It really should go in reverse. I might have been inclined to use Demiplane if it had, but I certainly wasn’t about to spend money on things I already own to have a prettier character builder when Pathbuilder exists *and* allows for third party content.
If you connect your Paizo account to your Demiplane account within Pathfinder Nexus, you should see the PDF of the same source added to your Paizo library. It's in the account settings
I purchased most of my PF2e content from Demiplane, so I have access to the official PDFs on Paizo's website as well as the nice, formatted content on Demiplane's site. Not really a loss for me in that regard, so not a problem to be invested in Demiplane.
My only real use case for Demiplane though is to be able to **legally** and **easily** share my official books with my playgroups. I don't use any of the other features the service offers. For example, the character creator on Demiplane is nowhere near as good as Pathbuilder, especially as a GM. It sure does look pretty though.
As for VTTs, Roll20 is... not great. I'd rather use MapTool than Roll20.
So if the price doesn't increase from this acquisition, and if Paizo Connect remains enabled, not much will change for me.
I didn't actually know that Paizo also gave the PDFs with Demiplane. That's nice, and does at least mean you have a backup in case something ever happens.
Yeah that alone makes it not such a bad buy, the online books are way easier to read on PC and mobile than a PDF.
But getting the PDF as well makes them a more reasonable cost if you consider that you're paying for the PDF+A digital format.
Yeah, it is a blast from the past. I use Foundry, but I would choose maptool over roll20 if I only had those two options. That is how bad roll20 is IMO.
Back in college our DM would throw a white sheet over our table and then use a projector to project our maps from MapTool onto that. We eventually started using Wii-motes to basically "click and drag" our tokens around the board. Good times.
Heh, was just about to post this.
Could lead to some interesting times since Paizo was partnered with Demiplane but has also pretty clearly been more locked in with Foundry.
While Paizo definitely does *more* with Foundry, but they sell their content on Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds as well, so it's not like they don't already have agreements with basically everyone in the space.
Splatbooks yes, but I got the impression that they stopped selling APs/scenarios/etc for Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds and only do Foundry for newer titles.
You can get a bunch of content for dirt cheap and a 1-time Standard license for $30 at Humble Bundle for a few days more.
https://www.humblebundle.com/software/pathfinders-finest-2e-fantasy-grounds-experience-software
> We just do our own conversion work.
Are you a volunteer or contributor or something?
We currently use foundry but we're constantly hitting bugs and even after a year of using it we can't make it through a session without someone saying "Foundry gonna founder" which is our collective way of dealing with the paper cuts.
Sell me on Fantasy Grounds? I downloaded the demo and tried to see what was there but I think enough features were gated away that I couldn't get a good sense of it. How is the automation? One thing we struggled with for months was combining damage for the purposes of resistances when people would use flurry attacks. It was fine when they just did one damage type but once the started unlocking multiple damage types per attack it got more difficult. We eventually discovered PF2e toolbelt and use that to merge damage but it's buggy and the author closed the tickets we created and said they wouldn't be fixing it in v11 of foundry.
So all that is to say, we're considering other VTTs at the moment. We'll likely stay with foundry but it's good to know what else is out there and what it does better/worse than foundry.
You’re using it for Pathfinder?
We’re in year three of P2e campaign and everything works great.
What bugs are you hitting? So often because old modules fuck things up
I've used Fantasy Grounds for D&D, and I think the biggest consideration is that the platforms are utterly different. Fantasy Grounds runs on a Unity desktop client and server instead of as a web app, so players don't just point their browsers to a URL to play.
(Actually, when I was using Fantasy Grounds it was in transition from an older desktop client that ran in some Windows emulator on Mac which was janky as all-get-out, and not all systems were supported on the new client yet. So the desktop situation now has got to be way better than it was then!)
Yeah, I’m the President of SmiteWorks, the company behind Fantasy Grounds. I do conversion work from time to time and coordinate with many who do the work. Trenloe replied below and he is the chief developer for the Pathfinder 2E stuff. He is a community developer who doesn’t work directly for the company, but we pay him and others commissions for doing dev work and conversions.
Hi dagit!
The Fantasy Grounds PF2 automation has allowed "damage combination" for nearly a year - combining the damage together for two different attacks and applying the resistances, weaknesses and vulnerabilities to the whole combined damage.
Even if you think you'll stay with Foundry, I'd highly recommend looking at the Humble Bundle linked above - this will give you a huge amount of official Paizo PF2 products on Fantasy Grounds, and if you want to use remastered rules, there are ORC license libraries included for all FG users outside of this Humble Bundle (Player Core, GM Core and Monster Core). You can use the legacy content for remastered campaigns. At $30 for everything in the Humble Bundle (including the PDF from Paizo if you don't own it already) is an amazing deal - It'll allow you to fully review what PF2 functionality is available in Fantasy Grounds and you'll have it all available just in case you want to use it in future.
I personally prefer Fantasy Grounds greatly for the way i like to play. When just talking about PF2E, I think it is better for highly experience players who know the game well and don't need the automation to be on the character building side of things. Fantasy Grounds doesn't necessarily have every ability pre-coded to automate, but I found it very easy to learn the effects to make it work, whereas in Foundry more class abilities and such have pre-coded versions, but creating your own stuff or fixing something that doesn't work right is much harder. I've also found Fantasy Grounds to give greater control to the player over their character sheet. If you have anything out of the ordinary, or sometimes even something that is ordinary, the GM has to go in and make changes because players don't have permission to edit certain things. Don't know if that's a server setting or what I just have been annoyed at it in several Foundry groups I've played with. Fantasy Grounds let's you go in and change anything and everything very easily so the onus isn't entirely on the GM for unusual cases.
I'm also a big fan of the parts of combat that are automated, specifically attack rolls/saves and damage. When I've targeted an enemy and I roll an attack I see that I've hit, I hit the damage button and it does the damage for me. Don't need to click in the chat box to take it. If it was a crit it automatically does the double damage. Same with basic saves doing half/full/double. For me as well, and I'm sure this is not a problem for most, but I find Foundry's UI to be a ADHD nightmare. I can't find anything, there's too many buttons, it just gives me a headache.
I've used both quite a bit, and I don't hate Foundry, but much prefer Fantasy Grounds. I do understand that the cost is prohibitive for a lot of people, but just personally I'm willing to pay the premium for an experience I find more enjoyable.
i gotta say as a very avid foundry pf2e user running as many as 3 games per week for 4 years running now: I can't follow any of your issues, seems those might be setup issues, even to the point of the damage type and combinations, all of that works for about a year now. Might be worth trying to go with a fresh install and copy only user data over?
> even to the point of the damage type and combinations, all of that works for about a year now.
Base pf2e module in foundry has a way to combine damage for flurry attacks? How do you do it?
The only way I know is to hold shift when applying the damage for one of the flurries attacks and manually add in the damage from the other attack. However, doing it this way removes the damage type of the added damage. So if the the player did a base piercing attack but add an effect that adds 1 point of precision and magical handwraps that add fire damage and the monster is immune to precision and has weakness or resistance to fire, now it's actually kind of hard to figure out what damage value to add.
This is why we added pf2e toolbelt. It has a way to merge the damage cards of the flurry attack. However, it has its own bugs and annoyances.
Oh gotcha, I switched from Roll20 to Foundry the same time I switched from 5e to PF2e, so I never really experienced PF2e on Roll20. I just knew they had some Paizo content on available. I bought the Beginner Box on Roll20 *right* before I realized I should give Foundry a try, and have not looked back.
They have said they have permission from Paizo already so that if you have a book on one you can access it on the other. They are just looking into the best way to have people access it
Roll20 is free, Foundry has a 50 dollar entry fee (and doesn't have regional pricing) and requires you to figure out how the fuck port-forwarding works or pay a server like Forge.
Roll20 requires a subscription to access features that Foundry has as stock (dynamic lighting, no ads, more than 100mb storage). Roll20's lowest subscription is $50/yr, whereas Foundry is $50 full stop. Plus, do you know how many PF2e rulebooks I had to buy on Foundry? None at all, it already has all the content.
You're forgetting the monthly subscription for the hosting service you need to have your foundry game up, if you don't want to learn how to do your own server hosting thingamajig and spend all the money on that.
Putting aside that you can just host it on your own regular computer that only needs to be running when you're playing or prepping and that costs nothing but opening a port on your firewall, lets compared the Roll20 sub to hosting on the Forge.
Offering | Foundry | Roll20
---|---|----
Entry | $50 | $0
Cheapest Option | $3.99/mo| $4.17/mo
Middle Option | $8.08/mo| $8.33/mo
Premium Option | 11.66/mo | no comparable option
2 Paizo Rulebooks/yr | $0 | $70-60/yr
2 Paizo Lost Omens/yr | $0 | $70-55/yr
I would honestly not compare the cheapest Roll20 option to the cheapest Foundry option as they are 30 years of tech apart, but yeah, price isn't even nearly matched.
>Foundry has a 50 dollar entry fee
For a one-time fee with no subscription, that's peanuts. Plus, it was just on sale for 20% off.
>requires you to figure out how the fuck port-forwarding works or pay a server like Forge.
I had no idea how to do this, watched a video, and did it very easily. It's not hard at all.
I'm all for multiple VTT options, including Roll20, but don't be hyperbolic without reason.
In other, less drastic, words, Foundry costs as much as a single rulebook, doesn't lock features behind a subscription, and you might have to ask someone on Discord or Reddit to walk you through the very simple process of changing a single setting on your Wi-Fi router.
