Convince Me to Switch to Fantasy Grounds

[GerPronouncedGrr]

I'm currently running two games over on Roll20, and have come up against some things that are terrible headaches.


Aligning maps to the grid is a nightmare
Character sheets are complicated for players to set up correctly
Most character sheets are broken in some way even when set up correctly
Uploading and organizing my custom content is a hassle


Does FG do better in any of these categories?

Does FG Classic or FG Unity do better in any regard?

If I own either version, can I host games for people who don't own any version of FG?

If so, can those people view the content of my library (rules, lore entries, etc.) for the things I own?

If you've used Roll20 before, tell me your favourite thing about FG versus Roll20.

[celestian]

I've nothing of substance to offer to the discussion but I came here looking for the meme but didn't find it. Someone better at this than me can do ithttps://imgflip.com/s/meme/Change-My-Mind.jpg

I will say there is one thing that FGC does better than any other VTT out there. Automation. If you want to have players playing the game and not having to know every single rule, then FG is the best platform. FGC has some faults that are being addressed in FGU (when it's released/stable) and if you can survive with those and automation and pre-made content is something you really would like...

[LordEntrails]

Welcome :)

Yes, FG does better, imo, in all of them.

FGC and FGU have almost identical capabilities. Most of these functions are defined by the ruleset, so behavior can be slightly different depending upon which ruleset (i.e. game system) you are using.

If you own an Ultimate license (either subscription or one-time), none of your players need a paid license (they can use the free/demo).

Players can access all content you mark/allow for them to load while they are connected to you. No limit to the number of campaigns you can share in, or the number of players in a campaign.

I've only used Roll20 a small bit, because I struggled with it. Especially combat automation and maps and grids. I find content creation and organization very easy in FG (see Adventure Module link in my signature for some idea) and it's great for homebrew. I also like FG because everything resides on my computer and not on some company's server that I don't have access to. Also, with the more popular rulesets, the combat automation in FG cuts my combat time to a third of what it is on paper. It gives us more time to engage in role playing and in narrating fun combat stuff, not just adding and subtracting modifiers, calculating if it was a hit or miss, tracking hit points, etc.

The other big reason I chose FG over Roll20 are the companies and the communities. I don't like the public policies of the Orr Group or how they treat their customers. I highly respect SmiteWorks for the way they act and treat their customers. And, these forums are perhaps one of the friendliest and most helpful places on the internet, especially when you consider the number of forum members.

[GerPronouncedGrr]

Thanks for your reply, the automated features sound great.I think what I'll do it take one or two Fantasy Grounds College classes and see how I like it. The price of both the Ultimate license and the rulesets I need are nothing to sneeze at, especially since I already paid for them on Roll20.

[phumano]

I'm new to FG myself, and I will say it is not intuitive at all. There is a high learning curve and most of it is outside of the game. I've spent hours in the forums, the wiki, and youtube.

Also, even thought its a cloud server if the GM (myself) is not in the game, no one can log onto the service it seems. If FG Unity has a hiccup on my end, everyone has to reload.

However, once you have this baby working, it is so powerful and amazing. It handles all my save rolls, initiative, DC, Hit points, with perfection. It allows me to focus on Role Playing and story completely.

Even prepping is a blessing. I drag all the maps, dialog, important characters/events down to the save keys.

My players love it because they roll right out of their character sheet for attacks/spells/saves/everything. They also love it because fog of war has no end. In Roll20 they had a feeling of how far they were into a map because they can see the edges. In FG it's black forever.

Long Story Short - FG= High Learning Curve FG= Most Immersive Experience.

I'm not sure how I'm going to go back to tabletop.

[Imagix]

Well, there's a cloud server for brokering connections, but the game itself is hosted from the GM's machine. And for me, that's a plus. If my network and computer are functioning, then i'm good to go. If Roll20's (for example, I've never used Roll20 so have no idea with what frequency or severity that roll20 experiences this) has an issue, then there's nothing I can do about it. My session would be ruined for a reason that didn't have to happen.

[Willot]

Reason to switch to FG?

Easy, Roll20 is pissing you off...


But seriously two things
FGU has ALOT more cool features BUT STILL IN TESTING and it WILL eventually crash in the middle of your game and carry on and frustrate the HELL out of you!
FGC is ALOT more STABLE and wont crash (well sometimes but not very often) but Its missing alot of the real cool features and is limited in a few areas because its a 32bit App and cant use cloud servers

[KithKiryn]

We switched from Roll20 to FGU and it was a better choice in our case, but I'd advise checking out all options before committing. While FGU could be great in the long run, it still has a a way to go. I'd see if Foundry VTT or Astral might be a better fit for your needs. Especially Foundry if you run as much custom stuff as it sounds like - it's just fluid, fast, smooth, the most automated VTT I've seen and just plain works . The down side is no attached store for content as FGU has, so you'd have to import from DNDBeyond (luckily very easy to do) or similar. There is however a Roll20 Converter that converts your roll20 campaign and imports it to Foundry, even as far as carrying over placed walls etc.

I invested pretty heavily in FGU so I'll be sticking with it for a bit (unless optimization is just tooo far down the road), and it's certainly helped us have a lot of fun, but as a consumer it's worth checking your options obviously.

[GavinRuneblade]

I'm currently running two games over on Roll20, and have come up against some things that are terrible headaches.


Aligning maps to the grid is a nightmare
Character sheets are complicated for players to set up correctly
Most character sheets are broken in some way even when set up correctly
Uploading and organizing my custom content is a hassle


Aligning to the grid is rough everywhere. I prefer ungridded maps whenever possible. There is a great tool that works for FG. I don't know if it works for other VTTs, but it may.
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?19813-Map-Align-Utility-to-scale-and-align-map-to-grid

Character sheets in FG are drag and drop simple. For Roll20 the best I know of is to pay for your content on DND Beyond and use the importer. That works ok, but I find Fantasy Grounds actually works works. Here, is the video on how to do characters in Fantasy Grounds so you can see for yourself:
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?46965-New-Character-Creation-Videos

Custom Content is what Fantasy Grounds does best. You can enter and edit anything you want, link it all to each other. Recently we even got a worldbuilding mod that makes it possible for you to sort and edit content by type, like groups, locations, etc. And have players put their notes on it while only seeing the bits you want them to see.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yQtfKf2yD4

You cannot host for anyone who doesn't have FG at all. But if you have the ultimate license you can host for people on a free license. those people can view what you share with them, but only when you are hosting and they join the campaign. In this way it is better than Roll20 but not as nice as DND Beyond. However what does work even better than Beyond is your custom stuff you can export as a module and your players can keep a copy forever. I love this feature.

