18 months on : FG vs. Roll20 vs Foundry [Archive]

HywelPhillips

September 1st, 2021, 23:24

Hi All,

Like many of us I went online for my gaming in the first COVID lockdown about 18 months ago.

I started with Roll20 because it seemed to have the lowest barrier to entry. I picked up Fantasy Grounds Unity and Foundry pretty much as they launched.

I wrote up some mini-reviews a year or so ago, but a lot has changed on each platform in that time so I thought it might be time to update my thoughts on the various platforms.

For context I play two weekly games on Roll20 still, play in one "beta test" game with a GM polishing stuff up for his pro games on Foundry, and run all my own games (two or three a week) on Fantasy Grounds. If you are new to VTTs and especially if you are new to running games rather than playing them on VTTs, I hope this post will be of some use.

The majority of my experience especially as a player is with 5E; your mileage may vary for different rulesets.

First up:

Roll20- The Good

Roll20 has changed the least over the last 18 months. To be fair that is in part because it already delivered its mission statement pretty well - it's the easiest of the platforms to get going on.

As a player TBH Roll20 delivers the vast majority of what you need, so long as your GM puts in the work to set it all up for you. It has a full-featured character sheet for 5E with an excellent charactermancer for automating character generation and levelling up. It's not quite as slick and D&D Beyond, but it's still clear enough for relative newbies to level their characters up unassisted. Most player tasks are now handled with automation without having to delve into the unsupported Wild West of Roll20 Macros; you'll get a tick box to add your barbarian's damage when they are raging or your rogue's sneak attack, you can add bless and guidance pretty easily so long as you and the GM know what you are doing. You can add boxes to the character sheet to help you keep track of everything from session to session, like the hours left on a soul coin powering a vehicle in Descent to Avernus or the number of uses of your healing light power left that day.

You can buy all the D&D rules on there, and their marketplace has plenty of other rules systems with reasonable implementations on the players' side, and there are acceptable community character sheets for pretty much every system out there.

In terms of maps and tokens it lets you import external files for maps, add grids and lighting and line of sight. It's relatively simple and functional, but if you want Roll20 to understand your game system AT ALL you have to start adding macros, and that rapidly degenerates into a world-class mess of unsupported rumours and hearsay. Even something as simple as showing token health bars requires the GM to adjust settings accordingly, because the maps-and-tokens part of Roll20 by design is intended to be system neutral.

It can play background music for you but only from a static playlist.

It has no map-making tools internally and a simple four-map-layers model (map&background, objects&tokens, GM info, walls for dynamic lighting). As with much else on Roll20, it is minimal by design and system-neutral.

It has pretty video effects for spell effects but by default the GM has to activate those by hand.

It's looking-for-game calendar system is simple and good and since it has a critical mass of players, genuinely useful for making contact with people and finding games to play.

Where Roll20 really scores is its simplicity and low barrier to entry. If you are new to online play and don't have an existing group it's pretty easy to recommend as the one that will get you going most quickly- buy the D&D Starter Bundle for $80, find your way around the Icespire Peak module and the Player's Handbook, and you can be running a game by Saturday.

It runs in the browser, which means players don't need to install anything. It's performance is pretty good, although mobile versions are still in development and I wouldn't hold your breath. Again, nice low barrier to entry. The game is always up so players can check out their character sheets etc. between sessions. On the downside, it's out of your control. For a while they had a lot of server issues and sometimes it was plain not possible to log in or it was very laggy for reasons unrelated to your own machines. But that seems to have improved a lot recently, it has been months since I had a disrupted session.

Roll20 - The Bad

It has built in voice and video. Which plain DOES NOT WORK. I have never once been in a group that has persisted in trying to use it past the first week; in one-offs there is ALWAYS someone who can't connect. Everyone switches to Skype, Zoom, Teams or (the vast majority) Discord. Don't believe the sales pitch, avoid heartache and start on Discord instead.

On the GM's side it is a whole ton of work to run games this way. It's organisational tools for GMs are very primitive- essentially just a flat list of maps you have to flick between by hand. You can copy and paste groups of tokens from one map to another, but there's basically no organisational structure there to help you out at all. Running pre-written modules which you've purchased is... OK. But the moment you want to start customising stuff and making notes, it does nothing to help. Most GM's I play with run stuff with the physical game book by their side and post-it notes. Which feels primitive beyond belief to me given that there is a computer sitting RIGHT THERE and computers are great at that sort of thing.

The system-neutral nature of the maps and tokens means that the GM has to do all the work of book-keeping, from comparing an attack roll to AC through doing all the math for hit points for NPCs. Players can do it for their characters but some GM's handle that too, which is plain masochistic as far as I'm concerned. Compare two numbers to see if one is bigger, then handle hit point subtraction... by hand... when there is a computer sitting RIGHT THERE?

I got annoyed with running games that way after only a few weeks. I'm impressed by the stamina of the GMs I play with who still run everything that way - personally I want a whole lot more of the drudge work and organisational work to be handled by the VTT.

Roll20 macros are powerful and one improvement they have made is a better section for finding useful scripts and improved documentation. Ironically, given the low barrier to entry on the player side, I find the barrier to entry the highest of the three when it comes to adding automation and macros/extensions. Want to give tokens a red/green/amber aura to track HP, rather than relying on the bar? You can, but you'll still be combing forum posts to find them or trying to figure out how they work. For example, on the front page of their recommended scripts is

"TrackerJacker -- Graphical turnorder tracker, as well as status/condition marker tracking". The entire documentation for that reads:

TrackerJacker is a cousin to TurnMarker made by The Aaron. Its logic however is quite different, and more rigid in function to simplify the most common use-cases. Like TurnMarker, it uses a graphic image that follows beneath tokens to indicate who's turn it is. The only animation TrackerJacker supports is the spinning graphic which is on by default (to disable it you'd need to edit a simple script flag). The real function however of TrackerJacker' is to track statuses and durations with an easily accessible graphical interface that's intuitive.

Any the wiser? Me neither. Oh, and it was last changed in 2015 and I noticed at the bottom it was in Category: Discontinued API Scripts. Which suggests maybe it should be moved from the list of recommended scripts on the introductory page, do you think? This is symptomatic of everything in Roll20 that gets at all technical. It's still a mess, even if somewhat improved from 18 months ago.

They are developing things, but the pace of change is glacially slow compared with FG or Foundry.

You are limited by server space which is a pain and which ends up mandating a paid subscription for the GM. Dynamic lighting requires a paid subscription from the GM. API scripts and macros require the top-level subscription. It doesn't take long for this to add up to more than the purchase price of Foundry or FG. Everything on their marketplace is a bit more expensive than on other platforms, too.

WHAT I THINK IT IS GOOD FOR

Getting going today and running a commercial module for your friends by the weekend
Running a rules-light system, stuff with a lot of theatre of mind, running low-level 5E D&D where the recordkeeping overhead is tolerable
Running an ancient or obscure indie rules system where the GM does all the work like they do at the tabletop - you'll probably find a decent community character sheet already on there
Running commercial modules with little to no homebrew input
Finding players
Low barrier to entry for players, too

It's the lowest common denominator, in a sense. I know plenty of people who are perfectly happy with it and use other things (Discord, D&D Beyond, paper notes, Google Docs, Dungeondraft) to supplement its shortcomings. I have a soft spot for it as it was my entry into VTTs and I've played some absolutely super campaigns in it. But running them? It's not for me.

WHAT I THINK IT IS REALLY NOT GOOD FOR

Homebrew campaigns
Organising your material as the GM
Crunch-heavy systems
High-level D&D or stuff with lots of combatants. At 10th level, battles take up entire 4 hour sessions and OMG the work for the GM to track all the conditions! Those little token markers in the corner only go so far.
Integrated audio-visual experience - it's all on the GM to trigger stuff by hand
Using extensive external assets (maps etc) because of the server space
Long-term it's very likely the most expensive option

bmos

September 2nd, 2021, 01:52

Yeah, I'm a player in a Foundry game and a Roll20 game and run a game in Fantasy Grounds.
If it wasn't for the people I play with, I'd have dropped that Roll20 game ages ago due to the janky VTT experience.
Foundry is way better, but the automation for PFRPG is so lacking (you can't even target attacks and resolve against AC) that it's a real letdown.
Fantasy Grounds doesn't have the prettiness Foundry does, but the game flow is so much faster/better and having official content makes it so easy.

HywelPhillips

September 2nd, 2021, 11:18

Foundry is no longer the cool new kid on the block, it's been out for a year now and we can have a better idea of the direction they are heading.

FOUNDRY - The Good

That direction is lots of hackers making cool extensions/modules, with a core development process that concerns itself with supporting that first and foremost. The number of system-tweak modules on their system outweighs the number of adventures to run, which I think is illustrative of those priorities. It's a code-twiddler's paradise, not least because it uses the ubiquitous Javascript.

Foundry is versatile - you can run it on your own computer, or set it up on a cloud platform, or pay a modest fee in top of your one-off Foundry purchase to run it on supported hosted servers (eg at the Forge, which is where the GM I play with regularly hosts his game). It's cheap for the one-off purchase.

It runs in the browser, so no heavyweight install for players, although GM's have to install and manage packages either locally or on the cloud-based server.

It's PRETTY. It feels like Roll20 with the prettiness turned all the way up. Add in a few modules for automated spell VFX and it's gorgeous - I know it is a bit of a gimmick but it IS cool seeing your warlock shoot off purple Eldritch blasts at your target. Crucially, unlike Roll20, this is amenable to automation. One of the lessons I learned with VTTs is that GM's are carrying a heavy cognitive load, so the frills are much better left to the machine to trigger or you'll forget.

Playing with a group of experienced players I would say that its user interface is more familiar-looking than FG's, but more complicated that Roll20's (naturally enough, because it can do more than Roll20). With us not playing every week, we all forget how to do stuff in between sessions and anecdotally I'd say that's just as prone to happen in Foundry as in FG. It doesn't seem to happen much to people on Roll20.

It is now possible to have a significant degree of automation in Foundry. The 5E game I am playing in does the to-hit checks for you when you have a foe targeted and make an attack, rolls damage, takes it off their hit points. You can set it up to handle conditions and the like. This is not core functionality, but added in through modules (and I'll have something to say about that in the negatives section). It's a bit flakier and less comprehensive than FG's automation for sure but it works well enough that I'd definitely choose it over Roll20 for that reason alone were those the only two choices.

They have a decent marketplace now and some companies are putting out nice commercial rulesets and adventures (Alien and SWADE are pretty good on there). But since what automation there is is usually implemented by third-party modules, out-of-the-box these products contain little more than Roll20 ones - it's all on the community to develop more automation support.

In GM organisational tools it is also intermediate between Roll20 and FG. You can pin stuff to maps (and indeed I much prefer its selection of icons for doing that to FG's pins). It's got more possibilities for map and scene organisation and so on. But it is all developed in a system-neutral way - which means it doesn't really "speak" RPG at all. It doesn't know the difference between a feat or a spell, and as a player this neutrality can often end up with you having to use a lot of mouse clicks to do something. It's so system-dumb that it doesn't provide anything like Roll20's charactermancer as far as I can see. There is a solution for 5E involving scraping or roll integration with D&D Beyond, for which see negatives. Our group has devolved into letting the GM do all of that work, which isn't ideal, but Foundry doesn't provide the hand-holding for players that FG or Roll20 does.

It definitely plays faster than Roll20 for large combats if you have a bunch of modules set up to handle to-hit/AC/damage and help automate conditions.

The UI for stuff like light placement is very slick.

It has drag and drop for a lot of stuff like character classes and inventory items and spells.

Audio is really good, including static playlists and ambient noises triggered by proximity on the map. If it had hooks into Syrinscape that would be absolutely killer and very easy to set up. (There's probably an extension for that).

Video FX and animations and stuff like animated map support and Dungeondraft import are great. Credit where it is due some of the extensions provide spectacular stuff painlessly. Still the one to beat in this area.

48984

Did I mention pretty? It has icons for all sorts of things, including the full 5E SRD.

HywelPhillips

September 2nd, 2021, 11:19

Foundry- The Dark Side

So what are the problems? There are in my opinion some really big ones.

1) Take a look at that screenshot of a game in progress. Does it remind you of anything? It reminds me of Fantasy Grounds. Combat tracker, chat window with results, the system rolling and applying damage, adding conditions to foes. Thing is, that's all done by third-party extensions. The GM for that game is running a WHOLE SCREENFUL - 40+ extension to get it to do what FG does out of the box. They are stuck on a much older version of Foundry because in all the newer ones, one or other of these extensions breaks or interacts in unpredictable ways with other extensions.

They have achieved the "crumbling edifice" state of software development where no-one dares change anything because of unexpected snowballing effects making the whole system stop working. Given that the program has only been available for 12 months, that's quite an achievement. I want the automation, but not at the expense of being stuck with a very out of date system that I cant change until the campaign has finished for fear of the whole thing collapsing! It's really heavyweight on the GM in terms of maintenance, and that's even running it on The Forge which offers to do a lot of this legwork for you. If you want to extract all the potential functionality from Foundry, you'll be doing a lot of maintenance.

Oh and as I predicted in my review last May, their system is already littered with abandoned modules produced in a rush of enthusiasm by someone with time on their hands, then left unsupported. Its a community of enthusiastic code-heads, not a professional company supporting these extensions as products.

2) No D&D official content outside the SRD. While some companies like Pinnacle and Free League are doing great things releasing commercial products for Foundry users, the elephant in the room remains the fact that for the most popular system of all, you can't get the content officially. If you want even the PHB - let alone stuff like Xanathar's or Tasha's - you are out of luck.

Instead, they have a frankly bizarre workaround which involves using an extension to scrape all the content from D&D Beyond. So first you'll have to have all that content on D&D Beyond, then you'll have to run some hacker scripts to import everything to Foundry, and if it changes I guess you have to do it again? This requires you to support a lone hacker on Patreon, and it makes me uncomfortable for several reasons. First and most important I am a content creator by day, and I think it is morally dubious at best. MAYBE the D&D Beyond terms and conditions allow it but I'm pretty sure it isn't in the spirit. I'd MUCH rather pay to own the content unambiguously. I want to pay, because I want to support a stable ecosystem which supports my platform of choice, my game of choice and funds maintenance and support in the long-term.

What're you going to do if WOTC pulls the plug on D&D Beyond? This all has a whiff of piracy to me regardless of how they are skirting the actual legal T&C.

3) You want that? That's an extension. Or write some code.

I'm mildly critical of FG for leaving some stuff which I feel should be core functionality to be handled by extensions. But on Foundry this philosophy is all-pervasive. Even popping out your character sheet to a separate window (core Roll20 functionality and hardly rocket science for something browser-based) requires an extension. The Foundry Discord is reams upon reams upon reams of discussing what extensions to install followed by how to get them all working in the same version. This is a recipe for swift development but a disaster for anyone running a year-long campaign. I've been running my regular group in FG through some absolute convulsions like FGU going through and out of beta and the release of lighting and every week the PHB has been reliably there for my players and the commercial adventure module still works and wow now the maps have lighting! In my limited experience of Foundry everything breaks all the time.

Example - you can drag a weapon to a hotbar slot to speed up attacks, but doing the same for a stealth skill roll requires writing some code. Drag and drop functionality is skin deep.

4) The UI is more familiar at a glance, but it still requires arcane juggling the moment you dive deeper. Double right-click to target is not superior to CTRL-click to target. And because Foundry doesn't speak RPG, accessing stuff is often a bit obscured by the totally generic nature of the object model. For example, you cannot see what damage weapons do at a glance on your character sheet. You have to open up the details pop-up, which is a tiny icon and highly non-obvious. I would actually say that we have more plaintive calls for help accessing basic player stuff to the GM and the one technohacker member of the group for Foundry than we ever have for FG. So this much-vaunted UI is actually no easier in practice than FG's much-derided UI. Especially not once you've got 40 extensions installed.

5) I'm sorry to say it, but the fraction of tribal asshats in the Foundry online supporter community seems to be higher than FG or Roll20. There ARE plenty of nice and supportive people out there, but there's also something of a rabid-follower-one-true-way-information-must-be-free-sheeple thing going on too. This may just be my mistaken impression but there it is, that's my experience. I found it rather off-putting.

WHAT IT IS GOOD FOR

Medium weight automation for games supported by publishers like Alien, SWADE, etc.
Pretty. Very, very pretty.
Automated pretty (much better than Roll20 in this respect; FG doesn't provide anything even faintly comparable in scope yet)
Simple ways to extend it yourself if you've got a bit of javascript
Wide range of community rulesets

WHAT IT IS NOT GOOD FOR

Maintenance reliability the moment you have extensions, which you will because achieving the awesome requires them
5E content, and purchased adventure content generally
Picking it up and running a game by Saturday (our regular GM spends HOURS AND HOURS doing prep. It's nothing like buying Icespire Peak and away you go)
The learning curve is significantly steeper than Roll20 and player-side automation is much worse especially for 5E
Hard to recommend as your first VTT as a result unless you are comfortable with GitHub and basic developer sysadmin chores

Foundry is a hacker toolbox, not a one-stop-shop VTT

Jiminimonka

September 2nd, 2021, 12:05

Great reviews. Love the Foundry one especially.

HywelPhillips

September 2nd, 2021, 12:34

Fantasy Grounds - The Good

Fantasy Grounds has changed the most in the last 18 months. FGU is now out, stable, and with some major extra features, most notably lighting and image handling in general.

This change has been managed without breaking everything. Scenarios first published years before FGU even launched continue to work. As new features have been added, the back catalogue has been updated (not universally, but still to an impressive degree). For free. This speaks very highly of the company's commitment to long-term support of their customers and the things those customers have bought from them.

If you are reading this and you've not run a game in FG, it's hard to express just much deeper the automation and system support runs compared with Roll20 and Foundry. FG consists of a core VTT engine to handle maps, lights, walls, tokens, images and so on. But sitting on top of that is the ruleset - and the ruleset actually understands the roleplaying system you are running. So unlike Roll20, the ruleset knows how an attack works in 5E and will automate it for you. Select your target, click on your character sheet, FG rolls the dice and tells you whether you hit. Roll damage and it applies it to your target. It understands what critical hits do and rolls the extra damage for you correctly. It understands what damage resistance does and halves it for you. It knows how temporary hit point work and handles that for you. It knows about half-damage from non-magic weapons. It knows about how prone works and if your attack can knock someone prone it'll facilitate you making them roll their save, and if they fail it'll let you apply the prone condition. It knows that melee attackers get advantage on you if you are prone, and ranged attackers get disadvantage. If you make spell saves it knows which spells cause half damage on a successful save. You can fireball a room full of zombies and with two clicks FG will roll all the saves, apply full damage to those who failed and half to those who succeeded.

As a result combat at higher levels in D&D is AT LEAST twice as fast to play in FG as in Roll20, even more so as the number of combatants increase. This was the grand finale big boss battle of my 18 month campaign last week - 12th level PCs, a vampire-lich homebrew, corrupted treants, vampire spawn, 12th level undead NPC spellcasters, and a whole barrel of minions. We did the lot in three hours. In Roll20 I guarantee that would have taken two or three full sessions. And as GM I could concentrate on WHAT the NPCs were doing it, rather than keeping track of them doing it. Finger of death spells, healing potions, multiple fireballs from both sides, all handled effortlessly by the automation.

48985

Note how pretty this is - this is a relatively plain map (Sunless Citadel) brought to life in a really cool way by lighting. Such a thing was not possible in FG 18 months ago.

Until you've experienced the reliable out-of-the-box automation that FG provides it is hard to convey just how much easier it was to run this battle than it would have been in any of the other VTTs I have tried. It has made us brave enough to aim for 20th level in this campaign, something we've not done for in-person games precisely because the record-keeping gets too onerous for the players, let alone the GM.

FG has the best organisational tools for the GM bar none. It provides the things you want to run a TTRPG - like encounters and parcels of loot which are made of items and can be dropped onto the party, and shared out amongst them. Every Roll20 group I am in has a by-hand party loot sheet which some poor sap has to keep up to date. The party sheet on FG does it automatically and effortlessly.

You can pin stories to maps, prepare encounters with pre-placed tokens without cluttering the map or the combat tracker. Foundry comes close here: in some ways I prefer their method of pre-placing tokens and selecting which ones to bring into the battle when it starts. But FG has extensions too and if you prefer to do it that way, there are robust extensions that do the job. There is still be something of the "abandoned extensions" syndrome but my experience is that the FGU developer community is much more committed to long-term maintenance and compatibility.

One complaint about FG has just been addressed - it used to be that you had to manage extensions by hand, which was a pain. The Forge fixes this and supports a much more Foundry/ForgeVTT like way of choosing, installing and downloading updates for your extensions. This is a significant improvement.

FG has the best marketplace for playable content (modules and so on). Roll20 probably has more systems, but FG has more adventures, and you can use more than one adventure in your campaign which is curiously convoluted in Roll20. The commitment to updating old modules with the latest line-of-sight and lighting has been exemplary. Material is properly licenced and once you've bought it you own it, in a local copy. So it's never going to just evaporate (like Foundry's D&D Beyond-scraping might).

Where the ruleset automation is lacking, particularly for 5E, extensions take up the slack (for example I use automatic pack tactics, automatic mirror image, automatic death resistance and the like just so I don't have to remember them). Unlike Foundry extensions which have to be very broad given the lack of automation out of the box, these extensions can be tightly-focussed and functional. Sadly conflicts and errors do occur, but they are usually resolved quickly by the authors. The most I had to do even during roll-out of major feature updates like lighting was to turn a couple of extensions off for a week or two.

A few extensions significantly extend FG's functionality - I'd particularly recommend MatteKurre's Syrinscape integrations (pin sounds to maps, and have sound FX triggered by stuff as you play - someone casts Charm Person, the Charm Person sound FX is automatically queued and played by Syrinscape). Portals is great for letting people explore the map organically and transport them to other maps. One-Click Druid or the Polymorphism extension handle one of the most onerous of 5E features (wild shapes and polymorph) effortlessly. Some of these I personally think should be core functionality (portals) and some stuff is still missing but overall the degree to which you can automate your game is truly impressive... without it feeling like a computer game.

Maybe it is just because I think the same way as the developers, but I find it a genuinely pleasant experience to fire up FG to do my session prep. I like to base everything on the map, and add annotations via pins. FG makes this very easy to do. Stories, encounters, npcs, image handouts to share, notes to give to players and so on. The spirit is the opposite of Roll20 and Foundry's system-neutral approach - FG tries its best to get into the nitty-gritty of each supported game system and provide the tools you actually need to prep, run and play it.

The level of drag-and-drop support is impressive. (If not always the most intuitive for new players - see the bad stuff post).

Oh, you can build maps entirely inside FG, facilitated by the art packs. Personally I think it is better used to customise base maps imported from elsewhere - there is a Dungeondraft universal VTT file importer as an external script that I very much wish would be incorporated as an extension or folded into core functionality.

I was running an adventure where they killed some owlbears. When they returned to the area, they found bloody trails leading away where someone had dragged the corpses away to animate as zombies. Adding this to the commercial module map was a simple matter of finding some nice blood spatter assets and painting them on the map. It took me a couple of minutes, tops. The impact was great - when their characters returned to the area the players discovered the blood trails for themselves, not via me reading flavour text. They freaked out and followed up the clues themselves, talking amongst themselves. FG's image tools are awesome for that.

bmos

September 2nd, 2021, 13:13

Wow. This comparison is absolutely aces.
I like how it isn't judgemental and acknowledges strengths and weaknesses all 'round while accepting that different VTTs could be better for different games/tables/situations.

HywelPhillips

September 2nd, 2021, 14:42

Finally:

Fantasy Grounds - Some Painful Truths

There are some negatives to Fantasy Grounds and let's get the big one out of the way first.

1) The user interface is divisive at best and hated at worst. This comes up time and time again from people who have investigated FG and decided not to use it. It's never that they think the automation is too much, or that their favourite system doesn't have good enough support. It is always that they found the user interface confusing, ugly, unintuitive, clunky, or old-fashioned.

Some of these comments are unfair because they haven't looked again at FG in its Unity incarnation. It's certainly much improved over Classic, which looked every bit like the 90's computer game a lot of people compared it to. New developments have been implemented with more modern UI conventions, the the drawing/image layer tools, which are using a pretty widespread set of UI conventions. I rarely see people commenting negatively on this part of the program.

But there are still a lot of things which bear that 90's computer game DNA, most particularly the context-sensitive right click menus. And the UI is scattered with minor annoyances (as in a recent thread about why sometimes you need to double-click to roll a d20 from your character sheet, and sometimes single click it). The module window is still broken, not showing you the bottom row and not being able to expand the window to do so.

A lot of this is tied in with the good feature of backwards compatibility that I praised above - rulesets developed 10 years ago still work, but that means you can't do a complete redesign of the UI without breaking them.

Roll20 isn't immune to such annoyances. (To read an ability you click it, but if you do that to spells you ping it to the chat. Or maybe it is the other way around. It should be the same convention whatever, players get that wrong at least once a session). I've already complained about some of Foundry's UI quirks.

So however much I enjoy using FG there is no denying that its UI puts people off. Different themes can help a lot here (SirMotte's dark theme for example which I'd love to use but it is too low-contrast for our group's middle-aged eyes).

2) It's very hungry on screen real-estate. Partly that's because it does a lot more (so for example the combat tracker window needs to be a lot bigger). But also because it eschews modern UI conventions like tabbed windows in a lot of places where they could be implemented. The chat window doesn't work like other windows, so you can't bring it to the front when the map is in your window background. Again, newer additions do better here but it's still struggling free of the confines of Classic in many areas.

Different themes can help a bit here too but only to a point.

3) Performance. It's remarkable that we can run combats with lighting and 30+ high level combatants and sound effects triggered through Syrinscape extensions and the works. But there's also no denying that FG does not make best use of the hardware, because the game can be stuttering and lagging whilst I still have 9 cores out of 10 sitting idle. There are workarounds - /imagequality and /vsync help people with lower-spec machines a lot - but in my opinion there's a lot of room for improvement here.

Let me not overstate the case. FG is perfectly usable. It's just that from the resources my iMac Pro has sitting idle, it should FLY. And it doesn't.

Some specific issues: search in the asset window is painfully slow if you have a large collection of maps, which I do. Whereas MacOS searches those same directories almost instantly. PC character sheet action tabs with long spell lists can be laggy especially on older laptops for players.

I really hope this is something that SmiteWorks will continue to work on.

4) You do have to download the software and install it on a computer. This is a barrier to entry for non-techie players compared with following a link in their web browser. Conversely, it means that everything is under your control, so it has compensations. In the unlikely case that SmiteWorks goes bankrupt, you'll still be able to run your games and have your complete library of purchases. For me the main annoyance here is probably the lack of offline module reading and the fact that players can't access the game while I'm not hosting it. There are workarounds (they can create their own campaign and import their character to look at it out of session) but it's not as good as letting them have their characters on D&D Beyond in parallel to FG.