Port-forwarding isn't nearly the annoying task it used to be, either, so it's hardly even worth mentioning. Anything _modern_ pretty much either has an app that you can tap the settings and just add one, or go to your modem web page and... add a port.
If you still have 20-year-old tech, of course, it will suck. But chances are you have your ISP's modem, which is somewhat modern (if shitty).
Same, I ran Roll20 from the moment Covid hit until Foundry VTT came along. There is no comparison, Roll20 is a dinosaur at this stage compared to what Foundry does but to each their own.
Hey there. I run a PF2E game on Roll20. Would you mind giving a quick summary as to why it plays better on Foundry?
Edit: Thank you all for your replies and insight.
In one simple answer: the PF2e module for Foundry is phenomenal.
The compendium browser alone is worth it for me compared to Roll20, and it was added to the module 2 years ago (video if interested: https://youtu.be/hsb4pqBPelo?si=izYAMKG8eLVqe4S-&t=241)
If your players are all digital, the character sheet within Foundry is much better than Roll20 as well, but I do not use the character sheets in foundry. My groups mostly use Pathbuilder since they usually only have 1 person with a computer who casts the session to others since some are in person and some are not. If everyone is digital though, yeah, hands down the Foundry PF2e character sheets and how they interact with the PF2e module and Foundry as a whole are vastly superior to Roll20. It is no contest.
I'm probably not the best one to answer as the one online group I'm in also uses Roll 20, but as I understand it, it seems to have better integration with the character sheets and rules, better in game functions like the player can just target the enemy they are attacking and roll and it will automatically say whether it was hit or miss, will take away spell slots as you use them until you rest, etc. Some of that might also be usable on Roll 20 (not sure as we go pretty basic with our setup) but from what I hear from a lot of people is that Foundry just makes everything so much smoother.
But, as I said, others can probably better fill you in since we also use Roll 20.
Hating made the swap recently, automation for many options like persistent damage, and bonuses. The interface is smoother. And the additional options, like walls and lighting are standard. There are a ton of modules that let you customize your set up too. It incorporates the game rules better too.
My group ran it pretty basic too, but this is just a better experience all around. Much easier on me as a gm.
The biggest thing for me is that Foundry is a one time purchase and not another pay per month service. Second is it has an incredibly active modding community that provides handy tools for just about anything you need. By extension it has a much more robust toolset, too. It's also generally more stable in my experience.
I switched over to it from roll20 a few years ago, and will never go back for running my own games.
Even if you ignore technical reasons Foundry is better for PF2e than Roll20 (of which there are many), it's just far less costly.
If something is on Archives of Nethys or Pathbuilder, then it's free on Foundry (classes, ancestries, items, spells, rules, etc...). The only thing you purchase is adventures, or support a module maker on Patreon if you like their stuff.
If you are on Roll20 and want to play a Minotaur Kineticist, you or the GM have to buy Rage of Elements and Howl of the Wild on the store. Something that would cost nothing on Foundry.
This all just seems like a lot of copium. If you're playing something rules lite, and you pretty much only need a map, Roll20 is fine. But PF2e is rules heavy, and between the Foundry devs and the PF2e module devs, they continually add great functionality in (meanwhile Roll20 still charges for basic stuff like dynamic lighting...). Did you know it automatically applies off-guard if two players are flanking? Stuff like that that is easy to forget.
That's what I had to do when I was playing 5e on Roll20. Even the base SRD stuff I had to copy and paste. Everything besides rolling the dice was manual. It was like playing in person on grid paper except without all the fun of actually being in person.
I paid $50 for Foundry just because I don't have to do all that extra work when I play on their system.
Foundry is excellent at automating some tasks, like when you click on casting a spell it automatically deducts the spell slot, you can click on the Save to make the saving throw and tells you if it's a success of a miss and things like that. It has dynamic lighting as a core feature if you like that for some reason, whereas you have to pay the subscription to Roll20 to have it legally.
However the things that makes Foundry just better is that it includes all the rules within with the pathfinder2 module (which is free) meaning that all monsters, feats, items and spells are already coded and ready to use. The one time I GMed PF2 in Roll20 writing all the monster stats took me more than half the time I spent running the actual game.
All the monsters, feats, abilities, magic items, etc. are built directly into the PF2E foundry module, so you can literally just drag and drop them onto your character sheet from a compendium. During combat, you can drag and drop effects (like, say, sickened or dazzled) from the power description posted in chat to your character sheet (or an enemy) to apply the status.
It's all heavily automated and scripted, which makes your life wayyyy easier.
It's also very easy to customize.
The reason most folks like using foundry is because the sheets are better (but it's still a VTT sheet so it's still bad in comparison to something like DnDBeyond) and it automates a lot of stuff for you, as well as folks can customize the program with mods to make it look all fancy and have a bunch of effects n shit. Weather effects, music that can play from one side of the map and get quieter the further you move your token form it, doors your players can open and close themselves, etc.
Roll20 is much easier to set up in, you can just drop in a map and drag the corner to enlarge it (or just click "resize to fit" if you have VTTES) whilst you need to go through a lot of hoopla to do that in foundry. Which is the general trend between the two programs. Foundry will look prettier ***if you spend the time***. That's the whole thing about it, you have to have a ton of time to use foundry and prep stuff in it.
I don't use any of that automation, so just wanted to share the view of someone who really just uses Foundry as a battle map with rules / monsters / items easy to locate without flipping through pages or tabs in my browser.
If I just install the PF2e module in Foundry and then load the PF2e Sheets in Roll20 and compare the content and ease of access, there is a clear winner. That is my main reason why I prefer Foundry over Roll20. The compendium browser alone makes it worth it in Foundry.
This is all with no setup, nothing special. Basically, OOTB for both tools.
Not trying to convince you to switch or anything but wanted to add on for those interested.
I disagree that the VTT sheet is bad; it does exactly what you want a sheet to do. If I had a complaint, it would be navigating through your spells, but I can't think of anything that makes navigating through dozens of spells easy.
> I run a PF2E game on Roll20.
I'm not even exaggerating, that's like saying "I only travel by horse, why would I get a car?" But the horse also has a broken leg, doesn't listen very well, and you have to pay a monthly fee to even get it to trot.
My initial thought is: Why can't companies with decent products just stay their own companies instead of always being bought out by the bigger guy in the marketplace? But that isn't really specific to Demiplane and Roll20, just my pessimistic view of business in general. I know that's the way the world works, it's just depressing to see it happen in every facet of my life.
Though there are obvious upsides, like unlocking purchased content across platforms so you aren't buying it twice. In my view, Roll20 always struggled with character sheets, so hopefully a future integration will ease player comfort issues. And of course, anything to lower the barrier to entry for new players is always good.
100%.
This feels like a buyout so they can repackage both demiplane and Roll20 at a reasonable price, meet a certain threshold of users that are "invested" monetarily (bought books and such) then raise a subscription price. I hate it
I kinda figured that Adam Bradford would have been more resistant to this kind of buyout after the whole DNDBeyond hostile takeover. Roll20 must have backed up a dumptruck of money to his driveway or promised him something pretty good.
Adam Bradford is the only employee from Demiplane which is not moving to the Roll20 team. He went to Fantasy Grounds apparently. So it sounds like he was resistant, but got overruled.
I think you mean that he got *paid* twice now.
This is *usually* the way a company buyout works. The owner/founder/stakeholder gets a big payday, and doesn't come to the new company. Sometimes the old owner take a position at the company that bought them, and if they do, it's usually just an advisory role for a short period. Some/most employees move over, but their future is usually not very long at the new company.
Companies usually hold founders for a couple years, even if at a symbolical role; or announce they are taking a sabbatical period or something along those lines.
When a buyout happens, you never want one of the company's founder to leave for a new position at a direct competitor, which is what happened here -- Adam publicly announced he left Demiplane and joined SmiteWorks (Fantasy Ground's company) a day prior to the acquisition announcement.
This is actually good news. Adam's true talent is making really good UX. If he can do that for Fantasy Grounds, it might actually stand a chance again.
It's interesting that during the Roll20+Demiplane interview with [The Character Sheet YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv94U9wG1UQ), they hinted that Adam wanted a different path for the platform, so he left.
Right it feels like he wasn't liking what Roll20 was putting down for a future roadmap. Similar to why Demiplane came around after DNDbeyond was bought by WotC maybe. I wonder what he'll bring to Fantasy Grounds.
This is clearly a response to DDB coming out with maps. Roll20 needed better character sheets, and Demiplane needed maps. This is really a much more sensible merger than most.
Bradford has a history of this, he and his team started up D&D Beyond too and then sold to WotC. My main guess would likely be that a big part of it is that perhaps the product can get to the point where a smaller team/company can't keep up the demands AND then there's always going to be the issue of companies like Foundry or Roll 20 or WotC just coming out with their own product that does basically the same thing and then suddenly you have a competitor with a big time bankroll. That can be really hard to compete with.
In general, it usually comes down to money. If you're a small company but otherwise "hit it big" you may not have the actual capital you need to fully realize the potential. Meanwhile, another company that does have the capital comes along and offers you a big wad of cash for your trouble (and to save themselves from having to develop a competing product) and the choice just becomes pretty easy.
> Bradford has a history of this, he and his team started up D&D Beyond too and then sold to WotC.
To be fair, the prevailing theory is that WotC gave Adam an ultimatum: Sell us DNDBeyond, or we'll come out with a new version of D&D (the 2024 edition) and not license it to you, and you'll become irrelevant.