I did use Roll20 for years. What made me change was two things. First, the data limit on Roll20. 10megs is just plain tiny. And paying for more space was going to be as expensive as a permanent FG license pretty quickly. On FG my harddrive is the only limit. I have a 2 terabyte drive dedicated to images, maps, etc. If I want I can have more than that too. I don't know if things changed since I left, but there was no unlimited plan for Roll20 when I used it. The second is this one:
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?45753-What-happens-if-FG-goes-away


You didn't specifically ask this, but it is somewhat related.
3. What if Fantasy Grounds lost a publishing license with company A
a. Our licenses are written to allow us to maintain copies on our server for use in re-installation for customers who bought content.
b. No content would ever be removed from a buying customer
c. FG would stop selling products from company A, so only existing customers would be able to access and use those products

It's very standard language to have a "destroy all licensed items" clause in contracts. We specifically pushed for changes to that language for each of our publishers -- even the big ones.

I still own 1e/BECMI D&D books, and books from several games that went bankrupt and stopped existing. I had a license for D&D Insider which is gone and with it all of my access to that content. I've had access to many other websites that no longer exist. I've played I don't know how many MMOs that shut down. With Roll20, I feel like it is on a ticking timer. Same with D&D Beyond. They're like Insider. One day they'll be gone and everyone who spent money there loses access to everything they paid for. If smiteworks goes down, I still have my digital books and my players can still connect directly to my games. Just like when I bust out my old physical books from games that don't have companies anymore.

[Targas]

I‘m not that satisfied with the FGU UI and performance and switched to Foundry VTT from FGC/FGU. My players like it much more, as I do.

[viviolay]

What ruleset/games are you playing?

I just started playing PF2E on FG recently (also play 5e) and I cant imagine playing it on a different platform tbh. There is just way more of the products + the ruleset is well supported.

The other big thing is I use FG offline on a TV table. I can do this in person regardless of the status of the internet and thanks to the map scaling extension Trenloe made. That was another big selling point for me. I know we won’t be playing in person for a while but if you ever want that functionality it’s there.


Note I use FGC. I have an FGU license but I’m waiting for stable final release.

[Valarian]

I'm currently running two games over on Roll20, and have come up against some things that are terrible headaches.

Aligning maps to the grid is a nightmare
Character sheets are complicated for players to set up correctly
Most character sheets are broken in some way even when set up correctly
Uploading and organizing my custom content is a hassle


1) Aligning grids can be a problem if the grid on the map image doesn't have consistently sized grid lines. When setting the grid, you drag a rectangle to highlight one of the grid squares. If the grid on the map image is inconsistent, the grid will go out of alignment.
2) Character sheets are already set up as part of the ruleset and (hopefully) tested by the developer. There is nothing for the player, or GM, to set up other than to fill in the character information.
3) See the above comment about developer testing.
4) There's nothing to upload, you organise your content in the campaign folder on your computer. You copy the images you want to use to the images folder. You create story, item, NPC, and encounter entries in Fantasy Grounds. You can export these as an adventure module for use in other campaigns, so it's an idea to have a "preparation" campaign where you create material and a "game" campaign for running it with your players. You don't have to create all the material, it depends on your GM style.


Does FG Classic or FG Unity do better in any regard?
I'm still using FG Classic for my games. FG Unity is still in beta, and a lot of the community rulesets don't yet run on Unity.


If I own either version, can I host games for people who don't own any version of FG?
The Ultimate license allows non-licensed players to connect to your games. They will still need to download and install the software. For FG Unity, they will need to create a forum account.


If so, can those people view the content of my library (rules, lore entries, etc.) for the things I own?
When connected to you, the players can see any library material that is:
a) player visible - so they can't go viewing the monster manual or GM guide (or equivalent).
b) shared with the player - as GM you can block libraries you don't want the players to see.


If you've used Roll20 before, tell me your favourite thing about FG versus Roll20.
I was a backer of one of the projects that merged with Roll20 and I've had an account for years. I can count on one hand the number of games I've run in Roll20 over Fantasy Grounds. The biggest difference, for me, is the focus on the map rather than the character sheet. Fantasy Grounds is story and character focused. The map, in FG Classic, is just another image. FG Unity adds some map features, which is nice for those that want them.

Roll20 may have got better in recent years, with the release of the character sheets. However, I got fed up with having to create each campaign from scratch each time - including all the functionality I wanted for the "tokens". With Fantasy Grounds, I select the ruleset I want to run the campaign with and I'm ready to go. All the setup work has been done for me already, and I can concentrate on setting up the game for my players.

Download it, take it for a spin. You can try it with a single player connection in demo mode for a read-only campaign.
For FG Classic, you need to open port 1802 as a game port and make sure your router is directing traffic to your computer.
For FG Unity, there's a cloud broker that does the routing for you.

[Targas]

Roll20 may have got better in recent years, with the release of the character sheets. However, I got fed up with having to create each campaign from scratch each time - including all the functionality I wanted for the "tokens". With Fantasy Ground, I select the ruleset I want to run the campaign with and I'm ready to go. All the setup work has been done for me already, and I can concentrate on setting up the game for my players.
With Foundry and the VTTA plugin you just need DnDBeyond and can import all and everything. Modules to come soon as well, so no prep effort and all players can administrate their chars on DnDBeyond, even roll on DnDBeyond. But I guess I‘m getting too off-topic, now.

[Valarian]

With Foundry and the VTTA plugin you just need DnDBeyond and can import all and everything. Modules to come soon as well, so no prep effort and all players can administrate their chars on DnDBeyond, even roll on DnDBeyond. But I guess I‘m getting too off-topic, now.
I rarely play D&D, and don't have a D&DBeyond account. :D

[GavinRuneblade]

With Foundry and the VTTA plugin you just need DnDBeyond and can import all and everything. Modules to come soon as well, so no prep effort and all players can administrate their chars on DnDBeyond, even roll on DnDBeyond. But I guess I‘m getting too off-topic, now.

No that is completely on topic because it is about what works on Roll20, and thank you for sharing, it might help the OP make their decision.

I found it a bit weird though that to get it to work in Roll20 you had to buy the content on Beyond instead of on Roll20. I did love the User Interface but I found limits from a functional standpoint. For example, it no longer has the warforged subraces from Wayfinders Guide to Eberron, it only has the newer single race warforged from Rising from the Last War. It also only works reliably in Chrome, both games I've played using it had trouble with firefox. Adding homebrew and managing it was difficult and frustrating, though people make the same complaint about Fantasy Grounds, so it may just be that I've only tried it twice and need to get used to it. Are you aware of a way to get homebrew into it easier? Have you tried?

God I wish FG's user interface was as intuitive and nice as theirs though. I love how it uses both vertical and horizontal tabs in the character sheet for sorting, and how the mechanics were all integrated visually. For example, Alchemist Infusions had a counter that showed how many you have left available, and which item was infused and whether it was in your inventory or a teammate's. A very simple one at that. Unfortunately, there are three published versions of Alchemists, and it only lets you use the new one from Eberron, not the Artificer from the UA, unless you manually create it as homebrew, or unless I was doing it wrong. What was your favorite part of the Roll20/Beyond linkup?