5) The annoyance that the automation isn't complete. One aspect is that commercially-purchased material may not implement automation as fully as it is possible to do in the existing system. It does rankle a bit to purchase Rob2E modules with fully-coded effects to get the full benefits of automation for PHB, Xanathar's, etc.. I understand why: the time it takes to implement every spell with all its variant effects and actions is non-trivial. And you can do it yourself if you have time. FG say that they aim for 80% automation and I'd say that for 5E in particular it is already higher than that out of the box for FG-plus-PHB, way beyond the dreams of Foundry and something that Roll20 hasn't even imagined.

Also annoying are the things that are crying out to be automated because they are hard, which FG have on their list to tackle but which haven't been yet (like paladin Auras, targeting shapes, effects attached to magic items that trigger when you equip them). It's churlish to complain when FG does so much more than the other VTTs, but also hard not to want it all!

6) The find-a-group/game calendar side of FG is not as good as Roll20. There's a forum and a Discord but it is not as easy to get your first game as it is on Roll20.

7) No sound integration.

8) No animated graphics file format support, which means no cute VFX for fireballs or rays of acid like on Roll20 or Foundry extensions.

9) It has a 5E charactermancer, but this is not as user friendly as D&D Beyond or Roll20. The UI is somewhat primitive and confusing eg the paladin class will show up several times if you have PHB, Xanathars and Tasha's all loaded. On the plus side, it picks up homebrew or third party content on an equal footing, which is much less well supported in Roll20. I think Roll20 has some Kobold Press content, but it's not seamlessly integrated the way it is in FGU's 5E charactermancer. And D&D Beyond is WOTC content only.

Do these sound like minor quibbles to you? That's good, because that's how I feel about them. For sure I'd like them to be improved. But for me most of them fall into the category of fine-tuning. What FG does out of the box is bloody awesome when you get your head around it.

WHAT IT IS GOOD FOR

Running adventures with full automation and GM record keeping. 5E, Pathfinder, Starfinder, 2E, SWADE in particular the automation is hugely impressive
Structured GM development environment - you can do it all in FG in a way which is not possible in Roll20 or Foundry. In many ways it provides a lot of the functionality of things like WorldAnvil and map-making software all inside your campaign, and that's really hard to let go of once you've experienced it!
High level adventures
Running commercial modules with excellent system support
Playing together week after week
Homebrew - not just homebrew adventures, but homebrew classes, races, spells, skills, items, etc.. All are treated as first-class citizens by the system. It's really nice.
Supportive company
Supportive community
Backwards compatibility taken seriously
Creator support and legal issues taken seriously
Marketplace with very rich content

WHAT IT IS NOT SO GOOD FOR
Introducing scared technophobe newbies into playing D&D online. They need to at least be comfortable with installing software and running check for updates.
Running minority systems. I mean there are community character sheets and even rulesets for a lot of stuff. So it's not worse than Roll20 or Foundry here. It's just that the automation isn't there the way it is for the best-supported systems.
Playing games with people who find its UI horrible.
One-shots with strangers (especially those new to FG).

If a new player asks me which VTT to try first I always recommend Roll20.

If a new GM asks me which VTT to try first I would debate which to recommend. Roll20 for sure will get you up and going for your first session more quickly, and it might be all you need if you're only going to dabble.

But Fantasy Grounds does so much more, and is so much nicer to develop your own adventures in!

If you are at all serious about GM'ing, I recommend Fantasy Grounds. You will have to work at it a more at the start, because there is so much more than it can do. Compared with Foundry, you'll get FG up and running with automation much quicker and there's the brilliant option of just buying IceSpire peak and running that while you learn the ins and outs of FG. You can't actually do that with Foundry.

You'll curse me for the first few weeks while you get up the learning curve. Then you'll thank me for the next five years while you watch GM's struggle with all the record-keeping chores on Roll20.

In some ways my ultimate recommendation is this - when you're running a game in person, would you want to have the VTT running beside you? Roll20? No, why would you? Foundry? Maybe, for pretty. Fantasy Grounds? Yes, because of GM organisational tools. When I ran my first in-person games in 18 months on holiday for my regular group, I started running it without my laptop and halfway through the session I went and got it so I could have FG running beside me as I ran it, even though I wasn't using the combat tracker. It's a powerful GM support tool with a built-in VTT.

Moon Wizard

September 2nd, 2021, 15:09

Thanks for the balanced reviews. Very good reading.

Regards,
JPG

stephan_

September 2nd, 2021, 15:38

Excellent reviews, thank you. Will be my go-to when anyone asks about differences between VTTs.

LordEntrails

September 2nd, 2021, 19:28

Great review, not just because I agree with so much of it, but because I believe it to be fair, well written, and insightful. I hope you share it elsewhere like on r/vtt etc.

FG "Prep Less, Play More"

Claybor

September 2nd, 2021, 19:30

Very comprehensive. Thanks.

Nylanfs

September 2nd, 2021, 19:44

The community differences between FG and Roll20 can not be emphasized enough.

MrDDT

September 2nd, 2021, 19:52

Wow what a great and completely right review. I've used all these systems and I would fully agree with everything here. This is on the nose. Thanks for writing it up.

Gwydion

September 2nd, 2021, 22:17

Really well done. Thanks for taking the time to post such detailed comparisons. I found it very useful and definitely in line the experience I do have with FG and Foundry in particular.

HywelPhillips

September 2nd, 2021, 22:25

I hope you share it elsewhere like on r/vtt etc.

I'm not on reddit but if anyone would care to repost or post links to there that would be grand :)

Cheers, Hywel

Ulric

September 2nd, 2021, 22:57

The sent a link to my players and then realized the GM map for tomorrows game is used as the example of how FGU looks now! I had to warn my players not to look!

I also think this is a great review of the three VTT! Thank you!

HywelPhillips

September 2nd, 2021, 23:31

Show them the map and scare the wits out of them since that's my homebrew encounter on top of it with a CR20 vampire/lich and all his minions in it!

:)

Weissrolf

September 3rd, 2021, 11:36

Great reviews, thanks for that!

I may not fully agree with all parts, especially where Foundry is concerned, but that is mostly because your reviews are centered around DnD 5e rulesets and overall just trifles. The reviews seem exhaustive and fair enough. :)

One important point I feel missing: *All* players need to create a FG account now to install/run FGU, which is another hurdle to draw players in. And once the account server goes down (bankruptcy case you mentioned) you cannot install the software anymore and thus may be locked out of your purchases. The latter is something all contenders have to deal with, though (e.g. Foundry is very protective of its licenses per hardware and concurrent games running).

Dr0W

September 3rd, 2021, 12:59

Great review on the vtts. As someone who has been using both Foundry and FG extensively for the last 18 months I'd like to add that the experience may vary depending on the Ruleset you are using.
5e on fg or foundry are really well automated, except that fg has official support but many features on fg requires you to buy community extensions or write one yourself, whereas on foundry you can get all for free.

Now I've had great experiences on other systems in foundry that are fully automated out of the box, like Warhammer 4th which I like to emphasize that is better automated than anything I've seen on any vtt.

You just can't beat Swade on fg. It's good on Foundry, but in fg it's just too good.

Pathfinder2e is really well automated on foundry and being it a completely srd system, it doesn't require any purchase at all to get it running.

I've had bad experiences too, with rulesets I actually bought officially there, like dcc that is so poorly automated that I decided to bring my games back to fg. But it's evolving little by little.

I'm the end, I got both vtts and my choice to run a game is often decided by which vtt does which ruleset better.

HywelPhillips

September 3rd, 2021, 13:13

I'll check out Warhammer 4th Ed on Foundry, thanks! Like you I'm happy to change tool depending on how well it does a certain job. For example, I'm thinking of running some of the old SAGA Dragonlance system at some point and actually the one which best supports that right now is Roll20.

I think they all have strengths and weaknesses and for sure the amount of work done in the ruleset has a lot to do with it As I said at the top of my reviews my experience is mainly with 5E, especially as a player rather than GM.

How do you find Foundry on the GM organisational side? I've only run commercial short scenarios using it so far so I've not got a good feel for how much of the documentation for an extended homebrew campaign you can sensibly develop inside Foundry; it's one of the strengths of FG for me that it supports GM organisation pretty well out of the box.

Cheers, Hywel

Dr0W

September 3rd, 2021, 13:53

I prefer prepping and running games on FG. Being able to drag and drop links pretty much everywhere really helps me out. I also prefer dealing with encounters using the CT than using tokens for that.

With that said, my players' opinions are quite the opposite. Those who have used FG for years will sometimes struggle with some basic functions like targeting or dropping an attack on a token. On foundry, for most of the systems and with a couple of extensions, they don't even need any explanation and proceed do to most of the tasks without a problem. Being able to run a combat and using actions directly from the token is a bliss for players.

So on fg I spend less time prepping and have less trouble gming, but I spend some time helping players. On foundry I spend more time prepping, but I rarely have players asking "how do I attack again? I can't target! Which button is the attack and which is the damage?"

HywelPhillips

September 3rd, 2021, 15:54

That's interesting. The group I am playing with on Foundry hasn't done a huge number of sessions but we've had at least as many "how do I target again?" questions in Foundry as my groups had in FG at similar number of weeks in.

That's what I was talking about when I said the double-right-clicking to select (Foundry) isn't superior to CTRL-clicking to select (FG): neither is obvious to a new player. I always start new FG players off with dragging and dropping - they get the hang of dragging and dropping the attack rolls and damage rolls from their character sheet onto the token on the map pretty quickly. Then I introduce the targeting idea when they want to affect more than one enemy at once.

So there's probably a lot of chance involved with what the group is trying to do as to which features they need to access in which order and which things they've discovered for themselves already, and I'm sure it'll vary quite widely by group and by ruleset.

Undeniably though there is a significant contingent who find the FG interface off-putting, it comes up time and again in discussions amongst people who tried it and decided to settle on another platform instead.

Cheers, Hywel

Ulric

September 3rd, 2021, 16:16

I have run Starfinder for several years for a group of players that previously started playing 5e on Roll20. Other than my Starfinder and 5e campaign they continue to play on Roll20. These players often make disparaging remarks about FG which annoys me because FG gameplay has been rock solid. They regularly have problems with Roll20 during their weekly Roll20 game but I hardly ever hear them complain about Roll20. Their last Roll20 game one of the players could only see the GM map. It turns out after searching the Roll20 forums that this issue was reported to the Devs months ago and still no fix or response. The level of support from SW owners and employees plus the awesome community of FG players is unmatched by any other VTT. I see Foundry as a young SW. I hope SW and Foundry continue to grow and make each other better. For now FGU is my current go to VTT.

Dr0W

September 3rd, 2021, 17:49

That's what I was talking about when I said the double-right-clicking to select (Foundry) isn't superior to CTRL-clicking to select (FG): neither is obvious to a new player. I always start new FG players off with dragging and dropping - they get the hang of dragging and dropping the attack rolls and damage rolls from their character sheet onto the token on the map pretty quickly. Then I introduce the targeting idea when they want to affect more than one enemy at once.

Since the first time I've used Foundry, I've used an extension that allows for targeting that works by ALT-Clicking, which I find to be a requirement for the GM since only the player can double-right click. So in that regard it becomes really close to FG, but the real difference is how the targeting actually works: On FG it's token based: Each token has their own targeting. On Foundry it is client based: The player targets something, and when any of their controlled characters attack, they will attack that one token. The real difference is visibility: On FG my players very often forget that they actually need to select their tokens to be able to see who they are targeting, so it's very common that they are trying to ctrl+click stuff and nothing happens (Actually it happens, but the player has no visual clue unless they remember to click their token first).

The only Ruleset I've seen behaving like that on FG was the Ad&d for I believe Celestian implemented a target crosshair to show up on the token that's being targeted by the current actor in the CT.

MrDDT

September 3rd, 2021, 18:10

shishz

September 3rd, 2021, 18:22

Agreed on two problems: Performance & "UI".

A VTT should be blazing fast even on midlevel hardware. This, I think, can be fixed over time as opposed to...

Now, the UI itself is not that bad. The bigger issue is the multiple-document interface. That absolutely is an abomination. Especially now that multiple monitors are common place too. The sad part here is it seems smiteworks has decided it is impossible to offer a sdi type interface.

Having said that, fg's positives still overcome it's limitations.

HywelPhillips

September 3rd, 2021, 19:46

Since the first time I've used Foundry, I've used an extension that allows for targeting that works by ALT-Clicking, which I find to be a requirement for the GM since only the player can double-right click. So in that regard it becomes really close to FG, but the real difference is how the targeting actually works: On FG it's token based: Each token has their own targeting. On Foundry it is client based: The player targets something, and when any of their controlled characters attack, they will attack that one token. The real difference is visibility: On FG my players very often forget that they actually need to select their tokens to be able to see who they are targeting, so it's very common that they are trying to ctrl+click stuff and nothing happens (Actually it happens, but the player has no visual clue unless they remember to click their token first).

The only Ruleset I've seen behaving like that on FG was the Ad&d for I believe Celestian implemented a target crosshair to show up on the token that's being targeted by the current actor in the CT.

Ah, fair comment. I've been using MatteKure's SelectOnTurn and 5E Indictors, which do likewise.
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/353690/Fantasy-Grounds-5E-Indicators
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/358244/Fantasy-Grounds-Select-on-Turn

Another reason I've probably got away with it is by introducing new players to the drag-and-drop-the-dice-on-the-monster's-head-on-the-map method of attacking and doing damage which doesn't require targeting at all. The people playing wizards soon learn how to target multiple creatures but the barbarians and rogues never need to :)

In fairness to vanilla FG, it does have the targeting/range arrow indicator, and it does show who you are targeting on the combat tracker. So at least there is some feedback if players have the CT open. But having the indicators extension certainly makes it clearer what's going on: blue arrows highlight token whose turn is active on the CT, yellow ones highlight their targets:

48990

I'll have to look for the ALT-CLICK module for Foundry as that's been annoying me trying to run games there.

Which goes to show what I said in my reviews - I don't think either Foundry or FG's UI is ideal, for all that the hate is all directed FG's way I don't think Foundry's UI is actually all that intuitive either. I think it is inherent in representing something as messy and complicated as a TTRPG system inside a VTT; there's so many things you might want to do, especially when you move beyond representing tokens on a map and making them proper representations of the RPG character that can attack, take damage, make saves, etc..

Cheers, Hywel

dmbrown

September 4th, 2021, 01:07

I agree with drOW about the WFRP ruleset for Foundry as I have it and it is very well done. I started following Foundry just to see the progress of the Warhammer ruleset. I would have preferred that the developer stuck with FG, but he decided to jump ship.

I did look at 5e and SWADE, but neither one of those on Foundry could touch FG. As was mentioned previously you had to have a bunch of modules loaded just to come close to 5e in vanilla FG. SWADE was better with the official content, but it is no where near what FG could do.

A player in my group is going to try and GM a WFRP campaign in Foundry, so we’ll see how that goes. He is complaining about the interface and is use to FG, but we’ll see how that goes.

JohnD

September 4th, 2021, 02:13

The mind boggles in 2021 that there are people who struggle with clicking a link and then running an install program, never mind creating a forum account.

But... yes I have experienced people with such challenges.

They usually also struggle with advanced concepts such as the mysterious double click and the confounding left click.

The summaries of each VTT seem to be comprehensive enough.

Nylanfs

September 4th, 2021, 03:14

One important point I feel missing: *All* players need to create a FG account now to install/run FGU, which is another hurdle to draw players in. And once the account server goes down (bankruptcy case you mentioned) you cannot install the software anymore and thus may be locked out of your purchases. The latter is something all contenders have to deal with, though (e.g. Foundry is very protective of its licenses per hardware and concurrent games running).

Doug has previously stated that in the VERY unlikely event that Smiteworks would have to close he would release a patch ensuring that FG wouldn't require an active license, and would likely host the program somewhere with a free download. And based on past customer support I would trust that they would find a way to not leave us in the cold

YAKO SOMEDAKY

September 4th, 2021, 12:08

I play with Dr0W and I don't mind playing at Foundry or Fantasy Grounds, I want to play and have fun.
I appreciate the Foundry and am a Fan Boy of fantasy Grounds.
I understand all the things mentioned and say that what makes Foundry stand out are things I look forward to for the FGU, which are performance and visual and sound features within the platform, but mainly performance, which takes time to open campaigns, no matter whether old or new, with or without extensions, spreadsheets are slow to open in most rule sets, the response of some resolutions or rollovers causes tension by their slowness.
"Good and new" machines don't seem to take real advantage of the platform.
And one thing I miss is image pre-loading and not "forced" sharing
There is a difference between me preloading an image to make it quicker opening and sharing it, and it would be nice to have that back.
But I still prefer agility and performance, as for the look of the FG, I'm already used to it....

Kelrugem

September 4th, 2021, 12:16

And one thing I miss is image pre-loading and not "forced" sharing
There is a difference between me preloading an image to make it quicker opening and sharing it, and it would be nice to have that back.

Presharing is essentially still there :) Already in FGC it is just like sharing, the only difference was that it does not pop-up on the client's screen if they were connected and you clicked preshare. That's it, in all other aspects it is the same as sharing; so, if you preshared something, then your players could already open it from the images tab in FGC for example :)

Hence, if you want to preshare something as a preparation, then just share it while you prepare for the next session. If no client is connected (and I think most people used the presharing option in preparation), then there is no difference to sharing. (Hence, this option probably does not come back, I think, because there is actually no advantage in that presharing option if it is used for preparing campaigns)

However, if you used the presharing option while clients were already connected, then it is something different since sharing creates a pop-up. But I do not really see a reason why one should preshare something while the session is already running (since it will still affect the bandwidth then etc.)

Jiminimonka

September 4th, 2021, 12:49

Weissrolf

September 4th, 2021, 14:08

It's not so much struggling, but having to jump two more hurdles when player are not yet convinced that they even want to try this VTT thingy. No need to be condescending towards players, no players = no gaming.

"Copy & Paste URL in browser, select player, click the big JOIN GAME SESSION button"
is an easier entry procedure compared to:

"Download (correct FGC vs. FGU) client, run installation, give strange permissions that no other software asks about, enter/confirm data directory path twice in different UI windows, be asked for account credentials, create account, enter credentials, start application, understand the lobby with three different ways to connect, understand that the client did not freeze while its busy loading modules, find Library -> Modules and enable all modules that the GM asks you to".

stephan_

September 4th, 2021, 14:09

Presharing is essentially still there :) Already in FGC it is just like sharing, the only difference was that it does not pop-up on the client's screen if they were connected and you clicked preshare. That's it, in all other aspects it is the same as sharing; so, if you preshared something, then your players could already open it from the images tab in FGC for example :)

Hence, if you want to preshare something as a preparation, then just share it while you prepare for the next session. If no client is connected (and I think most people used the presharing option in preparation), then there is no difference to sharing. (Hence, this option probably does not come back, I think, because there is actually no advantage in that presharing option if it is used for preparing campaigns)

However, if you used the presharing option while clients were already connected, then it is something different since sharing creates a pop-up. But I do not really see a reason why one should preshare something while the session is already running (since it will still affect the bandwidth then etc.)

You can share an image without a pop-up on the players' side by right-click-sharing the image from the image window list (not the image itself).

HywelPhillips

September 4th, 2021, 16:33

Whilst not wising to turn this into a "negging on FG" thread, I do agree that bringing new players on board is significantly more involved for FG than for others. Not least because when they finally DO connect to the game for the first time, they have to go through the module selection procedure to ensure they have the PHB or whatever other modules loaded.

Sure they only have to do it the first time, but I struggle to see what the use case of doing this is. Why wouldn't you want the players to have the modules the GM says they can load, loaded? Why yet another confusing step for first-time players?

I made a suggestion for forcing player load on the idea informer but I'd go further and say this should be the default. Remove the need for the campaign setup pop-up to appear when a new player connects, especially if the GM could also force defaults for options in the campaign settings. Which techie players could be all means pop up a window to override but which would remove the need for this step entirely for everyone else.

Cheers, Hywel

Jiminimonka

September 4th, 2021, 16:40

Weissrolf

September 4th, 2021, 16:49

At least we have the animated die now, which originally was hidden so far to the lower right corner that it was easily overlooked (even when known to exist). This is a genuine improvement that I am quite thankful for, despite the unnecessary steep climb it took to get that implemented.

HywelPhillips

September 4th, 2021, 16:52

Hi it is here:
https://fgapp.idea.informer.com/proj/?ia=135437

Cheers, Hywel

Kelrugem

September 4th, 2021, 17:16

You can share an image without a pop-up on the players' side by right-click-sharing the image from the image window list (not the image itself).

Ah, nice, thanks a lot, I did not know that :)

So, yako, you see the presharing option with all its facettes is basically still available :)

YAKO SOMEDAKY

September 4th, 2021, 17:28

I know if I share the image directly, it opens on the player screen.
I know if I share the file it won't open, but it's there for a curious player to click (I'm a curious player) :D

Kelrugem

September 4th, 2021, 17:31

I know if I share the image directly, it opens on the player screen.
I know if I share the file it won't open, but it's there for a curious player to click (I'm a curious player) :D

yes, but the presharing in FGC did not prevent this either :D

(but yes, a presharing in the sense of still hiding it in the image list would be quite neat actually; at the moment I always put global fog of war over all my maps to work against curious players :p Or turning on LoS/lighting should do it, too; if it is a map, then that has to be turned on nevertheless :D)

Dr0W

September 5th, 2021, 00:28

Ah, fair comment. I've been using MatteKure's SelectOnTurn and 5E Indictors, which do likewise.
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/353690/Fantasy-Grounds-5E-Indicators
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/358244/Fantasy-Grounds-Select-on-Turn

Another reason I've probably got away with it is by introducing new players to the drag-and-drop-the-dice-on-the-monster's-head-on-the-map method of attacking and doing damage which doesn't require targeting at all. The people playing wizards soon learn how to target multiple creatures but the barbarians and rogues never need to :)

Two paid extensions that do things that perhaps should be done by the software itself :(. Many of my players also like to check for range before attacking, since the system we use most have it calculated automatically, so the only way is to target first. Also, I have players who play using a touchpad only. I do prefer the drag & drop approach, but it's a trouble for them. And by the end, the "I don't need to even open my sheet to attack" usually beats all that.

I agree with drOW about the WFRP ruleset for Foundry as I have it and it is very well done. I started following Foundry just to see the progress of the Warhammer ruleset. I would have preferred that the developer stuck with FG, but he decided to jump ship.

I did look at 5e and SWADE, but neither one of those on Foundry could touch FG. As was mentioned previously you had to have a bunch of modules loaded just to come close to 5e in vanilla FG. SWADE was better with the official content, but it is no where near what FG could do.

A player in my group is going to try and GM a WFRP campaign in Foundry, so we’ll see how that goes. He is complaining about the interface and is use to FG, but we’ll see how that goes.

Just lemme correct one thing: 5e does MORE than what FG does, but with free modules. There are some things you can do there that right now are only possible on FG if you purchase some extension made by the community. Things like halfling luck, automatic backstab damage, and many other automations. There are some paid extensions that implement half of those features on FG. The only real difference is that we have official support on FG, but you can import official content from DnD beyond there.

The mind boggles in 2021 that there are people who struggle with clicking a link and then running an install program, never mind creating a forum account.

But... yes I have experienced people with such challenges.

They usually also struggle with advanced concepts such as the mysterious double click and the confounding left click.

The summaries of each VTT seem to be comprehensive enough.

I'm a teacher, I've been using RPG to teach quite a lot lately. Back in the day I did use FG Classic one for that matter, and it was with a group of students that I knew they were good with technology and knew how to do things. If I want to do that with FGU I'll have to intrusively ask students not only to install a new software but also create an account on a forum that they are going to use once or twice in their lives. Not only I'm having 0 problems with that on Foundry because that's a matter of sending a link, but I've also got some friends who were resistant to playing online to actually try it. I'm starting to have friends I've player RPG with for decades, and they are getting... old. The easier I can make it for them to join a game and understand whatever is going on, the better.

Xydonus

September 5th, 2021, 01:31

Just thought I'd jump in here and add my opinion to this. Good review from Phillips, points out a lot of things that I would also feel the same about, although might be a stretch to call the D&D Beyond unofficial integration support as 'piracy' considering there have been calls on FG's forums (and previous support) for such a module.

I was never a fan of Roll20 and to me, it is a dying platform unless they start implementing changes. Regarding FoundryVTT I was at first very hesitant to use it, and this was early on when it was just starting to become popular. I've been a long-time supporter and user of FG and backed FG:Unity in the kickstarter, with matched enthusiasm that I now have for Foundry. Switching over to Foundry was surprisingly painful considering amount of $$$ I invested in FG's products and the fact that FG has been the foundation for my Warhammer game whose functional ruleset, community made, has been keeping me on FG:Classic even now.

FG:Unity to me has been the biggest factor in making me do the switch over to Foundry for all my other games, rather than Foundry's impressive features being the main draw. I have just lost patience with Unity, and comparing the two; Unity and Foundry, the choice was obvious for me. And since I've jumped over to Foundry, I just love it. Simple as. It's lacking in areas, especially automation, but the fact that I can actually feel somewhat ambitious again in prepping my games and having a strong community behind it who are continuously updating modules (unlike what Phillips said, I find the majority of 'useful' modules are being regularly updated, but some are on hold now till 9.1 due to the changes that will bring) for the system feels great, considering you can access those modules easily. The system is most certainly far more modular than FG and you can do a lot with it.

My whole group, for the first time, played D&D on it recently. Up until then I've only used Foundry with smaller groups in different games, because my main game is still Warhammer 2nd edition, and that means I'm still using FG:Classic whose support has now ended sadly, so the clock is ticking with regards to that. But my group loved the system, and it has already converted two GM's in my group over to it, one of them who is also a FG user, just from that one game they've had. It's just very clean to use. Players love the interface it seems, and all the fancy immersive features are just cherries on top.

I honestly wish I wasn't dropping FG in its entirety because I know I will once I end up either switching to 4th Edition WFRP or playing 2nd Ed on Foundry. Competition is good and I hope it is good enough to make me look at FG again in the future and maybe get tempted to switch back. Right now I can't see that happening anytime soon.

There's definitely a problem with the direction of FG:Unity development if someone like me who has in the past recommended FG to others (two GM's bought Ultimate licenses based on my recommendations) and invested a considerable amount of $$$ into a program can be swayed by a $60 VTT program that only contains a tiny percentage of the automation features of FG. Smiteworks would do well to open their eyes I feel and not ignore people like myself or others who have developed disappointment with the direction of FG:Unity.

dmbrown

September 5th, 2021, 03:45

Just lemme correct one thing: 5e does MORE than what FG does, but with free modules. There are some things you can do there that right now are only possible on FG if you purchase some extension made by the community. Things like halfling luck, automatic backstab damage, and many other automations. There are some paid extensions that implement half of those features on FG. The only real difference is that we have official support on FG, but you can import official content from DnD beyond there.

I imagine you have put more time into running 5e on Foundry than I have, so you might know more about what is possible, but from what I've seen it wasn't close to FG without dozens of modules. I've wondered and I've seen others ask elsewhere what modules were necessary to get Foundry up to par with FG, but no one has gone through and listed them though I know of some of them.

