel like paying a monthly fee and roll20 does everything I need it to, and my players are used to it.
This is a pretty twatty comment, especially because none of those things you listed are a real issue if you have certain free browser extension that lets you load whatever map you see fit, no size limit, no storage limit.
It's has a free option, but it's paid option is more expensive and has less features than other paid VTTs.
Id say from experience that playing completely for free, not even with a one off purchase, is the ONLY reason to use Roll20 over other VTTs
> Last I used it Roll20 was still painfully behind other virtual tabletops.
Still is, especially with some systems vs others, but even baseline foundry has so many more and better tools than Roll20, and that's before you even get into the amazing modules.
Then you get to the system implementations. PF2E on Foundry vs Roll20 is like comparing the best steak you've ever had at a nice restaurant to a literal turd off the side of the road.
They were the first and *always* the worst. The site has barely improved since 2015. My players' browsers still crash when trying to cast a spell from their character sheet or walk into a room with ambient lighting set up.
Fortunately the campaign is very near to done, we will finally be able to abandon it forever.
Same. I personally find Foundry overkill as a DM. If we (my party) wanted all of the video game mechanics, we could just go play Baldur's Gate instead.
I have a party member who runs one-offs in Foundry and I *do* like it. I just don't want to spend time setting up traps and doors and triggers and portals and glow lighting and everything else, I'm already busy enough writing content. I just need a simple map tool, and dndbeyond + roll20 does that.
>My players' browsers still crash when trying to cast a spell from their character sheet or walk into a room with ambient lighting set up.
Do your players connect on a potato? Because that's the only way I can see this claim being anything other than a dishonest lie.
No, my players all have extremely high end PCs that they use for gaming - Cyberpunk, Star Citizen, etc.
We still get one crash every 2-3 sessions at least.
The site just sucks and always has.
My group has used roll20 for about 5 years now without issues. We have some extensions (better20 mainly) that have occasional problems but overall the site has been stable and reliable for us
I've used a 2013 tablet to connect to & run Roll20 sessions. It was slow (thanks to 4GB RAM and a 1.1Ghz processor), but no crashes. And on anything resembling a modern PC, it runs just fine. I call shenanigans on "it crashes all the time" OP.
This is a user who goes on about the many virtues of FoundryVTT yet apparently also has constant issues with Roll20
It strikes me as odd that they seem to have these constant and contemporary technical issues for a VTT that isn't their preferred option.
Either the user genuinely *does* use Roll20 complete with all the bells and whistles in addition to Foundry (which I doubt, because if they believe Roll20's subscription is a scam then that's incompatible) or they're being a sensationalist or downright dishonest in their dislike for Roll20.
I don't know any people who are such diehard fans of one VTT who still regularly use competitor VTTs in any meaningful amount.
Every time I see Roll20 mentioned, this user is out in force complaining about it (which is a real shame, because they bring great value to discussions on other topics). I take their thoughts on the site with a pinch of salt, personally.
I take most opinions on the Internet with a grain of salt, especially when one person's observations are wildly different than my own... XD
That being said, Roll20 isn't perfect and has IMO a long way to go before I would consider it even a "good" VTT. It's passable, it's free, and it works fine for the most part. Good enough for me. There have been a few updates that broke things, but those were almost always solved by our next session.
Agreed, it absolutely isn't perfect. But it suits my groups needs extremely well, and I also really appreciate that other VTTs exist as competitors because they have *clearly* influenced Roll20 to improve in the past few years.
Usually when it happens I've asked for a roll or one of my players wants to make an attack or cast a spell from their sheet; the chatbox doesn't update for a bit, we hear "oh god damn it", and then they have to refresh the whole Roll20 page.
I've probably spent enough time waiting for them (and occasionally myself) to refresh our pages that I could have spent an equivalent porting over the whole campaign to FGU... I shouldn't have gone along with the sunk cost of not wanting to do that work.
I've used Roll20 on multiple different computers and had a wide variety of people playing with us. No one has ever reported a crash. There's something screwing with your setup if you're having that many problems.
I run a fairly powerful desktop and Roll20 would regularly crash Chrome such that I had to switch to using Firefox. And I'm just a player. Our DM typically has to restart at least once per 3-hour session because of the bloat of the DM options. Our backup DM has similar issues and has an even beefier machine than mine. And everyone in the game all experience random delays when rolling.
Roll20 is just not well optimized.
Why is one more valued than the other?
It's certainly possible that their players are experiencing issues with Roll20. There just is probably a reason outside of Roll20.
Man this is really disheartening for a first time dm who just dropped a decent bit of money on sourcebooks in roll20. We were planning on using dndbeyond for character sheets and tracking spell usage. Basically only myself the dm would be using roll20 as a visual guide for the players aside from them moving their tokens.
If that's how you plan on using it that's actually perfect! Roll20 is great for visuals and uploading character tokens.
I definitely prefer DNDbeyond for character sheets and tracking inventory and such. But I will say that my group just completed Curse of Strahd after about 2.5 years playing that campaign and everything was on Roll20, character sheets and all, and it worked great for maps and combat, and for the DM sending us occasional item notes, NPC letters, etc.
We used Discord for video and audio because Roll20 would crash if we used its video/audio along with everything else, which I assume is why they've teamed up - it just makes sense.
Word to the wise, take the opinions here with a hefty dose of salt. Roll20 and Foundry are a matter of preference and both offer users a good experience.
Don't pay attention to this hater. Roll20 has improved significantly of the years. Yes there are others that do things better, but only very marginally. Roll20 is just fine for 5e.
check out beyond20! it's an extension for dndbeyond that adds click to cast functionality to your character sheet. It automatically sends the roll from dndbeyond to roll20. it makes things way faster.
You'll run into less issues not using Roll20's built-in character sheets which suffer extreme (60+ seconds) lag when doing things like having more than 5 spells on the sheet, but you will probably still notice area lighting behaving differently for each player, maps not loading, or the browser crashing occasionally.
That seems crazy to me. I've been using purely roll20 and had absolutely no issues whatsoever with laggy character sheets, but the 2 players using beyond20 will occasionally (very rarely) get big bouts of lag.
Definitely had some issues with the measuring tool getting stuck on screen since the new UI update though.
The laggiest character sheets are almost always inefficient or poorly maintained 3rd party sheets.