As I said in my earlier post, my favorite thing about the Roll20/Beyond integration is how you can share content even while offline. In FG you need to give your players a module to do that. But the better part is they can look at that stuff and use it in multiple campaigns, not just the one you shared it in. Or even use it to DM their own game with your homebrew content. To my knowledge, Beyond doesn't let you DM with my content, it only lets me give you access to my content when you are my player and I'm DMing.

[Targas]

Well, I might need to explain abit more I guess. Foundry VTT is a brand new 1 day old VTT. It is a mix between Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds.
One user created an AddOn Module called Beyond20 for Roll20, which lets you use DnDBeyond material you own. The same exists for FoundryVTT.
However there is alot more available like VTTA doing almost the same and even more. The GUI for Foundry is much better than for Roll20, usage and performance wise, giving you the freedom to either host a (rented) server, or run a game locally, one time license purchase only, etc.
Of course you rely on DnDBeyond to use the sources. Foundry can be run with Safari, Crome or Firefox only for the players. I‘ve alread had half a dozen sessions with players using Chrome and Firefox. Together with e.g. Dungeondraft you can create maps in some minutes, use the import to directly add walls & lighting in a second, so no prep time at all.
True DnDBeyond is sharing your content only. You‘d need a VTT like Foundry to run the GM part.

[BlackMagic0]

It's a great system. Fantasy Grounds is amazing. Just as long as no one in your group uses Apple.

[Kelrugem]

One user created an AddOn Module called Beyond20 for Roll20, which lets you use DnDBeyond material you own. The same exists for FoundryVTT.

Since I do not play 5e that is for me personally not important, but I wonder whether such an extension is in sense of the ToS of all sites (and WotC), especially for Roll20 where you can purchase (some of) the modules, too :) I would be always cautious about custom user extensions adding the ability to use purchased modules in other programmes for which they were not intended to be used

[LordEntrails]

I will add, one thing that is important for me is longevity. To me it is very important that I learn one system, create content in that system, and be able to use that data for decades to come. It's one reason hosted solutions like Roll20 are a major detractor for me. I like that their are new VTTs like Astral, Foundry, Tableplop, etc. But out of the dozen or so VTTs announced in the last year, I will be surprised if more than 1 of them is still being actively developed in 3 years.

Everything I create in FG is saved on my computer in a simple xml format. Its portable and there it is very reasonable to expect FG to have a high chance of still being supported over the coming decades. (I see it as a much better chance than any other VTT.)

[GerPronouncedGrr]

Thank you to everyone for the great comments. I don't have anything to add, but am reading everything and appreciate it all.

[Springroll]

I'm a Pro on Roll20 and have bought all DnD and Pathfinder1/2 products there, as well as a lot of tokens, maps etc. I'm also an Ultimate user on both FGC as well as FGU and have bought all official DnD releases, Savage Worlds, Call of Cthulhu and more on FG. Why am I mentioning this? Well I just wanted to start with saying that I'm actually quite heavily invested in both platforms and as such can give you the pros and cons of both platforms. I also own Foundry but have never used it.
Roll20 is good just because the player base is so large, it's very easy to find a game with strangers (I'm a GM so that helps as well :)), if you're not using API's it's also quite close to playing on a TableTop in that sense that you have to calculate a lot of the die rolls yourself, targeting several targets at once is not easy to get going etc. I actually like that so that's not a minus for me. Also, it's easy to log on for both the GM as well as the players (it's in a browser after all).
In FG you can choose to play it like a tabletop, calculating everything yourself but if you want to automation is there (depending on game and module). I looove the dice in FG, and the community that FG is much better in my NSHO. Prepwork is easier in FG as well and the ability to create items, spells, parcels, encounters, map pins etc is just so much better than Roll20. I like both but if I had to choose only one, it would be Fantasy Grounds no contest, but I would go with Classic for now as Unity is not quite there yet.

Send me a PM if you'd like me to show you anything as you could log on with only a demo account.

Oh and I'm not a DnD Beyond user (owning all hardback and the modules in Roll20 and FG makes this a bit to much even for me...) so I can't speak about it's connection to Foundry or Roll20, but as stated above, it might not be following the ToS.

[arkanis]

I've no experience with Roll20 but some with Foundry and a lot with FGC and some with FGU. The graphical/image/map part of Foundry is vastly superior to FG. In that department, FGC and FGU feel clunky and look completely outdated. If your VT experience is just two games, I'd recommend it, because is good for people that come directly from real-life tabletop and have no bias for automation and you and your players will like the better visual experience.

If you and your players want to offload a ton of menial work and you are not afraid of a steeper learning curve, FGC is the way to go. FGC is so good at automation that for my game group it still outweights the better graphics of Foundry.

And for FGU, don't even think of running an adventure there. It's just such a miserable experience right now that you should avoid touching it. The bad news for me is that from what I can deduce from the Unity forum posts, it will take a long time to achieve feature and performance parity with FGC. And once there, it will take much much longer to even look as polished as Foundry on the graphics side.

[HywelPhillips]

Like many newbies, I switched to VTTs because of lockdown.

I thought I'd post my experiences so far with Roll20, Astral and Fantasy Grounds.

Our group started with Roll20 because it has the lowest barrier to entry. Nothing to install, huge user-base, has a marketplace because I needed to learn how to run games remotely and I wanted the maximum amount of stuff provided for me to do that. I ran a few sessions of 5th Ed D&D and am currently playing in a 5th Ed campaign run by a very experienced Roll20 GM. I've got the top-level membership and bought a lot of the D&D stuff on there.

I think:

1) It's fine. With a good GM, willing to put some effort it, it can be brilliant. I'm sure you can play extended campaigns and have a super time.

2) It's pretty. It does the map-and-tokens VTT thing well. There's a reason everyone is adopting their line of sight system- great for immersion.

3) It's got a good marketplace. Lots of stuff is available on there and the implementation is OK so long as you're mainly running single-module adventures.

4) It's flexible. You can run theatre of mind or crunchy detailed battles. It's quite system agnostic but has helpful levels of support for big commercial systems.

5) It's limited. A LOT of the work still devolves onto the GM. Because its tools are system agnostic, you end up having to find workarounds to help. For example, we've taken to adding AC and passive perception to our usernames because the GM needs to see that ALL THE TIME and there's no option to eg add them as columns on the initiative tracker.

6) For us at least the built-in video conferencing plain didn't work.

7) It's organisational tools are very lacking. There's no way to hyperlink a handout to a map, for example, so you just click on the room to bring up the description, relevant monsters and treasures, etc..