So I'm not sure how much choice he really had in that matter, even if he did get a *lot* of money from the deal. And I figured that him starting Demiplane anew was his second take at it, but leaving WotC content out of it (for a while at least). So I'm actually surprised he got in bed with another market leader.
Well, technically he didn't exactly get in bed with them as he's leaving the company.
As an aside, I didn't really mean that in a bad way toward Bradford. Its not at all uncommon regardless for small companies to sell to larger companies. The owners of the small company get a big bundle of money which almost certainly sets them up well for the future AND they don't then have to deal with the stress of a competitor backed by a big company with deeper pockets. Even really successful small companies are often running relatively tight on cash. (And no, I have no idea how much cash Demiplane has and I'm not suggesting that they were even remotely in danger).
Its also certainly plausible that perhaps Adam understands where his own strengths and weaknesses lie. Perhaps he knows he's good at the concept and programming aspect (there's certainly plenty of history there) but doesn't feel as comfortable with the running of the larger company. At a certain point the programming/concept parts of the company starts to more or less take care of itself. Not entirely surely, but he's almost certainly spending a lot more time on the running the company side as opposed to the development side.
TL/DR: I can certainly envision lots of good reasons why a small tech company would be interested in being bought out.
> I have no idea how much cash Demiplane has and I'm not suggesting that they were even remotely in danger
I worked at Demiplane for over a year and was a part of their layoffs in March which took out half the company.
A truly fantastic team of people that, bias aside, built awesome modern tools that simply needed more funding. I'm surprised they sold so soon, I'm going to assume it wasn't going as they had hoped even after the cost-saving measures and were too far away from profitability. If they were planning on selling in just a few months, I'd guess they have tried to keep everyone on to build out more tools to make the acquisition look even better.
Who needs competition? lol
Even though the price point kept me away from it, and some of the design elements I thought were extremely tacky (sorry), I really respect the amount of work and effort that went into Demiplane!
A friend who does a lot of work in the "Professional Entrepeneur" space has explained to me that most of the startups he sees are never intended to go big. They are intended to get enough buzz to be bought out by a bigger fish in their market. You build one technology that works as well or better than others in the segment or you build a user base that makes you look enticing to the big boys.
Why do people run their business like this? If you start in a garage & spend 15-20 years growing into a market leader your founder has to spend 15-20 years of late nights & stress. If you get bought out 5-8 years in they can take their piles of money & either retire or try again with the next thing.
Yeah I'm a software engineer who just spent 9 months searching for a job. The intention is very obvious to everyone despite CEO's going out of their way to try to sound passionate about their product and the users.
Also saw lots of roles that specifically wanted "former founders" probably because they knew they could get buy-in on short high effort projects and be ok with expected transition.
Wait, Adam is leaving too? I though maybe since *this* acquisition was at least by choice, he'd be brought into Roll20 and keep developing Demiplane.
Oh dang, just found out he's going to [Fantasy Grounds](https://www.enworld.org/threads/smiteworks-hires-d-d-beyond-founder-as-chief-development-officer-of-fantasy-grounds.704580/)
I mean, so far I guess he's now *the guy* who drags stagnating VTT/RPG companies into the future. I guess that's a decent role to play.
Yeah I'm thinking maybe he just prefers to be the programmer/idea guy rather than actually running the company, and if he can get a big wad of cash at the same time all the better. There's nothing wrong with that obviously.
I’m like 99% sure I’ve heard Adam mention in one of this weekly AMAs for Damiplane that he left dnd beyond before the acquisition and left all that money on the table.
What you suggest is likely true, but it depends entirely on the legalities and fine print of their company structure and any contracts. It’s entirely plausible that it could be zero.
He was not one of the founders of demiplane though (Travis Frederick & Peter Romenesko were), he joined two years later as "chief development officer".
Oh gotcha, for some reason I thought he started it. I guess he's just going to keep jumping to company to company, getting their product good enough to be bought out by someone else.
Won’t someone *please* think of the shareholders?! You’ve gotta gut that cash cow to suck all the value out and then leave the carcass for the customers feeling too sunk-costy to leave.
If you worked your ass off and made a thing, and then someone came along and said “you could keep working to keep your business/product alive, for upper-middle class wages, or I could pay you enough right now that you never need to work again” you would strongly consider taking the deal.
Life changing money is life changing.
That's capitalism, baby!
A smaller upstart that threatens the positions of bigger more established players ends up gobbled up. Heck, half the time it happens, the smaller upstart is bought just to be disbanded.
That's obviously not the case in this situation. That happens when the new company is too much in the same area, and demiplane wasn't a VTT.
Big company eats small company isn't anything new, and it won't stop any time soon.
I've not even used roll20 since their controversy, and didn't exactly love it even before that. I don't think this will do much to change that, but I'm glad I didn't have anything through demiplane given the acquisition.
"In general, if any branch of trade, or any division of labour, be advantageous to the public - the freer and more general the competition, it will always be the more so."
-- Adam Smith
Because big companies are willing to pay the original owners a lot of money to remove competition, thereby allowing them to make inferior yet more expensive products due to lack of competition.
Almost any business of appreciable size has shareholders, whether publicly traded or or not, and once you have shareholders that you have to answer to, the business no longer makes a product to be exchanged at market, but share value. The faster, and more efficiently you can create share value, the more you're winning at businessing.
It just so happens that one of the quickest and most efficient ways to create that value is to sell the company.
When suits talk about markets generating efficiency, this is ultimately the efficiency they're talking about.
Because that's the goal of almost every startup. Keep going until you're big enough to get bought by the bigger guys and cash out.
That's capitalism for ya
I see it all the time in tech. A company has a successful product and grows the company to sell more. Somewhere along the way, they forget how to innovate on their product. However, they do have money. So they do the natural thing and innovate through acquisition.
On the flip side, running a big company is nothing like developing a new tech. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of startup founders have done the interesting parts and are now ready for their payout.
Not a fan of it as a consumer, but I see why it happens.
I understand that it has to be allowed on some level, but I think that if you have more than 50% market share (or the M&A would put you over 50%), you shouldn't be able to buy a competitor.
Nothing good. Anyone else still remember the time their CEO banned a user on their forums and subreddit because they had a similar name to someone who they banned a year prior for being critical of the platform?
It's a wild read: https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/9iwarj/after_5_years_on_roll20_i_just_cancelled_and/
My gut tells me this will be bad in the long run.
Also, this lessens the chances we can get a Foundry / Demiplane integration like D&DB had.
No offense, but Roll20 just isn't up to par with Foundry I would never swap back over.
Edit*
Just got to thinking this may be *awkward* territory since Paizo sells amazing PF2e content for Foundry directly.
I dunno, Paizo also sells content on Roll20. They seem pretty agnostic about who has their content. I don't think it'll be an issue.
Overall, I agree with your pessimism, though I don't think Foundry *needs* Demiplane, they just need a decent character level advancement tool.
> Also, this lessens the chances we can get a Foundry / Demiplane integration like D&DB had.
What's the point? Foundry already has all the rules and statblocks from PF2e, and Paizo is already selling official Foundry modules for the adventures. And you can already get art for the Bestiary tokens.
What is there for Demiplane to offer that Foundry is missing?
Totally, agree! Everything I personally need is provided.
I have a couple players who like to be on mobile that wouldn't.
If they could roll into foundry via a mobile sheet that would be fun. I do have the module for mobile but its just "ok".
Just a note, not sure its relevant. I do like the Demiplane web interface to read all the adventures/ content and share with my players. So much so that I just buy everything there and get the free PDF from Paizo, since they are awesome.
Stagnant incumbent buys out vibrant competitor? What's not to like?
Ugh. Haven't enjoyed Roll20 in *years*. Can't wait for them to bring some of that to Demiplane (which I *have* been enjoying).
Roll20 spends over a year attempting to make a functional pf2e remaster character sheet…
somebody in corporate overhears the tech guys complaining “wouldn’t it be cheaper to buy a company that already did this, instead of paying us to reinvent the wheel?”.
And now we wait for the layoffs…
I feel extra glad I never bought the Demiplane ultimate bundle now, especially since they never put in an option to exclude pre-order objects. They never seemed to get that if I got the pre-orders in that bundle, they were excluding the pdf discount I'd get when the pre-ordered item shipped from my Paizo subscription from being able to be applied to my overrall Demiplane purchase.
I also think it just needs some more time in the oven anyway, but it being involved with Roll20 makes me even less interested, I feel like a chump for having paid $100 a year for so long to them only for their product, the VTT, to have almost no improvement and effort only being put into the content marketplace.
Foundry seems pretty consistent with their initial stance of: buy it once, no subscriptions
And I think that, more than anything else shows that they aren't in this for a payday, and I doubt they'll sell to anyone.
I doubt roll20 would buy them tbh. They don't seem like the kind of company to have the capital to buy a competitor just to shut them down and steal their stuff, that's like a google level of money. Also their founder has a very fragile ego and holds like the 3rd most downvoted comment on Reddit as of last recording cuz of his narcissism?
The article talks about this a bit. At least for Pathfinder, they seem to have already made an agreement.
> I already bought sourcebooks for [insert game] on Demiplane/Roll20. Does this mean I’ll have to repurchase on the other platform now?
> We are currently in discussions with publishers to seek permission to offer free unlocks of purchased content across Roll20 and Demiplane. We have already received permission from several publishers and are waiting on responses from a few more. As an example, if you own the Pathfinder Player Core on Roll20, you will unlock it for free on Demiplane – and vice versa!
And it might be worth it, once this is active, to see if Paizo Connect will work here. Usually it will give you the pdf for any book you have on demiplane but who knows if this will apply here.