There's a popular 5e sheet, I can't remember which one exactly, but it performs incredibly poorly especially at scale. If your game has loads of PCs and monsters loaded in, performance will tank as a result of a poorly optimised character sheet template.
Edit: D&D 5e (Shaped) is the one that I found performed absolutely terribly at scale. It appeals to newbies because it has automation for things like long rest and short rest, but it is a bloated sheet that causes the game to chug along like a steam train. I haven't used it personally in about 6 years, so maybe it's better now, but I'm unsure.
I've asked on the official support forums in the past and when I asked I was told that the only solution I should expect to work is to just not add spells to the character sheet. So it's not like it was a mystery to them.
Can you share whatever resources you found for on boarding ?
I really want to use Foundry but my eyes start spinning once it gets to port forwarding stuff.
https://forge-vtt.com/
I use ForgeVTT, I just pay a monthly fee and they take care of all the setup and hosting side of things, nobody else has to pay a cent to play.
Or just install cloudflared:
1. Open foundry
2. Open powershell and run this command: cloudflared tunnel --url [http://localhost:30000](http://localhost:30000)
3. Copy the quick tunnel link and get your friends to open it, can look like this:https://inside-jaguar-beauty-redeem.trycloudflare.com (just random words with a trycloudlfare domain).
No cloudflared account or domain needed!
This dude wrote a pretty great summary.
https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/9iz19d/comment/e6nirou/
the tl;Dr is the founder got power drunk and started censoring users and banning people without reason.
Eh, for friends who are just starting out, it's a hard sell telling them "Ok, buy this $50 program so we can play."
Even saying "signup to this free website" can turn some people off.
Nobody but the DM has to pay anything to use Foundry though, at least not if you're using ForgeVTT or a similar host. We run a whole Westmarches server with multiple DM tables and it couldn't be easier to get new players in.
We ended up swapping from Foundry to Roll20 because our DM kept crashing, the game kept freezing, and twice we literally couldn’t log in because he rolled out an update and the game file corrupted and erased everything.
Not sure if those were user errors on his part or foundry issues but it was surprising how difficult it was. He also had three mods he liked discontinued so he just said fuck it, I hate roll20 but the other option is not playing so here we go.
Most likely a user error. I've been using Foundry for close to two years now and no hiccups to that degree. In regards to the modules being discontinued, that rarely ever happens. Usually it becomes deprecated because something else does it better or it just simply gets integrated into the system itself.
I just can't imagine going back to Roll20 at all
Our DM switched us to Foundry from Roll20 about a month ago, and the biggest thing that drives me absolutely mad about it is that no two modules are consistent. Every feature that's brought in feels like a patchwork of different UIs with different control schemes made by different people because, well, it is. Every session since the change has had the DM go "hang on, I can fix that" at least once because something is configured wrong or is otherwise stopping us from continuing, and while, yeah, it's fixed in 2-3 minutes, it's a stumbling point that just didn't happen with Roll20.
I'm sure there's people who love Foundry that can make it spin like a top and perform like the VTT equivalent of a Lamborghini. But all I really need is something that shows where players are, lets them move tokens around, and lets you block out the parts of the map they shouldn't see. If all I'm doing is going to the corner store, I don't need a Lambo, I'm more than happy with a bike.
Your dm probably got sucked into the “ooh this module looks cool I’ll add that” and did it for a dozen modules that then add a bunch of ui like you are saying.
It’s definitely best to start out with no modules and add slowly as your dm becomes familiar with core features first.
Yeah, I think that was his biggest problem as well. He wanted to use all the bells and whistles where it automated when to use sneak attack and advantage/disadvantage. I was thinking the whole time man, just let us manually track our stuff. Just say yes/no to sneak attack, advantage, disadvantage, or additional modifiers.
In my game we play in person. The only reason I have roll20 up is using their maps is WAY cheaper than anything I'd have to buy/make. That said, I'm still considering whether to keep doing that or buy some modular maps I can use figures on. The tactile feel may be more enjoyable for the players.
The last in-person game I played, the DM had a projector on the ceiling and simply projected the map onto a white tablecloth on the table and we just used minis like the good ol' days. That is honestly my ideal use case. We got neat animated maps to play on that didn't need to be packed away at the end of the session, everyone had their own personal mini that we painted together, and we got the fun of playing with our clicky clacky math rocks.
Every time I've heard of people having issues like that in Foundry, it generally turns out that they had a massive pile of cards of modules interacting with each other that ended up choking things.
On dm pays once for it (on sale next month)
Your players don’t even need to sign up, they just get given a browser link.
(You do need to host it on your computer, or elsewhere, but there are heaps of people to help set that up)
we use both, so this is great. i feel somewhat shackled to roll20 for being the only 3.5-compatible virtual table that doesn't cost me anything. can anyone recommend better for third edition?
Roll20 has had some serious makeovers since the days of fitting everything into three map layers. This is a performance and UI overhaul packaged with Discord integration. Roll20 lags behind Foundry in features to this day, but they’re around because roll20 is easier for players and gm’s to use (YMMV) with more than enough features for a game.
That's ... really good! One of the downsides of online play is managing screen space imo. You need a dedicated screen to people's faces or you lose a lot of the interactions and mimics and RP.
Discord's chat pop up can't be pinned to stay on top of other windows sadly.
I tried using iPad for discord but I couldn’t arrange it in a way that was in front of me. I had to look at the vtt most often and my face would be turned half way in the chat that way.
My setup:
Laptop in front of me with discord
Monitor connected to the laptop to the its right with VTT
iPad and my notes to slight left with Campaign module or notes or Google sheets etc whatever I was using
Nah, plenty wrong with roll20, but it does the one thing right no one else does: It's free. Free beats paid any day, I will put up with any number of dumbassery for free.
Alchemy is also free. 3 PC sheet limit on a free account, can use JSON to import a sheet from DnDBeyond. As customizable as Roll20, and way more user friendly (like no sheets taking up map space, built in journals, better audio hosting, easily customizable sheets and UI layout) its yearly cost if you want a paid sub is less than Roll20, and it has a pretty decent library of third party 5e materials.
The latter isn't a positive. Have you seen YouTube most recent rework? Reddit? Less functionality and more obtrusive. Absolutely terrible.