8) There's no map editing to speak of and the only "first class" entities it has are maps, characters, tokens, compendium items and handouts. Some systems support stuff like drag-and-drop from the compendium to the character sheet, but it's all a bit ad hoc. Its use as a GM prep tool is consequently limited, and I see quite of lot of GM saying they use paper notes/physical books etc whilst running games on Roll20.

9) It can be hacked about with macros and an API, but as soon as you depart from the vanilla world, support levels plunge off a cliff into a wild west of GitHub and out-of-date wikis. So you can get more out of it, but you have to put a lot of technical coding-level work into doing it.

10) Running in the browser is a two-edged sword. Especially with the large influx of new players during lockdown, it's frequently offline for half an hour here and there, which would be very annoying mid-game. They're fixing it, but I'm surprised at how often it seems to be a "whole system throws a bunch of exceptions when you even access the front page".

11) Let us not underestimate Roll20's excellent looking for game feature and the huge user base. I wanted to try playing in a game run by an experienced online GM to learn. I found not one but multiple options at a suitable date and time for me, easily. If you want a pick-up game or to find a group, frankly, go to Roll20.

In conclusion it is a pretty shared map-and-tokens system which runs in the browser, has wide adoption, decent (and improving) support for 5th Ed D&D and a few major systems but which has made limited progress going beyond that.

[HywelPhillips]

I've tried Astral but only for testing, I've not run a live game with it because it didn't fit my use case (I couldn't buy a commercial scenario to get started quickly with it).

My thoughts:

1) It out-pretties Roll20, with tokens with transparency in all their examples, extensive weather effects, etc.. Maps can have triggers all over the place so sounds play or fire appears or all manner of other trigger effects snowball. If immersion and player audiovisual experience is your priority, Astral looks good.

2) It's got a decent map editor built in. Indeed, if Roll20 feels like it is based around a maps-and-tokens shared VTT, Astral feels like it is built around a map builder as a core.

3) System support on the other hand seems almost entirely absent. As far as I could see there was no help at all in generating a 1st level 5th Ed character - not even an SRD class list or spells to choose from.

4) It runs in the browser, as far as I can see, with all the strengths and weaknesses therein.

5) It lets you view PDFs of game scenarios during play inside the system (which is nice) but as far as I can see no simple way of translating that to game stats or clickable rollies for monsters etc.. I'm very spoiled by FG's magical ability to parse plain text and turn it into game stats on the fly.

6) The marketplace is illustrative - it seems to all be maps and tokens. I couldn't see so much as a single commercial module to run. It will not be quick to get your first game going on it (which is why I've not tried).

7) The interface is pretty but relies on a lot of pop-ups and sidebars and top bars, and I found the default character sheets for 5th Ed very hard to read.

8) Simulating a combat seems to devolve entirely to the GM. As with Roll20, it didn't seem to be possible to add the most important stats like AC to the initiative tracker. The first thing I'd want to do if running a combat would be to get a physical stickie and write AC and PP on it and stick it to the bottom of my screen. That might be exactly what you want. For me personally, I want to be looking at the computer and have all the info I need there electronically and available at a glance.

9) Similarly, inflicting wounds is handled by the GM clicking on the token, bringing up a window, entering a number, choosing add or subtract to click. It felt very cumbersome to me. Each character gets a quickbar so they can echo stuff to the chat system easier (eg typical weapon and spell attacks with rolled to-hit and damage) but then you can't *DO* anything with that info as the GM as far as I can tell. You have to open up a cumbersome set of things to apply the damage. Again, I've got very spoilt by FG. You rolled damage without a target? Fine let me drag it from the chat window onto the monster and inflict those wounds automatically.

10) As far as I can see it has limited campaign management features and no system support to speak of. Like Roll20, you can probably set up an encounter on a map in advance; you can probably do some hyperlinking as well but I didn't explore deeply enough to find out how flexible that is. The first-class citizens of its world are definitely maps, tokens, effects, and stuff from "Map maker world".

I would say if the main thing that frustrates you is Roll20's lack of prettiness and the ability to create more engrossing and immersive player experiences on the maps, Astral looks pretty and would be well worth a serious look.

[HywelPhillips]

The one I've actually settled on though is Fantasy Grounds Unity. I bought and tried both Classic and Unity (with the top-tier pro version) and have purchased most of the 5th Ed D&D stuff, plus Call of Cthulhu, Masks of Nyarlathotep, and a bunch of other systems and scenarios.

I've run a couple of months worth of sessions of 5th Ed D&D and Call of Cthulhu.

Here are my thoughts:

1) Unlike Roll20 and Astral, Fantasy Grounds is first and foremost a GM support tool. The "first-class citizens" in its world are not maps and tokens but characters, monsters, treasure, party, stories, notes, images, damage, targets, effects and draggable hyperlinks. If you decide to describe a new sort of magic sword, FG will take you the whole way, from creating it, to adding it to a treasure parcel, linking an image of it, to hyperlinking on the map the chest where they find it, to dragging it to the party for them to inspect it, to clicking a button once they've cast identify on it and finding out what it actually does, to allocating it to a character, to appearing on their sheet, to clicking on it to roll to hit in combat, to doing damage with it, inflicting that damage on a foe, and maybe triggering conditional effects like doing extra damage if the foe is vulnerable to fire and is of type undead. Neither of the other two VTTs have anything remotely like it, as far as I can see.

2) It doesn't have an initiative tracker. It has a combat tracker which shows everything the GM needs to know for every character to run the whole combat without constant reference to NPC stats, looking up AC or manually entering the results of every blow. You CAN use it like Roll20's initiative tracker and have the GM do most of the book-keeping. But with a little care (and purchasing Rob 2e's complete effects packages) it can do 90%+ of the book-keeping for you and is simple to over-ride if you make a mistake or need to correct.

3) By contrast with Astral or Roll20, if you get a result come up in the chat window you can drag and drop it on to the intended target and FG will track it accordingly. It knows the difference between a hit roll and a damage roll.

4) If you can train your players a little to do target selection, you can get to the point where you can run a whole combat as the GM and not have to do a single bit of book-keeping. FG does the lot. I cannot express how excited I am for the prospects of doing that with high-level D&D play, something I've always shied away from because the weight of record-keeping on the GM becomes an awful lot like work rather than having fun with your hobby running a game for your mates.

5) Fantasy Grounds delivers much better GM support for writing your own material inside FG and having it translate easily to running the game. You build an encounter, which it knows often have different monster types, and it allows you to drag and drop where the combatants will appear without actually having the tokens live on the map. You can have eight different battles queued up to run on the same battle map, with a hyper-linked pin to bring that up, all prepared with drag and drop- and click one button to enter it all onto the combat tracker and go.

6) It has no map creation to speak of, although some is promised. Once you've got the map image though it's pretty easy to handle grids, LOS, etc..