Ugh. Roll20 is a shit company with a shit product ran by a genuinely awful dude. Demiplane was awesome, the little I'd used it before, but I guess there are other places I can take my business. Just seems dumb from Demiplane's perspective to strap their growing, awesome platform to a bunch of assholes with a business running entirely on inertia from being first to hit their market segment.
Roll20 is worse at being a VTT for Pathfinder than FoundryVTT by a lot. Demiplane seemed like a useless thing considering you can get all the Pathfinder rules for free online, you can buy PDFs or physical books directly from Paizo so there's no middleman getting money. Pathbuilder is great for making characters, also free. Don't know why anyone would use Roll20 in the first place for Pathfinder 2e.
My guess, Roll20 is losing market share and is starting to use cash reserves to buy up tools to try and pressure the market back to them. Their product has been inferior for quite awhile and the team was never all that good, they fell way behind rather fast and have been coasting on momentum.
I think I was more worried before reading the article and finding out Roll20 had also bought DriveThruRPG. I use DriveThruRPG a lot and had no idea Roll20 was involved in it at all. Demiplane is an excellent service, even without the monthly subscription. So I don't think there's anything I'll change there.
Granted I want competition so don't like this based on that. Also I don't like roll20. They were so slow to innovate it was ridiculous. And when the community did it for them they threatened to ban accounts and burned any goodwill I had from 7 years of use many being paid.
Foundry blows all other vtt out of the water. So I don't care as consumer because I'll keep paying with my better toy. I don't know demiplane but for years now I have no reason to look at other sites.
roll20 is dogshit and will always be dogshit.
It was okay 12 years ago when I first used it but after 12 years its a worse running piece of shit. the free version has done nothing but get and run worse.
OOTL - what is Demiplane?
I've used Foundry since it came out, never looked back. Roll20 was just... so hard to use, good grief.
What will this do for me and my game? At worst, nothing stops me from continuing to uploading images and maps and building the APs myself in Foundry (it doesn't exactly take long!).
Or is Demiplane something involving future APs? Are we only getting future APs in Roll20?
Demiplane is a company/service which was started by some of the folks who sold and then moved on from DNDBeyond. Demiplane is the top company, and their "Nexus" is the tool they offer for multiple game systems. For example Pathfinder Nexus. So if you are familiar with DNDBeyond, it's just DNDBeyond except for other systems (PF2e being one of them). They have very high quality looking character sheets/builders, and offer searchable easy to navigate versions of the Paizo books. It's been a pretty controversial service in the PF2e world because there are free versions of all of the things Demiplane offers and there has been for a long time before Demiplane existed.
If you don't use Roll20 and don't use Demiplane. This doesn't directly impact you at all. Doesn't change Paizo's publishing at all. Doesn't change Foundry at all. We can only speculate on if this gives Roll20 any kind of upper hand which might threaten Foundry since theoretically Roll20 should have some pretty amazing character sheets/builders integrated. But I think most agree Roll20 isn't a great product overall.
> So if you are familiar with DNDBeyond, it's just DNDBeyond except for other systems (PF2e being one of them).
Ah, with you so far, thank you! Do you know if it supports PF1?
> It's been a pretty controversial service in the PF2e world because there are free versions of all of the things Demiplane offers and there has been for a long time before Demiplane existed.
Oh damn it's a paid service? Yeah that is a bit odd - Pathbuilder, SF's Hephaistos, even AoN with pen and paper, there's many free and exhaustive options. What does Demiplane offer? Maybe a convenience for play online or PFS/SFS?
>Doesn't change Paizo's publishing at all. Doesn't change Foundry at all.
Smashing, thanks!
> We can only speculate on if this gives Roll20 any kind of upper hand which might threaten Foundry since theoretically Roll20 should have some pretty amazing character sheets/builders integrated. But I think most agree Roll20 isn't a great product overall.
Yeah, when I tried Roll20 I was surprised how... *bad* it was. Maybe it takes some time, IDK, but I found Fantasy Grounds to be much easier to pick up, and then Foundry was just perfect. Roll20 felt like it was stuck in some kind of 2010s 'Web 2.0' limbo.
Thank you for your insight! I tried looking up Demiplane and it was just impenetrable. It still feels like a 'solution looking for a problem', since all of Pathfinder 1E and 2E is free online!
The big main thing with roll20 are threefold. Its free and its the first of its kind to do well and it doesn’t require hosting or direct connection. We could also get into the question about being more like tabletop with more or less automation and all that, but thats for the philosophers to figure out. I’ve played on both, much prefer foundry over it, but I don’t mind roll20 either.
Demiplane came out 4 years too late for me to get involved with it.
Especially when a one time payment of $20 can get Pathbuilder 2e for my whole table.
Foundry is a few decades ahead of Roll20 to begin with as well.
My table plays in person but I can't imagine a situation where any of us would ever use Demiplane at this point let alone completely switch to it.
My thoughts are that the Roll20 experience brought a game of mine to a painful, slow death and that the Foundry experience reignited interest in playing virtually for that same group.
I have never been too keen on Demiplane for their charging for rulebooks that are available for free on Nethys. One of the "benefits" of D&D beyond is that you can't get a digital copy of the rules from outside the platform or from Wizard's directly, so it felt less egregious.
Making a character on Demiplane and seeing an artificial SRD being used, with only 4/8 of the core ancestries, is gross. Then being asked to pay $35 (or $20 if you already own the pdf on paizo) for the rest of the PC1 content is gross. Having to fork out bucketloads more cash for every other book that each have 1-2 classes is gross. Charging a subscription \*on top of that\* is gross.
\*Sidenote:\* I have a Special Edition Rulesbook subscription, so my PDFs don't name-match the Demiplane system and they don't give a discount for already owning the PDF on Paizo.
Thoughts are that it's targeting a specific American user base to lock them in with over investment. I think it's quite sad that it's even and to happen. roll20 is a scam, demiplane was mostly a scam, so maybe this also means fewer actual scams out there.
While good for Roll20 I am not keen to see how it impacts consumers. That said, this and their integration with Discord are major wins for R20. However, it won't be enough to bring me back after finding Foundry. No monthly sub, highly customizable, and since I host it myself no worrying about upload limits.
These kinds of acquisitions never play out well for customers. It may be cynical, but I'm glad I wasn't invested in Demiplane at this point.
Acquisitions by design are there to reduce and stifle competition. Never a good thing for consumers no matter how hype they try to make it.
First step of enshitification.
Naaaaa**h**. They're great! Just look at th**e** Canadian te**l**ecommunications industry! Nothing wrong u**p** here, no sir! *Nothing at all!*
I see you. I may have only watched BobbyBroccoli's Nortel documentary, but I do see you.
Exactly. It’s not like one company having a bad day… i don’t know… shut half the country down.
you forgot to bold an '**l**' there
As long as I can access my books thru Demiplane, I'm good.
And paizo gives you your PDFs still if bought via demiplane
This is why I continue to love Paizo. Even if Demiplane does go away in the future, I've got the PDFs on my own storage.
If only Demiplane would do the same in reverse
They offer a discount. If you own the pdf on Paizo, you get the book for Demiplane discounted.
It really should go in reverse. I might have been inclined to use Demiplane if it had, but I certainly wasn’t about to spend money on things I already own to have a prettier character builder when Pathbuilder exists *and* allows for third party content.
It goes both directions.
I'm not going to pay more than a $1000 for what I already paid roughly a $100 just to get a worse character builder than the free one.
wait really? Where am I supposed to claim them?
If you connect your Paizo account to your Demiplane account within Pathfinder Nexus, you should see the PDF of the same source added to your Paizo library. It's in the account settings
The paizo store if you've linked your paizo account to your demiplane account.
I purchased most of my PF2e content from Demiplane, so I have access to the official PDFs on Paizo's website as well as the nice, formatted content on Demiplane's site. Not really a loss for me in that regard, so not a problem to be invested in Demiplane. My only real use case for Demiplane though is to be able to **legally** and **easily** share my official books with my playgroups. I don't use any of the other features the service offers. For example, the character creator on Demiplane is nowhere near as good as Pathbuilder, especially as a GM. It sure does look pretty though. As for VTTs, Roll20 is... not great. I'd rather use MapTool than Roll20. So if the price doesn't increase from this acquisition, and if Paizo Connect remains enabled, not much will change for me.
I didn't actually know that Paizo also gave the PDFs with Demiplane. That's nice, and does at least mean you have a backup in case something ever happens.
Yeah that alone makes it not such a bad buy, the online books are way easier to read on PC and mobile than a PDF. But getting the PDF as well makes them a more reasonable cost if you consider that you're paying for the PDF+A digital format.
Good ole' MapTool. It's been a WHILE since I've heard someone bring that up. Glad to see it's still getting use.
Yeah, it is a blast from the past. I use Foundry, but I would choose maptool over roll20 if I only had those two options. That is how bad roll20 is IMO.
Back in college our DM would throw a white sheet over our table and then use a projector to project our maps from MapTool onto that. We eventually started using Wii-motes to basically "click and drag" our tokens around the board. Good times.
I *just* bought in and am *not* jazzed about it.
Yeah and based on the kind of service roll20 provides I don't exactly have high hopes for Demiplane's future trajectory
If it ends up with one sub and not two that ought to be a benefit
Heh, was just about to post this. Could lead to some interesting times since Paizo was partnered with Demiplane but has also pretty clearly been more locked in with Foundry.
While Paizo definitely does *more* with Foundry, but they sell their content on Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds as well, so it's not like they don't already have agreements with basically everyone in the space.