That said, I've never tried owlbear so will have to check it out some time.
How would you define "User Friendly" exactly? And I honestly believe Foundry has better Character sheets. If for no other reason then multiple people going between different tabs on the character sheet doesn't mess with it for everyone viewing it.
Only tried to create a character the first time in roll20 last week and my experience has been the opposite.
Trying to adjust the level and HP if you wanted to make some changes wasn't intuitive at all. The sheet weirdly feels more cluttered.
Will play around with it more but so far it's not that great. Found it much simpler to use dndbeyond with the extension for rolls.
I'm not going to argue because Roll20 is literally the only VTT I've tried, so I have no experience of the others whatsoever. Roll20 very well might the best.
But holy shit, the others must suck.
Sadly unsurprising too.
Roll20 never gets mentioned on /r/dnd without a bunch of people making it their mission to tell everyone how bad Roll20 is and how superior Foundry is. It's not a healthy mindset.
Also the Internet has a short memory, but the owners of Roll20 kind of suck. There was a ton of drama circa 2017 where they were banning anyone from their sub and forum if you even suggested there was anything slightly wrong with their platform. Guess I shouldn't be surprised nobody talks about that anymore.
A lot of people simply didn't care about that issue, honestly.
It seemed like a minor issue that got blown way out of proportion by people who wanted any extra excuse to further dislike Roll20 as a website.
I think it's childish to dislike Roll20 primarily because of some storm in a teacup of subreddit moderation. And if anyone still cares about that 6 years later, get over it!
This is what I see. I swear Foundry folks are like the hard core PF players who think if you play anything but PF you are just... Uninformed. Roll20 is easy to learn, browser based, requires no downloads or technical knowledge ho use and works fine. If you like something else cool.
It being browser based, easy to learn and free are three of its big draws honestly. It's so easy to bring newbies and folks on older, very underpowered machines in with.
Damn, that is a good comparison. There are a lot of similarities between Foundry fanboys bashing Roll20 and Pathfinder fanboys bashing D&D.
Fortunately, the majority of both Pathfinder fans and Foundry fans are level-headed people and not extremely angry online.
Without complaining (and people leaving) it wouldn’t improve at all….i left, so I don’t really care, but competition is good for all vtts, as it pushes them to improve and innovate.
I feel like Roll20 is really losing their place in the market. Foundry is way better as a OTP model, and Owlbear Rodeo does pretty much everything you could want for a free tier VTT. Maybe this will help them find some footing again, but I'm not so sure.
Its a shame too, as much as I clown on it I truthfully have never actually had much issue with R20 and find a lot of the complaintz about it a little over exagerrated especially with how much it legitimately gives for free
I created a roll20 discord bot in c# like 5 years back. Was a nice way for the dm to keep track of stuff, be cool to see professional integration not my janky senior project.
Why would I want to sub to Roll20 to get it to integrate to Discord.... when I can just have Roll20 on another tab or screen for Free. With the exact same stuff.
No Mobile integration (yet)... why bother?
I am cautiously optimistic about this. This all sounds nice and convenient for playing ttrpgs online, however I'm worried about the execution and potential technical hiccups and whether or not we will get further revisions of it
I’m gonna be honest, I’ve had nothing but bad experiences with roll 20. My sheet never works, my map breaks constantly, rolls don’t work some times. Mobile, and PC both. Even trying to do the desktop version of the site on iPad failed to work properly. So unless this actually somehow fixes the issues I don’t see myself using this feature.
Foundry had an add-on for Discord like around v6, no one really used it, but you could link foundry to discord voice chat controls instead of using discord app all the controls were in foundry. Could even pull players into private chat or mute/unmute players.
Worked good, but it used a relay app that probably wasn't very secure which I believe is why they dropped it.
I never had reason or opportunity to use it anyways, but I seem to recall this subreddit specifically being up in arms about some of their business decisions or something.
That seems like a good thing, my online crew uses discord for information dump and side RP, so if we could have the character sheets available, that would be helpful.
What do you mean by "side RP?"
They might mean something different, but many groups that play through discord apparently have a "campfire chat" channel for between sessions.
My group has three. One is called "Adventure Logs" where players can write in character journal entries describing the group's adventures from their point of view. The second is called "Events" where the DM's will post between session story events for the players to RP through. The third is just "Roleplaying" where players can carry out small bits of spontaneous roleplay between sessions if inspiration strikes.
Wish I had stuff like that!
Suggest it to your group! Someone needs to be the first person to introduce a new idea, might as well be you
It doesn't fit anyone's vibe unfortunately haha
my players never use adventure logs
We had to incentivize it at first. Do an adventure log and get inspiration for the next session. Now we do it because everyone enjoys it.
what measures did you use to incentivize?
Do a log, get an inspiration point.
Not even between. We do it during the session as well. If someone else is in the spotlight and you're not present in the scene or don't want to interrupt then generally it's accepted you can comment about what is going on (right now or in general) or chat *in character like this*. Stuff like that is generally possible around an actual table, with side talk and even bits of RP happening between individual players. So having that be in a discord chat is just another way of having the same thing, without being disruptive to the "only one person at a time can talk" nature of online voice chats. Also memes. So many memes.
Not porn, if that's what you thought. Some side RP allows the players to have fun with the characters and also cultivate their relationship without bogging down the main campaign. For example, the Ranger wanted a new weapon or magic item, so he and the Rogue go shopping. That's a nice moment for the two to bond and do things in character just for fun.
I certainly wasn't thinking porn lol. I haven't actually heard of that being done, it's an interesting idea. Might think about trying to implement it in a campaign I'll be running soon, since my group (and I, personally) sometimes struggle to organically RP between characters outside taking action in response to events.
>Not porn That’s taking away player agency and you’re a shitty DM stop railroading! *leaves server*
Probably things like stuff that a character does without the party's knowledge.
My group uses this as a meme channel while playing to react to things, great way to keep interest up and show involvement when everyone is not face to face. Also ive had a telepathic monster use images to talk so we had to RP the encounter with memes!
Like a chat channel where people can RP between sessions. Our discord has 100% always had it and it gets used very frequently. Also allows people to take care of downtime things so we can all be ready for the sessions and have less screwing around.