The large complex modules, CUB, Midi-QL, DAE SRD and I think there were others help to come close to vanilla FG, but are volunteer modules, so what if they're abandoned? Now you have half the functionally of what FG gives you gone. Not only that but you have to keep track of the versions of these modules and if they're compatible with each other and the version of Foundry that you're running.

I think with Foundry as you mentioned it comes down to the ruleset. That is why I was agreeing with you on WFRP as it appears that Moo Man has gone and integrated a lot of what various modules did right into the ruleset and it is very well automated. I've kept my on on Foundry and will continue to do so and maybe their 5e ruleset will get better. I hope Foundry and SmiteWorks keep looking at what the other is doing and try to improve on their product as that is what is best for the consumer. In the end a group should use what they feel is best for their game. For me I have a large investment in FG for 5e and SWADE, so for now that is what my group is staying with, but we will use Foundry for WFRP and I am sure there are many groups that have a similar setup for various systems.

MrDDT

September 5th, 2021, 18:00

Two paid extensions that do things that perhaps should be done by the software itself :(. Many of my players also like to check for range before attacking, since the system we use most have it calculated automatically, so the only way is to target first. Also, I have players who play using a touchpad only. I do prefer the drag & drop approach, but it's a trouble for them. And by the end, the "I don't need to even open my sheet to attack" usually beats all that.

Just lemme correct one thing: 5e does MORE than what FG does, but with free modules. There are some things you can do there that right now are only possible on FG if you purchase some extension made by the community. Things like halfling luck, automatic backstab damage, and many other automations. There are some paid extensions that implement half of those features on FG. The only real difference is that we have official support on FG, but you can import official content from DnD beyond there.

There are other EXTs (free) that auto target your token when it's your turn.

Some of the stuff you are talking about with halfling luck and automatic backstab (I think you mean sneak attack) etc can be done with free exts. Some just require more work or need another step to do some of the stuff.
Also they are not perfect. You have to understand that like the auto sneak attack. That should NOT be coded in FGU basic because it forces the player to do sneak attacks on their first turn (unless you go in and turn it off). Some DMs like the choice of it the other way because that's how mostly it's used but the rules are rules. FGU should no FORCE a choice.

Importing content from D&D Beyond is also a double edged problem 1) It might not be there always. 2) You would also need to own that content on D&D Beyond. 3) D&D Beyond servers need to be online.
You cause other issues that I'm not even listing because they are fringe but still problems.

Trust me I'm not a Fanboi of FGU however, give credit to what they are doing and options they have like IMO the first poster did.

Dr0W

September 5th, 2021, 18:14

yes, but the presharing in FGC did not prevent this either :D

(but yes, a presharing in the sense of still hiding it in the image list would be quite neat actually; at the moment I always put global fog of war over all my maps to work against curious players :p Or turning on LoS/lighting should do it, too; if it is a map, then that has to be turned on nevertheless :D)

Actually it did. A looong time ago it did, perhaps over 10 years ago, but then it got changed.

There are other EXTs (free) that auto target your token when it's your turn.

Some of the stuff you are talking about with halfling luck and automatic backstab (I think you mean sneak attack) etc can be done with free exts. Some just require more work or need another step to do some of the stuff.
Also they are not perfect. You have to understand that like the auto sneak attack. That should NOT be coded in FGU basic because it forces the player to do sneak attacks on their first turn (unless you go in and turn it off). Some DMs like the choice of it the other way because that's how mostly it's used but the rules are rules. FGU should no FORCE a choice.

Importing content from D&D Beyond is also a double edged problem 1) It might not be there always. 2) You would also need to own that content on D&D Beyond. 3) D&D Beyond servers need to be online.
You cause other issues that I'm not even listing because they are fringe but still problems.

Trust me I'm not a Fanboi of FGU however, give credit to what they are doing and options they have like IMO the first poster did.

By no means I'm saying its use should be enforced, but if it's there you can simply turn on or off at will. It's better to have the option of something being automated and have the option to toggle it, than not having it at all. That's how it is on Foundry.
If I want Halfling luck working automatically I should either: Have and old EXT from a time that people gave those for free, or have to purchase a new one. It's better to have something automated and being able to turn it off if you don't like it, than not having it

Believe me, I've looked for extensions that did those things, and most of them were either abandoned or removed. The ones up to date are the ones people are charging money.

Zarestia

September 5th, 2021, 19:58

I got logged out while writing an answer :D

... although might be a stretch to call the D&D Beyond unofficial integration support as 'piracy' considering there have been calls on FG's forums (and previous support) for such a module.

I've never seen a post in the last 3 years here calling for a Patreon-gated D&D Beyond importer. The only feasible solution would be an agreement between Smiteworks and Fandom (probably WotC has also a say in this) like the Paizo PDF discount and snyc.
The D&D Beyond (and R20 + FG) importers are at least grey-area if not straight illegal. One can only speculate if IP owners go after such things. Two of the bigger RPG and 5E online sharing sites went down in the last few months, just saying ...

Smiteworks would do well to open their eyes I feel and not ignore people like myself or others who have developed disappointment with the direction of FG:Unity.

I haven't read one argument or solution in your post, might be the reason why you are "getting ignored".

The only real difference is that we have official support on FG, but you can import official content from DnD beyond there.
Like i wrote earlier, Patreon-gated importer which is atleast grey area.

Now to my personal experiences with the systems.

Roll20:
Good
- easy to get into
- good for dual monitor setup
- always online (if it was not laggy or offline)
- community search for strangers
Bad
- stale
- most expensive of the big three after 1-1.5 years
- wiki a total mess
- was sadly lagging nearly every evening we played
- only subscription-based
- macros and the like were a total mess, old, no documentation, non-functional
- no SRD, nearly no automation, cumbersome play having to manage everything by hand (this was D&D 3.5e)

Foundry:
Good
- modern technology, rather easy to mod
- big community and therefore many rulesets and modules
- rather easy for atleast players to get into
- cheapest basline of the big three

Bad
- fragmentation (1100 modules listed on the mainpage, about 800 of them not listed as compatible with the newest Foundry version from 19 days ago. Do they work? I don't know, maybe, probably, maybe not.)
- The product roadmap gets semi-decided and voted on by the patreon supporters
- Limited demo possibilities (only as player and mostly only D&D 5e). Can't really test the software without buying it.
- the evangelizing part of the community (take a look into the pf2e subreddit for example)
- no official D&D 5e product support (D&D 5e is by far the most played TTRPG)

Fantasy Grounds Unity:
Good
- you can demo everyhting on a free account besides hosting
- good and fast official support (even by devs)
- My GM time (5e, 3.5e & PF2e) has been mostly chill, before and in the session. I can concentrate on the adventure and not the system.
- Combat Tracker & Party Sheet
- Campaign management
- Fantasy Grounds Academy (former College)
- Work gone into the new wiki and newsletter
- Forge

Bad
- No official PaizoCon 2021 participation (besides the great people from FGA)
- Some things which were shown years ago still not in the program (I think multi-colored and -skinned dice were shown by Doug in a Facebook post in 2016)
- Some "weird" things (right-click menu, the assets bag needs some QoL [handling, performance and unloading things you don't need or want], loading performance hiccups [ah, the old single-thread discussion])
- More information about new features in updates (VISONMAX & VISIONMOD I think were offenders, put them in the wiki or a short video, would help immensely)
- More transperancy on what's being updated (was already discussed and pointed out in past)
- It comes across like the idea informer doesn't get looked at (I know this is probably not the truth, it just appears like that)

All in all, everyhting product has it's pros and cons.
If you just got into TTRPG and VTT, I suggest to take a look into R20. It is rather beginner-friendly.
If you want many mods, rulesets and fiddle with maybe contradictions between them, I suggest to take a look into Foundry.
If you don't have a problem with paying money for modules (read books) and don't want to concern youself with anyhting but playing an adventure with friends or strangers, I suggest to take a look at Fantasy Grounds Unity.

MrDDT

September 5th, 2021, 20:50

Actually it did. A looong time ago it did, perhaps over 10 years ago, but then it got changed.

By no means I'm saying its use should be enforced, but if it's there you can simply turn on or off at will. It's better to have the option of something being automated and have the option to toggle it, than not having it at all. That's how it is on Foundry.
If I want Halfling luck working automatically I should either: Have and old EXT from a time that people gave those for free, or have to purchase a new one. It's better to have something automated and being able to turn it off if you don't like it, than not having it

Believe me, I've looked for extensions that did those things, and most of them were either abandoned or removed. The ones up to date are the ones people are charging money.

I don't want to derail the thread even more however, I do not think that's a good standard of putting items into the game or not as a function. Think of all the options people can or can't have at their table with choices and rules. Now see how many settings people would have to go through for obscure functions of these options.

Example would be like 5E Barbs have the option to rage. What if you made them rage every time as an effect on the first turn of combat. Sure you can make it an option to turn it off, but there is no rule that says it should happen the first turn of combat and it is 100% choice of the player (just as sneak attack is) if they want to do sneak attack or not. You say "well we should have option to turn it off" why would you put an option for something when there is no standard or rule for it?
I think it's much better to have it the other way as new players would be confused. In fact I think it should be the other way even if it were an option to be turned off and maybe an option to turn on. However, still there is no rule for sneak attack at all to be done every attack on your first attack. So why would a game system put this in as an option at all? I can see having it as an option that you can click on before doing your attack. (Which they have the code for it) I just don't see it as an option to force it even with an on off option as there is no rule at all for this.

Dr0W

September 5th, 2021, 21:58

I don't want to derail the thread even more however, I do not think that's a good standard of putting items into the game or not as a function. Think of all the options people can or can't have at their table with choices and rules. Now see how many settings people would have to go through for obscure functions of these options.

Example would be like 5E Barbs have the option to rage. What if you made them rage every time as an effect on the first turn of combat. Sure you can make it an option to turn it off, but there is no rule that says it should happen the first turn of combat and it is 100% choice of the player (just as sneak attack is) if they want to do sneak attack or not. You say "well we should have option to turn it off" why would you put an option for something when there is no standard or rule for it?
I think it's much better to have it the other way as new players would be confused. In fact I think it should be the other way even if it were an option to be turned off and maybe an option to turn on. However, still there is no rule for sneak attack at all to be done every attack on your first attack. So why would a game system put this in as an option at all? I can see having it as an option that you can click on before doing your attack. (Which they have the code for it) I just don't see it as an option to force it even with an on off option as there is no rule at all for this.

If you use it as an example, everything should be optional. From AC calculation bonuses being added to the character automatically. We use automation to make the job easier, and if you're saying that automation makes it harder for newbies to understand the game, well... it's FG, it's really well automated.

Take Halfling's Lucky, as an example: It wouldn't hurt anyone to have it implemented by default. It's a rule that overrides a rolled 1, and if it does during play and the player really wants to fail he could just say "Hey, I want to fail it". On Foundry, all you have to do is check a box on the character and it's automated. On FG either you have an old extension that at one point was given for free, or you hop into DMS guild and buy this.

You want advantage and disadvantage being automatically calculated for your characters? The same, you look for a paid extension because for the life of me I've tried finding a free one on FG on forums and failed. But I can easily go to DMS guild, perhaps the new Forge and I'll find something I can purchase. Some of these are really specific, but some like Halfling's Lucky are really simples and should be part of the core product imho.

My point just being that: It's better to have something done and ready for use if you need, than not having it at all or the only way to have it is to pay more for it.

You say you're not a FGU fanboi, well, I am. I have written articles for FGU during its Kickstarter to have people coming this way (https://medium.com/rpgnoticias/fantasy-grounds-unity-kickstarter-e5fa54e53787 ), I have set up an youtube channel with tutorials, have translated rulesets to my native extension, and lastly I love running games on FG as I have done for over a decade.

All I want is that FGU should have the best things I can find on the neighbor's garden.

MrDDT

September 5th, 2021, 22:05

If you use it as an example, everything should be optional. From AC calculation bonuses being added to the character automatically. We use automation to make the job easier, and if you're saying that automation makes it harder for newbies to understand the game, well... it's FG, it's really well automated.

Take Halfling's Lucky, as an example: It wouldn't hurt anyone to have it implemented by default. It's a rule that overrides a rolled 1, and if it does during play and the player really wants to fail he could just say "Hey, I want to fail it". On Foundry, all you have to do is check a box on the character and it's automated. On FG either you have an old extension that at one point was given for free, or you hop into DMS guild and buy this.

You want advantage and disadvantage being automatically calculated for your characters? The same, you look for a paid extension because for the life of me I've tried finding a free one on FG on forums and failed. But I can easily go to DMS guild, perhaps the new Forge and I'll find something I can purchase. Some of these are really specific, but some like Halfling's Lucky are really simples and should be part of the core product imho.

My point just being that: It's better to have something done and ready for use if you need, than not having it at all or the only way to have it is to pay more for it.

You say you're not a FGU fanboi, well, I am. I have written articles for FGU during its Kickstarter to have people coming this way (https://medium.com/rpgnoticias/fantasy-grounds-unity-kickstarter-e5fa54e53787 ), I have set up an youtube channel with tutorials, have translated rulesets to my native extension, and lastly I love running games on FG as I have done for over a decade.

All I want is that FGU should have the best things I can find on the neighbor's garden.

Halfling Luck is one I think should be put in, as the rule is that it rerolls it always and it's out of the norm to say no.
Sneak Attack is not like this, its a choice to use it or not. Its a resource. It uses a resource.

HywelPhillips

September 5th, 2021, 22:13

This thread is getting a bit more heated than I'd intended (but perhaps not more than I could have anticipated).

The point I was trying to make about extensions is that there is nothing magical about the Foundry volunteer community writing free extensions, nor about the FG volunteer community writing free extensions.

The reason why a bunch of previously-free FG extensions for things like Halfling Luck are now defunct is because that's ALWAYS what happens to volunteer code in coding communities. FG has simply had a lot more years for people to have kids, get jobs, retire, move away, or whatever.

Foundry has had 12 months, and as someone else pointed out higher in the thread, the majority of modules on there are already falling mildly behind the update schedule. Leave it a decade or more (IIRC FG dates back to 2004?) and a whole lot of those free extensions will fall behind and become useless.

This is not a comment on Foundry vs. FG. It is a comment on community-generated code vs. code supported by a commercial provider.

The vast majority of the automation features of Fantasy Grounds today come from the core product. Sneak attack is automatable within FG to the extent that you can apply an effect to add the dice to your damage roll, and FG will keep track of the to-hit rolls, AC, critical damage, resistances, etc.. That's something you can do within the core product. And it is something that SmiteWorks works very hard to ensure keeps working with every change they make to the base program. Halfling Luck can't be automated with base FG but honestly I've never had a player who is slow to spot they can re-roll a natural 1. It's a quality of life feature; the core product tracks HP, temp hits, crits, damage, AC, resistance, saving throws, half damage on made saves, etc.. And a commercial company is fixing it with each release to make sure it works.

I'm also in favour of moving more and more of these things into the core product with time. Halfling luck certainly could be and probably should be.

The core product of Foundry today, if I understand correctly, doesn't do any of that automation. The extension which does stuff to do with sneak attack has to sit on top of the one that handles to hit rolls, damage and the like. My experience is the more of these things you need stacked up in a house of cards, the more likely something somewhere is to have the developer drop out and convert the whole stack into the towering-edifice of software that no-one dares to touch. If one of the ones near the bottom of the stack goes, everything above it suddenly stops working.

Some software communities manage to overcome this tendency to entropy. In my experience paying people (even modest amounts) tends to help- whether that's paying someone to buy the Automatic Halfling Luck extension on DMSGuild/FG Forge or paying someone on Patreon to develop the code that slurps the D&D Beyond content into Foundry.

It's not infallible, but it does tend to slow down the entropy. Which is why adventures that people purchased from SmiteWorks 10 years ago can still be run today.

I hope the Foundry community will be one of the vibrant ones that staves this off for a long time. My concern is that they may well learn about software entropy by painful experience! Free is great; working is better.

Since I am lucky enough to be at the stage of life where I have enough money to get by but very little spare time or patience with crumbling software stacks after a decade and more in the trenches running software for large science experiments, my personal preference is to pay and get 80% of the automation, then pay a bit more to smooth the edges where I feel things are useful. Hence FG as my platform of choice as a GM and I don't mind in the least paying for extensions that I use - indeed, happy to pay for the convenience of automated downloads via the Forge even for extensions I already bought via DMs Guild.

That balance will be quite different for you if you are time-rich, or don't mind a bit of software stack maintenance, or are not lucky enough to be in the position of not really having to care whether an extension is free or costs a few bucks. In which case Foundry is probably right up your street.

And if you just want something relatively simple to get started with and don't want to be doing anything more complicated that it absolutely has to be, and have a GM who will take up the slack, Roll20 will be exactly what you need.

Cheers, Hywel

Ulric

September 6th, 2021, 03:27

Springroll

September 6th, 2021, 06:46

I've used all three VTT platforms and for me (it's objective after all), Foundry is the least attractive, yes it's beautiful and slick, but it's also not intuitive or easy to get to grips with, the modules are all over the place and I spend more time getting to understand what to do as a GM than actually playing, Roll20 is the easiest to get into and plays closest to a regular tabletop, map, tokens, dice and is by far the easier one to find players for, especially if you're looking for a less popular game (ie. not 5e). And FGU is my choice if I can find players :) But for 5e we also have Shard which in my opinion is one of the cleanest VTT's out there.

HywelPhillips

September 6th, 2021, 20:57

I agree, Shard has a nice interface especially on the player side. I've poked around in it but not actually run a live game with it, how is it to run stuff?

I didn't investigate it further for three reasons, one a bit trivial, one major one and one really fundamental.

1) It only has manual fog of war and no lighting (at least it did when I messed around with it). Since the major competitors do have those and I like the way they allow automation of what players can see, darkvison, etc. and I think they make playing more immersive and pretty, it would have had to have a lot of other things in its favour. That's the trivial one.

2) Limited automation. Unless I'm being really dumb, it doesn't even compare hit rolls to AC. I think that's understandable for a system-neutral VTT trying to make it possible to support a wide range of systems, but when one system is all you've got I really want more system support than that. That's the major one.

3) It's a 5E-only platform... which doesn't have 5E on it. No PHB, no MM, no Xanathar's, no Tasha's. With the best will in the world, Kobold Press books are not a substitute for the actual core 5E books. I have to wonder at the business thinking behind launching a game-specific platform which doesn't allow you to purchase and use the core rulebooks of that game.

What I think it shows is that creating a VTT is actually not that hard. Small teams or even solo developers can make a Roll20-ish platform for shared modules, maps, tokens, etc.. There are probably a dozen more such platforms available, or in eternal beta, or popping up on Kickstarter.

Making a successful one requires a lot of elements outside the core software which few of these smaller platforms really seem to have devoted enough thought to. Astral has partnership with DriveThruRPG, Shard has Kobold Press and a few others but that's simply not as good as being able to use the core 5E books on the platform. Especially not if you are a 5E-only platform!

It may well be that WOTC/Hasbro aren't handing out any more licences in advance of their own entrance into VTTs, which is shitty news for everyone else but a perfectly understandable business decision from their end I suppose.

But if that's going to be a fact of business life, I think you need to work really, really hard to get compelling content onto your platform, not least because I suspect that revenue stream is really important for your company survival. It's going to be the content that draws people to the platform to some extent too. Shard have done what they can here but to be honest I think that without the PHB and other core books, it is dead in the water.

Cheers, Hywel

Nylanfs

September 7th, 2021, 14:02

Coming from a long time person with experience in the RPG coding, WotC has NEVER been able to make decent D&D software. Mastertools anyone, even with eTools they had to hire CMP to come in and fix and make it workable.

Now with D&D ACTUALLY beginning to show up on Hasbro's bottom line they might get some support from some of Hasbro's other computer oriented dept's so that might change. But I'm not going to hold my breath.

Weissrolf

September 7th, 2021, 16:06

Pathfinder 2 on Foundry depends less on modules (extensions) than DnD 5e, because they incorporate many things directly into their core PF2 game system (ruleset). This ensures that more moving parts work together, albeit at the slight cost of the community calling the PF2 system out (more or less seriously) of swallowing up external modules.

celestian

September 7th, 2021, 16:47

Thanks for these write ups, very well done.

One of the things I liked about Foundry was they use JavaScript and HTML templates. The benefit of that is you now open the door to hundreds of thousands of coders that know that language. I believe it is still (JavaScript) the most popular programming language world wide. I had hopes that FGU would change it's customization mechanics during early days of FGU talks but, unfortunately that didn't happen.

You are right, there are a zillion mods for Foundry. I play in a game that a friend runs but he only has a couple (Dice so nice and a couple more). I found the hiccups related to the modules to be on par with how I've experienced in FG... that said, I don't play 5e.

On the topic of other systems. I did some initial work writing an AD&D/OSRIC system for my friend in Foundry and was able to knock out the basics in a month or so. Mainly because the flexibility of their system (and docs on javascript/html are readily available). I did run into some issues that caused me grief (I wanted to nest objects but the way they store items it's not possible so you have to build a index list of items within the item... but that causes issues on export/import/modules). I cannot overstate how easy it was to develop for ... compared to my experiences in FG, particularly UI.

One thing I noticed (and you mentioned it) is that automation isn't a prevalent in the Foundry verse. I am honestly not sure why other than the fact the main dev isn't a big fan of it (my perception, not his words). When I was working on the system for my friend it was a bit odd that no one had the functionality built into the rulesets that let the players "damage" a target like you can in FG. It took a little digging but I figured out how to make it work and various other systems how I wanted them but it is not uncommon to find rulesets that make all data changes through the DM...

On the development side I love Foundry. I would kill to be able to use html templating in FGU for UI. It's VERY easy to develop for... but their core is still young and they are updating often. Meaning, you have to keep updating to maintain parity with the new changes.

The upside to new startups like Foundry is it keeps pressure on Smiteworks to keep updating and improving. I feel at times its a bit to slow for my tastes but im an impatient soul ;) I look forward to seeing what all these guys do to keep apace with each other. For automation and D&D content right now there is no challenger, FGU is it. Lets hope we can see some of the features (like integrated Sound) from the Foundry show up in FGU down the road.

Weissrolf

September 7th, 2021, 17:02

Foundry is so open to modifications that one guy even created a module that improved both the visuals and performance of Foundry's lighting system, using better algorithms and WebAssembly instead of JavaScript!

Foundry's next version (V9) will incorporate the algorithms used by the mod developer, but based on pure JavaScript for better compatibility. The mod itself will likely stay somewhat better performing because of that, but using WebAssembly breaks compatibility with other mods that make use of the lighting system. So Foundry tries to include as much as possible of the goods without including the bads.

Overall I am very astounded that Foundry can be modded on such a deep level and the community as a whole (including paying customers) surely benefit from it.

The Decepticon

September 9th, 2021, 15:30

When picking the software and VTT I was going to go with, I was really wanting to speed up combat. On Roll20, it takes forever for combat and currently playing a campaign on there, there is so much downtime between your 1st and 2nd attack. Battles can take up to 3 hours or more which is insane.

I quickly realized that Roll 20 was not for me. I then went on and did research on Foundry and FGU and it was close. I was super torn on which one to get after watching videos and reading reviews, but ultimately decided to purchase a FGU Ultimate license and I can say that it was a great decision.

The forum community is top notch and very helpful whenever I had a question, need a suggestion or even if I find a bug or two to quickly get it fixed and updated. I have met some great players on here and currently running Storm King's Thunder for them after LMoP.

FGU makes it very easy to DM a game and does take less prep for the most part, but it does get kind of rough fighting for that screen space when I have 8 windows open. Need to get a 2nd monitor, now to just convince the wife...

TMO

September 9th, 2021, 21:54

I really don't have much to add to what other, more capable, people have already commented. I cut my teeth on Roll20 and then quickly migrated to FGC and then FGU. I am currently a player in a Foundry game as well. So I do have some experience with all three systems albeit mostly as a player. I've only DM'd in FG. My DM for the Foundry game is experienced in all three platforms and pretty much concurs with the orignal poster's reviews.

My biggest worry is whether FGU has an unbreakable ceiling due to the architecture (Unity) that serves as its base. Can FGU grow, expand, and scale the way modern web apps can? I am not qualified to answer that but my sense is that there is only so much Unity will accomodate.

LordEntrails

September 9th, 2021, 22:20

My biggest worry is whether FGU has an unbreakable ceiling due to the architecture (Unity) that serves as its base. Can FGU grow, expand, and scale the way modern web apps can? I am not qualified to answer that but my sense is that there is only so much Unity will accomodate.
Web apps have a different set of limitations than a client-server architecture like FG does. Actually web apps are probably more limited, at least on the client side, than an app like FG does, because they are limited by the browser.

But, it's not apples to apples, they all have advantages and disadvantages.

Don't worry about the FG architecture being limited, it's first and most relevant is the require to install a client application. After that, most of the major differences would be considered advantages.

Weissrolf

September 9th, 2021, 23:17

PF2 core rules + Agents of Edgewatch 1, Dreaming Palace (floor 1) loaded as GM (1st instance) and player (2nd instance), LoS enabled, Lighting disabled, no extensions, ImageQuality 2 used in FGU:

https://i.imgur.com/S2u6NqY.png8

Loading 37 extensions in Foundry for various eye candy and additional automation doesn't change much about the numbers. Changing FGU's ImageQuality to 1 increases its GPU load for the LoS player client to about the number of the Foundry one.

MODERATOR EDIT: Do not post other user's private feedback in a public forum without their permission.

USER EDIT: I got feedback that my pure numbers no comments screenshot above was not appropriate for this FGU vs. Foundry thread.

Jiminimonka

September 9th, 2021, 23:26

Yeah great review!

HywelPhillips

September 13th, 2021, 12:05

As several people here an on other boards have recommended the WFRP4E Foundry set-up as being amazing with great automation, I decided to give it a go. I tried hard to approach it with fresh eyes - I always enjoyed running WFRP previous editions and a heavily-automated system with full licence from the publisher is a fairer test case of Foundry than 5E minus WOTC core books.

So I bought the core, starter set and Rough Nights/Hard Days bundle and had a bit of play, and played a paid one-off by an experienced WFRP GM last night with pregen characters. The other players had more Foundry and WFRP 4E experience than me.

Obviously this is hardly an exhaustive review from an experienced user - these are my initial impressions.

1) The automation is up to Fantasy Grounds standards, based on the one game with an experienced GM.

2) There's a charactermancer of sorts. It's not as comprehensive as FG's 5E one or Roll20's, and certainly not up to D&D Beyond (but then again what is?) It gets you stats, skills, talents etc but as far as I can see nothing for starting equipment.

3) The GM was running a module he has prepared for Foundry himself, based on a conversion of an old 1E adventure. He remarked in passing that he has to rebuild the module constantly, pretty much with every Foundry version change.

4) Indeed, when I imported the WFRP commercial stuff into my Foundry game, a message popped up and kept popping up about some database problem that the WFRP author had decided not to fix because of the impending move to a new Foundry version which should fix it.