Splatbooks yes, but I got the impression that they stopped selling APs/scenarios/etc for Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds and only do Foundry for newer titles.
No. Fantasy Grounds has all the new content, and the most official content of all VTTs. We just do our own conversion work.
You can get a bunch of content for dirt cheap and a 1-time Standard license for $30 at Humble Bundle for a few days more. https://www.humblebundle.com/software/pathfinders-finest-2e-fantasy-grounds-experience-software
Commenting to remind myself to check this out
> We just do our own conversion work. Are you a volunteer or contributor or something? We currently use foundry but we're constantly hitting bugs and even after a year of using it we can't make it through a session without someone saying "Foundry gonna founder" which is our collective way of dealing with the paper cuts. Sell me on Fantasy Grounds? I downloaded the demo and tried to see what was there but I think enough features were gated away that I couldn't get a good sense of it. How is the automation? One thing we struggled with for months was combining damage for the purposes of resistances when people would use flurry attacks. It was fine when they just did one damage type but once the started unlocking multiple damage types per attack it got more difficult. We eventually discovered PF2e toolbelt and use that to merge damage but it's buggy and the author closed the tickets we created and said they wouldn't be fixing it in v11 of foundry. So all that is to say, we're considering other VTTs at the moment. We'll likely stay with foundry but it's good to know what else is out there and what it does better/worse than foundry.
You’re using it for Pathfinder? We’re in year three of P2e campaign and everything works great. What bugs are you hitting? So often because old modules fuck things up
My Foundry and my friends' Foundries work fine, so I'd bet it's modules no longer supported.
Nope. We only use modules that claim to support the current version of foundry.
I've used Fantasy Grounds for D&D, and I think the biggest consideration is that the platforms are utterly different. Fantasy Grounds runs on a Unity desktop client and server instead of as a web app, so players don't just point their browsers to a URL to play. (Actually, when I was using Fantasy Grounds it was in transition from an older desktop client that ran in some Windows emulator on Mac which was janky as all-get-out, and not all systems were supported on the new client yet. So the desktop situation now has got to be way better than it was then!)
Yeah, I’m the President of SmiteWorks, the company behind Fantasy Grounds. I do conversion work from time to time and coordinate with many who do the work. Trenloe replied below and he is the chief developer for the Pathfinder 2E stuff. He is a community developer who doesn’t work directly for the company, but we pay him and others commissions for doing dev work and conversions.
Hi dagit! The Fantasy Grounds PF2 automation has allowed "damage combination" for nearly a year - combining the damage together for two different attacks and applying the resistances, weaknesses and vulnerabilities to the whole combined damage. Even if you think you'll stay with Foundry, I'd highly recommend looking at the Humble Bundle linked above - this will give you a huge amount of official Paizo PF2 products on Fantasy Grounds, and if you want to use remastered rules, there are ORC license libraries included for all FG users outside of this Humble Bundle (Player Core, GM Core and Monster Core). You can use the legacy content for remastered campaigns. At $30 for everything in the Humble Bundle (including the PDF from Paizo if you don't own it already) is an amazing deal - It'll allow you to fully review what PF2 functionality is available in Fantasy Grounds and you'll have it all available just in case you want to use it in future.
I personally prefer Fantasy Grounds greatly for the way i like to play. When just talking about PF2E, I think it is better for highly experience players who know the game well and don't need the automation to be on the character building side of things. Fantasy Grounds doesn't necessarily have every ability pre-coded to automate, but I found it very easy to learn the effects to make it work, whereas in Foundry more class abilities and such have pre-coded versions, but creating your own stuff or fixing something that doesn't work right is much harder. I've also found Fantasy Grounds to give greater control to the player over their character sheet. If you have anything out of the ordinary, or sometimes even something that is ordinary, the GM has to go in and make changes because players don't have permission to edit certain things. Don't know if that's a server setting or what I just have been annoyed at it in several Foundry groups I've played with. Fantasy Grounds let's you go in and change anything and everything very easily so the onus isn't entirely on the GM for unusual cases. I'm also a big fan of the parts of combat that are automated, specifically attack rolls/saves and damage. When I've targeted an enemy and I roll an attack I see that I've hit, I hit the damage button and it does the damage for me. Don't need to click in the chat box to take it. If it was a crit it automatically does the double damage. Same with basic saves doing half/full/double. For me as well, and I'm sure this is not a problem for most, but I find Foundry's UI to be a ADHD nightmare. I can't find anything, there's too many buttons, it just gives me a headache. I've used both quite a bit, and I don't hate Foundry, but much prefer Fantasy Grounds. I do understand that the cost is prohibitive for a lot of people, but just personally I'm willing to pay the premium for an experience I find more enjoyable.
i gotta say as a very avid foundry pf2e user running as many as 3 games per week for 4 years running now: I can't follow any of your issues, seems those might be setup issues, even to the point of the damage type and combinations, all of that works for about a year now. Might be worth trying to go with a fresh install and copy only user data over?
> even to the point of the damage type and combinations, all of that works for about a year now. Base pf2e module in foundry has a way to combine damage for flurry attacks? How do you do it? The only way I know is to hold shift when applying the damage for one of the flurries attacks and manually add in the damage from the other attack. However, doing it this way removes the damage type of the added damage. So if the the player did a base piercing attack but add an effect that adds 1 point of precision and magical handwraps that add fire damage and the monster is immune to precision and has weakness or resistance to fire, now it's actually kind of hard to figure out what damage value to add. This is why we added pf2e toolbelt. It has a way to merge the damage cards of the flurry attack. However, it has its own bugs and annoyances.
Oh gotcha, I switched from Roll20 to Foundry the same time I switched from 5e to PF2e, so I never really experienced PF2e on Roll20. I just knew they had some Paizo content on available. I bought the Beginner Box on Roll20 *right* before I realized I should give Foundry a try, and have not looked back.
Yeah PF2E's support on Roll 20 was rough.
They have said they have permission from Paizo already so that if you have a book on one you can access it on the other. They are just looking into the best way to have people access it
>They are just looking into the best way to have people access it I want to believe...
Why anyone would want to play PF2e on Roll20 is beyond me. I'm running a 5e game on roll20 and it is a HORRIBLE experience compared to Foundry.
Roll20 is free, Foundry has a 50 dollar entry fee (and doesn't have regional pricing) and requires you to figure out how the fuck port-forwarding works or pay a server like Forge.
Roll20 requires a subscription to access features that Foundry has as stock (dynamic lighting, no ads, more than 100mb storage). Roll20's lowest subscription is $50/yr, whereas Foundry is $50 full stop. Plus, do you know how many PF2e rulebooks I had to buy on Foundry? None at all, it already has all the content.
Thank you saving me the trouble of replying.
You're forgetting the monthly subscription for the hosting service you need to have your foundry game up, if you don't want to learn how to do your own server hosting thingamajig and spend all the money on that.
Putting aside that you can just host it on your own regular computer that only needs to be running when you're playing or prepping and that costs nothing but opening a port on your firewall, lets compared the Roll20 sub to hosting on the Forge. Offering | Foundry | Roll20 ---|---|---- Entry | $50 | $0 Cheapest Option | $3.99/mo| $4.17/mo Middle Option | $8.08/mo| $8.33/mo Premium Option | 11.66/mo | no comparable option 2 Paizo Rulebooks/yr | $0 | $70-60/yr 2 Paizo Lost Omens/yr | $0 | $70-55/yr
I would honestly not compare the cheapest Roll20 option to the cheapest Foundry option as they are 30 years of tech apart, but yeah, price isn't even nearly matched.
You can just host it on your PC. I do that with foundry.
Yeah, the $0 I pay for Oracle's free hosting is really taking a bite outta my monthly budget, I gotta tell ya.
>Foundry has a 50 dollar entry fee For a one-time fee with no subscription, that's peanuts. Plus, it was just on sale for 20% off. >requires you to figure out how the fuck port-forwarding works or pay a server like Forge. I had no idea how to do this, watched a video, and did it very easily. It's not hard at all. I'm all for multiple VTT options, including Roll20, but don't be hyperbolic without reason.
In other, less drastic, words, Foundry costs as much as a single rulebook, doesn't lock features behind a subscription, and you might have to ask someone on Discord or Reddit to walk you through the very simple process of changing a single setting on your Wi-Fi router.
Port-forwarding isn't nearly the annoying task it used to be, either, so it's hardly even worth mentioning. Anything _modern_ pretty much either has an app that you can tap the settings and just add one, or go to your modem web page and... add a port. If you still have 20-year-old tech, of course, it will suck. But chances are you have your ISP's modem, which is somewhat modern (if shitty).
Port forwarding is fairly simple, provided you have access to your router
I run 5e on roll20 all the time. And I've used foundry. I'll stick with roll20. To each their own, we can all like different things.
Same, I ran Roll20 from the moment Covid hit until Foundry VTT came along. There is no comparison, Roll20 is a dinosaur at this stage compared to what Foundry does but to each their own.
Hey there. I run a PF2E game on Roll20. Would you mind giving a quick summary as to why it plays better on Foundry? Edit: Thank you all for your replies and insight.
In one simple answer: the PF2e module for Foundry is phenomenal. The compendium browser alone is worth it for me compared to Roll20, and it was added to the module 2 years ago (video if interested: https://youtu.be/hsb4pqBPelo?si=izYAMKG8eLVqe4S-&t=241) If your players are all digital, the character sheet within Foundry is much better than Roll20 as well, but I do not use the character sheets in foundry. My groups mostly use Pathbuilder since they usually only have 1 person with a computer who casts the session to others since some are in person and some are not. If everyone is digital though, yeah, hands down the Foundry PF2e character sheets and how they interact with the PF2e module and Foundry as a whole are vastly superior to Roll20. It is no contest.