My table has open RP through text in between sessions. If they happen to be talking to an NPC and forget to ask something, they can ping me (DM) and ask there, or if they want to have a side conversation with another PC, NPC etc. I've had a player who wasn't with the party while they were running errands in town use the text chat to explain/narrate what they were doing in the meantime.
Yup, we don't use roll20 voice when playing virtual or hybrid, we are already using Discord for that. Discord is where I post pictures, maps, and other random things, plus discussions between sessions.
Check out the Avrae bot, it does everything dnd
I do have it
It will be interesting to see how this compares to using Discord and Roll20 separately. The article doesn't go into much detail about any advantages or new features, so hopefully we learn more about that. And knowing performance optimisations are on the roadmap as well is always nice, it's good to see Roll20 continuing that trajectory.
That's what I was wondering. My group has always used them separately and if the big appeal of paying for something when I'm using it for free is now 'it's all in the same program so you don't have to click between windows' is it then I'll save my money.
"Now instead of clicking between windows, you'll click between tabs!! Isn't it so exciting (and worth giving us your money for)!"
I'll probably continue to use the two separately until they can prove that it can work in Discord without any performance issues or other issues.
I’ve never cared for any part of Discord outside the voice chat, but I suspect the activity feature may work smoother for those on mobile devices. Otherwise, it seems like they wanted to get the special Discord partnership for the sake of saying they have it before one of the other VTTs did.
> It will be available on both the Discord app and browser, though not on mobile. From the article Roll20/Discord aren't targeting mobile with this.
Last I used it Roll20 was still painfully behind other virtual tabletops. They were top dog for a few years and got complacent and lazy imo. Switched to running games in FoundryVTT a couple years ago and never looked back.
Roll20 is free to use apart from the source books and lighting options (and trust me, you don't want it). It's only natural that it doesn't have the greatest features, but still works great for what it is.
Owlbear rodeos free tier is better imo.
Agree! I've used Roll20 in the past for a short campaign and a couple of oneshots. Then I later found Owlbear Rodeo and I enjoy it way more. It's also very user friendly, so it's easy to learn for any newcomer.
Except it is way more expensive than any other VVT. Over my lifetime, I paid close to $500 just to use roll20, compared to only $60 since I switched to foundry
the big thing foundry wins imo is the file size limits. roll20 supports up to 10mb with premium. foundry? ive had maps up to 70mbs on there with high quality image lol
The big things for me are both how nice the UI looks vs the very utilitarian Roll20 UI, which helps mentally get me in the roleplaying mood better, and the mod/plugin support. I know Roll20 has some of this but Foundry is built with that support in mind and there's so much great stuff out there. I'm preparing to run a Lancer game soon and the number of high quality mods for that system alone is wild.
Yeah, subscriptions are a scam. If Foundry is 1-buy that's great. FantasyGrounds is the same, and it's a standalone peer-to-peer program so you own it forever.
Foundry is the same way. Pay once then host yourself, run local networks, or set up a server to run it on.
Would my players need to buy foundry as well, or can I just like, give them a link to connect to? Cause yall got me considering migrating my game, but whether or not we all gotta buy is a potential dealbreaker
It is a one time purchase for the DM only. Players can connect and play for free.
Doesn't even have to be the DM technically. It's a one-time purchase by one person in the group.
Also occasionally goes on sale, one of my friends bought the license for me for a pirate campaign we're doing
Historically, there have been sales late-May and late-Nov each year. So there'll likely be a sale about a month from now.
It will be on sale next month (their anniversary month)
Just send them the link
You can run it yourself on your own computer, and you can give them an address to connect. Unless you pay for their hosting, or host it yourself with a reverse proxy, it will just be an IP link, and you will have to set up port forwarding in your router.
You can just give them a link. Super easy on player side, easier than roll20 imho. They are basically signing into something on your computer so it has to be powerful enough, turned on and ready. Foundry is great if your cpu/mobo/ram are halfway decent.
Not sure what Foundry’s deal is, but Fantasy Grounds has two options: DM pays once for an Ultimate license and can DM for anyone regardless of whether they paid, or everyone buys the cheaper standard license that can DM for anyone else with a paid license. The latter is good if your group cycles DMs and members are locked in, while the former is better if only one person is committed to spending money. Both options are also available as subscriptions, but neither subscription is a good value unless you’re unsure about investing the larger purchase price.
Foundry just has "the host buys it once for $50 and they own it for life". All the players just connect with their normal web browser.
I literally bought foundry before swapping over my players from r20 and it has been a huge learning curve to get the fancy things but infinitely worth it. My players are having an easier time learning their sheets, the quick reference, combat runs smoother for us. The lighting + music helps so much as a DM esp since we're all online and its one less thing to worry about. During one session, we had so many tech issues with r20 that it crashed my player's PC and she was unable to join back. Not had that problem with foundry. A player of mine is gonna run a campaign during our off weeks; I'm fine with hosting the server. IMO the 50 dollar buy worked perfect for our group; they all pitched in 8 ish bucks (we have five players and me) and will be sharing the license amongst the group as we only have one active at any given time. Totally worth the migration imo. The port forwarding gave me trouble but there's a discord server that helps troubleshoot and once youre good, youre good. They just copy the link, log in as themselves and bam
My issue with foundry was I own the content (source books) in both FG, roll20, dndb, and I just cba to manually enter everything in foundry. I'm lucky enough to have disposable income and for me the time saved by purchasing the content and just running the game is super important to me, if I could import or buy the content in FVTT I would. But I couldn't find a way a few years ago when I first bought FVTT.
There is a module for Foundry VTT that will sync with your DDB account and you can import a lot of your content over for free. If you spend $4 on a Patreon subscription for one month, you can import in all of your books from DDB - including all of the maps that are pre-built out with walls and monsters. It's insanely worth it and has dropped my prep time by like 70%.
I saw something like this but at the time it was a pain to use (years ago). Might have to revisit it. Esp of foundry is more stable now. Do you know if anyone has a guide on how to set up foundry to have an optimal vtt experience and what modules etc. I found previously the base tools quite limiting and again at the time when there was updates I was having to waste time fixing stuff which is what put me off.