5) The GM kindly gave away his module to the players. I imported it into my game. It was broken. Entries were not in their folders - scenes, actors and journals were there but in the root directory. Not all actors had attached character sheets. Error messages popped up about stuff being deleted from the world. I doubt that the module was like that when he wrote it, based on what he said.

6) As far as I have been able to discover the sum total of the documentation is four videos from the author of the WFRP ruleset. The first three are out of date, since they correspond to alpha, beta and 1.0 releases. The other is out of date because it is 10 months old and the code has moved on a lot since then.

7) One of the other players was also a WFRP GM who was having a night off. In the after game chat there was a quite a lot about making sure stuff worked with other stuff, modules, Foundry versions, etc.

8) The commercial adventures from C7 do not have a particularly useful layout for GM's to run out of the box. Unless I am being dumb, there were few battlemaps for scenes, no prepackaged encounters in the sense that FG has them, and those scenes with battle-maps didn't have pre-placed tokens.

It's OK, it wouldn't be too hard do to in your prep but it is not comparable to running Lost Mines of Phandelver or Icespire peak on Roll20 or FG. As a starter kit for beginning GM's it is... not really much of a starter kit. The raw materials you need are there, but I'd say it's going to be a fair bit of prep time for the GM before starting. For example in the Night at the Three feathers adventure, the map has number keys for location, but these are not linked to the respective journal entries.

This reinforces my initial impressions - it's got lots of potential, it's being very actively developed, it's already got a lot of powerful automation. It is absolutely NOT set up for casual entry. The GM in particular has to be a keen experimenter to figure out what it does on the basis of already-10-months-or-years-out-of-date videos covering features which have already been re-written.

If you think the FG documentation is a bit lacking (and it is) - at least there is some.

It's in perpetual beta, everything breaks all the time, and even experienced WFRP Foundry GM's can't keep up.

I'll use it when I come to run WFRP4, since I very much doubt the Roll20 implementation has any automation to speak of, and FG currently doesn't have official support. But OMG I will choose a Foundry version, get everything working, and never change anything again or everything will break.

I mean it is cool and shiny and all, and doubtless a huge achievement from the main developer, who seems like a really nice guy. But it is very much built on shifting sands.

And the message I take from it is that the only thing stopping me from using FG for everything I want to run is the availability of systems and commercially-prepared content. I see quite a lot of fleeting mentions of stuff being developed - Forgotten Lands, Coriolis, RuneQuest, etc.. I know these are probably very small turnover compared with 5E and Pathfinder, but I'd really encourage SmiteWorks to do what they can to expand the efforts and get some of these products onto the store.

Cheers, Hywel

Xydonus

September 13th, 2021, 14:39

A fair review on the WFRP system. I will add ruleset system navigation tutorials tend to be lacking, but Foundry tutorials are certainly comprehensive and since the systems are agnostic across Foundry, it is fairly easy to pick up.

- 5) The GM kindly gave away his module to the players. I imported it into my game. It was broken. Entries were not in their folders - scenes, actors and journals were there but in the root directory. Not all actors had attached character sheets. Error messages popped up about stuff being deleted from the world. I doubt that the module was like that when he wrote it, based on what he said.

Far as I know packaging scenes into a module is wonky. Sharing a module in Foundry is not on the same principle as say sharing an extension/module FG. Module sharing is easy enough (just get the manifest URL from them) but depending on what he actually packaged, if it consists of his personal journal entries and scenes that he packaged away (likely using ScenePacker) then yeah that's not a core functionality.

- 8) The commercial adventures from C7 do not have a particularly useful layout for GM's to run out of the box. Unless I am being dumb, there were few battlemaps for scenes, no prepackaged encounters in the sense that FG has them, and those scenes with battle-maps didn't have pre-placed tokens.

Yeah everything can be confusing at first. I made the mistake of loading too much content. I backed out and only loaded the Core+Starter Set, which was easier to comprehend. I will say I find the compendium a neater interface for browsing content than FG's method. There is no prepackaged encounters as Foundry lacks core functionality with pre-set encounters. There's a module for this but it is clear that it's another one of those nice things to have in the system itself. I did see mention of journal pins linking to a journal entry which in turn help with setting up combat encounters, not tested this out myself though. I think the lack of battlemaps for scenes is a criticism on C7 more than anything - far as I can see, everything that should be there, is there when it comes to maps and scenes. (I own the physical set)

All in all, while I'm not a fan of the 4th edition, the system for it is very impressive and MooMan has done an amazing job with it. Considering Foundry was released in 2019 after it came out of closed testing, and WFRP came not long after that to get licensed, it's quite impressive.

Also, Fantasy Grounds has had something like 16/17 years (FG came out in something like 2004) and Foundry has had 2 years, not counting the time it spent in closed testing. It's unreasonable to assume Foundry is going to adopt the same standards as Fantasy Grounds in things like automation in such a short timespan and even more so to put Foundry and Fantasy Grounds side-by-side for a direct comparison, considering one program is over 16 years old, and another 2 years. What Foundry accomplished in the span of those 2 years is ultimately what made me hop on over to try it (that and some of the nice systems). I still use FG though for one other system.

I'm excited to see where the core system is going, and am looking forward to more core functionality being added. It is certainly experiencing a lot of growth.

similarly

September 30th, 2021, 02:27

Very balanced reviews. I completely agree. I think you've summarized the points very well.

What I'd like to see in FGU:
1. Faster loading.
2. Better ability to quickly and easily switch between windows and move windows around..
3. I think it would be cool if, for GMs running ultimate, if they players could get by with something browser-based. I've had a few players balk at downloading.
4. More payment options, like Konbini (convenience store) payment for Japanese customers.
5. In the forums, under Looking for Group and Looking for Players, I'd like to see subforums for other time zones. I'm in Japan, but almost ALL of the LFG, LFP announcements are for USA time zones. I don't want to wade through dozens of USA games looking for games in my area.
6. I'd like to see some of the functionality in 3rd party extensions make their way into the finished FGU product.

Laerun

October 1st, 2021, 00:33

The article is live for the main VTT with permission for @HywelPhillips!
Article Commenting is turned off.

https://fantasygroundscollege.net/a-comparison-review-of-the-top-three-virtual-tabletop-platforms/

amerigoV

October 5th, 2021, 16:09

I think the overall reviews are fair based on my usage of the top 3 and what I want out of the VTT. I run Savage Worlds and the combo of FGU/SW Ruleset are excellent. I moved from R20 to FGC/FGU just before the pandemic. I play in a weekly game on Foundry.

Ironically, I found R20 the best for a game like Blades in the Dark - low overall rules but it has a wonderful ruleset. But its obvious design is as a virtual battlemap, which I find to just be solid. I have not used R20 for Savage Worlds since Pinnacle started releasing official content for it, and thus I cannot comment if its improved.

I would add one thing each to FGU vs. Foundry.

FGU - Like most programs, there usually are 3 ways to do anything
a) The obvious way
b) The more efficient way
c) The "woah, I did not know I could do it that way" way

I remind my players of this as I might know (a) and (b), there are some hidden (c)s out there. This is both a plus and a minus, with the minus being documentation of certain things.

Foundry
The module stack has been commented, but mostly from the GM perspective. As a player, the constant updating of modules does create confusion. Every week the game is a bit different based on what modules are working that week. I play in one weekly game on Foundry and this happens about one out of every three weeks. I can image your view of Foundry as a player would vary from GM to GM and ruleset to ruleset.

Broadly, there are some cool things in Foundry like the spell effects. I think dices skins are on the way for FGU (or at least in consideration). I do value the automation over this, at least as a GM. At this point, I like that Foundry presses the development of FGU. I was glad to see SW start to sunset FGC to so they can focus on FGUs development and to let the people that implement the conversions take advantage of what FGU can do.

Topdecker

October 16th, 2021, 21:47

I am going to look at the negatives for Foundry and FGU. I have no significant time with roll20 as a GM so I can't speak about it.

I think that the core problem with Foundry is that it is still in beta. Changes will happen because more features are implemented. The steady stream of upgrades has created burn-out for extension developers and extensions can get wildly out-dated as a result. For a 5e player, a further complication is that the dev for the 5e ruleset is also the Foundry developer and as a consequence, the 5e ruleset is well behind several others (WFRP in particular, is excellent).

The negatives for FGU have largely been echoed previously in this thread. They should have improved the UI - it's a no-frills trip back to 2003 that makes GMs spend too much time telling players how to accomplish simple tasks when we should be gaming. It's also a bit behind on visual gloss (animation) and not even in the game for sound effects. Also, a lot of the older modules are very low quality in terms of graphics. I could really rant here, but I will simplify it by saying that Smite should have minimal standards for what is acceptable for a module and should sweep out some of the aging products that offer very little of value to a GM.

POSITIVES... let's end on a good note.

Foundry has the ability to be hosted on a server and hence even GMs with poor connections can host visually rich campaigns. There are a good number of free extensions / rulesets. The multimedia support is outstanding. Development speed is noticeable and it is continually improving.

FGU has the best automation of well supported rulesets. (That's mostly 5e, 2e, and Savage Worlds - hopefully I've not missed one.) It has superb support for effects. The community here is amazing and you have to credit Smite with having made mostly good choices in the management of the community.

MOVING FORWARD...

I think that Foundry is ahead in the areas that they've worked upon. They will get effects in soon and once all the individual elements are built, they'll dig in on automation. They will close the gap as they reach 1.0.

FGU has a great community and that might be really beneficial to them as competition heats up. Smite needs to get sound added, they need to get animation going, and they need to fix-up their difficult interface. Since they have an actual software client, in my opinion they should try to link in a PDF viewer. If they added PDF support and used PDF notes for hiding data, they could let all of us spend NO TIME entering text while having it right there as the authors intended. (PDF support is purchasable as a support library specifically for Unity, so this is far from an impossible dream.) I would also love it if Smite tried to work a deal with Syrinscape for a sound engine - let it play / work without a subscription to Syrinscape, but make it super-easy and even more feature rich with a sub. Smite should take advantage of being a software solution and do the things that a web solution cannot - that is how they find and maintain a competitive edge.

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Zarestia

October 16th, 2021, 22:05

Also, a lot of the older modules are very low quality in terms of graphics. I could really rant here, but I will simplify it by saying that Smite should have minimal standards for what is acceptable for a module and should sweep out some of the aging products that offer very little of value to a GM.

Do you have some examples?
I think updating such things would be a logistical nightmare (contact old converters/publishers, etc.)

jharp

October 16th, 2021, 23:45

celestian

October 17th, 2021, 00:20

Zacchaeus

October 17th, 2021, 00:28

Best practices for dev conversion definitely needs a re-visit with FGU now being the platform to develop for.
Maps are bigger now in Unity only modules (about double the FGC standard). Not changing the limits for other images as yet. Some modules have quite a large number of images and increasing those would add considerable bloat to modules and other resources.

similarly

October 17th, 2021, 00:30

A few thoughts and questions:

They should have improved the UI

I often see this mentioned. How would YOU improve the UI, and what effect do you think that improvement would have?

It's also a bit behind on visual gloss (animation) and not even in the game for sound effects.

I agree. I would enjoy animation and sound ... BUT, I already have players whose potatoes and toasters can't handle LOS and dynamic lighting. There IS some animation effect I've used to simulate running water for example. I had to turn it off. Your note on Foundry having the ability to be hosted on a server is a valid point. Unfortunately, although it would be good for GMs with poor connections, it wouldn't fix problems for players with poor connections.

Also, a lot of the older modules are very low quality in terms of graphics. I could really rant here, but I will simplify it by saying that Smite should have minimal standards for what is acceptable for a module and should sweep out some of the aging products that offer very little of value to a GM.

I have several points about this:
1. That's really on the original module creators, not smiteworks.
2. "Low quality" is an opinion not every GM shares.
3. Many GMs LOVE the older modules. There's some nostalgia there. A lot of OLDER GMs do a lot more theater-of-the-mind. I hadn't played D&D for 25 years when the Covid lockdown pulled me back in. One thing I noticed was that a lot of people now try to play D&D like it's a video game: music, sound effects, animated graphics ... next they'll want each player to have controller support for character movement, and animated tokens that actually fight (actually, that DOES sound kinda cool!). My point is: tabletop rpgs aren't supposed to be a video game. Yes, I like pretty maps too. I was very disappointed in Waterdeep Dragon Heist for it's old-school black-and-white maps after playing LMoP with it's very lovely maps. But 25 years ago, my group didn't even HAVE maps. I had three giant green laminated hex boards, and if combat got too difficult, I sketched it on the board in dry-erase marker.

I totally get the point about how cool graphics are. I love to make pretty maps. I would love to be able to animate more water, and have animated torches, etc. But maybe that's not really the focus of table-top rpgs. At the very least, I'd let consumers decide, and as a company ask smiteworks to put at least one example of a game map as an image for the adventure in the store page.

in my opinion they should try to link in a PDF viewer. If they added PDF support and used PDF notes for hiding data, they could let all of us spend NO TIME entering text while having it right there as the authors intended.

Here's some old info on PDFs,
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?44133-PDF-Conversion-to-an-FG-Module-Information-Index

but I don't know if it works in unity or just classic. I AGREE 100% that having the ability to convert a pdf easily into fgu would be cool ... but I have no idea how they would do that. Whether or not you can get text from a PDF depends hugely on whether OCR was part of the pdf. Even when I have a good pdf, text can be garbled horribly to the point it's less work to just retype it.

It would be great though.

Final Thought on Foundry:
I think it's great to have competition. I think competition can inspire and motivate. I think competition is almost always good for the consumer ... not always, but almost always. My biggest concern with Foundry, and this may change when they get bigger, is that at the current time they have very, very few licensing deals. Right now, there's a tool to skim data from D&D Beyond, and I know the creators at D&D Beyond and the people at WotC don't like it one bit. They're working, last I heard, on a way to block it, because that data is licensed for use through DDB, but people are pulling that data into foundry and sharing it with players through foundry, which is a copyright violation.

Topdecker

October 17th, 2021, 00:31

I don't know what "low" quality means for you in this context but I can say when I adapt a product I'm limited to 1000x700 (jpg). So if something is bigger than that it gets scaled to at best 1000x700.

Wow, alright, that would explain it. The remainder of this isn't aimed at you, Jason - you are just explaining it.

I am pretty sure that there are Unity games with bigger texture files than that. After some thought, I'll say that virtually all Unity games that use textures have bigger texture files than that.

I've hosted Foundry sessions that had 1920x1080 streaming video (MP4) as an animated map with LOS data. 45mb with 6 players all getting it and we had a 2-hour battle on it. I also regularly toss out maps > 10mb, though I generally try to stay under 4mb. I have many VTT maps that over 220mb in size and while I've never used one without downsizing it, the point that I am making is that content providers keep making them bigger and bigger. BTW, Foundry says no at 50mb for a file size (or it did).

If the point of moving to Unity wasn't to unlock more visual and sound capabilities (i.e. bigger video files), what was it? I realize that expanding large maps consumes more memory, but video memory is measured in gigabytes and a 1000x700 jpg is probably measured in kilobytes.

I don't understand why they are tying at least one of your hands behind your back.

https://i.imgur.com/xlVqvDJ.jpg

Yeah.

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Zacchaeus

October 17th, 2021, 00:46

Apart from the very few products that have been released very recently everything must still function in Classic. Classic is limited by being 32 bit and therefore has considerable memory restrictions. Map images were therefore limited to max 2048x2048 and <1Mb. General images are limited to either 1000 wide or 800 high. As I said above in Unity only modules the maps can now be double what the Classic limits were but general images are not going to be bigger at least in terms of pixel size but personally I have increased the quality a bit for the ones I’ve done. General images really don’t need to be any bigger than those limits anyway. Having a bigger image of an NPC doesn’t add anything. Maps are the one thing that can benefit from being a bit higher quality and that is happening now in Unity exclusive modules.

One other point to make is that developers can only work with the material they are provided with. There will be stuff out there that was not of great quality to start with; so the developer can only do what they can.

Topdecker

October 17th, 2021, 02:10

That image size guideline seems extremely and probably needlessly restrictive - at least where it applies to maps. Other images, sure, because the resolution isn't needed. But maps, it's the game board, the beating heart of a VTT.

60x40 grids with 100px per grid seems roomy. Yes, 6000x4000px. I am guestimating that might take 72mb of memory - but let's be cautious and say it takes 100mb. So 1gb of video memory = 10 such images open. It's just math.

The 4gb RAM with 2gb of graphic memory minimal system requirement should be able to handle 10 such images, and still have plenty of memory for other things.

There is a point where you are trying to keep the system requirements low so more people can participate, but man, you're doing those customers with mid-range and better systems a real disservice.

One other point to make is that developers can only work with the material they are provided with. There will be stuff out there that was not of great quality to start with; so the developer can only do what they can.

That's where standards come in aka customer satisfaction -vs- another product. It should be 'We're sorry, we'd like to develop your product as a module for Fantasy Grounds, but the core images aren't up to our mapping quality standards. Do you have better images for maps?' Legibility of a map seems like a pretty low bar, but it is being missed.

FWIW, I've frequently taken the time to redraw the maps for FG material that I am using and then provide them as modules or individual files for other to use. The images in those modules are far, far larger than your current standards and, over the span of years that they've been out, not a single person has told me about a memory or display problem.

Anyhow, I am disappointed that going to Unity hasn't brought about much change in terms of image quality. It should be closer to an order of magnitude of improvement, not doubling what had previously been a very very conservative maximum for image sizes.

Here is another way to look at it. I get a FG module, look at the maps and sigh, rebuild them by hand, and send my 4000x3000 map out and have zero problems ever. Zero problems. From my limited perspective, it doesn't feel like you guys are pulling the wagon and the comments about technical limitations seem incorrect and flawed. Your products work with larger maps. Period. You just don't provide them.

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similarly

October 17th, 2021, 02:20

... and, over the span of years that they've been out, not a single person has told me about a memory or display problem.

I had a lot of problems in my last game. Most of my players were in Australia (I'm in Japan). Several of them told me their computer was old, their internet connection not so fast, etc. We regularly had problems. It took time for maps to load. Players often saw only a black rectangle. They had computer freezes waiting for maps to load. They had lag. Not all of my players had this. Those with newer computers and faster internet were fine. Maybe you're just lucky. For me, I was half-tempted to go old-school theater of the mind just to keep the game going.

similarly

October 17th, 2021, 02:21

Zacchaeus

October 17th, 2021, 02:30

Jiminimonka

October 17th, 2021, 02:35

That image size guideline seems extremely and probably needlessly restrictive - at least where it applies to maps. Other images, sure, because the resolution isn't needed. But maps, it's the game board, the beating heart of a VTT.

60x40 grids with 100px per grid seems roomy. Yes, 6000x4000px. I am guestimating that might take 72mb of memory - but let's be cautious and say it takes 100mb. So 1gb of video memory = 10 such images open. It's just math.

The 4gb RAM with 2gb of graphic memory minimal system requirement should be able to handle 10 such images, and still have plenty of memory for other things.

There is a point where you are trying to keep the system requirements low so more people can participate, but man, you're doing those customers with mid-range and better systems a real disservice.

That's where standards come in aka customer satisfaction -vs- another product. It should be 'We're sorry, we'd like to develop your product as a module for Fantasy Grounds, but the core images aren't up to our mapping quality standards. Do you have better images for maps?' Legibility of a map seems like a pretty low bar, but it is being missed.

FWIW, I've frequently taken the time to redraw the maps for FG material that I am using and then provide them as modules or individual files for other to use. The images in those modules are far, far larger than your current standards and, over the span of years that they've been out, not a single person has told me about a memory or display problem.

Anyhow, I am disappointed that going to Unity hasn't brought about much change in terms of image quality. It should be closer to an order of magnitude of improvement, not doubling what had previously been a very very conservative maximum for image sizes.

Here is another way to look at it. I get a FG module, look at the maps and sigh, rebuild them by hand, and send my 4000x3000 map out and have zero problems ever. Zero problems. From my limited perspective, it doesn't feel like you guys are pulling the wagon and the comments about technical limitations seem incorrect and flawed. Your products work with larger maps. Period. You just don't provide them.

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FGU has only just become the sole product supported for new modules. So, as Zacchaeus said, the new products are having higer resolution maps. Older products need to be updated individually, which is a lot of work (have you seen the size of the catalog?) for the devs (community and SW). As you said, you can make your own high res map for whatever adventure you are playing with no problems and eventually you won't have to.

celestian

October 17th, 2021, 03:05

As I said maps are now in the range of 4kx4k and are better quality. Those weigh in at about 2Mb -4Mb or so depending on a number of factors. 100Mb maps might well be fine on some machines with lightning internet speeds but I don’t see that becoming the standard.

I can't imagine having speeds to download 100meg maps being considered "lighting" ;)

I get the need to have a "standard" size, I just hope that moving forward things change from being based on the lowest common denominator. I mean, I guess they have more data than I do but I cannot imagine the bulk of the user base is on low end systems on low end connectivity. It would make more sense if that is the case to have those users on old systems and limited connectivity build smaller images since they are not the most common user base for FGU.

LordEntrails

October 17th, 2021, 03:36

That's where standards come in aka customer satisfaction -vs- another product. It should be 'We're sorry, we'd like to develop your product as a module for Fantasy Grounds, but the core images aren't up to our mapping quality standards. Do you have better images for maps?' Legibility of a map seems like a pretty low bar, but it is being missed.
"Sorry Wizards, we are no longer going to convert and sell your modules. Yes they are our #1 selling product etc, but they don't meet our new map quality standards."

*end silliness! Sort of* :)

Topdecker

October 17th, 2021, 03:43

I can't imagine having speeds to download 100meg maps being considered "lighting" ;)

Before we get going too hard on 100mb maps, we are talking about 6000x4000px maps (so maybe 8mb in file size) that expand out to maybe as much as 100mb of memory when in use (probably much less than that, but I just wanted a very conservative worst case example).

As for slow internet connections and slow loading maps, I did a lot of that as a GM. My upload speed was 60kbs on good days and my download speed was 300kbs. I tried to keep the map size down to around 1.2mb max and preloaded everything. But sometimes a player would need to reload the PHB or something and we'd just have to chat for a while. Yeah, I know the pain.

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Topdecker

October 17th, 2021, 03:54

"Sorry Wizards, we are no longer going to convert and sell your modules. Yes they are our #1 selling product etc, but they don't meet our new map quality standards."

*end silliness! Sort of* :)

I can go to DnD Beyond and get every SINGLE map in higher quality than is provided here. You don't want to go here because someone might ask you how this other company is getting so much better source materials while charging a similar price.

EDIT: I will back off this 'every SINGLE map' just a bit. At one point, the Sword Coast product was shipping with the full 32mb map (which, afaik, was causing zero problems). That was the full, best quality map and it was glorious.

EDIT AGAIN: I will back WAY off now because Storm King's Thunder has some really challenging mapping material. It appears that the really difficult pieces almost certainly were super-sourced.

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similarly

October 17th, 2021, 04:01

I have high-speed internet in Japan, so I'm regularly over 250mbps download and 175mbps upload. Average speed in Aus is around 50 mbps. I have a few 5000 x 5000 maps about 5mb for the jpg, but that's just a fraction of what's needed. Once you add tokens, los, dynamic lighting, water effects, etc., that's a LOT.

Zacchaeus

October 17th, 2021, 04:06

The source material will be the same. And as I have said you are getting better quality images now than previously. There have only been two WotC modules released so far only for Unity and the size and quality of the images in both of those are on par with what you are asking for.

What isn’t going to happen is revising anything that is still available and used in Classic.

My comments on quality of source material were more directed to some early modules (like 10 or more years ago) which was what I assumed you were also talking about.

Temmpest

October 17th, 2021, 04:15

Great review Hywell! I was curious about Foundry, but I will definitely be sticking with FGU now! Thanks!

Topdecker

October 17th, 2021, 05:45

The source material will be the same. And as I have said you are getting better quality images now than previously. There have only been two WotC modules released so far only for Unity and the size and quality of the images in both of those are on par with what you are asking for.

Oh cool, which ones? I am guessing that it is some of the really recent stuff. I might give them a try. (D&D The Wild Beyond the Witchlight looks to be one - is the other an adventure league module?)

And yeah, the modules that I am using as examples are pretty old.

I am currently prepping to run Storm King's Thunder. The source maps - yeah, LordEntrails has a point with this one in particular.

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Zacchaeus

October 17th, 2021, 06:01

Actually Witchlight might be the only one so far released. I think the other one I did is next month.

I had all sorts of problems with SKT, mainly because the maps were all so big because of the scale. I always hate chopping maps up so sometimes the quality suffers to get it down to the sizes required.

Topdecker

October 17th, 2021, 06:35

LordEntrails

October 17th, 2021, 07:28

I did see one thing - not really a technical thing, but more of a conceptual thing - to bring up. There is at least one map where you put LOS terrain walls up all the way around the perimeter of trees on an overhead view. That's good if you are, you know, flying overhead, but not so great if you are on the ground and only have to deal with the trunk.
This is something I've struggled with as a cartographer & DM for years. And I don't have a good rule of thumb. I've been in forests where the tree branches come all the way down to ground level, so it makes sense that the terrain features is the full diameter of the tree image. And I've been in other forests where the branches end ten or twenty feet off the ground, and only the trunks obscure vision and where the terrain should be drawn as you suggest.

I've come to the approach where either I just assume the tree to be the type that matches existing LOS, or if I add the LOS myself, then I try to think of the encounter and try to think what type of tree would be more fun.

And glad you didn't take my previous comment too seriously. It was tongue in cheek and admittedly uninformed :)

similarly

October 17th, 2021, 08:11

This is something I've struggled with as a cartographer & DM for years. And I don't have a good rule of thumb. I've been in forests where the tree branches come all the way down to ground level, so it makes sense that the terrain features is the full diameter of the tree image. And I've been in other forests where the branches end ten or twenty feet off the ground, and only the trunks obscure vision and where the terrain should be drawn as you suggest.

I've come to the approach where either I just assume the tree to be the type that matches existing LOS, or if I add the LOS myself, then I try to think of the encounter and try to think what type of tree would be more fun.

And glad you didn't take my previous comment too seriously. It was tongue in cheek and admittedly uninformed :)

Wow. I didn't even think of that. SKT would probably mean coniferous trees (evergreen, etc.) with conical shapes and branches all the way to the ground, where something like LMoP, might be deciduous broadleaf, with high branches.

HywelPhillips

October 17th, 2021, 10:07

I've posted a suggestion on the idea informer to include both low-res and high-res versions of assets, in particular maps, for commercial modules. For example a forge module with the high-res versions, key available when you purchase the adventure from the store so the low-res people don't need to ever clog up their downloads and hard drives with comparatively huge files they will never use.

I think the needs of the minimum-bandwidth old computer groups and the multiple 4K+ 30" monitor high bandwidth crowd are sufficiently different that it is worth providing both. I certainly have to scour the internet or make my own higher-res maps for a lot of commercial content, which is frustrating knowing that there must be a high-res version of the original available somewhere, certainly for all of the recent WOTC stuff.