7) It's not as pretty as R20 or Astral although Unity has a few effects added (eg rain or snow effects layers) and now has working line of sight. Setting up line of sight is easy and fast, for my money is the easiest to set up of the three (R20, Astral, FG). It's functional but your players won't be cooing with the beauty of it, I suspect.

8) FGU is beta and admittedly prone to updates breaking stuff. Support, however, are really on it. I've not missed any game time so far. The main thing is not to update on game night, just in case there's a new bug lurking. Do it after game night, make sure it runs OK, then don't touch.

9) The user interface is... unconventional. This places a high barrier on casual pick-up by players. All my group are technical professionals, most of us have PhD's, and they found out how to use bits of Roll20 by experimenting before I did. With FG though I've had to tell them how to do pretty much everything. Dragging a character class to the sheet to level up makes sense once you know it, but I don't think anyone will guess how to do that by playing around.

10) It has a solid marketplace and a very friendly and helpful community.

11) It will not stop working if the company changes direction or goes bust. This is a non-trivial concern for investing significant cash and even more so if you're going to write and implement big homebrew campaigns in the system, rather than just using it as a way of all seeing the same map and tokens. Storage is local so I can back it up and have effectively no storage limit. I wouldn't want to actually develop my campaign in Roll20 or Astral - I think it is more intended for GMs to input a subset of their paper or other-format notes, not develop the entire campaign inside it which FG supports and encourages.

If what you want is an immersive VTT to show maps and tokens, with the GM doing all the heavy lifting of running the actual game system... FG can do it but in all honesty Roll20 and Astral are probably better suited for your purpose.

FG is a bit cranky and certainly quirky.

It's got a much steeper learning curve, especially for casual players.

FGC is stable and performant but lacks some crucial features - line of sight might be non-negotiable once you've experienced how immersive it is in play.

FGU is unstable and not yet performant but IMO is the place to be, not least because it runs on Macs without using the appalling WINE. It's worked fine for me to run I guess 30+ hours so far with five players, so let's not overstate the beta-ness of FGU.

Once you get your head around how it actually works and start to use it to run games and even more so write scenarios, running games in Roll20 feels like having one arm tied behind your back. I don't want to live without effects and condition tracking, auto-inflicted damage including saves made automatically when targeting big groups of enemies, pins for hyperlinks, the parser that turns English-language monster descriptions into rollable stats that automatically come up in the combat tracker, a built-in calendar system, etc.. I do all my game prep on FG and can access everything with a few mouse clicks.

Honestly, once we can play face to face again I'm going to find it very hard to let go of these GM support features.

I hope that helps some people who might be looking at which VTT to choose.

Best regards,

Hywel

[Three of Swords]

Very well written analysis and comparison of the three VTTs you listed, Hywel! I'm impressed.

I've tried all three platforms as well and don't disagree w/ anything you've said. Each platform has additional advantages and disadvantages, but you listed all the major ones, imo.

Now check out and review Foundry VTT. It just fully released this week. (Through research, not saying you should buy it, or anything.) It does suffer from lack of content like Astral, though supposedly a chrome extension will allow you to convert D&D Beyond content to it if you have a DDB account.

I like FG. A lot. Great devs. Good platform, though development is a bit on the slow side. I upgraded from Standard to Ultimate when the Unity kickstarter came around. I had planned to stay here for a very long time.

But I will be checking out Foundry for my next campaign, I think. Just to test. Maybe it has some things I won't like. But I did hours of research on it today. It's missing a few things compared to FG like full combat automation, parcels, and 3D dice. But the dice can be added with an 'extension'. It has more automation than Roll20, it's just not quite as automated as FG. But it more than makes up for it in other areas. Or so it seems, having not actually used it yet.

I really hope that Smiteworks can kick Unity development into high gear and add some highly desirable features like Fog of War since every other VTT has it. I want FG to be the best VTT. But I've already seen a few high profile converts from Roll20 and FG in the Foundry discord channel. So Smiteworks really has their work cut out for them...

[Kelrugem]

Very well written analysis and comparison of the three VTTs you listed, Hywel! I'm impressed.

I've tried all three platforms as well and don't disagree w/ anything you've said. Each platform has additional advantages and disadvantages, but you listed all the major ones, imo.

Now check out and review Foundry VTT. It just fully released this week. (Through research, not saying you should buy it, or anything.) It does suffer from lack of content like Astral, though supposedly a chrome extension will allow you to convert D&D Beyond content to it if you have a DDB account.

I like FG. A lot. Great devs. Good platform, though development is a bit on the slow side. I upgraded from Standard to Ultimate when the Unity kickstarter came around. I had planned to stay here for a very long time.

But I will be checking out Foundry for my next campaign, I think. Just to test. Maybe it has some things I won't like. But I did hours of research on it today. It's missing a few things compared to FG like full combat automation, parcels, and 3D dice. But the dice can be added with an 'extension'. It has more automation than Roll20, it's just not quite as automated as FG. But it more than makes up for it in other areas. Or so it seems, having not actually used it yet.

I really hope that Smiteworks can kick Unity development into high gear and add some highly desirable features like Fog of War since every other VTT has it. I want FG to be the best VTT. But I've already seen a few high profile converts from Roll20 and FG in the Foundry discord channel. So Smiteworks really has their work cut out for them...

I think one should not forget the community in all the reviews of VTTs, too; and in that FG is the best in my opinion.

It is up to you whether you want to believe me in the following :) I was once on the Foundry VTT because I searched for some person there, and there was some modding/coding channel where people spoke about pirating stuff from Roll20 and FG, sharing ways to do that etc. and it got not moderated although the posts there were sometimes rather old (maybe it is now moderated? I am not there anymore). Just to cite roughly out of my head about what people were saying there when it was about what could happen with these piracy methods of FG stuff: "What should Smiteworks do? Erasing my License? Pah, as if I would ever will use that license again, so, no problem in stealing their modules to make use of them for Foundry" (comments roughly like that I was able to find there) And, it looked like whether the developer of Foundry was also participating in these discussions, and not to ban these discussions.. But I may be mistaken, and it is so long ago that things may have changed and/or my mind tricks me now :) So take that with a grain of salt :)

For me personally that is a reason why I would never switch to Foundry, regardless how well-developed it will suddenly be (and since I play 3.5e it will probably not so soon well-support that ruleset. Also a plus point for me for FG :) ). Such conversations about piracy should not be welcomed as it looked like there; but as I said, maybe that changed already. All VTTs are competitors, yes, but that shouldn't mean that you can treat your competitors like bad enemies without showing any respect

I like the community here which lead to that I developed stuff for it, too :) So, I just wanted to say that this is also a big plus point for FG for me :)

[Three of Swords]

I think one should not forget the community in all the reviews of VTTs, too; and in that FG is the best in my opinion.