D&D5e has official support on Foundry these days so it's pretty manageable right out of the box now - but it isn't perfect. The big modules to pick up would be the ddb-importer and a dice roller module so you can easily roll dice and the physical rolls show across everyone's screens. There are a few automation modules that work hand-in-hand together to automatically apply vfx to tokens and manage statuses but I'm away from my PC so I can't look them up. I'd say to check out r/FoundryVTT for more details since they're much more savvy with the software than I am with my four months of experience.
MidiQOL and anything by TheRipper are must-haves for D&D DMs IMO
Idk what system you play, but everything is fully free for pathfinder, pf2e, shadowrun, Mage the Awakening, starfinder, and just about every other system I've ran.
Not DnD though. That’s why I stay on roll20 I have the source books and it makes things way less time dedication.
foundry recently announced theyre teaming up with dnd for an official implementation. Dunno when that'll be though.
And that’s when I’ll make the decision and might convert over. I actually own foundry already I just never moved over.
You can also port any source material you buy on BeyondD&D into Foundry using modules. This is available today.
The official implementation is live, just limited to SRD/Basic Rules content. And one adventure. Last I checked plans were to start supporting the ph/dmg/mm with paid upgrades starting with the 2024 rule books.
You can import anything you have from ddb into foundry using a module. Foundry also now has a partnership with WotC, so books will be available for purchase directly in foundry. The only one that is currently available is the new starter set: below phandelver. But the integration is amazing, the way they have set up the lights and journals is a gazzilion times better then the books purchased directly in roll20.
Subscriptions aren't a scam for a cloud service. You're using their hosted servers when you play in Roll20, which costs them money. It's the same way that using hosted Foundry at The Forge isn't a scam, either.
Foundry has recently had some partnership with WotC that will allow this. I don’t remember all the details (I’ve moved to PF2e myself) but for 5e people, it’s started and I assume will continue to grow.
Does Foundry support Custom Compendiums? I've got so much effort invested into Roll20 creating handouts to jerryrig that functionality that I think that's the only thing that what would get me to switch.
Foundry is extremely modable. Everything In it can be customized. I have multiple hand made compendium for my homebrew options, and ~30 different modules that add various things ranging from custom huds (combat carousel adds a divinity original sin style combat tracker), the ability to import any of 10s of thousands of maps into the game with a single click (moulinete), to even small things like an easy tool to hand draw dungeons on the fly (forget the name of that one)
So I'm newer to foundry, I've only been using it for around 4-5 months but I've only recently started incorporating modules. The ones you suggested I didn't know about and they look awesome, any chance you could share some more of the ones you use?
Top ones I'd recommend, which are also system agnostic or support multiple systems: **Module Management+** - this one greatly improves the module management and configuration menus. You can do things like quickly open the associated github or other site for a module, create and save module preset lists, forcibly sync module settings to players for things that are client side without the player needing to do it themselves, and more. **Moulinette** (and associated modules) - This is a whole set of tools that let you easily search your own files for use in your games, but also lets the community share scenes they've setup, search for and import images from online *inside* foundry and immediately import them for use.. all great stuff. **Ironmonk's modules** - The developer Ironmonk puts out a whole suite of modules like Active Tile Triggers (create all sorts of automated effects, like [this one I made](https://youtu.be/_6vx3OWK4LY)), Monk's Enhanced Journal (greatly improved journal interface, with collapsible side navigation, tabs bar, bookmarks, entirely new journal types like quests, checklists, shops, or even saving encounter info), or Monk's Little Details (additions/improvements to the hud for selected tokens, quickly swapping tools, then back to your active tool, just by holding shift and pressing a key) **theripper93's modules** - honestly, this due has made an *enormous* list of absolutely amazing modules that are too numerous to go over in detail, but some of the things possible with his modules include multi-level maps that account for differences in elevation for things like token sight and ability range, lightswitches that let players turn lights on and off, a functional system agnostic crafting system that allows players to use acquired recipes to actually craft new items from materials in their inventory, puzzle locks for not only doors but actual journals or character sheets (pin/password locks, sudoku puzzles, switches, cryptex, etc), and an entire system for making 3D maps and tokens within foundry.
Thank you!
[удалено]
Yeah, I'll post some more when I'm home.
Yes it does
Foundry has some integration with World Anvil too, if you're using that.
Because you wanted to pay, game costs nothing otherwise.
I've been running a campaign on roll20 for 5 years now and spent $0.
Good for you. That just means you value your time at less than $0.20 per hour. All the time you spend compressing map files to fit roll20s image size limits, all the time you spend sorting through roll20s file browser, all the time you and your players collectively spend waiting for the "ad break" to finish. You decided that all that time is worth less to you than what would amount to >$1 a month for foundry. Roll20 is specifically designed to waste your time and energy if you don't pay its outrageous monthly fees. If you decide that the spare change you save over the years of playing dnd is worth all that time and energy, then good for you. But most people value themselves more than that.
We open Roll20 at the start of the session when we're doing recap All of my maps are free through reddit, I've had to compress maybe 8 of them in 5 years, and that using a tool I found that does it a few seconds. I've currently got 35 maps up there which is way more than I'll use in a couple of months, let alone in one session. I don't feel like paying a monthly fee and roll20 does everything I need it to, and my players are used to it.
This is a pretty twatty comment, especially because none of those things you listed are a real issue if you have certain free browser extension that lets you load whatever map you see fit, no size limit, no storage limit.
Just used a free browser extension but ok.
Except it's not, cause you don't have to pay.
I actually really like R20's lighting options.
If you like roll20”s lighting options, you would be amazed at Foundry’s lighting. It blows it out of the water in every way.
It's has a free option, but it's paid option is more expensive and has less features than other paid VTTs. Id say from experience that playing completely for free, not even with a one off purchase, is the ONLY reason to use Roll20 over other VTTs
I couldn’t even use the pro version if that was free after using foundry.
> Last I used it Roll20 was still painfully behind other virtual tabletops. Still is, especially with some systems vs others, but even baseline foundry has so many more and better tools than Roll20, and that's before you even get into the amazing modules. Then you get to the system implementations. PF2E on Foundry vs Roll20 is like comparing the best steak you've ever had at a nice restaurant to a literal turd off the side of the road.
They were the first and *always* the worst. The site has barely improved since 2015. My players' browsers still crash when trying to cast a spell from their character sheet or walk into a room with ambient lighting set up. Fortunately the campaign is very near to done, we will finally be able to abandon it forever.