I understand the historical context - this is not a complaint to Zacchaeus! But going forward while there will always be groups with low-spec machines and slow internet, there's also going to be an increasing number of us in the high-res camp, too. So given that the higher-res versions usually do exist somewhere (eg for the print product) it would be awesome to just get them in FG in full res with LOS etc already done.

https://fgapp.idea.informer.com/proj/fgapp?ia=137527

Cheers, Hywel

Zacchaeus

October 17th, 2021, 11:28

You did good with SKT. On the difficult maps, the grid aligns nicely and you weren't given a lot to work with. Dealing with a 50' grid is no fun and cropping the map off of the larger image was a good call for a lot of reasons.

I did see one thing - not really a technical thing, but more of a conceptual thing - to bring up. There is at least one map where you put LOS terrain walls up all the way around the perimeter of trees on an overhead view. That's good if you are, you know, flying overhead, but not so great if you are on the ground and only have to deal with the trunk.

I was working with Empire of the Ghouls VTT maps by Kobold Press and encountered a similar situation:

Anyhow, it is a LOT easier to just draw a random trunk than to slowly work around the outer edge. Time saver, less is more in this case.

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The debate about trees blocking LoS is an interesting one and came up early in Alpha or Beta I think. I don't think there's a right or wrong answer really. The pine trees in my garden don't have branches all down to the ground but the Silver Birches do. Additionally there's a fair covering of ferns, saplings and gorse which grow to about 6 or 7 feet. So when I look from the house I can't see the bottom of the garden, not because the trees are blocking my view but the undergrowth is. Similarly in the forest where I walk the dog the ground cover is pretty dense in the summer and autumn but not so much in the winter and spring. So whilst trees themselves may not necessarily block the LOS (apart from the trunk) a lot of other foresty stuff might. There is also the possibility that the 'trees' are actually bushes or other vegetation. It may not always be clear what was in the cartographers mind when they were drawing the map. So I always assume that vegetation blocks LoS and draw that in on the basis that the DM can always switch it off - which takes less time that me not drawing the LoS and the DM having to do it.

Also we may have strayed well off topic of Hywel's excellent thread.

YAKO SOMEDAKY

October 17th, 2021, 12:47

I've been playing at Fantasy Grounds for a long time and I'm used to its UI, but it's a fact that it scared me for a long time and will continue to do so with newbies.
As for Unity I notice a certain slowness in it, compared to the same campaign, in the same Ruleset with the same extensions.
As for the audiovisual resources, I say that it is fantastic to have the audio on the platform, to have the audio muffled by walls, to have sound only in one region, to have the possibility of placing music and sound effects directly on the platform, thus having a constant quality (that's features present in Foundry that I believe might exist in the FGU).
Now, continuing what I said but quoting visual resources that may exist in the FGU, for example, the clock and the time table that activates effects such as rain and wind and that makes the day gradually change to night, which makes items and effects run out, the various functions of LoS, especially the directional one (both sides, just the inside, just the outside), as the vision and lighting can change the vision of a character or monster to 180º instead of 360º ie do so that they only see what's in front of them, regarding lighting, the ability to change the colors of the light and rotate it to create a scene where there is a ship alarm or even the light of a vehicle in the scene, plus the possibility to control the beam of light from 360º to say 60º and thus simulate a flashlight, I believe that what I'm quoting and that already exist in Foundry can and will exist in FGU and more I believe and know that the Smite team works constantly for the performance of the FGU improve more and more and even the Foundry being faster and more attractive in terms of resources and visually I stand firm and strong in the FGU because I still believe in the team and its potential and not to forget and finish this text I say the possibility to operate PDFs directly on the platform would be wonderful and would greatly streamline the possibility of companies becoming interested in the platform and would facilitate the relationship between Smite and "publishers", it has been a few years since I saw the GURPS demonstration for SJGames and in it the SJGames team loved the experience and authorized full automation, but as for the modules she did not authorize and mentioned the possibility of having their content on the platform but through PDFs, at the time this was not possible because it was still FGC, but now this is possible and will be good for both companies.
Example: You want to play Kids on Bikes, the Smite team offers Ruleset, but you want to have the content to create your adventures buy the PDF from Renegade Studios.

Topdecker

October 17th, 2021, 14:54

Also we may have strayed well off topic of Hywel's excellent thread.

We did, apologies. But we also uncovered a comparison that may have been neglected.

Which app does a better job for low speed connections? I can't address roll20, but I did try Foundry using the same files that were in an FG classic campaign. It was a one-shot that I ran in FG classic and then tried it with friends in Foundry. I did it because I wanted a solid comparison at the time.

Foundry was unusable for me on slow but reliable internet. It managed to very roughly get through maybe 2 scenes of 5 and then became unresponsive on a map with a lot of lighting sources. This was back in the .4x days of Foundry and it may have improved, but the same one-shot came off fairly flawlessly in Fantasy Grounds classic. (Technical uncertainty here... Foundry may compose scenes and stream 'live' changes. It certainly appears to stream audio. Anyhow, I think that it creates and wants to maintain live data connections that are needed/wanted regardless of the need to transfer a file such as a map. These aren't very large streams, but when you're hard pressed for bandwidth every little bit matters.)

The ability to pre-load scenes combined with the buffering and re-try attempts of Fantasy Grounds was a clear and easy winner for low bandwidth usage. I also wonder if FG does a better job of handing out the data to clients, ensuring that full packets get moved before allowing another user to start the transfer of a packet, and so on. Data packet size and management of available bandwidth are really important when it is limited in availability. For instance, smaller packets are better if errors are occurring (re-transmitting is more efficient with less data) and I don't know if FG just starts smaller or if it senses and adjusts downward, but which ever one it is, it is well suited for poor conditions.

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HywelPhillips

October 19th, 2021, 18:00

Just had an email from Astral saying that their development has gone on hold, with their founder deciding to retire.

As they put it in the email: "even with the growth that Astral has experienced, it has not attracted an audience large enough to be a thriving business". They say they hundreds of thousands of players (although how many are active is another question - I tried it but it never had enough features above and beyond the other options to make me run a live game in it).

OneBookShelf/DriveThruRPG are keeping it going and maintaining it, but the marketplace is closing and they are dropping prices on subscriptions.

It's sad, but not surprising. The lack of 5E core books can't possibly have done them any good, and they didn't have Foundry's hacker to scrape from D&D Beyond.

My guess is that content and ease of use is going to be more important than graphics in the next wave of VTT wars, now everybody is more or less up to the basic minimum graphical standard set by Roll20. Indeed, I think it is going to be hard to maintain a VTT as a business if you don't do something pretty special. FG's ace card remains its GM development environment and automation. Roll20 has the lowest-common-denominator and market dominance allied with their find-a-game. Foundry's got the code junkies excited and demonstrably does make it easy for people to develop for.

I very much hope Doug's wheeler-dealer business acumen can make sure FG stays in with the big publishers! The nightmare scenario is D&D 6E and Hasbro deciding not to hand out the licences to ANYONE else because they are launching their own VTT. Fingers crossed that doesn't happen.

Cheers, Hywel

Topdecker

October 19th, 2021, 19:58

It's sad, but not surprising. The lack of 5E core books can't possibly have done them any good, and they didn't have Foundry's hacker to scrape from D&D Beyond.

Scraping data from D&D Beyond... I've been somewhat in the thick of this. The are two devs that did this, though one has sort of fallen behind the other. From what I could gather, at least one of these fellows was in contact with D&D Beyond and had learned enough to know what their data policies were. As for hacking, that assumes an unlawful use of the service and it's data. The way this stuff was set-up was to almost guarantee a subscription to D&D Beyond (i.e. legal access) and so I think it very likely that Foundry users added a nice boost to earnings there.

While we're on this... D&D Beyond allows you to share all of your books with like a dozen other people that participating in your campaigns. So actually running a campaign with scraped data isn't giving the players anything different from what they almost certainly already had access to see.

I would be more concerned about the DnD Beyond crew coming to play with a VTT entry than WotC. They already have very, very key portions of the puzzle digitized and easily accessible on a proven platform. If they go, their approach will be to leverage what is already there (i.e. discord, a linked rollbot, and so on) and probably to just have a new subscription tier. There are a lot of small pieces already there and they do high quality work. If they are really thinking about it, their smart move would be to license a limited version of Foundry or perhaps create a paid addon for Foundry that gets a direct pipeline to all of that lovely data they've made so accessible.

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HywelPhillips

October 19th, 2021, 21:03

Aside: I'm old, I use hacker in the old-fashioned sense of "a person skilled in information technology who uses their technical knowledge to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle, within a computerized system by non-standard means", as Wikipedia has it. So I don't necessarily mean that the scraping is illegal. Just unintended.

Indeed I'm not sure what the legal situation with the D&D Beyond data scraping is. The mere fact that you can share via Foundry without the scope of checking that D&D Beyond's campaign share player limit is respected shows that it is not likely to be using the service as intended. I'm pretty sure WOTC/Hasbro will be less than delighted about it. I would be, if it were my products.

The problem for D&D Beyond is that they are 100% dependent on the whims of Hasbro. I'd be eyeing the licence terms pretty nervously if I were them, not least because of the aforementioned scraping to Foundry. I don't think a Hasbro exec is going to look kindly on one of the digital platform licencees being so insecure that they have enabled a whole platform's worth of what will in their eyes surely be piracy, whatever the actual legal situation. Or indeed whatever the actual practicalities of preventing the scraping given that D&D Beyond serves everything as web pages, something that I doubt the hypothetical Hasbro executive is going to understand. They're just going to see that they're not getting any money from people using WOTC products on Foundry, no matter than the people doing it already have D&D Beyond purchases. Colour me cynical on that, anyway.

You're absolutely right that a D&D Beyond VTT will be a major development if they can keep WOTC on board and if they can deliver something on a par with Roll20 in terms of functionality. They have the best D&D charactermancer bar none, and it already functions with VTTs (Foundry and Roll20 via the Beyond20 extension). I wonder how they will handle third party D&D content like Kobold Press etc.?

Interesting times!

Cheers, Hywel

Topdecker

October 20th, 2021, 12:45

I had 330kbs download rates with those conditions I mentioned - but something like 50kbs up because it was DSL. FWIW, I thought that I had 1/3 of a 1mb connection.

I ran my first FGU session last night with my new internet solution - Starlink. 3 or 4 seconds is all anyone had to wait for an image. I've got like 25mb up and 80mb down, so it was very pleasant for everyone.

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YAKO SOMEDAKY

October 20th, 2021, 13:13

In fact, as Primo said we are having our high experiences in terms of playing RPG with VTTs and we can play for Foundry using the Internet 3G yes 3G because 4G, 4.5G and 5G are a lie here and what hinders the most is the screen size, as to what TopDecker compared I agree with it and I say for myself now that I can't compare the Roll20 as I've never used it, I've already started on Fantasy Grounds and dedicated my pennies to it, I play on Foundry too and I can say we have more resources and performance compared to what we have in the FGU, especially performance I know that programming languages are different and this influences performance a lot, I know that one day we will have what we see in the other, but the question comes many that I know migrated from platform, many that I know they were divided until they migrated from platform, some were gained by the audio-visual features, but what attracted them the most was the performance and "silly" things like being able to have the time changed through a scroll of ta beautiful and with the result for example activating a rain effect, having a lighting going off with the passage of time without having to worry about it having an item count that decreases the quantity in the inventory and this passage of time makes the day transitions into night and we still have breaks, shifts, hours, days, months, the effects are starting to apply and if we apply an 8 hour Magic Armor effect and the DM takes a long rest the armor effect if it goes away, as I said, it's silly things that attract a GM, streamline players' lives and still speaking for me, what keeps me going is the hope of a better vision, of better lighting (not that it isn't good, it is good yes) but it needs to give more options for people as I say in several topics the control of light ray and vision and rotation for light, as for the occluders they need to add the steering capacity, because there we have the ability to allow us to see on one side but not on the other (great feature for elevations) and we see but are not seen, a map with LoS and lighting and several players with different views flows, while the same in FG becomes impractical, this referring to a campaign created without extensions, but then I heard once that this happens because the FG with the platform change has achieved and will achieve things that we couldn't before and I agree with that and I heard once that the fault of the FGU's "slow" performance is that even with these features, we're not running it with multi-thread yet and that would bring big changes, but what matters is that in my case even seeing and quoting in several posts some repeated things will keep me in the FGU, because I know the effort of the entire team in delivering quality to us and that changes are slow, even living in an immediatist era.
I end the huge text apologizing for the huge text, but I can't summarize my thoughts and I apologize for the insistence on LoS and lighting, but this is something nice to see as soon as possible.

Topdecker

October 20th, 2021, 14:15

Yako2020, some of the LOS blockers in Foundry that are directional do allow you to simulate height differences, but they are far from perfect and take quite a bit of effort to setup. I rigged 2 maps that had a lot of height changes (Wave Echo Cave being one of them) and it works fairly well, but the time it took to achieve the effect -vs- any sort of wow-factor was not quite worth it. It is an ok feature, but it's not accurate (no lighting fall off, for example, and the edge of your vision should in many cases move with the token rather than having an arbitrary cut-off point) and simply allows you to sort of simulate height changes.

I personally give the edge on LOS tools to FGU. Yes, they don't have some of the more esoteric directional walls, but in terms of use, FGU allows me to rig a map in perhaps 1/2 the time. Foundry is really horrible about double/triple/quadruple clicks and doesn't always leave a node where I wanted a node. FGU almost never has a double click problem and drops nodes pretty close to where I want them - I was marveling at how much better it felt.

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Egheal

October 23rd, 2021, 13:32

@Yako: Don't apologize for this huge text. But even Jacques Mayol would have died, out of breath, reading this unique sentence aloud, with only one period at the end ! ;)

Dr0W

October 23rd, 2021, 18:45

We did, apologies. But we also uncovered a comparison that may have been neglected.

Which app does a better job for low speed connections? I can't address roll20, but I did try Foundry using the same files that were in an FG classic campaign. It was a one-shot that I ran in FG classic and then tried it with friends in Foundry. I did it because I wanted a solid comparison at the time.

Foundry was unusable for me on slow but reliable internet. It managed to very roughly get through maybe 2 scenes of 5 and then became unresponsive on a map with a lot of lighting sources. This was back in the .4x days of Foundry and it may have improved, but the same one-shot came off fairly flawlessly in Fantasy Grounds classic. (Technical uncertainty here... Foundry may compose scenes and stream 'live' changes. It certainly appears to stream audio. Anyhow, I think that it creates and wants to maintain live data connections that are needed/wanted regardless of the need to transfer a file such as a map. These aren't very large streams, but when you're hard pressed for bandwidth every little bit matters.)

The ability to pre-load scenes combined with the buffering and re-try attempts of Fantasy Grounds was a clear and easy winner for low bandwidth usage. I also wonder if FG does a better job of handing out the data to clients, ensuring that full packets get moved before allowing another user to start the transfer of a packet, and so on. Data packet size and management of available bandwidth are really important when it is limited in availability. For instance, smaller packets are better if errors are occurring (re-transmitting is more efficient with less data) and I don't know if FG just starts smaller or if it senses and adjusts downward, but which ever one it is, it is well suited for poor conditions.

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I've ran multiple games on both platforms with players with good and bad connectivity.

It all depends solely on how you run your games and which content you use. If you use many high resolution maps on FG, you'll have problems exactly the same way you'd have in Foundry. There's no hidden mystery here: Players are uploaded whatever the GM make them download.

However you are more likely to use more bandwidth in Foundry because of the following reasons:
- You are able to upload more types of Media. You can add sounds, videos, gifs, etc. Since you have more tools, you will probably want to use them.
- You have better performance, meaning that its easier as a GM to grab maps and tokens with absurdly high resolutions. The GM doesn't feel it, but anyone with bad internet will have trouble to download it all. When using FG, specially if we're talking about FG Classic, the moment you use something above the recommended the GM will feel stuttering and even crashes.

If you try to run the same campaign, with exactly the same maps and tokens in FG and Foundry, bandwidth usage is the same and it wouldn't make any sense if it weren't. Foundry does have an Edge here: You can actually upload media to a different place, out of the server machine, to alleviate upload usage if the GM has a bad upload speed, but the same can't be done in FG.

So, I don't agree that saying that FG is better or worse than Foundry for good or bad connectivity, since it's all related to how you use a software.

As a comparison, it would be like saying that a car that goes up to 60km/h consumes less fuel per hour than a car that can go up to 120km/h. The faster car an always slow down an consume less per hour if it needs to, but the slower car can't go faster even if he wants to. Being slower is not a good quality for the slower one, we need to pump those numbers up so it can reach the faster car, not the other way around.

Edit: More points to add about pre-loading scenes on Foundry vs FG.

- You can't pre-load images on FGU without sharing them with players. As soon as you pre-load images, it shows up in their images tab possibly leading to spoilers. I've used FG for over a decade, it WASN'T like that before, but it got changed at some point and it's like that ever since. I've got some problems with some players finding out by accident about some images I had pre-loaded, it really broke the mood and spoiled the surprise. I've never pre-loaded again.

- Foundry does have pre-loading capabilities for scenes, music and other stuff. On that matter, I have 0 problems with my bad connectivity players. It's just a matter of pre-loading 5 minutes prior to moving into a new scene.

Egheal

October 23rd, 2021, 20:11

Pre-loading work nicely with FGU. just apply FOW and unindentify on every images. It worked perfectly for me on my ancient adsl (now i have super fast connectivity).

Dr0W

October 23rd, 2021, 22:18

Pre-loading work nicely with FGU. just apply FOW and unindentify on every images. It worked perfectly for me on my ancient adsl (now i have super fast connectivity).

A workaround solution for a problem that shouldn't be there in first place.

Jiminimonka

October 23rd, 2021, 22:56

A workaround solution for a problem that shouldn't be there in first place.

You can turn on LOS on maps and then even if the players can see the maps they cant see the maps.. until the GM puts their tokens on it.

Dr0W

October 23rd, 2021, 23:08

You can turn on LOS on maps and then even if the players can see the maps they cant see the maps.. until the GM puts their tokens on it.

That is still a workaround solution to a problem that shouldn't have to exist at all. I just want to pre-load something, and not be paranoid about me not forgetting to put all the images to unidentified, and making sure that it has LOS on (Which isn't a thing in FGC by the way).

I know how to "solve" these, I know my way around Fantasy Grounds.

I'm just pointing the fact where it concerns low connectivity issues that Foundry still has the upper hand with pre-loads working as intended and we've had a pre-load that shares content with players in FG for years and that should have never been like that in first place.

When I say "In software A we have this, and in software B we have a problem with that", and people say "but you can mitigate problem in B by jumping around every time it happens", it doesn't make the problem in B disappear. It's still there, and has been there for years. What I wish is that the problem is gone.

Zacchaeus

October 23rd, 2021, 23:18

I don't get this thing about preloading images. As far as I can see FGC and FGU work the same way - the only difference being that in FGU there's no 'preload' button.

In FGC players can still open images and see everything that's been preloaded when they join the game. As far as I remember it was always the case and if it were a map then you would make sure that it had the mask on it so they couldn't see anything. In FGU you switch on lighting to achieve the same thing. All they'll see is a black image.

Kelrugem

October 23rd, 2021, 23:33

Yup, in FGC it is not different than FGU; the only difference was that FGC's preload button didn't open the image automatically on connected clients (as if drag&dropping into the chat (without chat message)); besides that it completely works like a typical sharing, we discussed that several times here on the forums. So, the players can also see preloaded images in the image tab in FGC (I know it because one player found that accidentally out and got spoiler-ed; since then I started to put global masks on all images in FGC) :)

Though this does not negate your problem; just pointing out that FGC did not prevent the accidental spoiler either :)

Jiminimonka

October 23rd, 2021, 23:48

That is still a workaround solution to a problem that shouldn't have to exist at all. I just want to pre-load something, and not be paranoid about me not forgetting to put all the images to unidentified, and making sure that it has LOS on (Which isn't a thing in FGC by the way).

I know how to "solve" these, I know my way around Fantasy Grounds.

I'm just pointing the fact where it concerns low connectivity issues that Foundry still has the upper hand with pre-loads working as intended and we've had a pre-load that shares content with players in FG for years and that should have never been like that in first place.

When I say "In software A we have this, and in software B we have a problem with that", and people say "but you can mitigate problem in B by jumping around every time it happens", it doesn't make the problem in B disappear. It's still there, and has been there for years. What I wish is that the problem is gone.

So what do you suggest Fantasy Grounds does with images so that this "problem is gone" ?

Kelrugem

October 23rd, 2021, 23:56

So what do you suggest Fantasy Grounds does with images so that this "problem is gone" ?

Dr0w suggest an intermediary solution: A preload button which loads the image into the cache of the clients (when they join or are already joined), but not listing these images in the image list until one finally shares them for the actual play :)

Jiminimonka

October 24th, 2021, 00:25

Dr0w suggest an intermediary solution: A preload button which loads the image into the cache of the clients (when they join or are already joined), but not listing these images in the image list until one finally shares them for the actual play :)

Sounds like a perfect solution, is it on the Idea Informer?

Dr0W

October 24th, 2021, 00:49

So what do you suggest Fantasy Grounds does with images so that this "problem is gone" ?

To make it work how it worked before.

When you pre-loaded an Image, it didn't show on the players list and they never had access to the item. It would show an icon to the gm (similar to a web, if I can recall correctly) to indicate that a player had completely pre-loaded that image.
But the image would only be actually shared when the GM clicked to Share.

That's how it has worked once, and then it got changed. And when it got changed, I remember that there was a reason: There was a glitch or something, so to prevent that bug from happening they simply made the pre-load button to work as a share that doesn't automatically open the image. And that's how it has worked ever since.

EDIT:

But here's the point of me bringing this up: It was just when considering comparing both platforms. Originally it was said that FG worked better for low bandwidth games, and I just wanted to recall that we've had this "problem" for years now and it never got a solution. I'm positive that people don't even care about it anymore because honestly most of the people have great connections today and couldn't care less.

But I've been using FG since I had a 56kb connection. I had, at some point in my life, to prepare and adventure, join as a player, generate the cache for that player, upload that file on some rapidshare or 4shared, and make each player download that cache so I didn't have to upload 20mb of files during game play. I had to use those options constantly and it has affected me throughout the years, specially when it stopped working the way it did.

But nowadays I don't really care. Nowadays a "bad connection" is usually one that can download a low-res map for FG, and even if it isn't we can wait for 30 seconds and we're done. However I do use pre-loading constantly when running games on Foundry, because there I load a shitton of maps, sounds, effects. I just wanted to mention my experience regarding both platforms since people were talking about exactly this.

Kelrugem

October 24th, 2021, 09:20

To make it work how it worked before.

When you pre-loaded an Image, it didn't show on the players list and they never had access to the item. It would show an icon to the gm (similar to a web, if I can recall correctly) to indicate that a player had completely pre-loaded that image.
But the image would only be actually shared when the GM clicked to Share.

That's how it has worked once, and then it got changed. And when it got changed, I remember that there was a reason: There was a glitch or something, so to prevent that bug from happening they simply made the pre-load button to work as a share that doesn't automatically open the image. And that's how it has worked ever since.

I recall that you once mentioned that in another thread; sounds good if that comes back :) Probably got changed before my time

similarly

October 25th, 2021, 02:06

Scraping data from D&D Beyond... I've been somewhat in the thick of this. The are two devs that did this, though one has sort of fallen behind the other. From what I could gather, at least one of these fellows was in contact with D&D Beyond and had learned enough to know what their data policies were. As for hacking, that assumes an unlawful use of the service and it's data. The way this stuff was set-up was to almost guarantee a subscription to D&D Beyond (i.e. legal access) and so I think it very likely that Foundry users added a nice boost to earnings there.

While we're on this... D&D Beyond allows you to share all of your books with like a dozen other people that participating in your campaigns. So actually running a campaign with scraped data isn't giving the players anything different from what they almost certainly already had access to see.

I would be more concerned about the DnD Beyond crew coming to play with a VTT entry than WotC. They already have very, very key portions of the puzzle digitized and easily accessible on a proven platform. If they go, their approach will be to leverage what is already there (i.e. discord, a linked rollbot, and so on) and probably to just have a new subscription tier. There are a lot of small pieces already there and they do high quality work. If they are really thinking about it, their smart move would be to license a limited version of Foundry or perhaps create a paid addon for Foundry that gets a direct pipeline to all of that lovely data they've made so accessible.

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Regardless of any verbal agreements, DDB only has permission from WotC to share on its own site and platform, and has no license to allow sharing beyond that, so sharing of ddb data on foundry constitutes a violation ddb tos and ddb's licensing agreement with wotc. Unless and until such licensing is amended, those "scraping" tools will remain of dubious legality. ddb has already said multiple times that it does not condone that usage and has been taking steps to close the loopholes. This is neither the fault of ddb nor of foundry's developers, and I really don't fault the people who made the tools, since that's just what users do. Just don't be surprised if in the future they close the gap. In which case, foundry should pursue proper licensing agreements on its own.

ZaylUlValen

November 23rd, 2021, 00:01

ddavison

November 23rd, 2021, 01:22

I think both Lua and JS are relatively comparable to learn. They are both widely used and there are lots of resources available for each.

Building a ruleset can be complex and time consuming. If the system you want to support is similar to another system, you can often unpack that ruleset and modify it. This would be much simpler and you could reference all the existing code. In some cases, you can do a pretty decent job using the MoreCore ruleset and modifying it in a more visual capacity. That might be a good first step. You can find it on the FG Forge.

Trenloe

November 23rd, 2021, 01:26

Out of curiosity, out of Foundry & FG which would be the better choice in building a new rule set? I'm well aware it will be a very long process to learn & build.

I've been doing most of the testing inside of Roll20 with sheets built inside Google Sheets, but I'd prefer to switch to a different VTT that's set up a fair bit better. Especially to be able to switch to one with much better combat automation, would greatly help and make the process much smoother.

From what I gather, it's easier to learn Lua than it is to learn JS. But with references, they should both be fairly straightforward.

Thanks for any help or suggestions.
Welcome to the FG forums!

I'll second what @ddavison mentions. As an example, the community MoreCore ruleset is specifically designed to be extensible and support different RPG functionality - the main being all the different roll systems. Refer to this thread for some examples of PC sheets community members have put together in MoreCore: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?44632-MoreCore-Character-Sheets

More info on MoreCore here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?47382-MoreCore-Info

celestian

November 23rd, 2021, 03:09

Out of curiosity, out of Foundry & FG which would be the better choice in building a new rule set? I'm well aware it will be a very long process to learn & build.

I've been doing most of the testing inside of Roll20 with sheets built inside Google Sheets, but I'd prefer to switch to a different VTT that's set up a fair bit better. Especially to be able to switch to one with much better combat automation, would greatly help and make the process much smoother.

From what I gather, it's easier to learn Lua than it is to learn JS. But with references, they should both be fairly straightforward.

Thanks for any help or suggestions.