Yeah, I can't speak on Foundry's community, that's for sure, just having looked into the VTT today.

As for FG's community, I must be more lenient than most in that regard. I was on Roll20 and active in the community for over 5 years and only saw what I would consider a few 'bad apples'. I've seen as many here in the last 2 years or so, and it's a smaller community. That said, the number of helpful ppl are about the same as well. So to me, they're about the same. (Unless you take moderation into consideration, in which case Roll20's censorship and community is vastly worse.)

[Kelrugem]

Yeah, I can't speak on Foundry's community, that's for sure, just having looked into the VTT today.

As for FG's community, I must be more lenient than most in that regard. I was on Roll20 and active in the community for over 5 years and only saw what I would consider a few 'bad apples'. I've seen as many here in the last 2 years or so, and it's a smaller community. That said, the number of helpful ppl are about the same as well. So to me, they're about the same. (Unless you take moderation into consideration, in which case Roll20's censorship and community is vastly worse.)

Yeah, I also never had any bad experience on Roll20, that's right :) But I never really participated there sadly, so can't really say a lot about this community :) (and yes, one has everywhere the "bad apples" sadly :) )

[dellanx]

I think one should not forget the community in all the reviews of VTTs, too; and in that FG is the best in my opinion.

It is up to you whether you want to believe me in the following :) I was once on the Foundry VTT because I searched for some person there, and there was some modding/coding channel where people spoke about pirating stuff from Roll20 and FG, sharing ways to do that etc. and it got not moderated although the posts there were sometimes rather old (maybe it is now moderated? I am not there anymore). Just to cite roughly out of my head about what people were saying there when it was about what could happen with these piracy methods of FG stuff: "What should Smiteworks do? Erasing my License? Pah, as if I would ever will use that license again, so, no problem in stealing their modules to make use of them for Foundry" (comments roughly like that I was able to find there) And, it looked like whether the developer of Foundry was also participating in these discussions, and not to ban these discussions.. But I may be mistaken, and it is so long ago that things may have changed and/or my mind tricks me now :) So take that with a grain of salt :)

For me personally that is a reason why I would never switch to Foundry, regardless how well-developed it will suddenly be (and since I play 3.5e it will probably not so soon well-support that ruleset. Also a plus point for me for FG :) ). Such conversations about piracy should not be welcomed as it looked like there; but as I said, maybe that changed already. All VTTs are competitors, yes, but that shouldn't mean that you can treat your competitors like bad enemies without showing any respect

I like the community here which lead to that I developed stuff for it, too :) So, I just wanted to say that this is also a big plus point for FG for me :)

I second that!

[GavinRuneblade]

Yeah, I can't speak on Foundry's community, that's for sure, just having looked into the VTT today.

As for FG's community, I must be more lenient than most in that regard. I was on Roll20 and active in the community for over 5 years and only saw what I would consider a few 'bad apples'. I've seen as many here in the last 2 years or so, and it's a smaller community. That said, the number of helpful ppl are about the same as well. So to me, they're about the same. (Unless you take moderation into consideration, in which case Roll20's censorship and community is vastly worse.)

Heh, can't forget the big drama from last year. The owner of Roll20 still has the third most downvoted reddit post of all time.

But what I found in my years on Roll20 (admittedly, quite a while ago now) was asking for help for the trickier stuff (like macros) got you mocked and teased and variations of "it's not that hard, what's wrong with you". Ask anything here and you'll get help. Share a game experience over there and everyone piles on with compliments and their experience of the same adventure. Look for a game and get tons of pointers and excited DM's telling you their story. Roll20 was great for that. But if you need help, no one beats this community in my experience.

[GavinRuneblade]

Once you get your head around how it actually works and start to use it to run games and even more so write scenarios, running games in Roll20 feels like having one arm tied behind your back. I don't want to live without effects and condition tracking, auto-inflicted damage including saves made automatically when targeting big groups of enemies, pins for hyperlinks, the parser that turns English-language monster descriptions into rollable stats that automatically come up in the combat tracker, a built-in calendar system, etc.. I do all my game prep on FG and can access everything with a few mouse clicks.

Honestly, once we can play face to face again I'm going to find it very hard to let go of these GM support features.

I hope that helps some people who might be looking at which VTT to choose.

Best regards,

Hywel
Thanks for the three, especially Astral that was great info.

Just a heads up that I know a lot of DMs, myself included, who use FG face to face. Cody from Taking20 even has a guide on how to make a game table that uses FG for the battlemap and is linked to your laptop as the DM screen so you can use it face-to-face.

[Larsenex]

Celestian nailed it. > Automation. Hands down makes this a complete and total win over Roll20.

I was a subscribed user with Roll20 for a year. I had to learn how to write scripts! I had to plead on thier forums how to do stuff and wait until I'd get a response (which usually happened) and follow the instructions.

All of this is done in FG. Once you learn how FG works it is amazing. Player targets mob > rolls to hit..FG calculates everything, hit or miss? Roll dmg > got damage resistance to slashing but its a flaming sword? > FG calculates (correctly every time) the damage as to be applied.

This alone is a time saver. Aligning maps is easier if you use the map align tool OUTSIDE of FG first and get it properly scaled.
Some maps > you just cant win (I'm looking at you Droskar's Crucible).

The Second but is likely really the best reason is the folks here on the FG forums are NICE! NOT CONDESCENDING, will answer (VERY FAST) any question and of course there is Fantasy grounds college >>> Laerun and Lady Shel the "help desk for FG", always (it seems like) available for questions!

[Mytherus]

I‘m not that satisfied with the FGU UI and performance and switched to Foundry VTT from FGC/FGU. My players like it much more, as I do.

Your choice but foundry isnt a full featured vtt for specific rulesets. I could be wrong but what i know of it there are no wotc or paizo content made specifically for foundry and there's no automation. That said if you and you players like it much better...you never gave fg a shot to experience its features. Fgc runs like butter for my games a crash happens maybe once every couple months (and i host 7 to 9 hrs of games per week). But i digress...you like foundry cool. But its not a real vtt.

[arkanis]

The Second but is likely really the best reason is the folks here on the FG forums are NICE! NOT CONDESCENDING,...

I'm not sure if your appreciation fits well with this statament below ;p


But i digress...you like foundry cool. But its not a real vtt.

[LordEntrails]

I'm not sure if your appreciation fits well with this statament below ;p
Statements made by different people. Everybody is entitled to their own opinions. Hopefully each person expresses them respectfully, but that doesn't always happen. Though I always assume people have the best intentions and simple don't express themselves on the forums with all the nuance they intend.