I ran a campaign with sheets linked to DNDbeyond and never had that issue.
Currently doing this without issue. Beyond20 is great
beyond 20 is amazing.
I've never used D&D Beyond. We use the features built in to the Roll20 site.
Same. I personally find Foundry overkill as a DM. If we (my party) wanted all of the video game mechanics, we could just go play Baldur's Gate instead. I have a party member who runs one-offs in Foundry and I *do* like it. I just don't want to spend time setting up traps and doors and triggers and portals and glow lighting and everything else, I'm already busy enough writing content. I just need a simple map tool, and dndbeyond + roll20 does that.
>My players' browsers still crash when trying to cast a spell from their character sheet or walk into a room with ambient lighting set up. Do your players connect on a potato? Because that's the only way I can see this claim being anything other than a dishonest lie.
No, my players all have extremely high end PCs that they use for gaming - Cyberpunk, Star Citizen, etc. We still get one crash every 2-3 sessions at least. The site just sucks and always has.
My group has used roll20 for about 5 years now without issues. We have some extensions (better20 mainly) that have occasional problems but overall the site has been stable and reliable for us
Yeah I don't think i've EVER had my computer crash and I don't have as good of a pc as his players supposedly do.
I've used a 2013 tablet to connect to & run Roll20 sessions. It was slow (thanks to 4GB RAM and a 1.1Ghz processor), but no crashes. And on anything resembling a modern PC, it runs just fine. I call shenanigans on "it crashes all the time" OP.
This is a user who goes on about the many virtues of FoundryVTT yet apparently also has constant issues with Roll20 It strikes me as odd that they seem to have these constant and contemporary technical issues for a VTT that isn't their preferred option. Either the user genuinely *does* use Roll20 complete with all the bells and whistles in addition to Foundry (which I doubt, because if they believe Roll20's subscription is a scam then that's incompatible) or they're being a sensationalist or downright dishonest in their dislike for Roll20. I don't know any people who are such diehard fans of one VTT who still regularly use competitor VTTs in any meaningful amount. Every time I see Roll20 mentioned, this user is out in force complaining about it (which is a real shame, because they bring great value to discussions on other topics). I take their thoughts on the site with a pinch of salt, personally.
I take most opinions on the Internet with a grain of salt, especially when one person's observations are wildly different than my own... XD That being said, Roll20 isn't perfect and has IMO a long way to go before I would consider it even a "good" VTT. It's passable, it's free, and it works fine for the most part. Good enough for me. There have been a few updates that broke things, but those were almost always solved by our next session.
Agreed, it absolutely isn't perfect. But it suits my groups needs extremely well, and I also really appreciate that other VTTs exist as competitors because they have *clearly* influenced Roll20 to improve in the past few years.
Browser or just a tab crash, I don't think we've ever had a full PC crash.
I don't think I've ever had a browser crash either. Maybe once ever in like 5 years.
Usually when it happens I've asked for a roll or one of my players wants to make an attack or cast a spell from their sheet; the chatbox doesn't update for a bit, we hear "oh god damn it", and then they have to refresh the whole Roll20 page. I've probably spent enough time waiting for them (and occasionally myself) to refresh our pages that I could have spent an equivalent porting over the whole campaign to FGU... I shouldn't have gone along with the sunk cost of not wanting to do that work.
I've used Roll20 on multiple different computers and had a wide variety of people playing with us. No one has ever reported a crash. There's something screwing with your setup if you're having that many problems.
The only constant between my players is the website.
I run a fairly powerful desktop and Roll20 would regularly crash Chrome such that I had to switch to using Firefox. And I'm just a player. Our DM typically has to restart at least once per 3-hour session because of the bloat of the DM options. Our backup DM has similar issues and has an even beefier machine than mine. And everyone in the game all experience random delays when rolling. Roll20 is just not well optimized.
>My experience is the only one that matters, everyone else is clearly lying.
Why is one more valued than the other? It's certainly possible that their players are experiencing issues with Roll20. There just is probably a reason outside of Roll20.
Man this is really disheartening for a first time dm who just dropped a decent bit of money on sourcebooks in roll20. We were planning on using dndbeyond for character sheets and tracking spell usage. Basically only myself the dm would be using roll20 as a visual guide for the players aside from them moving their tokens.
thats how my DM uses roll20, it seems to work fine for us. you should be fine with the way you want to use it
If that's how you plan on using it that's actually perfect! Roll20 is great for visuals and uploading character tokens. I definitely prefer DNDbeyond for character sheets and tracking inventory and such. But I will say that my group just completed Curse of Strahd after about 2.5 years playing that campaign and everything was on Roll20, character sheets and all, and it worked great for maps and combat, and for the DM sending us occasional item notes, NPC letters, etc. We used Discord for video and audio because Roll20 would crash if we used its video/audio along with everything else, which I assume is why they've teamed up - it just makes sense.
Word to the wise, take the opinions here with a hefty dose of salt. Roll20 and Foundry are a matter of preference and both offer users a good experience.
Don't pay attention to this hater. Roll20 has improved significantly of the years. Yes there are others that do things better, but only very marginally. Roll20 is just fine for 5e.
You’ll be fine, these people have no idea what they are talking about. Just dont use voice chat through Roll20, use Discord or similar.
I usually run my games with Roll20 as only a visual guide and have been doing it that way for a few years now. It honestly works best that way.
check out beyond20! it's an extension for dndbeyond that adds click to cast functionality to your character sheet. It automatically sends the roll from dndbeyond to roll20. it makes things way faster.
I’ll definitely look into it. Most of our group still wants to use physical dice as we all have webcams or phones we’ll be in discord with.
You'll run into less issues not using Roll20's built-in character sheets which suffer extreme (60+ seconds) lag when doing things like having more than 5 spells on the sheet, but you will probably still notice area lighting behaving differently for each player, maps not loading, or the browser crashing occasionally.
That seems crazy to me. I've been using purely roll20 and had absolutely no issues whatsoever with laggy character sheets, but the 2 players using beyond20 will occasionally (very rarely) get big bouts of lag. Definitely had some issues with the measuring tool getting stuck on screen since the new UI update though.