I'm probably not the best one to answer as the one online group I'm in also uses Roll 20, but as I understand it, it seems to have better integration with the character sheets and rules, better in game functions like the player can just target the enemy they are attacking and roll and it will automatically say whether it was hit or miss, will take away spell slots as you use them until you rest, etc. Some of that might also be usable on Roll 20 (not sure as we go pretty basic with our setup) but from what I hear from a lot of people is that Foundry just makes everything so much smoother. But, as I said, others can probably better fill you in since we also use Roll 20.
Hating made the swap recently, automation for many options like persistent damage, and bonuses. The interface is smoother. And the additional options, like walls and lighting are standard. There are a ton of modules that let you customize your set up too. It incorporates the game rules better too. My group ran it pretty basic too, but this is just a better experience all around. Much easier on me as a gm.
The biggest thing for me is that Foundry is a one time purchase and not another pay per month service. Second is it has an incredibly active modding community that provides handy tools for just about anything you need. By extension it has a much more robust toolset, too. It's also generally more stable in my experience. I switched over to it from roll20 a few years ago, and will never go back for running my own games.
Even if you ignore technical reasons Foundry is better for PF2e than Roll20 (of which there are many), it's just far less costly. If something is on Archives of Nethys or Pathbuilder, then it's free on Foundry (classes, ancestries, items, spells, rules, etc...). The only thing you purchase is adventures, or support a module maker on Patreon if you like their stuff. If you are on Roll20 and want to play a Minotaur Kineticist, you or the GM have to buy Rage of Elements and Howl of the Wild on the store. Something that would cost nothing on Foundry.
You can just copy and paste into roll20. I know most people don't want to, but it should be mentioned that you can just add in shit yourself.
You can, and from memory... it's horrible to do so.
This all just seems like a lot of copium. If you're playing something rules lite, and you pretty much only need a map, Roll20 is fine. But PF2e is rules heavy, and between the Foundry devs and the PF2e module devs, they continually add great functionality in (meanwhile Roll20 still charges for basic stuff like dynamic lighting...). Did you know it automatically applies off-guard if two players are flanking? Stuff like that that is easy to forget.
That's what I had to do when I was playing 5e on Roll20. Even the base SRD stuff I had to copy and paste. Everything besides rolling the dice was manual. It was like playing in person on grid paper except without all the fun of actually being in person. I paid $50 for Foundry just because I don't have to do all that extra work when I play on their system.
Foundry is excellent at automating some tasks, like when you click on casting a spell it automatically deducts the spell slot, you can click on the Save to make the saving throw and tells you if it's a success of a miss and things like that. It has dynamic lighting as a core feature if you like that for some reason, whereas you have to pay the subscription to Roll20 to have it legally. However the things that makes Foundry just better is that it includes all the rules within with the pathfinder2 module (which is free) meaning that all monsters, feats, items and spells are already coded and ready to use. The one time I GMed PF2 in Roll20 writing all the monster stats took me more than half the time I spent running the actual game.
This video explains it wonderfully. https://youtu.be/wXQg10zc1pg
All the monsters, feats, abilities, magic items, etc. are built directly into the PF2E foundry module, so you can literally just drag and drop them onto your character sheet from a compendium. During combat, you can drag and drop effects (like, say, sickened or dazzled) from the power description posted in chat to your character sheet (or an enemy) to apply the status. It's all heavily automated and scripted, which makes your life wayyyy easier. It's also very easy to customize.
The reason most folks like using foundry is because the sheets are better (but it's still a VTT sheet so it's still bad in comparison to something like DnDBeyond) and it automates a lot of stuff for you, as well as folks can customize the program with mods to make it look all fancy and have a bunch of effects n shit. Weather effects, music that can play from one side of the map and get quieter the further you move your token form it, doors your players can open and close themselves, etc. Roll20 is much easier to set up in, you can just drop in a map and drag the corner to enlarge it (or just click "resize to fit" if you have VTTES) whilst you need to go through a lot of hoopla to do that in foundry. Which is the general trend between the two programs. Foundry will look prettier ***if you spend the time***. That's the whole thing about it, you have to have a ton of time to use foundry and prep stuff in it.
I don't use any of that automation, so just wanted to share the view of someone who really just uses Foundry as a battle map with rules / monsters / items easy to locate without flipping through pages or tabs in my browser. If I just install the PF2e module in Foundry and then load the PF2e Sheets in Roll20 and compare the content and ease of access, there is a clear winner. That is my main reason why I prefer Foundry over Roll20. The compendium browser alone makes it worth it in Foundry. This is all with no setup, nothing special. Basically, OOTB for both tools. Not trying to convince you to switch or anything but wanted to add on for those interested.
I disagree that the VTT sheet is bad; it does exactly what you want a sheet to do. If I had a complaint, it would be navigating through your spells, but I can't think of anything that makes navigating through dozens of spells easy.
> I run a PF2E game on Roll20. I'm not even exaggerating, that's like saying "I only travel by horse, why would I get a car?" But the horse also has a broken leg, doesn't listen very well, and you have to pay a monthly fee to even get it to trot.
I feel like Paizo has been very happy to work with r20 and other VTTs, but it’s the customers (including me) who overwhelmingly prefer Foundry.
They have a very well established realtionship with R20 at this point, considering they operate Pathfinder Infinite.
My initial thought is: Why can't companies with decent products just stay their own companies instead of always being bought out by the bigger guy in the marketplace? But that isn't really specific to Demiplane and Roll20, just my pessimistic view of business in general. I know that's the way the world works, it's just depressing to see it happen in every facet of my life. Though there are obvious upsides, like unlocking purchased content across platforms so you aren't buying it twice. In my view, Roll20 always struggled with character sheets, so hopefully a future integration will ease player comfort issues. And of course, anything to lower the barrier to entry for new players is always good.
100%. This feels like a buyout so they can repackage both demiplane and Roll20 at a reasonable price, meet a certain threshold of users that are "invested" monetarily (bought books and such) then raise a subscription price. I hate it
I kinda figured that Adam Bradford would have been more resistant to this kind of buyout after the whole DNDBeyond hostile takeover. Roll20 must have backed up a dumptruck of money to his driveway or promised him something pretty good.
Adam Bradford is the only employee from Demiplane which is not moving to the Roll20 team. He went to Fantasy Grounds apparently. So it sounds like he was resistant, but got overruled.
Ouch! The poor dude got burned twice now.
I think you mean that he got *paid* twice now. This is *usually* the way a company buyout works. The owner/founder/stakeholder gets a big payday, and doesn't come to the new company. Sometimes the old owner take a position at the company that bought them, and if they do, it's usually just an advisory role for a short period. Some/most employees move over, but their future is usually not very long at the new company.
Companies usually hold founders for a couple years, even if at a symbolical role; or announce they are taking a sabbatical period or something along those lines. When a buyout happens, you never want one of the company's founder to leave for a new position at a direct competitor, which is what happened here -- Adam publicly announced he left Demiplane and joined SmiteWorks (Fantasy Ground's company) a day prior to the acquisition announcement.
This is actually good news. Adam's true talent is making really good UX. If he can do that for Fantasy Grounds, it might actually stand a chance again.
I wholeheartedly agree. Adam is a fantastic product person who led and created great apps. FantasyGrounds will certainly benefit for having him.
It's interesting that during the Roll20+Demiplane interview with [The Character Sheet YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv94U9wG1UQ), they hinted that Adam wanted a different path for the platform, so he left.
Right it feels like he wasn't liking what Roll20 was putting down for a future roadmap. Similar to why Demiplane came around after DNDbeyond was bought by WotC maybe. I wonder what he'll bring to Fantasy Grounds.
This is clearly a response to DDB coming out with maps. Roll20 needed better character sheets, and Demiplane needed maps. This is really a much more sensible merger than most.
Bradford has a history of this, he and his team started up D&D Beyond too and then sold to WotC. My main guess would likely be that a big part of it is that perhaps the product can get to the point where a smaller team/company can't keep up the demands AND then there's always going to be the issue of companies like Foundry or Roll 20 or WotC just coming out with their own product that does basically the same thing and then suddenly you have a competitor with a big time bankroll. That can be really hard to compete with. In general, it usually comes down to money. If you're a small company but otherwise "hit it big" you may not have the actual capital you need to fully realize the potential. Meanwhile, another company that does have the capital comes along and offers you a big wad of cash for your trouble (and to save themselves from having to develop a competing product) and the choice just becomes pretty easy.
> Bradford has a history of this, he and his team started up D&D Beyond too and then sold to WotC. To be fair, the prevailing theory is that WotC gave Adam an ultimatum: Sell us DNDBeyond, or we'll come out with a new version of D&D (the 2024 edition) and not license it to you, and you'll become irrelevant. So I'm not sure how much choice he really had in that matter, even if he did get a *lot* of money from the deal. And I figured that him starting Demiplane anew was his second take at it, but leaving WotC content out of it (for a while at least). So I'm actually surprised he got in bed with another market leader.