[OverCriticalHit]

I haven't delved that deeply into Roll20, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think you have access (or at least easy access) to things like Tables and Story Templates. With FG and 5e as an example, the entire DMG's "roll an adventure" sequence of tables is baked right in, making it a one-shot process to generate the skeleton of a credible adventure in seconds, as well as dice up a dungeon on the fly. Obviously you'll have to flesh out details, but FG gives you the tools to do stuff in the client that can make a GM's life very easy while still allowing for creativity and flourish. Once set up, it subordinates the fiddly bits and leaves you free to concentrate on the things computers can't do, which is be inventive. I'd actually say it can do this better than the tabletop experience, because you're not so bogged down in accounting.

The depth in FG is incredible. That obviously comes with a learning curve, but the product isn't just about flashy graphics (and it is probably the least flashy), it's about the engine under the hood. From what I can see, FG is and will likely remain streets ahead in the horsepower department, and will reward those who put in the effort to come up to speed with the system. Once the fundamentals have been grasped, the "Prep less. Play more." promise really kicks in. And if you get stuck, there's a lot of documentation and people to help you out.

Admittedly I've had nothing to do with support here or anywhere else in the VTT biz, but you just get the impression that FG is made by people who really care. When you have a look at the official team's videos, that shines through. I feel good spending money with people who care.

That's my 2% of a dollar.

[LordEntrails]

I haven't delved that deeply into Roll20, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think you have access (or at least easy access) to things like Tables and Story Templates. With FG and 5e as an example, the entire DMG's "roll an adventure" sequence of tables is baked right in, making it a one-shot process to generate the skeleton of a credible adventure in seconds, as well as dice up a dungeon on the fly.
I suspect limited table and template functionality in Roll20 is one of the reasons they have never released the 5E DMG.

[OverCriticalHit]

I suspect limited table and template functionality in Roll20 is one of the reasons they have never released the 5E DMG.

See, I didn't even know that. That's the beauty of FG -- it takes the rulebooks and makes them into tools rather than mainly reference material. The one downside is that READING the rulebooks as reference material is not the easiest on FG, and if I could wish for anything it would be some kind of integration/discount program with D&D Beyond. Duplicating the purchases to get the ideal combo of reference and tools is a pretty massive hit to the wallet. By somehow sharing that, I reckon that both FG and Beyond would come out ahead in the end.

[Imagix]

As mentioned elsewhere, D&D Beyond is run by yet another company, and that would require prices to rise in order to cover their licensing and operating costs. Really, this is something you should take up with Wizards of the Coast.

[OverCriticalHit]

As mentioned elsewhere, D&D Beyond is run by yet another company, and that would require prices to rise in order to cover their licensing and operating costs. Really, this is something you should take up with Wizards of the Coast.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm definitely not blaming FG for the situation. It's just that essentially repeating the purchases on other platforms (and physical) gets pretty taxing. I doubt WotC would care what I had to say much, but I reckon with some imaginative thinking everyone would, as I said, come out ahead. For example, I'm personally not likely to go full bore on Beyond AND FG, but if there was an incentive to do so, I very probably would. That would be some sort of revenue on the other platform as opposed to none. But I obviously don't know all the intricacies involved or what it would mean in the larger picture.

[Valatar]

I'm keeping an eye on Foundry. As VTTs go it's a promising newcomer, isn't a perpetual subscription model, and supports third-party code, but only time will tell if it can catch up to FG's pretty commanding lead in ruleset support. Foundry also seems to be a team of one, so if the developer gets bored or something else comes up to make him wander off, it'll be dead from that moment on. FG at least has multiple developers who could step up if Doug dropped out, so it's a little less dependent on a single person.

[Marquis_de_Taigeis]

my VTT experience

Roll 20 - i have a little experience with Roll20, i went onto it to try and host a short campaign for a couple friends whilst we were socially distanced, before i set my game up i was jumped in as a player in a one-shot to test the mechanics from a player view. The GM had lots of PC options but i found the characters sheets to very fidgety to create a character,

When i went to run my game i found the following with Roll 20
I was not in a position to buy lots of modules to use for my players to create characters when we were all new to VTTs, and i already had all as physical copies. so having them create characters in game was no use at the basic free ruleset built in.
this was no problem as i had shared the PHB on dnd beyond so we used this for our character sheets for the first game day
I found map movement and creation to be clunky and not easy to use, this was when i found Astral VTT, which had a far nicer map builder built into its browser.

for the first session i was running tower of the stargazer from Lamentations of the flame princess
so from the start for all the VTTS i was having to put together the module material and maps in game from scratch.
I found The UI for FG was the best for collecting all the material in easy to access manner for quick referencing during play.

now for Fantasy ground

to run my game i am using unity. and since joining FG i have also become a player in a game on unity and on classic.

Pros for classic is token locking for managing movement in combats more efficiently for being able to apply reactions/opportunitys secrets.
Unity is great for its Line of sight functions.

I have found that using fantasy ground works the best if you have two monitors and run it windowed, but stretched across them so that the map and chat window are on in my preference the left monitor, whilst story, notes, combat tracker, character sheets are all on my right monitor

[jackkerouac]

I have found that using fantasy ground works the best if you have two monitors and run it windowed, but stretched across them so that the map and chat window are on in my preference the left monitor, whilst story, notes, combat tracker, character sheets are all on my right monitor

That's how I do, except reversed.

Haven't tried Roll20, but I did buy a copy of Foundry to check it out. Very well done, with a great UI and all the usual features of a modern VTT. You can even use video maps or animated images. Pretty cool. Since it is JavaScript and jason based, people can create extensions pretty easily. But once again, it is the automation. That's where FG kills the competition, despite their horrible, no-good UI.

To be fair, there is some automation in Foundry and their use of animation, LOS stuff (including their LOS behind the scenes builder) and great UI make it an ALMOST switch for me. Almost. Because at the end of the day, the automation keeps me coming back to FG.

[HywelPhillips]

Update: I've spent that last couple of days playing with Foundry VTT. In the spirit of my earlier posts on the other main contenders, here are my thoughts.

1) It's VERY pretty, and setting up that prettiness is quite easy. It's got really good line of sight, lighting, light emission from tokens, light sources with colours which interact with walls and can come on when a certain threshold of scene darkness is reached, with a "fade to day" and "fade to night" option. Great audio options too. Significantly prettier than Roll20, on a par with Astral. I'd say Astral is more "bright and high fantasy", Foundry more "gritty low fantasy" in default look-and-feel although obviously a lot will depend on your maps etc. Astral seems to have more options for map changes happening on the fly via triggers. Foundry makes it very easy to set up a beautiful lighting system.

2) Conversely, it's new, and although it has just moved to a commercial release, it's not really a version 1.0 yet. There's lots of niggles which will probably be ironed out in time but for example right now on a Mac, the full-frame toggle doesn't seem to do anything and the Mac OS top menu bar obscures the top of the Foundry VTT window. In the YouTube tutorial the guy copy-and-pastes the path to the directory where FVTT needs your assets, but on the Mac this text isn't selectable so I can't do likewise. Since this directory is in Library, which is a hidden system file by default, a non-techie Mac OS user will not actually be able to find it. Furthermore, the button which should pop out a system finder window for file selection doesn't work on Mac OS. Command-Z doesn't undo, despite the menu shortcut saying it should. You need CTRL-Z. CTRL-click doesn't work for some stuff, you need to Command-click.