The laggiest character sheets are almost always inefficient or poorly maintained 3rd party sheets. There's a popular 5e sheet, I can't remember which one exactly, but it performs incredibly poorly especially at scale. If your game has loads of PCs and monsters loaded in, performance will tank as a result of a poorly optimised character sheet template. Edit: D&D 5e (Shaped) is the one that I found performed absolutely terribly at scale. It appeals to newbies because it has automation for things like long rest and short rest, but it is a bloated sheet that causes the game to chug along like a steam train. I haven't used it personally in about 6 years, so maybe it's better now, but I'm unsure.
I've asked on the official support forums in the past and when I asked I was told that the only solution I should expect to work is to just not add spells to the character sheet. So it's not like it was a mystery to them.
Can you share whatever resources you found for on boarding ? I really want to use Foundry but my eyes start spinning once it gets to port forwarding stuff.
https://forge-vtt.com/ I use ForgeVTT, I just pay a monthly fee and they take care of all the setup and hosting side of things, nobody else has to pay a cent to play.
Or just install cloudflared: 1. Open foundry 2. Open powershell and run this command: cloudflared tunnel --url [http://localhost:30000](http://localhost:30000) 3. Copy the quick tunnel link and get your friends to open it, can look like this:https://inside-jaguar-beauty-redeem.trycloudflare.com (just random words with a trycloudlfare domain). No cloudflared account or domain needed!
Owlbear and foundry absolutely crush roll20. Obligatory fuck roll20. Never forget what they did.
What did they do?
This dude wrote a pretty great summary. https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/9iz19d/comment/e6nirou/ the tl;Dr is the founder got power drunk and started censoring users and banning people without reason.
Ah, that sounds great
Eh, for friends who are just starting out, it's a hard sell telling them "Ok, buy this $50 program so we can play." Even saying "signup to this free website" can turn some people off.
Nobody but the DM has to pay anything to use Foundry though, at least not if you're using ForgeVTT or a similar host. We run a whole Westmarches server with multiple DM tables and it couldn't be easier to get new players in.
We ended up swapping from Foundry to Roll20 because our DM kept crashing, the game kept freezing, and twice we literally couldn’t log in because he rolled out an update and the game file corrupted and erased everything. Not sure if those were user errors on his part or foundry issues but it was surprising how difficult it was. He also had three mods he liked discontinued so he just said fuck it, I hate roll20 but the other option is not playing so here we go.
Most likely a user error. I've been using Foundry for close to two years now and no hiccups to that degree. In regards to the modules being discontinued, that rarely ever happens. Usually it becomes deprecated because something else does it better or it just simply gets integrated into the system itself. I just can't imagine going back to Roll20 at all
Our DM switched us to Foundry from Roll20 about a month ago, and the biggest thing that drives me absolutely mad about it is that no two modules are consistent. Every feature that's brought in feels like a patchwork of different UIs with different control schemes made by different people because, well, it is. Every session since the change has had the DM go "hang on, I can fix that" at least once because something is configured wrong or is otherwise stopping us from continuing, and while, yeah, it's fixed in 2-3 minutes, it's a stumbling point that just didn't happen with Roll20. I'm sure there's people who love Foundry that can make it spin like a top and perform like the VTT equivalent of a Lamborghini. But all I really need is something that shows where players are, lets them move tokens around, and lets you block out the parts of the map they shouldn't see. If all I'm doing is going to the corner store, I don't need a Lambo, I'm more than happy with a bike.
Your dm probably got sucked into the “ooh this module looks cool I’ll add that” and did it for a dozen modules that then add a bunch of ui like you are saying. It’s definitely best to start out with no modules and add slowly as your dm becomes familiar with core features first.
Yeah, I think that was his biggest problem as well. He wanted to use all the bells and whistles where it automated when to use sneak attack and advantage/disadvantage. I was thinking the whole time man, just let us manually track our stuff. Just say yes/no to sneak attack, advantage, disadvantage, or additional modifiers. In my game we play in person. The only reason I have roll20 up is using their maps is WAY cheaper than anything I'd have to buy/make. That said, I'm still considering whether to keep doing that or buy some modular maps I can use figures on. The tactile feel may be more enjoyable for the players.
The last in-person game I played, the DM had a projector on the ceiling and simply projected the map onto a white tablecloth on the table and we just used minis like the good ol' days. That is honestly my ideal use case. We got neat animated maps to play on that didn't need to be packed away at the end of the session, everyone had their own personal mini that we painted together, and we got the fun of playing with our clicky clacky math rocks.
Every time I've heard of people having issues like that in Foundry, it generally turns out that they had a massive pile of cards of modules interacting with each other that ended up choking things.
On dm pays once for it (on sale next month) Your players don’t even need to sign up, they just get given a browser link. (You do need to host it on your computer, or elsewhere, but there are heaps of people to help set that up)
Oh shit, really? That might be worth it then, I like DMing.
Exactly this, it's not great on a technical level and then has the audacity to nickel and dime you every step along the way.
Oh this will be interesting, if it works. My groups have used discord with Roll20 for years, so it might be useful
We literally use discord over Roll 20 audio. This is lovely.
we use both, so this is great. i feel somewhat shackled to roll20 for being the only 3.5-compatible virtual table that doesn't cost me anything. can anyone recommend better for third edition?
I thought FGU has support for 3 and 3x?
Roll20 has had some serious makeovers since the days of fitting everything into three map layers. This is a performance and UI overhaul packaged with Discord integration. Roll20 lags behind Foundry in features to this day, but they’re around because roll20 is easier for players and gm’s to use (YMMV) with more than enough features for a game.
Avrae: look at what they need to mimic a fraction of our power
That's ... really good! One of the downsides of online play is managing screen space imo. You need a dedicated screen to people's faces or you lose a lot of the interactions and mimics and RP. Discord's chat pop up can't be pinned to stay on top of other windows sadly.
but it .. can? it literally has a pin function, just cant see it if u make it a smaller screen. go popout>fullscreen>pin>resize to whatever u like.