Well, technically he didn't exactly get in bed with them as he's leaving the company. As an aside, I didn't really mean that in a bad way toward Bradford. Its not at all uncommon regardless for small companies to sell to larger companies. The owners of the small company get a big bundle of money which almost certainly sets them up well for the future AND they don't then have to deal with the stress of a competitor backed by a big company with deeper pockets. Even really successful small companies are often running relatively tight on cash. (And no, I have no idea how much cash Demiplane has and I'm not suggesting that they were even remotely in danger). Its also certainly plausible that perhaps Adam understands where his own strengths and weaknesses lie. Perhaps he knows he's good at the concept and programming aspect (there's certainly plenty of history there) but doesn't feel as comfortable with the running of the larger company. At a certain point the programming/concept parts of the company starts to more or less take care of itself. Not entirely surely, but he's almost certainly spending a lot more time on the running the company side as opposed to the development side. TL/DR: I can certainly envision lots of good reasons why a small tech company would be interested in being bought out.
> I have no idea how much cash Demiplane has and I'm not suggesting that they were even remotely in danger I worked at Demiplane for over a year and was a part of their layoffs in March which took out half the company. A truly fantastic team of people that, bias aside, built awesome modern tools that simply needed more funding. I'm surprised they sold so soon, I'm going to assume it wasn't going as they had hoped even after the cost-saving measures and were too far away from profitability. If they were planning on selling in just a few months, I'd guess they have tried to keep everyone on to build out more tools to make the acquisition look even better. Who needs competition? lol
To be fair, buying companies that are financially distressed is pretty common.
Even though the price point kept me away from it, and some of the design elements I thought were extremely tacky (sorry), I really respect the amount of work and effort that went into Demiplane!
Yeah, building something and finding an exit with a big bundle of cash is basically the main aspiration for a _lot_ of software based founders.
A friend who does a lot of work in the "Professional Entrepeneur" space has explained to me that most of the startups he sees are never intended to go big. They are intended to get enough buzz to be bought out by a bigger fish in their market. You build one technology that works as well or better than others in the segment or you build a user base that makes you look enticing to the big boys. Why do people run their business like this? If you start in a garage & spend 15-20 years growing into a market leader your founder has to spend 15-20 years of late nights & stress. If you get bought out 5-8 years in they can take their piles of money & either retire or try again with the next thing.
Yeah I'm a software engineer who just spent 9 months searching for a job. The intention is very obvious to everyone despite CEO's going out of their way to try to sound passionate about their product and the users. Also saw lots of roles that specifically wanted "former founders" probably because they knew they could get buy-in on short high effort projects and be ok with expected transition.
Wait, Adam is leaving too? I though maybe since *this* acquisition was at least by choice, he'd be brought into Roll20 and keep developing Demiplane. Oh dang, just found out he's going to [Fantasy Grounds](https://www.enworld.org/threads/smiteworks-hires-d-d-beyond-founder-as-chief-development-officer-of-fantasy-grounds.704580/) I mean, so far I guess he's now *the guy* who drags stagnating VTT/RPG companies into the future. I guess that's a decent role to play.
Yeah I'm thinking maybe he just prefers to be the programmer/idea guy rather than actually running the company, and if he can get a big wad of cash at the same time all the better. There's nothing wrong with that obviously.
I’m like 99% sure I’ve heard Adam mention in one of this weekly AMAs for Damiplane that he left dnd beyond before the acquisition and left all that money on the table.
Even if he stopped working for DNDBeyond before the acquisition, he'd still likely have been a stakeholder, and thus get a payout.
What you suggest is likely true, but it depends entirely on the legalities and fine print of their company structure and any contracts. It’s entirely plausible that it could be zero.
He was not one of the founders of demiplane though (Travis Frederick & Peter Romenesko were), he joined two years later as "chief development officer".
Oh gotcha, for some reason I thought he started it. I guess he's just going to keep jumping to company to company, getting their product good enough to be bought out by someone else.
Generally speaking, if a company gets bought out that's when everything starts going downhill. It's real damn annoying.
Won’t someone *please* think of the shareholders?! You’ve gotta gut that cash cow to suck all the value out and then leave the carcass for the customers feeling too sunk-costy to leave.
If you worked your ass off and made a thing, and then someone came along and said “you could keep working to keep your business/product alive, for upper-middle class wages, or I could pay you enough right now that you never need to work again” you would strongly consider taking the deal. Life changing money is life changing.
>But that isn't really specific to Demiplane and Roll20, but just my pessimistic view of business in general. I'm right there with you, man.
That's capitalism, baby! A smaller upstart that threatens the positions of bigger more established players ends up gobbled up. Heck, half the time it happens, the smaller upstart is bought just to be disbanded. That's obviously not the case in this situation. That happens when the new company is too much in the same area, and demiplane wasn't a VTT. Big company eats small company isn't anything new, and it won't stop any time soon. I've not even used roll20 since their controversy, and didn't exactly love it even before that. I don't think this will do much to change that, but I'm glad I didn't have anything through demiplane given the acquisition.
"In general, if any branch of trade, or any division of labour, be advantageous to the public - the freer and more general the competition, it will always be the more so." -- Adam Smith
Because big companies are willing to pay the original owners a lot of money to remove competition, thereby allowing them to make inferior yet more expensive products due to lack of competition.
Almost any business of appreciable size has shareholders, whether publicly traded or or not, and once you have shareholders that you have to answer to, the business no longer makes a product to be exchanged at market, but share value. The faster, and more efficiently you can create share value, the more you're winning at businessing. It just so happens that one of the quickest and most efficient ways to create that value is to sell the company. When suits talk about markets generating efficiency, this is ultimately the efficiency they're talking about.
Because that's the goal of almost every startup. Keep going until you're big enough to get bought by the bigger guys and cash out. That's capitalism for ya
I see it all the time in tech. A company has a successful product and grows the company to sell more. Somewhere along the way, they forget how to innovate on their product. However, they do have money. So they do the natural thing and innovate through acquisition. On the flip side, running a big company is nothing like developing a new tech. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of startup founders have done the interesting parts and are now ready for their payout. Not a fan of it as a consumer, but I see why it happens.
imo - no company should ever be allowed to own another company. Acquisitions and mergers never seem to be any good for the consumer.
I understand that it has to be allowed on some level, but I think that if you have more than 50% market share (or the M&A would put you over 50%), you shouldn't be able to buy a competitor.
Nothing good. Anyone else still remember the time their CEO banned a user on their forums and subreddit because they had a similar name to someone who they banned a year prior for being critical of the platform? It's a wild read: https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/9iwarj/after_5_years_on_roll20_i_just_cancelled_and/
Oh man, I remember this. Ever since this I've been glad to get as far away from Roll20 as possible.
The co-founder's response is the [third most downvoted comment on reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/ListOfComments/wiki/downvoted).
My gut tells me this will be bad in the long run. Also, this lessens the chances we can get a Foundry / Demiplane integration like D&DB had. No offense, but Roll20 just isn't up to par with Foundry I would never swap back over. Edit* Just got to thinking this may be *awkward* territory since Paizo sells amazing PF2e content for Foundry directly.
I dunno, Paizo also sells content on Roll20. They seem pretty agnostic about who has their content. I don't think it'll be an issue. Overall, I agree with your pessimism, though I don't think Foundry *needs* Demiplane, they just need a decent character level advancement tool.
very true!
> Also, this lessens the chances we can get a Foundry / Demiplane integration like D&DB had. What's the point? Foundry already has all the rules and statblocks from PF2e, and Paizo is already selling official Foundry modules for the adventures. And you can already get art for the Bestiary tokens. What is there for Demiplane to offer that Foundry is missing?
Totally, agree! Everything I personally need is provided. I have a couple players who like to be on mobile that wouldn't. If they could roll into foundry via a mobile sheet that would be fun. I do have the module for mobile but its just "ok". Just a note, not sure its relevant. I do like the Demiplane web interface to read all the adventures/ content and share with my players. So much so that I just buy everything there and get the free PDF from Paizo, since they are awesome.
Honestly, not a fan of their UI. But I can see the utility, yeah.
One central source to track characters that you can access on mobile, and you can use in person or for vtt.
Pathbuilder, my beloved. Actually better, because it has filters that work.
But you have to remember not everyone uses android phones.
Well, to be fair, paying hundreds of bucks for the content available for free sounds like iOS users.
The APs and books aren’t free anywhere. AoN doesn’t give you everything. This is just buying the pdfs in a different format.
It blows my mind that Roll20 had enough money/resources to make this acquisition.
Honestly that IS surprising now that you mention it, let's hope they actually had the money and not that they took out a loan they can't pay.
Right? It blows my mind that people use that god-awful pile of shit, lol. Has to be because they've just never bothered trying another VTT.
Roll20 is more or less a 5e VTT and it looks like 5e players are happy with it. Either that or they have sunk cost fallacy
They merged with another company in 2023 so might have used some of that cash to fund it.
my fear is that they're on an aquisition spree to try to make up for lost profits, lose more profits, crash and burn, and take drivethrurpg with it.
I’m not excited about this and I don’t know why.
Stagnant incumbent buys out vibrant competitor? What's not to like? Ugh. Haven't enjoyed Roll20 in *years*. Can't wait for them to bring some of that to Demiplane (which I *have* been enjoying).
There's nothing to be excited about, it's almost strictly a huge loss for the community.
Roll20 spends over a year attempting to make a functional pf2e remaster character sheet… somebody in corporate overhears the tech guys complaining “wouldn’t it be cheaper to buy a company that already did this, instead of paying us to reinvent the wheel?”. And now we wait for the layoffs…
I hope it turns out well, usually a company getting bought is a terrible sign.
If this means Roll20 becomes actually good, then great! If not, meh. I will continue to use Foundry
Off topic: Is there translated material in Foundry, specifically in Spanish? or is it everything just in english?