3) Although these are minor things and will doubtless be fixed with time, it's symptomatic of fact that it's a solo-developer-plus-GitHub-community style of project. I would not want to be walking a technophobe or impatient player through it right now. Similarly, I wouldn't choose it to start as a DM right now, especially not as your first VTT (choose Roll20 for that, for sure, much though I love FG there's no denying that for running your first ever online game session, Roll20 is the best option).

4) The whole thing is very much set up by a hacker for other hackers to contribute to. This is a big strength - although the thing only commercially released like a week or two ago, there are a hundred plus extension modules, some of which are really useful (I particularly like the one which shows extra vital stats on a token like AC and passive perception when you select). Conversely, since most of these are being developed non-commercially, the odds of them being abandoned or becoming incompatible over time are in my experience quite high for projects like this. One of my main bits of advice for the developer would be to take some of the most important ones in-house as soon as possible.

5) There is some system support in there. More than Roll20, far less than Fantasy Grounds. You can at least get Foundry VTT to do some basic math and recordkeeping - specifically, it can apply rolled damage and healing, with options for half damage. (I'm speaking of 5e here, no idea what it is like for other rulesets). But conversely some very basic stuff is missing, like comparing hit rolls with AC to decide whether or not you hit.

6) Like all the VTTs other than FG, Foundry is at heart a map and token display system, not a roleplaying game system. There's only one sort of item which functions for everything a character can "have" - from spells through feats to swords and armour. You are responsible for any organisational system you put in. If it ends up support stuff like treasure parcels it'll probably do so via extension modules, not through the core system.

7) There's no map making, but once you've got the background JPG in (which was non-trivial, as the file button doesn't work on Mac OS!) the capabilities for handling grids, lighting, notes, etc. are really good.

8) It has hyperlinkable pin equivalents for notes (with options for many different icons which can be any colour you like - books, flames, chests, etc.. As I said, it does pretty extremely well). I don't think it quite has FG's ability to turn anything into a pin, and it certainly doesn't have anything like encounters with pre-placed tokens in the way FG does. As GM organisational tool I'd say it is a bit better than Roll20, with system extensions already providing more options. The way of managing the extensions is far better than anything roll20 has to offer BTW (they are treated as proper first-class citizens by Foundry, with load/unload more in the style of FG modules, but already half a dozen extensions were giving warnings that they might not be compatible with the release version of the software, which is not great for two-week-old software).

9) Its combat tracker is better than roll20 and Astral, but not on the same planet as FG. At least you can add a column for AC, but it doesn't do targeting, conditions, concentration, effects, etc..

10) It currently has no marketplace and no official 5e material outside the SRD. It doesn't support anything much in the way of character sheet automation for character generation and levelling up - for example, you have to calculate HP and AC by hand. This may come in time. There are demo adventures, but you have to fight through wikis full of not-yet-written pages to find them and I've not tried one yet. If you are homebrew all the way or want to enter everything by hand, or want pure SRD stuff, it's OK. Personally I'll wait until at least PHB and MM are supported in some official way. There *is* an extension to integrate with D&D Beyond, which is intriguing, but to use it you have to hack around with installing Chrome plus an extension, and a Foundry module, and subscribe to the author of the script's Patreon for quite a stiff monthly fee. TBH I am nervous of this not least because I'm not sure what the legal position is for taking Monster Manual entries from D&D Beyond and importing them into Foundry. Probably OK for personal use but I must say I'd be much happier with a proper licence agreement and marketplace purchases. I hope they will add this sooner rather than later because...

11) For the stuff that *IS* supported, the SRD, they have done a very nice job of presentation. Every spell has a pretty glowy icon, every weapon has a picture, the monsters that do have tokens (not all do) those tokens are very good, when the spells require a template to cast the integration of that into the VTT part is exemplary (you get a hovering template to click and lay down to show area of effect). Like I said, pretty.

12) I found myself doing a lot of mouse clicking compared with FG for running a sample combat (which I was just doing as DM). You click once to bring you attack up in the chat window. Then click to make an attack, then the DM adjudicates whether it hits, then click to roll damage, clicks to select targets, right click to bring up apply damage menu, click to apply. It'll probably flow fine when you have players doing most of that work, but I don't think running PCs vs 20 orcs and a thunder boar is going to go as smoothly as it did in FG.

13) There's a LOT of depth on the techie side. For example, it is explicitly set up so you can run it locally, or in the Cloud, or via a hosted provider. It's great that stuff is there, but it is at the level of unix hackery that you already know how to spin up cloud resources and install packages etc.. As I said, it clearly comes from a very techie hacker crowd and that shows. Getting your technophobe friend with an eight year old laptop onto it may prove more challenging than doing so on Roll20. As a result I wouldn't actually know how to start running it myself for my friends, as each of these setups is going to have its pitfalls. (You need port forwarding for local, for example, and just look at the FG forum for what agony that causes amongst less technical users!)

In conclusion -
Foundry is very interesting, very pretty, and has a much more standard UI that FG.
On the other hand it is a pre-version 1.0 release by a techie crowd more used to (and more interested in) hacking so it runs smoothly on various cloud providers or writing cool extensions than in figuring out how to get the PHB and Mines of Phandelver onto it, or sorting out the basic UI on Mac OS so a new GM who doesn't even know what a hidden system file is can import some assets.

It's got the beginnings of rpg system support with damage maths incorporated - ahead of Roll20 and Astral. As a GM support system the automation not there to compete with Fantasy Grounds yet.

If I wanted something pretty for player audio-visual experience I'd choose it over Astral right now. I prefer the look and feel. Also Astral's emphasis on dynamic map triggers and the like feels more like an beginning computer game development system than a system for running wide-ranging oh god what have the players done now roleplaying game. Foundry feels much more like a quick and pretty way to present traditional roleplaying resources like static maps to their best effect.

I can see why everyone is excited about Foundry.

For actually writing campaigns and running games, it doesn't come close to Fantasy Grounds. Especially without full 5e PHB.

Audiovisually, I'd say it is the one to beat for FGU.

But for functionality on the automation and game system side it is all the other way - Foundry really needs to implement 90% of what FGU provides on that side to interest me in switching. Right now it does maybe 5%.

Cheers, Hywel

[Three of Swords]

Update: I've spent that last couple of days playing with Foundry VTT. In the spirit of my earlier posts on the other main contenders, here are my thoughts.


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Another great synopsis! Once again, I can't argue w/ anything you've said.