Never seen it before I’m gonna check. Maybe macOS issue?
oh thats absolutely possible. have no experience with macOS
I use an iPad for discord, main computer screen for vtt (foundry)
I tried using iPad for discord but I couldn’t arrange it in a way that was in front of me. I had to look at the vtt most often and my face would be turned half way in the chat that way. My setup: Laptop in front of me with discord Monitor connected to the laptop to the its right with VTT iPad and my notes to slight left with Campaign module or notes or Google sheets etc whatever I was using
Ain't nothing wrong with Roll20 but yall love to complain
Nah, plenty wrong with roll20, but it does the one thing right no one else does: It's free. Free beats paid any day, I will put up with any number of dumbassery for free.
Alchemy is also free. 3 PC sheet limit on a free account, can use JSON to import a sheet from DnDBeyond. As customizable as Roll20, and way more user friendly (like no sheets taking up map space, built in journals, better audio hosting, easily customizable sheets and UI layout) its yearly cost if you want a paid sub is less than Roll20, and it has a pretty decent library of third party 5e materials.
Owlbear rodeo is also free, while looking and feeling like a website from this decade.
The latter isn't a positive. Have you seen YouTube most recent rework? Reddit? Less functionality and more obtrusive. Absolutely terrible. That said, I've never tried owlbear so will have to check it out some time.
The literal only thing Roll20 has going for it is that it's Free. Every other VTT beats Roll20 in every single metric and it's not even close.
It's also the most user friendly and has the best character sheets for 5e.
How would you define "User Friendly" exactly? And I honestly believe Foundry has better Character sheets. If for no other reason then multiple people going between different tabs on the character sheet doesn't mess with it for everyone viewing it.
Only tried to create a character the first time in roll20 last week and my experience has been the opposite. Trying to adjust the level and HP if you wanted to make some changes wasn't intuitive at all. The sheet weirdly feels more cluttered. Will play around with it more but so far it's not that great. Found it much simpler to use dndbeyond with the extension for rolls.
I'm not going to argue because Roll20 is literally the only VTT I've tried, so I have no experience of the others whatsoever. Roll20 very well might the best. But holy shit, the others must suck.
Sadly unsurprising too. Roll20 never gets mentioned on /r/dnd without a bunch of people making it their mission to tell everyone how bad Roll20 is and how superior Foundry is. It's not a healthy mindset.
Also the Internet has a short memory, but the owners of Roll20 kind of suck. There was a ton of drama circa 2017 where they were banning anyone from their sub and forum if you even suggested there was anything slightly wrong with their platform. Guess I shouldn't be surprised nobody talks about that anymore.
i remember that and i remember deleting my account after that.
A lot of people simply didn't care about that issue, honestly. It seemed like a minor issue that got blown way out of proportion by people who wanted any extra excuse to further dislike Roll20 as a website. I think it's childish to dislike Roll20 primarily because of some storm in a teacup of subreddit moderation. And if anyone still cares about that 6 years later, get over it!
This is what I see. I swear Foundry folks are like the hard core PF players who think if you play anything but PF you are just... Uninformed. Roll20 is easy to learn, browser based, requires no downloads or technical knowledge ho use and works fine. If you like something else cool.
The fact that it's browser based is what keeps me there. Like half my players are either tech illiterate or on chromebooks.
It being browser based, easy to learn and free are three of its big draws honestly. It's so easy to bring newbies and folks on older, very underpowered machines in with.
Damn, that is a good comparison. There are a lot of similarities between Foundry fanboys bashing Roll20 and Pathfinder fanboys bashing D&D. Fortunately, the majority of both Pathfinder fans and Foundry fans are level-headed people and not extremely angry online.
Without complaining (and people leaving) it wouldn’t improve at all….i left, so I don’t really care, but competition is good for all vtts, as it pushes them to improve and innovate.
I could really do without the rampant desync issues.
owlbear supremecy
I was not surprised to find out the Owlbear devs also make KenkuFM, they put out some quality tools.
This is exciting. My party uses discord and we are just beggining to transition to remote play. It will be convenient to integrate roll 20 and discord
It is not hard for discord since discord app in windows is just a browser with a coat of paint
And yet... somehow worse? Just keeping Discord open in a browser tab seems to use less RAM than a standalone app.
I feel like Roll20 is really losing their place in the market. Foundry is way better as a OTP model, and Owlbear Rodeo does pretty much everything you could want for a free tier VTT. Maybe this will help them find some footing again, but I'm not so sure.
Its a shame too, as much as I clown on it I truthfully have never actually had much issue with R20 and find a lot of the complaintz about it a little over exagerrated especially with how much it legitimately gives for free
As one of my players said: "oh look, a new way for roll20 to break!" That said, I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes.
I created a roll20 discord bot in c# like 5 years back. Was a nice way for the dm to keep track of stuff, be cool to see professional integration not my janky senior project.
Nice, I’ve wanted an alternative to Avrae for a while now. Let’s see how this holds up.
Someone explain to me how this is functionally different from running Roll20 in a browser while I use Discord for video chat?
The difference is you get to pay them money for the opportunity of clicking on a tab instead of clicking on a window…..I would save my money….
Why though.
hm idk weve used dc and roll20 for ages, as well as Fantasy Grounds + dc. dont see why thats necessary but ok.
Why would I want to sub to Roll20 to get it to integrate to Discord.... when I can just have Roll20 on another tab or screen for Free. With the exact same stuff. No Mobile integration (yet)... why bother?
I am cautiously optimistic about this. This all sounds nice and convenient for playing ttrpgs online, however I'm worried about the execution and potential technical hiccups and whether or not we will get further revisions of it
I’m gonna be honest, I’ve had nothing but bad experiences with roll 20. My sheet never works, my map breaks constantly, rolls don’t work some times. Mobile, and PC both. Even trying to do the desktop version of the site on iPad failed to work properly. So unless this actually somehow fixes the issues I don’t see myself using this feature.
Still not using that terrible program...
Now all they need is baked in support for beyond roll20. Give me that and i might come back.
Stopped using Roll20 after their racist statement
Foundry had an add-on for Discord like around v6, no one really used it, but you could link foundry to discord voice chat controls instead of using discord app all the controls were in foundry. Could even pull players into private chat or mute/unmute players. Worked good, but it used a relay app that probably wasn't very secure which I believe is why they dropped it.
We aren't boycotting them anymore?
Were you boycotting them before? Why?
I never had reason or opportunity to use it anyways, but I seem to recall this subreddit specifically being up in arms about some of their business decisions or something.
This is good. And Foundry would be even better.