As someone that's built in both I've a little feedback to offer. For me JS and HTML templating is easier to use/learn. There are far more resources out there for learning JS and HTML than compared to Lua.

That said, FG is much more "stable" (which can be good/bad depending on what you need). I've built a system in Foundry for a friend of mine and with their latest release I'm having to re-code a lot of it due to data/scheme changes. FG, hasn't done something as dramatic as that and when they do something similar it's much less dramatic and done in smaller pieces.

I really do like the ease of CSS/HTML templating for UI but I think their system could use more time baking to stabilize.

Both platforms offer good solutions and the choice is up to you. Compare what both offer and what you need. For example, if you need a "marketplace" there is only one choice right now.

Mytherus

December 3rd, 2021, 15:32

Fantastic read. Thank you for undertaking the effort, the reviews are well detailed and balanced. I have zero interest in Roll20 , like seriously I wouldn’t care if they closed down. For reasons beyond the software alone btw.

Foundry I bought almost 6 or 7 months ago because it’s , as you said, “very pretty” and as the newer VTT getting a lot of talk I wanted to see what the fuss is about. I play with it to learn how to use and understand it from time to time but that’s it. I find it more time consuming to learn than I expected it to be if I’m being honest. I don’t like the “just add this script or install this to do that” nature. But anyway I have playing with it as a side thing I do.

FGU my preferred VTT for almost 4 years now(obviously FGC before ) . Steep learning curve as they say but for me it makes more sense than foundry.

I know the software well now and play only 5e currently, as a DM.

I do like many folks think some of the worst negatives to FGU are…

Performance. Particularly like in my group I probably have the weakest system and that’s a 3 year old intel 8700 32 gig with a 1080 gtx , over a 1 gb connection. Players will sometimes have significant lag . Not always but sometimes and this is with only 10 npcs on the map or in the CT and I already know about don’t share or open maps or modules you don’t need.

I think performance optimization should be a higher priority than adding new features.

After all if the software runs like mud does anyone care what features it has?

Beyond that a massive UI overhaul is needed and finally support for fancier graphics (at least animated maps) are needed to compete with newer VTTs.

And for the love of god support DUAL MONITORS! FGU is a screen real estate hog how this system doesn’t support multiple displays is both frustrating and disappointing.

No stretching your display over multiple screens is not the solution.

It’s still my favorite VTT despite all that .

Zacchaeus

December 3rd, 2021, 16:07

Make sure you add your votes to the wish list for features you'd like - like in my signature.

AFAIK dual monitor support isn't viable since Unity doesn't support it across all platforms. Animated maps would significantly increase performance issues. Also what kind of UI overhaul? There are some changes to the UI in the next update due out next week but updating the UI impacts a ton of rulesets and so is very resource intensive to change. And I don't think anyone can agree anyway on what sort of overhaul is needed.

celestian

December 3rd, 2021, 19:45

And I don't think anyone can agree anyway on what sort of overhaul is needed.

While this is true there are certainly modern standards that can be applied to make the UI more user friendly over all. There are many sites and companies and even libraries for developers to help design UI interfaces these days. I've a friend with a job title specific to this topic ;) I guess what I am trying to say is there are a lot of resources (free and otherwise) that can be used for improving UI be it from a visual or usability stance.

From the ruleset side I'd absolutely love to see more API functionality to directly manage (Unity side) UI pieces so we could have standard UI functionality (combobox, nested trees, windows). There are similar "versions" of some of those but they are emulated with windows/etc and have very limited functionality when compared using them directly. Without a major update tho I realize it's wishful thinking but it certainly would go a LONG way to making it easier to update the UI interface.

toastsniffer187

December 11th, 2021, 15:11

Valyar

December 11th, 2021, 15:13

Topdecker

December 11th, 2021, 15:42

It would have been a shame if they'd taken the opportunity FGU afforded them to modernize or even slightly update the user interface. Nested radial choices are the best.

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toastsniffer187

December 11th, 2021, 15:47

Unity is software created from scratch. it has nothing to do with the Classic. The decision to make Unity backward compatible with all rulesets and content is business decision and it makes sense - there are hundreds of products out there that can't be rendered obsolete. This is move that only Apple does. :)

It does not mean that in future there might not be new architecture of the rulesets and etc. With Unity there no limits.
All im saying is they missed an opportunity leave 2004 in the past and build something completely new and since it is using Unity engine as you said the possibilities are endless! But they are not becuase they took classic called it unity and added lighting and mapping tools. Now VTT's of the future such as The Foundry are going to murder them on sales and community at a 1/3 of the price. To be clear im saying this because I love FG and it pains me to know that Unity could of been so much more.

Valyar

December 11th, 2021, 19:56

I am not sure why you think FGU could have been... It is huge improvement over the classic and the last major updates that introduced effects, LOS, dynamic lights and other ruleset specific features show that the product is far from "over". The fact that you now have map-making capabilities is amazing - everything in one place.

Yes, we want much faster pace from Smite Works, but even today FGU has much more to offer than its competitors.

similarly

December 11th, 2021, 22:05

My thing is why does FGU not have this pretty effects and such? Its unity!!!!! I think Smite Works dropped the ball big time in not writing FGU from scatch and using FGC as its base. It really disheartens me we paid $100 to upgrade from classic to unity for lighting and map tools. Unity is such a powerful engine and they could of sank the competition for the next 10 years if they had only built it from scratch with 2021 tech and future tech in mind! There is no reason FGU should even have competition for the price they charge and the size of the community.

To be clear (I don't want to make assumptions): which "pretty effects" did you want? I came back to D&D about a year ago after not playing for 25 years. 25 years ago, my gaming group did 99% theater of the mind, and 100% homebrew. "Back in the day", I played over a dozen different systems, and even made a few systems on my own. Part of the beauty of roleplaying back then, for us, was imagination. Now, I feel there's a LOT of expectation on making D&D more of a video game experience. People want animated maps, weather effects, sound effects and background music. I feel this takes away just a bit from the imagination that used to be such a big part of roleplaying for me. I used to have 3 giant laminated green hex boards that I'd draw on with water-color markers if combat got confusing. Otherwise, we just winged it. I'd much rather Fantasy Grounds focused on things like finding ways to get things to load faster, or maybe integrating some of the automation we find in extensions.

Foundry is a great system, but honestly: until they have legitimate licensing for roleplaying systems directly with roleplaying publishers, they'll still be far behind Smiteworks. That said: different people roleplay in different ways. If foundry or roll20 work better for those people, then great. I bought Fantasy Grounds because I homebrew so much content that I would have very quickly reached the limits of roll20.

YAKO SOMEDAKY

December 11th, 2021, 23:56

I believe that audiovisual resources are something linked to technology and the reality of VTT's nowadays.
I played a lot with Teatro da Mente as well, but I confess that I'm attracted to hear and see a special effect when I launch my magic missiles and that emotion arises when we have a good trail accompanying our journey.
I know that most of the features that are mentioned on other platforms will arrive at Fantasy Grounds and I am patient to wait.
And I agree that before any "extra" features it is necessary to work on the speed and stability of Fantasy Grounds.

Weissrolf

December 12th, 2021, 01:39

You need to realize that only one person is speaking at any time in voice chat. And usually only two people actively play on each PCs turn while the rest of the group is busy staring at their screen while staying quite. The "video game experience" is what keeps their eyes on the map at least, else they would just browse the web or watch some video while waiting for their turn.

This is a different experience from sitting at a table where multiple people can talk, especially with each other while the GM and one player are handling a PCs turn. The whole group is (hopefully) more invested and in the moment and everything is more "tangible".

Torch flickering is nice, that pulsating light is more of a hazard. Some map effects work, others not so much (and why are the defaults for "fog" so unusable fast?).

https://i.imgur.com/5XSPG9O.gif

celestian

December 12th, 2021, 01:52

Now, I feel there's a LOT of expectation on making D&D more of a video game experience. People want animated maps, weather effects, sound effects and background music. I feel this takes away just a bit from the imagination that used to be such a big part of roleplaying for me.

What you call "video game experience" many call immersion. Not something that reduces imagination but improves it and most certainly improves ones ability to roleplay as the character in that specific situation.

The upside to having modern audio, video and graphical features for your games, you don't have to use them and the those that prefer them can.

similarly

December 12th, 2021, 06:06

celestian

December 12th, 2021, 06:42

I dunno. I find the focus on graphics and music breaks my immersion ... but then I have a pretty vivid imagination. From a practical side though, I find most of the tech simply bothersome. I had a map all set up with animations and lighting and had to turn it off because of lag for one or two players on slow connections. Just easier to run TotM.

Your problem mentioned is with the platform, not the technology. As I said earlier and as you did in this case, not using it is a option. Whether it works properly tho is in the developers.

What I find destressing is some the people on the forums (and not just in this thread) suggesting "advanced" features shouldn't be added because they don't need/want them. What's worse is when others start using that as justification for their own desire to "not see" said features. Whether it's UI, audio, graphics or improved performance.... these are features we should expect. Whether we use them or not is entirely up to the table. I don't need to know Bob the DM doesn't use audio when requesting audio features be on the table for FG. There is certainly a triage list of things that can and should be worked on depending on severity (performance is a hot topic these days) but new features should be on the table as cycles permit.

I don't expect things to spin around and get done instantly, things are slow and steady, more slow than steady but, things get done. Just remember when you respond to someone asking for something you don't see a need for that everyone is not the same.

similarly

December 12th, 2021, 07:52

What I find destressing is some the people on the forums (and not just in this thread) suggesting "advanced" features shouldn't be added because they don't need/want them.

I think you'll find, if you read my posts, that I've only talked about what I, as an individual do, or value, or think. Nowhere have I suggested that smiteworks shouldn't add the features, have I? And I don't believe I've seen in THIS thread anyone suggesting that either, unless I've missed it. I've suggested other things I'd RATHER see. I'm allowed to do that. Perhaps just relax and don't read too much into it, eh? What does it matter what I think anyway?

Valyar

December 12th, 2021, 09:37

One of the reasons Foundry VTT seems to be blossoming is the open nature of the platform and the programming languages it employs (which is also curse, not just blessing). Remove all the add-ons and the base platform is bland. Also more than half of the functionalities come from external developers, which is bad.

I can't accept a product that makes a GM to run 20-100 (yes) extensions to play and manage campaign at adequate levels when in Fantasy Grounds I don't need any, just 3-4 for convenience. And not to mention - MAP EDITOR!!!

HywelPhillips

December 12th, 2021, 12:14

I've always tried to use audio-visual resources when running games - 30 years ago I had a slide projector rigged up to show photos to set the scene, did handouts and made mix-tapes as the soundtrack to various campaigns.

I've never been all that big on map and mini or tokens, apart from a few campaigns where the focus was on tactical combat where the system really demanded it. I usually prefer theatre of the the mind for that. My preferences as a player were similar.

However, I've found online gaming changes the equation for me considerably.

As Weissrolf says, the biggest change in the experience is the stilted, one-at-a-time nature of voice/video interactions during online games. This means that players can't be having whispered conversations with each other while the GM is dealing with the active player in the same way. It wrecks round-table PC discussions to such an extent that "planning sessions" are no longer viable the way we used to run and enjoy them. Someone (and in my experience that overwhelmingly becomes the GM) has to "run the Zoom meeting" making sure everyone gets invited to speak in turn, gets a decent share of the spotlight, etc..

In some ways tactical combat is a whole lot easier to run via VTT than a talky theatre of mind round-table talking session. The technology can support you, rather than putting strict limits on you.

It takes advantage of the fact that players are staring at a screen to put relevant stuff on that screen for them to look at. They can plan out their moves, make deductions, look at the map decoration and invent cool things to do with that crate there, and so on. I think this plays to the strengths of VTTs, so it is no wonder that people are pushing the software in that direction. From there is a natural progression to show meaningful information like health bars and effects icons, put down map markers for stuff that's on fire, and then a small step to animating that. After all, the common shared space is no longer the physical tabletop and the room you're in with your buddies. It's not your character sheet - only you are looking at that. It's the map that's the portal onto the shared world.

So I make much much heavier use of maps on VTTs that I ever did offline. A really good map can spare you hundreds of words of exposition, which is economical when the most precious resource is "voice time" on the voice chat channel. It helps stops people's attention wandering to the other tab with twitter open in it. I customise maps much more, for which I love FGUs new toolkit. I use handouts less, because the map is doing a lot of the shared world-building that I'd previously have relied on an evocative photo or drawing to do.

A good token can remove the need to display the artwork for a newly encountered person, and use of subtle visual hints can let players "do" things like perception rolls and discovery by themselves without taking up too much "voice time" by simply allowing the player to notice things on the map. Scouting missions become more involving for the group rather than less if party vision is turned on. I don't need to tell them to stop because their familiar has flown into a room with a giant ogre in it - they can see it.

For sure there is a danger of tying down the imagination too much and becoming more like a static-coded computer game. There's a balance to be struck, which is one of the reasons I emphasised how automatically the extra AV pretties can be done in my platform reviews above. If the GM has to stop the action, leading to dead "voice time" while they trigger a cool visual, that's bad for me. But if as part of the narration of a lightning bolt going off you hear crackling lightning sound effects automatically triggered over the background music by Syrinscape chat trigger, with no chat dead time, that's good for me.

So I'm in favour of things like the FGU map effects because of the way they let players interact with the setting information for free, without taking up precious chat time. For example one of my campaigns has the PC's chasing down rifts in space and time to close them. I use a subtle bit of the water effect to indicate this. Near big rifts, the effect is unmistakable. If I want to subtly hint at it, I apply a very mild version of the effect over the relevant part of the map, and maybe add some low alpha sparkly pulsing lights. The players pick up almost subconsciously that there's something weird going on in that one particular bedroom of the house just by moving their tokens around and exploring. For sure it's all backed up with descriptions and the usual GM communications, but as a way of dropping hints and rewarding player engagement with their FGU window rather than their twitter window, I find it really useful.

I'm skeptical about 3D not because of the technology or the computer-game-ness or even the performance but because I've just a little experience of how much more work it is to populate 3D realms with resources and build a scene. There's a reason why computer game companies have to have entire teams to build levels or make the 3D characters. I can see the appeal of a 3D simulation of being around a tabletop with miniature figures and an infinite supply of virtual Dwarf Forge scenery I guess. But personally I am trying to get drawn in to the game environment, not the emulation-of-sitting-around-a-table environment.

I'd like to see how VTTs can push in this direction of drawing us in to the game environment in a different way from the way computer games do it. One of the things I really want to get my groups experimenting with is the real-time use of typed chat to try to replace the table-whispers. It's worked really well in a couple of one-shots I played, where it was player-led. I wonder if there is a way to encourage more use of it as the GM?

Cheers, Hywel

Weissrolf

December 12th, 2021, 12:36

At least for systems/rulesets - PF2 in my case - having a community of enthusiasts code and enter data leads to faster turnaround times and maybe even better product quality (less strain on single authors). Their main motivation is "I want to play that, too" and some "this is something I am proud of producing". Of course both system/rulesets and content preparation are not free, but these volunteering enthusiast pay for end-users in time and effort. Some offer Patrons, like the author of PdfToFoundry (which I became a member of) and some explicitly don't want money (like the PF2 folks).

And a group of people deciding on both priorities and interpretation of rules (for automation) eases the situation of the whole system userbase being dependent on the goodwill of a single person, like with those FG rulesets that are maintained by a single person.

I use 23 extensions on FG and 88 modules on Foundry (some of which are shared libraries), with many of those being features I want/like, not necessarily what is needed to play. The PF2 system needs less addons than other systems and tends to "eat" the most important ones for better compatibility and support. 6 of my Foundry modules are updated to use features of the next major Foundry update. 3 modules are "outdated" for the current version already, but after testing all my modules I find these to still be working (v.8.9, v9 might be different).

Knowing that Foundry is still v0.x software and innovating left and right I am not too bothered by the whole modules situation yet.

toastsniffer187

December 12th, 2021, 13:34

similarly

December 12th, 2021, 13:44

Hywel, that's an excellent explanation. I've also made a LOT of maps since coming back to D&D. For my last campaign, I'd mapped out 41 locations, some with more than a dozen levels. I experimented with lighting, and experimented with effects (like making water move, etc.). Some of my players were on VERY slow connections with computers that couldn't handle some of the maps, but that was a hardware problem, and not a problem with FGU.

As well, I made a bunch of images of characters, items etc., but got scolded by an older player for not doing more describing, lol.

For voice, I use discord, but it would be NICE if FGU had a built-in system that included a whisper mode. It would also be cool if it included a built-in voice changer, lol. I'm not great at voices. There's a chatroom app that amplifies voices as you come near the person in the virtual environment, and silences the voice as you move away. That would be cool for in-game communication. All the GM to hear everybody, but in-character voice depends on location. You could have three buttons: in character, out of character, and private. Think I'll suggest that!

Kelrugem

December 12th, 2021, 13:50

They could hire 1 guy to code

SmiteWorks searches already for some new people, posted here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/home/JobOpportunities.php

that is already from some weeks ago, and the positions are still not filled (even months?). So, it is seemingly not so easy to simply find someone doing something. There are a lot of different tasks SmiteWorks need to do as a small company, and as others already said other things had higher priority :) Of course more employees can help to solve all the tasks faster or do more projects simultaneously, but as I said, it is not like that the posted positions are filled in just a couple of days. You should not forget that we are speaking about a niche product of a niche hobby :)

Weissrolf

December 12th, 2021, 13:51

Fantasy Grounds is an advanced system on an outdated frame-work. Foundry is a growing system on a modern frame-work.

When the most modern PCs are continuously bogged down by FG displaying a simple table of text then that is what pushes people away, though, not some animated effects on top of the bog.

Valyar

December 12th, 2021, 14:00

YAKO SOMEDAKY

December 12th, 2021, 14:02

I agree with what was said by the toastsniffer187.
We have a powerful tool called UNITY and with it we could make FANTASY GROUNDS much better and for that I believe that YES, we should look to other tools aimed at our target audience, which is the RPG PLAYER, who wants agility to conduct their adventures but at the same time want to give wings to your imagination and make them real through AUDIOVISUAL RESOURCES, I know that many will talk about THEATER OF THE MIND, but that sounds like laziness to me.
Some will mention about the LICENSING that SMITEWORKS has on many products, but we know that not all LICENSED PRODUCTS receive the same attention, offering "MEDIOCRE" PRODUCTS and there is also the fact that most do not care if it is OFFICIAL or NOT.
WE (At least the vast majority) want these features that give a SPECIAL TOUCH to their TABLES and more than that we want AGILITY in the PROGRAM we use (FANTASY GROUNDS) and when I refer to AGILITY I don't just mean with AUTOMATIONS but also when loading the GAME TABLE, AGILITY when presenting something without LOCKS during NARRATIVE.
Anyway, this is MY VISION about what happens, about what I saw that attracts PEOPLE to the other PLATFORMS.

Weissrolf

December 12th, 2021, 14:06

Outdated framework is Unity engine or the XML/LUA codebase for rulesets?

Outdated frame-work seems to be especially the code-basis/implementation of FG itself. Again, it is not even able to display a table of text without bogging down the most modern of computers. It does not matter at this point whether this is a limitation of Unity + Lua 5.1 or a limitation of what SW codes on top of this, it does not work well either way.

When you run a Porsche in 1st gear on an acre then driving the Porsche doesn't move you any faster than driving a Trabant.

Xydonus

December 12th, 2021, 17:37

To touch upon what Celestian and Similarly are saying, I think both sides of their perspectives have merit. I've been in games where it's just a screen (and sometimes a map) and just relying on theatre of mind. I've enjoyed those games as a player, and I've been in games that are a audio and visual delight because of the immersive nature that those games have on the senses. As a GM, the latter is more my style as I like to prepare as much as I can and immerse the group in the sounds and such. Don't think any particular style has less value as long as you are telling a good story and paying attention to the group. That's all that matters.

LordEntrails

December 12th, 2021, 19:39

All I was saying is we have the unity engine if you read the original post about what makes the other tables good we could have that too. We shouldnt have any competition over here because we can have it all on the unity engine. Especially for the price that is charged per ultimate lic......For example dice skins/effects. They could hire 1 guy to code and put those in the store and the sales from that alone would cover his salary and then some. Our community shouldnt be shrinking right now. And it is frustrating seeing half the games posted are people sniping players off from our community to other VTTs. The Foundry being the biggest and that goes unmoderated.
Running a business, and a software application is not so easy.

Your "Just hire 1 guy ..." As has been pointed out, they are looking to hire (but not for dice skins), but finding the right person is not easy. And hiring the wrong person can do more damage to the product and company than any value they add. Next, how many dice sins do you think they are going to sell? And at what price? Because I think if you dive into the economics, you will find a challenge not losing money on dice skins. Not that their are not high value opportunities, but they are already working on hiring for those things.

As for other comments about Unity being limitless, and such. No engine is limitless, they all have their shortcomings. As well, people should consider the complexities of software development. Had SmiteWorks just built FGU from the ground up and dropped the XML/LUA architecture etc. They would have then obsoleted ~1700 products in their store, and hundreds or thousands of community modules and extensions. Sure, maybe their would have been some way to convert the old format to the new format, but such a converter would have taken time to develop as well. And that whole process would have had it's own drawbacks and people wo would have thought it bad/negative.

In short, none of us know all the challenges faced in the development and deployment of FGU. And, second guessing decisions we are inadequately informed about that were made years ago is pointless. We might as well discuss water under the bridge. What we can do is to consider what FGU is today and the direction and manner the developers are going in. And then decide if it is the VTT that fits our needs. And if it is, then help with bug reports and voicing opinions on what is next. And if it's not the VTT of choice, then move on and go do the same for whatever option that is you chose.

On another note, if anyone sees recruiting in the FG forums for platforms other than FG, please report the post and the issue will be dealt with quickly.

similarly

December 12th, 2021, 23:10

Running a business, and a software application is not so easy.

Your "Just hire 1 guy ..." As has been pointed out, they are looking to hire (but not for dice skins), but finding the right person is not easy. And hiring the wrong person can do more damage to the product and company than any value they add. Next, how many dice sins do you think they are going to sell? And at what price? Because I think if you dive into the economics, you will find a challenge not losing money on dice skins. Not that their are not high value opportunities, but they are already working on hiring for those things.

As for other comments about Unity being limitless, and such. No engine is limitless, they all have their shortcomings. As well, people should consider the complexities of software development. Had SmiteWorks just built FGU from the ground up and dropped the XML/LUA architecture etc. They would have then obsoleted ~1700 products in their store, and hundreds or thousands of community modules and extensions. Sure, maybe their would have been some way to convert the old format to the new format, but such a converter would have taken time to develop as well. And that whole process would have had it's own drawbacks and people wo would have thought it bad/negative.

In short, none of us know all the challenges faced in the development and deployment of FGU. And, second guessing decisions we are inadequately informed about that were made years ago is pointless. We might as well discuss water under the bridge. What we can do is to consider what FGU is today and the direction and manner the developers are going in. And then decide if it is the VTT that fits our needs. And if it is, then help with bug reports and voicing opinions on what is next. And if it's not the VTT of choice, then move on and go do the same for whatever option that is you chose.

On another note, if anyone sees recruiting in the FG forums for platforms other than FG, please report the post and the issue will be dealt with quickly.

Lol, that sounds like my job. I was just saying the other day that for everything I finish, I find two more things that need to be done.

@Xyndonus, I DO see the value of both. I used to do strictly theater of the mind, but since coming to FGC and then FGU as it came out, I've spent a lot of time making maps, making images, etc., and it IS really nice. In my last game for example, I had a purely visual puzzle. I love the LOS and lighting and effects, and in my next game I hope to recruit players with good connections and good PCs (it's going to be a pre-requisite, I think).

For FGU, my advice would be:
Audio-video:
Rather than reinvent an integrated voice-video option, I would instead focus on improving coordination with existing platforms like discord. Discord can already connect an overlay on FGU so I can see who's talking.

Animated maps:
I think this should definitely be an OPTION. There are some awesome animated maps and animated map-makers out there. Seeing improvements would be great.

Import:
Improve import of VTT format maps (like from dungeondraft). Also, there are two new map makers, Dungeon Alchemist and soon Chronos Builder. I haven't tried importing from DA, but I do know it has a Fantasy Grounds export option.

Speed:
This is a priority for me. My last campaign was enormous, and it took about 5 min to load the campaign in FGU ... but that's mostly my fault. I have TOO many modules and extensions and maps and shared items. I need to be more efficient, but a little more help from FGU would help too.

Content:
I'd love to see new content for Call of Cthulhu. I totally understand that there have been some unforeseen and totally unavoidable delays with some new content, and am totally content to wait. I really DO understand, but from a purely ignorant customer perspective, I'm really excited for Masks of Nyarlathotep and Horror on the Orient Express. I'd also love to see more for Alien RPG.

Suggestions:
Not for Smiteworks, but for customers, I encourage everyone to vote in the idea informer app (https://fgapp.idea.informer.com/). I know Smiteworks takes that seriously, and our voices DO help.

FGU has flaws, but it's still the best fit for me.

meadegendar

December 15th, 2021, 18:14

I have run all these systems as well and will agree with everything you posted. Only thing, and for some reason I could never find a good explanation for it, but with Foundry my biggest issue is I was unable to run a game with more than 4 people without experiencing serious lag. I would have to constantly reboot the server and had to keep my sessions within a 2.5 hrs before it just gives up on me. Had this issue both running from home system as well as using one of their clouds services (The Forge). Came to FGU in September of this year and yet have not been disappointed with the system. Sure the UI is par at best but after spending sometime learning it, I found my ways to make it work.

Fahder

December 24th, 2021, 20:40

Great stuff in these reviews and responses!

I've been running an in person 5e/homebrew game for a couple years and the only computer help I used was a virtual sound board. Recently someone donated an LCD to use as a digital table top. At first, I just loaded maps in photoshop and added grid and fog of war layers, then I would adjust the eraser size to match sight and click to delete from the fog of war layer as we went along. Not the most immersive, but it created a cool element of suspense as the maps were revealed.

Now I have a player from out of town. The first session went by alright just using facetime...but the remote players don't get a feel for the sound ambiance and effects at all.

So, to my question! I want to shift to a hybrid game, where mechanics are still pen and paper, but I have a VTT that just hosts the maps and sounds for the digital table top and the remote player (the remote player would still face time with their relative, but could also be logged into the VTT on another device to get a better map and sound experience than through the video chat).

Which of these three VTT do you guys recommend I wade into for that sort of hybrid set up?

Caveats:
-As the OP mentioned earlier, I'm one of those DMs who keeps a pretty significant cognitive load throughout the session, so ease of use (during the session. prep is no problem) on my end means a lot to me.

-The site we play at has a fair amount of jitter in their latency. I've notice bufferless streaming services can really struggle there. But if it runs with a 1 sec buffer or so it should be smooth.

Jiminimonka

December 25th, 2021, 12:48

Weissrolf

December 25th, 2021, 16:47

Because of?