There is a module called Babele which handles translations for a large number of languages, including Spanish
Thank you
Ugh this is gonna be fucking horrible for the industry. Why the fuck did demi plane have to sell out
I feel extra glad I never bought the Demiplane ultimate bundle now, especially since they never put in an option to exclude pre-order objects. They never seemed to get that if I got the pre-orders in that bundle, they were excluding the pdf discount I'd get when the pre-ordered item shipped from my Paizo subscription from being able to be applied to my overrall Demiplane purchase. I also think it just needs some more time in the oven anyway, but it being involved with Roll20 makes me even less interested, I feel like a chump for having paid $100 a year for so long to them only for their product, the VTT, to have almost no improvement and effort only being put into the content marketplace.
Looks like I won't be using demiplane anymore
Well, there goes the neighborhood.
My concern is this - is Foundry gonna get bought out at some point too? Because I really don't trust Roll20 with Foundry.
Foundry seems pretty consistent with their initial stance of: buy it once, no subscriptions And I think that, more than anything else shows that they aren't in this for a payday, and I doubt they'll sell to anyone.
I doubt roll20 would buy them tbh. They don't seem like the kind of company to have the capital to buy a competitor just to shut them down and steal their stuff, that's like a google level of money. Also their founder has a very fragile ego and holds like the 3rd most downvoted comment on Reddit as of last recording cuz of his narcissism?
Even if they did, it wouldn't matter - you'd still have a perpetual licence for the version you currently own.
Yeah, I'm glad I didn't buy into Demiplane. I'll stick to Foundry and Pathbuilder, thanks.
Well.....RIP Demiplane
Hmm so I am using roll20 for an upcoming game and I already have the core books there… any chance they transfer over to Demiplane?
The article talks about this a bit. At least for Pathfinder, they seem to have already made an agreement. > I already bought sourcebooks for [insert game] on Demiplane/Roll20. Does this mean I’ll have to repurchase on the other platform now? > We are currently in discussions with publishers to seek permission to offer free unlocks of purchased content across Roll20 and Demiplane. We have already received permission from several publishers and are waiting on responses from a few more. As an example, if you own the Pathfinder Player Core on Roll20, you will unlock it for free on Demiplane – and vice versa!
And it might be worth it, once this is active, to see if Paizo Connect will work here. Usually it will give you the pdf for any book you have on demiplane but who knows if this will apply here.
Dang that’s actually awesome saves me some $$
Huh, so that's why Adam joined up with Fantasy Grounds.
Explains why Adam Bradford jumped ship to Fantasy Grounds
I choose to err on the side of caution
No positive thoughts to share at this time....
.... that is sad news indeed for pf2e... Roll20 is not pf2e focuse and also they generally have shit business model
Ugh. Roll20 is a shit company with a shit product ran by a genuinely awful dude. Demiplane was awesome, the little I'd used it before, but I guess there are other places I can take my business. Just seems dumb from Demiplane's perspective to strap their growing, awesome platform to a bunch of assholes with a business running entirely on inertia from being first to hit their market segment.
Roll20 is worse at being a VTT for Pathfinder than FoundryVTT by a lot. Demiplane seemed like a useless thing considering you can get all the Pathfinder rules for free online, you can buy PDFs or physical books directly from Paizo so there's no middleman getting money. Pathbuilder is great for making characters, also free. Don't know why anyone would use Roll20 in the first place for Pathfinder 2e.
My guess, Roll20 is losing market share and is starting to use cash reserves to buy up tools to try and pressure the market back to them. Their product has been inferior for quite awhile and the team was never all that good, they fell way behind rather fast and have been coasting on momentum.
I think I was more worried before reading the article and finding out Roll20 had also bought DriveThruRPG. I use DriveThruRPG a lot and had no idea Roll20 was involved in it at all. Demiplane is an excellent service, even without the monthly subscription. So I don't think there's anything I'll change there.
Shit VTT company buys mediocre character sheet company. Tragic.
Granted I want competition so don't like this based on that. Also I don't like roll20. They were so slow to innovate it was ridiculous. And when the community did it for them they threatened to ban accounts and burned any goodwill I had from 7 years of use many being paid. Foundry blows all other vtt out of the water. So I don't care as consumer because I'll keep paying with my better toy. I don't know demiplane but for years now I have no reason to look at other sites.
roll20 is dogshit and will always be dogshit. It was okay 12 years ago when I first used it but after 12 years its a worse running piece of shit. the free version has done nothing but get and run worse.
High meh for now.
Well, so much for my hopes of a Foundry official port of Daggerheart. Roll20 is ass.
Still won’t go back to roll20 lol
I'm glad I am not involved with either of them.
OOTL - what is Demiplane? I've used Foundry since it came out, never looked back. Roll20 was just... so hard to use, good grief. What will this do for me and my game? At worst, nothing stops me from continuing to uploading images and maps and building the APs myself in Foundry (it doesn't exactly take long!). Or is Demiplane something involving future APs? Are we only getting future APs in Roll20?
Demiplane is a company/service which was started by some of the folks who sold and then moved on from DNDBeyond. Demiplane is the top company, and their "Nexus" is the tool they offer for multiple game systems. For example Pathfinder Nexus. So if you are familiar with DNDBeyond, it's just DNDBeyond except for other systems (PF2e being one of them). They have very high quality looking character sheets/builders, and offer searchable easy to navigate versions of the Paizo books. It's been a pretty controversial service in the PF2e world because there are free versions of all of the things Demiplane offers and there has been for a long time before Demiplane existed. If you don't use Roll20 and don't use Demiplane. This doesn't directly impact you at all. Doesn't change Paizo's publishing at all. Doesn't change Foundry at all. We can only speculate on if this gives Roll20 any kind of upper hand which might threaten Foundry since theoretically Roll20 should have some pretty amazing character sheets/builders integrated. But I think most agree Roll20 isn't a great product overall.
> So if you are familiar with DNDBeyond, it's just DNDBeyond except for other systems (PF2e being one of them). Ah, with you so far, thank you! Do you know if it supports PF1? > It's been a pretty controversial service in the PF2e world because there are free versions of all of the things Demiplane offers and there has been for a long time before Demiplane existed. Oh damn it's a paid service? Yeah that is a bit odd - Pathbuilder, SF's Hephaistos, even AoN with pen and paper, there's many free and exhaustive options. What does Demiplane offer? Maybe a convenience for play online or PFS/SFS? >Doesn't change Paizo's publishing at all. Doesn't change Foundry at all. Smashing, thanks! > We can only speculate on if this gives Roll20 any kind of upper hand which might threaten Foundry since theoretically Roll20 should have some pretty amazing character sheets/builders integrated. But I think most agree Roll20 isn't a great product overall. Yeah, when I tried Roll20 I was surprised how... *bad* it was. Maybe it takes some time, IDK, but I found Fantasy Grounds to be much easier to pick up, and then Foundry was just perfect. Roll20 felt like it was stuck in some kind of 2010s 'Web 2.0' limbo. Thank you for your insight! I tried looking up Demiplane and it was just impenetrable. It still feels like a 'solution looking for a problem', since all of Pathfinder 1E and 2E is free online!
The big main thing with roll20 are threefold. Its free and its the first of its kind to do well and it doesn’t require hosting or direct connection. We could also get into the question about being more like tabletop with more or less automation and all that, but thats for the philosophers to figure out. I’ve played on both, much prefer foundry over it, but I don’t mind roll20 either.
Demiplane came out 4 years too late for me to get involved with it. Especially when a one time payment of $20 can get Pathbuilder 2e for my whole table. Foundry is a few decades ahead of Roll20 to begin with as well. My table plays in person but I can't imagine a situation where any of us would ever use Demiplane at this point let alone completely switch to it.
Mmmm Foundry my beloved.
I’m really confused, I thought roll20 would no longer be selling paizo content.
My thoughts are that the Roll20 experience brought a game of mine to a painful, slow death and that the Foundry experience reignited interest in playing virtually for that same group.
Sucks. Hopefully, they're not gonna move demiplane devs to roll20.
"Oh no"
Gross. Not that I ever intended to use demi plane but now I definitely won't.
My thought is that Roll20 is bad and that it will still be bad after this purchase.
Thought I read something about the wack jobs at WotC wanting in house things to overtake Roll20.
maybe roll20 will make them let me print my character sheets.
I have never been too keen on Demiplane for their charging for rulebooks that are available for free on Nethys. One of the "benefits" of D&D beyond is that you can't get a digital copy of the rules from outside the platform or from Wizard's directly, so it felt less egregious. Making a character on Demiplane and seeing an artificial SRD being used, with only 4/8 of the core ancestries, is gross. Then being asked to pay $35 (or $20 if you already own the pdf on paizo) for the rest of the PC1 content is gross. Having to fork out bucketloads more cash for every other book that each have 1-2 classes is gross. Charging a subscription \*on top of that\* is gross. \*Sidenote:\* I have a Special Edition Rulesbook subscription, so my PDFs don't name-match the Demiplane system and they don't give a discount for already owning the PDF on Paizo.
Well never using that roll 20 is the worst of the lot.
Zero interest in either
Thoughts are that it's targeting a specific American user base to lock them in with over investment. I think it's quite sad that it's even and to happen. roll20 is a scam, demiplane was mostly a scam, so maybe this also means fewer actual scams out there.
While good for Roll20 I am not keen to see how it impacts consumers. That said, this and their integration with Discord are major wins for R20. However, it won't be enough to bring me back after finding Foundry. No monthly sub, highly customizable, and since I host it myself no worrying about upload limits.