Happy holidays! :o

Jiminimonka

December 25th, 2021, 16:51

Happy holidays! :o

Happy Holidays

Ecks

December 26th, 2021, 00:41

So, to my question! I want to shift to a hybrid game, where mechanics are still pen and paper, but I have a VTT that just hosts the maps and sounds for the digital table top and the remote player (the remote player would still face time with their relative, but could also be logged into the VTT on another device to get a better map and sound experience than through the video chat).

Which of these three VTT do you guys recommend I wade into for that sort of hybrid set up?

I ran a hybrid game with 1 remote player and 3 in-person players, I posted about my setup in another post here: https://fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?68777-Playnig-with-a-group-both-face-to-face-and-online&p=603546&viewfull=1#post603546

At the time, I used Roll20 at the Free tier (I hadn't tried Fantasy Grounds yet). I used Roll20 for battle maps, tokens (PC and NPC), handouts, and the remote player's character sheet - everything else was done with pen/paper at the table, physical dice, and I ran from physical copies of the 5E books (I didn't have any digital content). I used the built-in mask tools to handle fog of war on the battle maps, but later on in the campaign I did start paying to unlock Roll20's dynamic lightning features, which, unfortunately, I found to be extremely buggy at the time (a few years ago). I had also found that Roll20's performance really struggled as I added more content, but again this was over 2 years ago and it may have improved.

If I did this hybrid setup again I would use Fantasy Grounds, primarily because I already own it and I typically run the 5E adventures which I can buy adapted for Fantasy Grounds, so I don't need to do any of the work of importing the material manually. I would run the entire thing from within Fantasy Grounds (instead of using any physical books). Thinking back, this would definitely have reduced the load on the GM, flipping back and forth between books, etc. However, I'm not sure how I'd take advantage of FG's automation with in-person players. It's possible to have them roll physical dice and enter the rolls manually - but there is no way I would go through the hassle of this as GM, and I don't really see the in-person players wanting to do that either.

If you're only planning to use the VTT for maps, tokens, and fog of war you can probably get by with just the free tier of Roll20. If you're planning to have the VTT handle anything more than that (automation, adventure content, NPCs, spells, etc), then I'd recommend trying Fantasy Grounds (I have no experience with Foundry so I can't comment on that). You can always download the demo to test it out for your own setup to see if it'll work for you, and I believe there is also a 30-day refund policy.

Nick Frost

December 26th, 2021, 09:41

I want to shift to a hybrid game, where mechanics are still pen and paper, but I have a VTT that just hosts the maps and sounds for the digital table top and the remote player (the remote player would still face time with their relative, but could also be logged into the VTT on another device to get a better map and sound experience than through the video chat).

I would not use any of those three for this specific scenario.
- For the map I would use a free and easy to use alternative: Owlbear Rodeo.
- I would push the music/sound via Voicemeeter, or tabletop audio, or RPGSounds... and use a dedicated chat software (Discord, Jitsi, etc...)

TheoGeek

January 12th, 2022, 01:39

I use FGU all the time for managing "in person" sessions. I set up the adventure and DM it from one PC, and have 2-3 laptops connect as clients. We turn manual dice rolls on so the players can roll physical dice and enter the rolls. They love paper character sheets and making characters and it's pretty easy to translate those to FGU where I can keep track of everything - the automation it provides me is worth it (the combat tracker is sweet).

Sometimes we even have a friend connect from out of town.

It works very well, and I'll never go back to straight pen and paper.

strei

January 18th, 2022, 10:47

i saw another thread that begins with the user saying they tried it and:

We had connection issues. We had combat tracker glitches. We had token visibility issues. Targeting was a nightmare.

We knew there was limited automation and were perfectly happy with what was there, but it's SO much better in FantasyGrounds (especially with Diablobob's stuff).

so i wanted to address it. let's break it down:

- If there were internet connection issues, but there are none in a regular multiplayer videogame or similar activity, you just didn't configure Foundry properly. it's very easy, but some users are clueless about portforwarding and other factors and might make mistakes or not do any configuration, which should be like 2 steps, then expect things to work.
badly configured antivirus software, and a myriad of things related to user error can, indeed, cause connection issues. shouldn't be a problem for any user that's able to handle computer basics. see, the thousands of users who are really not tech savvy and use foundry. some of which ask for help with setting up and then comment on how effortless it was.

- What Combat Tracker issues? how come nobody else in the entire community has these issues? again, it's a very simple feature to work with, but people trying to hammer a nail with a screwdriver often find it an issue.

- What token visibility issues? i would put my hands in fire this was due to very unnecessary user error. as the feature is extremely robust, proven and simple. now this leads me to really question the integrity and capacity of this user. if not the intentions of the post altogether, but let's not go into that.

- targeting is literally brainless. how someone can have issues with that is beyond me, and a challenge worthy of a genius person. really hammering home the previous point's questioning.

- "i knew there was limited automation" as was said in the thread, depends on the game system. some have far better and more advanced automation than FG, see pf2e or dnd 5e when using the automation modules for the latter.
yeah. foundry is a software that has a very strong API, modular structure and community support surrounding these mods. and while the benefits of the features the modules add cannot be credited to the core app, the fundamental user experience is what matters. and for example for dnd 5e, the automation modules are there since day one. if people don't use them, and then complain no automation, they can solve their issue in 10 seconds flat by just inquiring about it in the community discord or googling.

furthermore, foundry has a free web demo anyone can try.
if that's not enough, there's also an endless amount of youtube videos, reddit posts, github and gitlab pages, several adjecent communities showing and teaching you what foundry does and does not do at a given point in time. the development is so active, last month's video might be so out of date it is now not applicable. mods get updates everyday, and new ones come out every day too.

if the above seems like a platitude or like i am unwilling to put my stuff where my mouth is, feel free to contact me, i'll prove it to you by showing it in my own foundry. we can even jump on a call and compare screens between FG and FVTT. then we can let facts speak for themselves.
you know, like it's a fact thousands of people don't have the mentioned issues for some reason. nor does one find opinions like those common place in neutral places on the web. but i digress.

post your doubts, issues opinions folks, let's have a discussion about the state of Foundry compared to FG as of time of posting.. keep it amicable, we are all here to have fun and discussion our passion for TTRPG played with the aid of a computer.
(some people turn tables into TVs and use foundry 100% offline, in person, controlling the tokens with minis and rolling physical dice that report the result inside foundry chat, so it didn't feel right to say "TTRPG played online".)

Kelrugem

January 18th, 2022, 11:20

i saw another thread that begins with the user saying they tried it and:

so i wanted to address it. let's break it down:

- If there were internet connection issues, but there are none in a regular multiplayer videogame or similar activity, you just didn't configure Foundry properly. it's very easy, but some users are clueless about portforwarding and other factors and might make mistakes or not do any configuration, which should be like 2 steps, then expect things to work.
badly configured antivirus software, and a myriad of things related to user error can, indeed, cause connection issues. shouldn't be a problem for any user that's able to handle computer basics. see, the thousands of users who are really not tech savvy and use foundry. some of which ask for help with setting up and then comment on how effortless it was.

- What Combat Tracker issues? how come nobody else in the entire community has these issues? again, it's a very simple feature to work with, but people trying to hammer a nail with a screwdriver often find it an issue.

- What token visibility issues? i would put my hands in fire this was due to very unnecessary user error. as the feature is extremely robust, proven and simple. now this leads me to really question the integrity and capacity of this user. if not the intentions of the post altogether, but let's not go into that.

- targeting is literally brainless. how someone can have issues with that is beyond me, and a challenge worthy of a genius person. really hammering home the previous point's questioning.

- "i knew there was limited automation" as was said in the thread, depends on the game system. some have far better and more advanced automation than FG, see pf2e or dnd 5e when using the automation modules for the latter.
yeah. foundry is a software that has a very strong API, modular structure and community support surrounding these mods. and while the benefits of the features the modules add cannot be credited to the core app, the fundamental user experience is what matters. and for example for dnd 5e, the automation modules are there since day one. if people don't use them, and then complain no automation, they can solve their issue in 10 seconds flat by just inquiring about it in the community discord or googling.

furthermore, foundry has a free web demo anyone can try.
if that's not enough, there's also an endless amount of youtube videos, reddit posts, github and gitlab pages, several adjecent communities showing and teaching you what foundry does and does not do at a given point in time. the development is so active, last month's video might be so out of date it is now not applicable. mods get updates everyday, and new ones come out every day too.

if the above seems like a platitude or like i am unwilling to put my stuff where my mouth is, feel free to contact me, i'll prove it to you by showing it in my own foundry. we can even jump on a call and compare screens between FG and FVTT. then we can let facts speak for themselves.
you know, like it's a fact thousands of people don't have the mentioned issues for some reason. nor does one find opinions like those common place in neutral places on the web. but i digress.

post your doubts, issues opinions folks, let's have a discussion about the state of Foundry compared to FG as of time of posting.. keep it amicable, we are all here to have fun and discussion our passion for TTRPG played with the aid of a computer.
(some people turn tables into TVs and use foundry 100% offline, in person, controlling the tokens with minis and rolling physical dice that report the result inside foundry chat, so it didn't feel right to say "TTRPG played online".)

First of all, you should have posted your answer in the thread where this is discussed, and not in a new thread in the support channel

Second: "Defending" your favourite VTT by insulting others via statements like "targeting is literally brainless. how someone can have issues with that is beyond me, and a challenge worthy of a genius person" (quote from your post) gives a bad taste; if someone struggles with the UI of a VTT, then one could also choose to help instead.

Sorry, but I do not have the feeling that your actual intention is really discussing both VTTs (and something tells me that you probably do not know FG at all while you blame others not knowing Foundry; so, following your arguments, why should you be the "right" person who is able to compare these VTTs?). Your post feels more like just insulting someone, plus a generic excuse at the end of your post ("I just have a good intention!"), and an attempt to generate visibility by posting it into another thread/channel which is read by more people

EDIT: @mods: This post should probably belong to https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?70355-18-months-on-FG-vs-Roll20-vs-Foundry :)

ColinBuckler

January 18th, 2022, 11:28

strei

January 18th, 2022, 11:42

the thread was closed, hence why not posted there.

Second: "Defending" your favourite VTT by insulting others via statements like "targeting is literally brainless. how someone can have issues with that is beyond me, and a challenge worthy of a genius person" (quote from your post) gives a bad taste; if someone struggles with the UI of a VTT, then one could also choose to help instead.
it's hard to help someone in a closed thread that stated they don't want to try to figure out how to make it work or solve any issue. bit hard. this person also didn't choose to word it in good taste by the way.

and the struggle was made to look like it's the software's fault, when it isn't. it's offensive to the entire human race, including me and you, when people word things in some ways and try to make it look like an error or limitation of them is the fault of external things or others are the same. the "brainless" remark is not meant to be an insult. it's literally describing the feature. there's nothing to using it. select targeting tool, left click token. there's 2 ways to selected that tool. there's modules to make it easier or with more features.

Sorry, but I do not have the feeling that your actual intention is really discussing both VTTs you are free to believe what you want, that's your problem. i'll let actions and facts speak regarding my intentions.

and something tells me that you probably do not know FG at all while you blame others not knowing Foundry; so, following your arguments, why should you be the "right" person who is able to compare these VTTs?)
you fail to understand, you can share your screen with FG, ill share screen with FVTT, and we can compare the same set of actions or aspects each on the respective VTT. i think this is the best way to show a FG user who never used FVTT how the matching thing works on the other side. so my experience with FG does not matter. and it would surprise you, but i need not prove myself to you. nice attempt to twist the argument though.

Your post feels more like just insulting someone, plus a generic excuse at the end of your post ("I just have a good intention!"), and an attempt to generate visibility by posting it into another thread/channel which is read by more people
i am new to the forum, if i posted in the wrong place that is my mistake. i tried to reply to the other thread and realized it was locked, to opened a new thread instead. maybe i should have done more homework before posting, but that should be an issue easy to solve. also, i would ask you stop questioning my intentions and attacking my person, and instead actually discuss the topic. i didn't have anything i could use to address the issues claimed. so i only stated my experience and facts about universal experience or the software. if you give me actual ontopic arguments, maybe we can have a civil constructive discussion like i wished we were having.

also, i feel like this needs to be addressed. i didn't come here to defend my favourite VTT. i decided to make an account and post to clear what is FUD or misleading remarks. and to help ANYONE who wants to learn about the topic, how the 2 vtts compare.

strei

January 18th, 2022, 11:49

I decided many years ago (2014) to invest in FG and have been very happy with the decision. Since then a number of additional products have entered the market offering various functionality. I own/used FGC/FGU/Foundry/Roll20/Tabletop Simulator.

Every GM/Player will have their own views of what they want/need from a VTT - I would suggest they draw that list up and then go and compare/demo the products vs their requirements.

If a better product came to the market, would I jump from FGU - if it better met my needs vs price & effort to change - absolutely.

For me, some of the choices are:

I didnt want a cloud service as thats restrictive upon the amount of data I can host.
Looking at Foundry I found to get something usable I needed to an excessive number of addins and then maintaining these seems to be a full time job.
A relatively high level of automation is an absolute must.
Not fussed about 3d maps as that is currently more work for me as a GM to create a map - after all time is money so to speak.

Others will have a different set of requirements.

There are a few things I wish FGU did that would (hopefully) be quick turn arounds - animated maps (mp4/webm/..etc) and the ability to skin dice. These alone would make the product look way more modern/advanced and graphically appealing to players.

For me - more products on the market means more choice and ultimately means more innovation.

thank you for making such a constructive post in the thread!

and i would like to eco and underline how different needs demand different solutions. and every GM and table has their own personal preferences.

- you don't need a cloud service to use foundry. self hosting is easy and works quite well.
also you can host for free with 200gb on oracle or 120gb on azure. and there are other solutions. this does involve some effort to setup, especially for non techies.

- using over 160 feature modules plus another such number of content modules, i don't agree with the "excessive" term. but, i get what you mean with maintaining module compatibility. however, i can help you curate a list that will not give you such issues. unfortunately this is something that is an issue and requires effort (curating a list). maintaining can be effortless after a good list and some right discrimination is applied.so it takes time and knowledge which i wish wasn't necessary. but it is becoming less and less as time goes on.

i hope the above 2 points can be of aid to you, even if you end up never touching foundry again, just for you to know.

Jiminimonka

January 18th, 2022, 11:55

thank you for making such a constructive post in the thread!

and i would like to eco and underline how different needs demand different solutions. and every GM and table has their own personal preferences.

- you don't need a cloud service to use foundry. self hosting is easy and works quite well.
also you can host for free with 200gb on oracle or 120gb on azure. and there are other solutions. this does involve some effort to setup, especially for non techies.

- using over 160 feature modules plus another such number of content modules, i don't agree with the "excessive" term. but, i get what you mean with maintaining module compatibility. however, i can help you curate a list that will not give you such issues. unfortunately this is something that is an issue and requires effort (curating a list). maintaining can be effortless after a good list and some right discrimination is applied.so it takes time and knowledge which i wish wasn't necessary. but it is becoming less and less as time goes on.

i hope the above 2 points can be of aid to you, even if you end up never touching foundry again, just for you to know.

People who need tech support for Foundry should be posting on Foundry forums, no?

strei

January 18th, 2022, 12:05

People who need tech support for Foundry should be posting on Foundry forums, no?

discussing how the VTTs compare as of present day, clearing things ppl might have missed (i don't think nobody is born knowing everything. what's just obvious as water is wet to me, might not be to others) and demystifying remarks of people who didn't have the best experience for countless possible reasons that could easily have avoided negatives and instead have had a much better experience i think is a good thing anywhere.

also, funny question considering FVTT has not official forums. support is done in real time.

ColinBuckler

January 18th, 2022, 12:11

Last night I ran a D&D 5E game in FGU with around 50 combatants in the Combat Tracker (including the 7 players) with multiple factions varying spells and abilities.

There is a 5E SRD ruleset I believe for Foundry available - outside of this there are no legal means of using the full 5E ruleset with items outside of the SRD with spells with automation. The encounters were pre-built along with maps and line of sight.

The game flowed smoothly - I even had a background fog effect and LOS switched with bonfire flickering effects.

Fireballs were cast, effects for Blur, Mage Armor, Invisibility were applied even, wildshape automation worked smoothly. Concentration checks made as appropriate when damage was received.

I would never as attempted this in a face-to-face game - FGU delivered as expected with very little prep work.

I dont know about other applications being able to deliver such a large intensive fight - they might.

Does FGU have its own problems - absolutely - very, very large maps with complex line of sights (dimensions of 100+ x 100+ squares with a complex tunnel system for instance) seem to cause me performance issues as it recalculates the LOS data on every move. Occasionally the database needs a clear down (about every 12 months, playing every week) where you have to export the characters and re-import them into a new campaign.

Am I happy with FGU - currently yes. Could it be better absolutely....

Jiminimonka

January 18th, 2022, 12:13

I wouldn't know. I don't use it.

This discussion thread is made by someone who actually uses there forums and Fantasy Grounds. Have you got Fantasy Grounds Unity strei?

strei

January 18th, 2022, 12:18

There is a 5E SRD ruleset I believe for Foundry available - outside of this there are no legal means of using the full 5E ruleset with items outside of the SRD with spells with automation. The encounters were pre-built along with maps and line of sight.
there are legal means yes. just doesn't come with foundry, u need to buy the content elsewhere.
you can buy a pack of spell effects for 5e and they will just work when you cast the things it affects.

the foundry experience is far from perfect too. but it gets better daily.

YAKO SOMEDAKY

January 18th, 2022, 12:50

I'm going to say it again and i'm going to say it again I like animated maps, I want more possibilities of Occlusors, Light and Vision, I want the ability of Animations and even audio and sound effects directly in the FGU, but more than that I want that in addition to 64 bits (which is what allows us to use more than 3 GB of memory) we have multi-threads so that we have more speed and agility, because it takes 30 seconds in a campaign with no new and no extensions and take 30 seconds to load as Host is a long time!
Not to mention that each player, it takes 1 minute to get effectively into the table and this 1 minute of waiting for the player is 1 minute waiting from the Host, and this is something that I consider urgent, speed and agility and that I believe would be something that could be solved by being multi-threaded and by being Unity and it be a platform for game development so I believe that we would have this possibility and with it more agility.
I believe that the advantage of Multi-Thread is the fact that after we make the link with the server (something I know that is part of the load time! Thanks for that Smite, goodbye door release!) by multiplying the multi-threaded things could be divided into smaller parts and loaded faster, in addition to the fact that you can continue the activities while others are entering your desk. At least that's my belief.

LordEntrails

January 18th, 2022, 17:12

MODERATOR RESPONSES BELOW

... shouldn't be a problem for any user that's able to handle computer basics. see, the thousands of users who are really not tech savvy and use foundry.

... again, it's a very simple feature to work with, but people trying to hammer a nail with a screwdriver often find it an issue.

... due to very unnecessary user error. as the feature is extremely robust, proven and simple. now this leads me to really question the integrity and capacity of this user. if not the intentions of the post altogether, but let's not go into that.

... targeting is literally brainless. how someone can have issues with that is beyond me, and a challenge worthy of a genius person. really hammering home the previous point's questioning.

... if people don't use them, and then complain no automation, they can solve their issue in 10 seconds flat by just inquiring about it in the community discord or googling.

... like it's a fact thousands of people don't have the mentioned issues for some reason. nor does one find opinions like those common place in neutral places on the web. but i digress.

Not useful and the attitude is not welcome here. Implying that problems with an application are the result of the user does not help anyone actually use the software. All programs have challenges with user knowledge and ability. We have it with FG; Foundry, Rll20 and every other application has similar issues. Blaming issues on the user is not helpful and instead providing links to documentation showing how to solve the issue etc. is useful (but not appropriate for this thread. FVTT support should be conducted via FVTT support/community.)

i.e. An appropriate response in this thread would be something like "All of these issues are easily solved. Instruction on how to solve each of these can be found at www.alltheanswers.fvtt".

it's hard to help someone in a closed thread that stated they don't want to try to figure out how to make it work or solve any issue. bit hard. this person also didn't choose to word it in good taste by the way.
The thread was closed for a reason. And replying with words that are not in good taste is not acceptable. Just because someone else posts in an poor manner does not mean it is acceptable for you to do so. Instead of acting like poorest member of the community, strive to act and post like the best members.

and the struggle was made to look like it's the software's fault, when it isn't. it's offensive to the entire human race, including me and you, when people word things in some ways and try to make it look like an error or limitation of them is the fault of external things or others are the same. the "brainless" remark is not meant to be an insult. it's literally describing the feature. there's nothing to using it. select targeting tool, left click token. there's 2 ways to selected that tool. there's modules to make it easier or with more features.
Not acceptable. And until you came to the forums of a application you admit you do not use and made an account on the forum you were not involved in the issue and have no reason to be offended. Again, the thread was closed for a reason, there is no need for you or anyone else to 'right the wrongs' that may have been done in that thread.

... you are free to believe what you want, that's your problem. i'll let actions and facts speak regarding my intentions.

... i am new to the forum, if i posted in the wrong place that is my mistake. i tried to reply to the other thread and realized it was locked, to opened a new thread instead. maybe i should have done more homework before posting, but that should be an issue easy to solve. also, i would ask you stop questioning my intentions and attacking my person, and instead actually discuss the topic. i didn't have anything i could use to address the issues claimed. so i only stated my experience and facts about universal experience or the software. ...

also, i feel like this needs to be addressed. i didn't come here to defend my favourite VTT. i decided to make an account and post to clear what is FUD or misleading remarks. and to help ANYONE who wants to learn about the topic, how the 2 vtts compare.

Your actions speak quite clearly. You read a post on a forum that you do not belong to. Took time out of your day to create an account on said forums, and have been spending your time to right the wrongs you see on that forum because you see those wrongs as harming your VTT of choice (which this forum is not about). Trust me, very few communities welcome unsolicited outsiders coming in to "help them". I will repeat one last time, that thread was closed for a reason. It is not appropriate for you to come here to right the wrongs of that thread.

thank you for making such a constructive post in the thread!
...

i hope the above 2 points can be of aid to you, even if you end up never touching foundry again, just for you to know.
This type of post is what we like to see here. If you can take the direction above and continue to add value with this type of post, you are welcome to continue posting here.

also, funny question considering FVTT has not official forums. support is done in real time.

FG also has real-time support, via Discord. But FG and the FG community pre-dates the existence of Discord and other tools that make real-time support feasible and when forums were by far the preferred method of support. The forums here are still the preferred method for some users, and remain very useful to the community. Some may consider the absence of a FVTT forums as a negative for that community. We do not consider the existence of an FG forum as a negative for our community.

... the foundry experience is far from perfect too. but it gets better daily.
That's good to hear. So does the FG experience for those that are actually using FG.

HywelPhillips

January 18th, 2022, 18:04

ddavison

January 18th, 2022, 20:00

strei

January 18th, 2022, 20:42

Just to comment on the ease of port forwarding...

It is often easy to do in just a few minutes and there is a lot of documentation available for most routers with a quick Google search. Despite this, it was probably our #1 support issue for around a decade. It didn't lessen as technology advanced and we added more users. In fact, it got worse as some carriers actively tried to block and obscure features like port forwarding within their router configs. Many thousands of people had very little issues setting up port forwarding, many thousands more needed help, and another whole set of people saw it as an impossible roadblock. For some users, it was not possible to set up port forwarding even with help from someone who was tech savvy. The biggest group of people who were unable to use this were people who did not control their router. If you had roommates, rented an apartment with shared Internet, lived in a dorm, or wanted to run from work (shame on you), then you may be prevented from accessing or modifying your port forward settings. This was a feature that we solved with Fantasy Grounds Unity. Our cloud service now facilitates the connections and provides NAT punch-through without any need for router configuration, VPNs, or monthly subscriptions to a separate hosting service.

Many of the other comparisons come down to personal preference and experience. Competition is good for advancement, and we will continue to advance the UI, performance, and feature set of Fantasy Grounds based on what we come up with on our own and what people see and like from competitors.

UPNP is pretty ubiquitous nowadays and with that box checked things should just work without any setup for the vast majority. but of course not all. those will need manual portforwarding. which will be easy for most of those, and a nightmare for a fraction, due to how finnicky it can be and how bad some control panels are etc
then, like you said, there's the people who cannot do it at all, and for those, it is most definitively a problem. if they are proficient enough at following a tutorial they can use a hosting service for free and get around the issue, but i wouldn't call it easy for any user, especially the less tech savvy ones. i hope this improves in the future for foundry to become more accessible and grant better user experiences to these fringe cases.

TheoGeek

January 18th, 2022, 20:54

MY old ISP implemented CGNAT which basically makes port forwarding impossible. They did that without any real notice too...ugh.

ddavison

January 18th, 2022, 21:00

We supported UPNP for many, many years. It may have helped reduce the # of support issues, but it definitely did not solve it for our community. Aside from the technical issues, there were many people that simply did not want to mess with it at all. It was hard to convince them that it is easy in most cases. We now have different outlier tech issues, but we are definitely happy that port forwarding is no longer one of them.

MrDDT

January 18th, 2022, 21:02

strei

January 18th, 2022, 22:04

I hesitate to post something a bit ad-hominem, but... case in point. I refer you to the section in my reviews of the platforms as the original poster of the thread regarding my experience of a certain sub-section of the Foundry community.

Cheers, Hywel

attacks on the messenger not the message was most of what was posted previously, but only my replies to those get moderation attention, as expected lol

in any case, let me address your initial post then.

That direction is lots of hackers making cool extensions/modules, with a core development process that concerns itself with supporting that first and foremost. The number of system-tweak modules on their system outweighs the number of adventures to run, which I think is illustrative of those priorities. It's a code-twiddler's paradise, not least because it uses the ubiquitous Javascript.
calling random developers hackers is something taken straight out of any political propaganda or smear campaign. maybe you are trying to use the term more literally and disregard the connotations and meaning it carries in present day culture, but it sets the tone for your perspective immediately. a guise of unbiased opinion delivering an agenda.
the design philosophy of fostering a thriving mod community is indeed a fundamental part of foundry, but this does not mean the number 1 priority is not the average consumer, which it is. and there's almost 2 years for development proving that. just having great API and a habitat for modders does not need to be mutually exclusive with aiming for the average user.

unlike roll20 and FG, there is no centralized marketplace in foundry. not understanding this isn't your fault however. and navigating the web space to find the products is certainly harder and more effort, a lesser experience, than having everything in 1 marketplace. but the number of adventure or compendium type modules, let's call it content modules, far outnumbers the feature modules by a scale of 10 to 1 or, most likely, above. the average foundry user has gotten used to just expecting foundry content straight from their favourite content creators. which are people living only from making content for VTTs in general, or even some, just foundry in specific.
it is also possible to port any content sold on roll20 to foundry. this is mostly effortless, not perfect but ok.
so to reiterate, while there is definitively a fault on the foundry ecosystem to be found in this aspect, the argument about content to feature module ratio and what it illustrates is fallacious and shows your lack of understanding of matters. FOSS by nature of being open and free, can be put anywhere, like the official module list. paid content needs to be gated. which hides it from the free official module list and not all artists wanted to use the premium partner program and chose to monetize their products directly, getting a bigger cut of the profits.

also, skyrim was sold 13 times, as in, different versions, up to a decade after it came out, unlike almost every videogame, because it is a "code-twiddler's paradise" despite it being a very faulty product. other similar products have long since barely moved units. Minecraft's success is also related to this. roblox is the biggest grossing platform of the day, because how easy it made making experiences on it to anyone wanting to.

1) Take a look at that screenshot of a game in progress. Does it remind you of anything? It reminds me of Fantasy Grounds. Combat tracker, chat window with results, the system rolling and applying damage, adding conditions to foes. Thing is, that's all done by third-party extensions. The GM for that game is running a WHOLE SCREENFUL - 40+ extension to get it to do what FG does out of the box. They are stuck on a much older version of Foundry because in all the newer ones, one or other of these extensions breaks or interacts in unpredictable ways with other extensions.

They have achieved the "crumbling edifice" state of software development where no-one dares change anything because of unexpected snowballing effects making the whole system stop working. Given that the program has only been available for 12 months, that's quite an achievement. I want the automation, but not at the expense of being stuck with a very out of date system that I cant change until the campaign has finished for fear of the whole thing collapsing! It's really heavyweight on the GM in terms of maintenance, and that's even running it on The Forge which offers to do a lot of this legwork for you. If you want to extract all the potential functionality from Foundry, you'll be doing a lot of maintenance.
they are stuck because they want to. there are often alternatives to 1 module, and without mention of what this feature was that was so important that help someone back, i can't speak much to it.
i can also recount the experience of many people who live on foundry's latest version, get regular updates and don't have extensions break almost ever. they don't update to major system releases on release day however. a healthy wait of 1 week, or a month for those more conservative, is usually the sane option. this while on dnd 5e, and having all features FGU has in terms of automation.

The Forge does nothing to help GMs with maintenance except make it easy to find outdate versions of anything. the same can be a achieve if a user backup their data before doing changes that might end in disaster. some would say this is basic computer practices, but i understand a lot of users do not do it. and some might be limited in their ability of doing it.

at the end of the day, foundry gives the user all the power in their experience. this is a blessing and a curse. because users who are more limited will have a more limited experience. and users will damage their experience without necessity as well, like in any software really. so while there is a fair distance to perfection in this aspect, it is also not the hell some love to portray. most user experiences are found in the middle, not matrix heaven and not installing 1000 modules, modules that clearly should not be mixed, updating on release day of a major revision with session 1h away and then panicking when 1 module breaks entirely.

Oh and as I predicted in my review last May, their system is already littered with abandoned modules produced in a rush of enthusiasm by someone with time on their hands, then left unsupported. Its a community of enthusiastic code-heads, not a professional company supporting these extensions as products.
so, on the previous point you praise The Forge for doing legwork for users, which is keeping outdated versions of modules. but now you fault the platform, foundry, for keeping outdated modules that were since abandoned. ok. and yes, the professional company supports the product, and integrates these extensions into the product, at their pace. if it is a 3rd party extension it is not given official support. that said, given how the most popular extensions have more support from enthusiastic code heads than most competitions official products if the user can sense how to discriminate they might have a better experience than on some other platforms...

2) No D&D official content outside the SRD. While some companies like Pinnacle and Free League are doing great things releasing commercial products for Foundry users, the elephant in the room remains the fact that for the most popular system of all, you can't get the content officially. If you want even the PHB - let alone stuff like Xanathar's or Tasha's - you are out of luck.

Instead, they have a frankly bizarre workaround which involves using an extension to scrape all the content from D&D Beyond. So first you'll have to have all that content on D&D Beyond, then you'll have to run some hacker scripts to import everything to Foundry, and if it changes I guess you have to do it again? This requires you to support a lone hacker on Patreon, and it makes me uncomfortable for several reasons. First and most important I am a content creator by day, and I think it is morally dubious at best. MAYBE the D&D Beyond terms and conditions allow it but I'm pretty sure it isn't in the spirit. I'd MUCH rather pay to own the content unambiguously. I want to pay, because I want to support a stable ecosystem which supports my platform of choice, my game of choice and funds maintenance and support in the long-term.

What're you going to do if WOTC pulls the plug on D&D Beyond? This all has a whiff of piracy to me regardless of how they are skirting the actual legal T&C.

what are you going to do if WotC pulls the plug on any existing platform? deals from 2 decades ago aren't going to hold on forever. while in all seriousness 5e will likely last a long time, WotC may make their own VTT at any point now and pull their content from competition entirely.

even the FG staff state competition is good. WotC, and Hasbro, are not agile corporations. any platform that is less than 15 years old is not getting their support. and this is their fault. Paizo, you know, from pathfinder, arguable the number 2 in recognition and being popular, have EVERYTHING in terms of core books in foundry.
you want to support a stable ecosystem? then don't be a them whims of corporations out of touch with the present that operate like a dictator. instead, help foster a healthy market where you can sell your content to any consumer on any platform easily and effectively. without also being gauged in a super high percentage of your sales price to be able to sell in a given storefront rather than a sensible %.

strei

January 18th, 2022, 22:04

3) You want that? That's an extension. Or write some code.

I'm mildly critical of FG for leaving some stuff which I feel should be core functionality to be handled by extensions. But on Foundry this philosophy is all-pervasive. Even popping out your character sheet to a separate window (core Roll20 functionality and hardly rocket science for something browser-based) requires an extension. The Foundry Discord is reams upon reams upon reams of discussing what extensions to install followed by how to get them all working in the same version. This is a recipe for swift development but a disaster for anyone running a year-long campaign. I've been running my regular group in FG through some absolute convulsions like FGU going through and out of beta and the release of lighting and every week the PHB has been reliably there for my players and the commercial adventure module still works and wow now the maps have lighting! In my limited experience of Foundry everything breaks all the time.

again, there's something true here, but also something misguided. the phb will always work in foundry too, it's not gonna break because of a module or an update to foundry. there are modules that came out day 1 in foundry, almost 2 years ago, and still work without EVER breaking, not once, see, popout module as an example.
so yeah, depending on the user's decisions, it can be more or less work to have the modules all good and dandy when you decide to hit the update button. i would also like to inform people there is no imp with a gun to your head forcing you to hit the update button at any moment in time. you can do it daily, hourly, monthly, yearly...

being on the cutting edge in any industry comes with issues. in terms of modules, hiding things from consumers for 6 months to make sure they are not gonna cause the lowest common denominator any issues, rather than push them out when they are ready to work for most users, is a choice many prefer. up to each person to have their preference, but if they prefer otherwise, they can just delay the updates to cater for this. not for a year really but ye, not on release day or week.

all that said, i would like to stop things for a moment to state this:

foundry experience isn't perfect. and it does require fiddling with modules to have automation going for most systems. modules can have conflicts sometimes, or take a couple weeks to work on foundry's newest version, or with another module you like. you can have all dnd content but it is not there officially. and relies on 3rd party people for some features most of us here love. if this detracts from your experience with a VTT it most likely isn't the VTT for you. considering the prices involved with FGU dnd 5e, you can afford to try out foundry on a whim and it's a drop in the ocean for you. who knows, maybe for your needs, wants, tastes and willingness to give it a shot it works out, maybe it doesn't, if you don't have the time to waste on trying, don't even consider it. if you always seek the best possible experience it's worth to give it a go.

4) The UI is more familiar at a glance, but it still requires arcane juggling the moment you dive deeper. Double right-click to target is not superior to CTRL-click to target. And because Foundry doesn't speak RPG, accessing stuff is often a bit obscured by the totally generic nature of the object model. For example, you cannot see what damage weapons do at a glance on your character sheet. You have to open up the details pop-up, which is a tiny icon and highly non-obvious. I would actually say that we have more plaintive calls for help accessing basic player stuff to the GM and the one technohacker member of the group for Foundry than we ever have for FG. So this much-vaunted UI is actually no easier in practice than FG's much-derided UI. Especially not once you've got 40 extensions installed.
targeting with a keybind has now been integrated into foundry.

the UI and UX is better. it is more generic in names for things, but expecting a competing platform to use the same names for things or have features work in the same way is not a fair expactation to have. using the word "vision" instead of "sight" should make it technohacker non rpg land.
you can see the damage weapons do at a glance on many game systems, and in dnd 5e specifically if you use the most popular character sheets rather than the basic system one. (yeah "there's a module for that", i know. but tidy sheet has been on foundry since it came out and never once broken too, so, you know..)

also, are you telling me, your group playing for years on FG or FGU has less doubts and questions than the people playing on new platform? nooo..... it can't be. people having doubts on new stuff?
sarcasm aside, i do wonder just how much people try to learn the new platform rather than expect it to be their old platform in a new name with extra features. for an analogy, it is common to find users that try to drive the car faster by trying to whip it harder or pulling reigns rather than using a sterring wheel or saying shifters and gears are arcane and break all the time, and then yelling the car is much worse than the horse for transportation, as the horse has beein great for centuries.

5) I'm sorry to say it, but the fraction of tribal asshats in the Foundry online supporter community seems to be higher than FG or Roll20. There ARE plenty of nice and supportive people out there, but there's also something of a rabid-follower-one-true-way-information-must-be-free-sheeple thing going on too. This may just be my mistaken impression but there it is, that's my experience. I found it rather off-putting.
i have the similar experience, but in mirrored fashion. the amount of aid i've provided to FGU users and the amount of times i get FGU asshats that can't make a logical argument and just have a holier than thou, traditionalist atitude is worse than the roll20 toxic % or astral, owlbear rodeo, talespire communities.

WHAT IT IS NOT GOOD FOR

Maintenance reliability the moment you have extensions, which you will because achieving the awesome requires them
5E content, and purchased adventure content generally
Picking it up and running a game by Saturday (our regular GM spends HOURS AND HOURS doing prep. It's nothing like buying Icespire Peak and away you go)
The learning curve is significantly steeper than Roll20 and player-side automation is much worse especially for 5E
Hard to recommend as your first VTT as a result unless you are comfortable with GitHub and basic developer sysadmin chores

Foundry is a hacker toolbox, not a one-stop-shop VTT

maintance is a potential concern. even for most savvy users. i have spent like 10h in 1 entire year on maintnance. a very different experience than your GM it seems. even tho i used 3 times more feature modules.

5e content can be like what you say for any user who doesn't gain information that would prevent it to be so. unfortunately WotC is not a good company to do business with, and cause this issue. anyone that wants to just buy x adventure module and have it just work in foundry, or use the latest y rule book can, easily too. but they won't be finding that inside foundry void of anything else.

learning curve is higher than roll20 on account of you doing more than in roll 20. for players of dnd 5e, with all automation, it can be lower than FGU assuming the GM knew how to make it so, which is the fault. requiring this user knowledge and it not being obviously apparent and easily found is a lacking. especially compared to FGU.

i have literally helped hundreds of ppl with their 1st vtt experience due to doing a lot of Westmarch and One shot type sessions, and the feedback i got was overwhelmingly positive. it is a much better 1st vtt experience than roll20 fundamentally. but to do the same automation as FG in 5e, from the GM perspective, it will be a much steeper learning curve and harder. for players, it is not the same however. it can be easier than FGU due to the latter's outdated UI/UX imho.

Jiminimonka

January 18th, 2022, 22:07

attacks on the messenger not the message was most of what was posted previously, but only my replies to those get moderation attention, as expected lol

in any case, let me address your initial post then.

calling random developers hackers is something taken straight out of any political propaganda or smear campaign. maybe you are trying to use the term more literally and disregard the connotations and meaning it carries in present day culture, but it sets the tone for your perspective immediately. a guise of unbiased opinion delivering an agenda.
the design philosophy of fostering a thriving mod community is indeed a fundamental part of foundry, but this does not mean the number 1 priority is not the average consumer, which it is. and there's almost 2 years for development proving that. just having great API and a habitat for modders does not need to be mutually exclusive with aiming for the average user.

unlike roll20 and FG, there is no centralized marketplace in foundry. not understanding this isn't your fault however. and navigating the web space to find the products is certainly harder and more effort, a lesser experience, than having everything in 1 marketplace. but the number of adventure or compendium type modules, let's call it content modules, far outnumbers the feature modules by a scale of 10 to 1 or, most likely, above. the average foundry user has gotten used to just expecting foundry content straight from their favourite content creators. which are people living only from making content for VTTs in general, or even some, just foundry in specific.
it is also possible to port any content sold on roll20 to foundry. this is mostly effortless, not perfect but ok.
so to reiterate, while there is definitively a fault on the foundry ecosystem to be found in this aspect, the argument about content to feature module ratio and what it illustrates is fallacious and shows your lack of understanding of matters. FOSS by nature of being open and free, can be put anywhere, like the official module list. paid content needs to be gated. which hides it from the free official module list and not all artists wanted to use the premium partner program and chose to monetize their products directly, getting a bigger cut of the profits.

also, skyrim was sold 13 times, as in, different versions, up to a decade after it came out, unlike almost every videogame, because it is a "code-twiddler's paradise" despite it being a very faulty product. other similar products have long since barely moved units. Minecraft's success is also related to this. roblox is the biggest grossing platform of the day, because how easy it made making experiences on it to anyone wanting to.

they are stuck because they want to. there are often alternatives to 1 module, and without mention of what this feature was that was so important that help someone back, i can't speak much to it.
i can also recount the experience of many people who live on foundry's latest version, get regular updates and don't have extensions break almost ever. they don't update to major system releases on release day however. a healthy wait of 1 week, or a month for those more conservative, is usually the sane option. this while on dnd 5e, and having all features FGU has in terms of automation.

The Forge does nothing to help GMs with maintenance except make it easy to find outdate versions of anything. the same can be a achieve if a user backup their data before doing changes that might end in disaster. some would say this is basic computer practices, but i understand a lot of users do not do it. and some might be limited in their ability of doing it.

at the end of the day, foundry gives the user all the power in their experience. this is a blessing and a curse. because users who are more limited will have a more limited experience. and users will damage their experience without necessity as well, like in any software really. so while there is a fair distance to perfection in this aspect, it is also not the hell some love to portray. most user experiences are found in the middle, not matrix heaven and not installing 1000 modules, modules that clearly should not be mixed, updating on release day of a major revision with session 1h away and then panicking when 1 module breaks entirely.

so, on the previous point you praise The Forge for doing legwork for users, which is keeping outdated versions of modules. but now you fault the platform, foundry, for keeping outdated modules that were since abandoned. ok. and yes, the professional company supports the product, and integrates these extensions into the product, at their pace. if it is a 3rd party extension it is not given official support. that said, given how the most popular extensions have more support from enthusiastic code heads than most competitions official products if the user can sense how to discriminate they might have a better experience than on some other platforms...

what are you going to do if WotC pulls the plug on any existing platform? deals from 2 decades ago aren't going to hold on forever. while in all seriousness 5e will likely last a long time, WotC may make their own VTT at any point now and pull their content from competition entirely.

even the FG staff state competition is good. WotC, and Hasbro, are not agile corporations. any platform that is less than 15 years old is not getting their support. and this is their fault. Paizo, you know, from pathfinder, arguable the number 2 in recognition and being popular, have EVERYTHING in terms of core books in foundry.
you want to support a stable ecosystem? then don't be a them whims of corporations out of touch with the present that operate like a dictator. instead, help foster a healthy market where you can sell your content to any consumer on any platform easily and effectively. without also being gauged in a super high percentage of your sales price to be able to sell in a given storefront rather than a sensible %.

Sorry, what exactly is your point?

strei

January 18th, 2022, 22:14

MODERATOR RESPONSES BELOW
Not acceptable. And until you came to the forums of a application you admit you do not use and made an account on the forum you were not involved in the issue and have no reason to be offended. Again, the thread was closed for a reason, there is no need for you or anyone else to 'right the wrongs' that may have been done in that thread.
That's good to hear. So does the FG experience for those that are actually using FG.

i am gonna just ignore most of what you said, to not waste more time and instead dedicate that to ontopic since how i spend my time worries you so much. ironic that you don't mind the other's offtopic responses, but you did mind my reply to those. but expected from the warrior defending their castle.
also, there's no harm that can be done to "my vtt of choice" from anything related to FG. and even if it could, last i checked i don't own any stake in FVTT nor do i have any sort of loyalty to it. i can't even see a reason to care about 1 vtt over another. i care about my experience or others' in general, consumer experience.

i have used FGU in the past, i no longer want to do so. good to know that aparently you seem to imply this isn't a public forum where anyone is welcome to talk in, but an exclusive forum for people who used FG/U in the last x amount of time. is it week? month? cus i've certainly used it before, i just consider it a lesser experience now and don't want to use it again unless it can outpace the experience i get elsewhere.

also, comparing how the FG experience improves with time to how Foundry user experience improves with time is ridiculous. it's not even within the same 2 leagues of magnitude. see the post of the user asking for multi thread. or any of the ever pervasive posts asking for a lot of features in any place FG is discussed. i will confirm the FGU experience improves with time of course. considerably. but let us not compare paces or act like they are comparable.

Jiminimonka

January 18th, 2022, 22:19

???

I still don't understand you point. Do you have one?

HywelPhillips

January 18th, 2022, 22:29

again, there's something true here, but also something misguided. the phb will always work in foundry too, it's not gonna break because of a module or an update to foundry. there are modules that came out day 1 in foundry, almost 2 years ago, and still work without EVER breaking, not once, see, popout module as an example.

The PHB is not available on Foundry. (Unless it's appeared there very recently). It can be imported via a convoluted process of data scraping from D&D Beyond, but it is not actually available to purchase and install in a straightforward way. Likewise, player facing modules like Tasha's and Xanathar's guide.

Other than that, it seems you agree with at least the core of many of my observations but conclude that they are not a major issue for you and that FOR YOU Foundry is the superior solution.

Which is perfectly fine. I'm 100% sure you're right.

It is not currently the superior solution for me, as I outlined in my original posts.

Foundry's particular drawbacks make it less suitable for my purposes than Fantasy Grounds, and its plus points are less appealing to me than the plus points of Fantasy Grounds.

I set out my experience of using all the platforms for my use case and explained my reasoning; I stand by those reasons as I stand by my observations in my original posts on Roll20, Foundry, FG and Shard Tabletop. We shall have to agree to disagree on our experience of the respective FG/Foundry communities.

I play on Foundry and Roll20 as well as FG, but I prefer to run my games on FG for all the reasons I stated in my posts.

Best regards,

Hywel Phillips

Zacchaeus

January 18th, 2022, 22:30

Let’s not derail the excellent point of the original post here by getting involved in the minutiae of one particular VTT.

Let’s just agree that there are adherents to each VTT on the market and convincing someone of the merits or demerits of any one is a pointless argument. The original post seeks to balance the good and bad in each of the three contenders mentioned whilst neither extolling one or denigrating the other.

Let’s also not descend into personal attacks.

strei

January 18th, 2022, 22:48

The PHB is not available on Foundry. (Unless it's appeared there very recently). It can be imported via a convoluted process of data scraping from D&D Beyond, but it is not actually available to purchase and install in a straightforward way. Likewise, player facing modules like Tasha's and Xanathar's guide.

Other than that, it seems you mostly agree with me for the most part then say that it doesn't matter and that FOR YOU Foundry is the superior solution.

Which is perfectly fine.

It is not currently the superior solution for me, as I outlined in my original posts.

Foundry's particular drawbacks make it less suitable for my purposes than Fantasy Grounds, and its plus points are less appealing to me than the plus points of Fantasy Grounds.

I set out my experience of using all the platforms for my use case and explained my reasoning; I stand by those reasons as I stand by my observations in my original posts on Roll20, Foundry, FG and Shard Tabletop. We shall have to agree to disagree on our experience of the respective FG/Foundry communities.

I play on Foundry and Roll20 as well as FG, but I prefer to run game on FG for all the reasons I stated in my posts.

Best regards,

Hywel Phillips
i think i worded it in the not most clear manner previously. the SRD is in, anything else is not, officially. but whatever it is, content wise, that is in, doesn't break with updates - which was what i was trying to address.

"mostly agree" when so many corrections and conflicting remarks were made is a big stretch. but there is certainly a chunk of stuff we can agree, namely, factual things.

we definitively agree it seems like it's not the best platform for you, are least, i think most certainly not for your GM. i am glad you have a platform that works good for you to run your games in!

also, it seems i need to state it since the last 2 posts here as i'm writing this, 1 yours the other from zacchaeus,are going somewhere with the conversation i never intended or tried to take it: i do not care what anyone's vtt of choice is, here or anywhere. unless it's someone i play with, it means very little to me. the point of my participation is clearing misinformation, warning interested parties in the pitfalls of foundry and relating how it compares to FGU from a very proficient user of FoundryVTT.

also zacc, for the initial post to work as it is supposed to be intended, it needs to be accurate in its claims. some of them do involve minutiae.
i may make my own thread with a 1st post like the one from here. but consider how if i misrepresent the FGU experience under the guise of it having been my experience, people here would most certainly call me out on it, and contribute corrections or clearings to the thread.
actually, i think that's what i should have done from the very begining, just make my own thread telling the tales of my adventures on FVTT, FGU, r20, astral, talespire and TTS as player and GM.

Jiminimonka

January 18th, 2022, 22:51

"Trolls in the Dungeon!

Just thought you ought to know....

faints..."

LordEntrails

January 18th, 2022, 23:12

i am gonna just ignore most of what you said, to not waste more time and instead dedicate that to ontopic since how i spend my time worries you so much. ironic that you don't mind the other's offtopic responses, but you did mind my reply to those. but expected from the warrior defending their castle.
If you have a problem with moderation, take it up with the moderator privately or directly with support (https://fantasygroundsunity.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portals). Arguing with moderation publicly is never acceptable in this community or any other I know of.

Users that have been an active member of this community and have positively contributed to the community are given a little more leeway than those who don't. If you feel a post is inappropriate, then report it via the "Report Post" button and one of the moderators will review it.

i have used FGU in the past, i no longer want to do so. good to know that aparently you seem to imply this isn't a public forum where anyone is welcome to talk in, but an exclusive forum for people who used FG/U in the last x amount of time. is it week? month? cus i've certainly used it before, i just consider it a lesser experience now and don't want to use it again unless it can outpace the experience i get elsewhere.
If you have used FGU in the past it is not under the user name you are currently using. If you wish to be given credence for such experience, then it would be best not to use an account you created just to argue the benefits of Foundry. Such behavior can be seen as creating a throw-away account for the purpose of trolling. And will not be looked upon kindly.

You hold a common misconception, because something is publicly accessible does not mean it is a public resource. This forum is not a public resource, it is privately owned by SmiteWorks. They pay for it and maintain it and they get to decide what it is used for. And the purpose they provide this for is as a resource for users of Fantasy Grounds, i.e. the FG Community. The FG Community welcomes respectful discussions that benefits the Community.

If you wish to contribute respectfully to this forum in a way that benefits the FG Community, please do so. If you don't wish to do so, please refrain from posting here.

SieferSeesSomething

January 19th, 2022, 09:28

If the UI and Performance improves then I would be so happy. The UI especially is what is causing some players to want to move to Foundry, despite me already buying books for FG. I'm not even talking fancy animated maps or dice skins, I mean I have to constantly tell them how to do stuff. One player didn't know how to edit a text field because it wasn't obvious what buttons to press to make it editable and there was no flashing text caret to indicate that it had focus. Those kind of things.

But I know you guys had to get to Unity, and the new lighting, image, and layer control tools demonstrate a more modern approach to UX so I know you guys are going in the right direction and will continue to improve all the old, clunky stuff now that you're no longer so tethered to FG Classic. For example, the new sidebar looks great, it takes up less screen real estate. And the themes that are coming out, like the winter theme from the other year, look beautiful, too.

Overall, I'm excited for all the changes. While I don't like the pressure from my players to change VTTs, I do think the competition is healthy. It makes me excited that FG has a reason to push forward and improve itself. Foundry seems to be making faster progress, but FG has a respected history, expansive extension and module catalog, and a strong base feature set. It's very hare and tortoise. The only one that scares me is the DnD Beyond VTT that was supposedly being considered. I haven't heard much, but that could be a game changer if that becomes a thing or WotC make one.

Mephisto

January 19th, 2022, 09:54

I think a fresh set of icons more in line of what modern UIs are using ("3 dot" menus, trash cans for deletion, pencils for edit) would already help a lot. :)

Ryuson

January 19th, 2022, 15:09

I believe I saw the map/draw tools have icons like that (I watched a class at the FG Academy last night on it). I’m liking the latest look especially the menu at on the right.

Locotomo

January 19th, 2022, 16:56

The input field of the chat window should be more obvious, my players never know where to enter text…

MrDDT

January 19th, 2022, 16:59

The input field of the chat window should be more obvious, my players never know where to enter text…

If you need to contact customer support or if there is something that you would like to see in Fantasy Grounds that isn't currently part of the software or if there is something you think would improve a ruleset then add your idea here https://fgapp.idea.informer.com/

Personally I've had 100s of people playing in my games (I run a PickUp style gaming group for 5E) and no one has never said this. However, if you feel it should be added to FGU, there is a link above where you can make it a suggestion and it might be added. More votes = more power.

HywelPhillips

January 19th, 2022, 17:02

I agree that one of the major hurdles in FG is simply recognising which fields are editable. A blinking text caret should be implemented everywhere, for every field, in every ruleset and every theme.

Within the limitations of rulesets and themes, visually differentiating editable fields in another way would be very helpful too. Slightly blacker text than non-editable fields, or slightly different shade of background for these fields, for example. Anything that would provide an at-a-glance difference between places which can be clicked and the text edited vs. places where it cannot.

Cheers, Hywel

MrDDT

January 19th, 2022, 17:05

Locotomo

January 19th, 2022, 18:55

I actually like the default themes. It doesńt matter if Savage Worlds, D&D5e, PF2nd or Starfinder.
I dońt want to try other themes. I made a remark that I like a better text window. Maybe it will be implemented or maybe not.
I like both VTT´s FGU and Foundry. PF2nd is a blast with Foundry and for me Starfinder is only playable with FGU.

Regards, Loco

strei

January 20th, 2022, 06:04

If you have used FGU in the past it is not under the user name you are currently using. If you wish to be given credence for such experience, then it would be best not to use an account you created just to argue the benefits of Foundry. Such behavior can be seen as creating a throw-away account for the purpose of trolling. And will not be looked upon kindly.

You hold a common misconception, because something is publicly accessible does not mean it is a public resource. This forum is not a public resource, it is privately owned by SmiteWorks. They pay for it and maintain it and they get to decide what it is used for. And the purpose they provide this for is as a resource for users of Fantasy Grounds, i.e. the FG Community. The FG Community welcomes respectful discussions that benefits the Community.

If you wish to contribute respectfully to this forum in a way that benefits the FG Community, please do so. If you don't wish to do so, please refrain from posting here.

Your assumption about me and that misconception is not correct. while i understand that it is indeed common, and someone in moderation is bound to lean on assumptions, it doesn't stop you having made a mistake in this case. Much like a Bar is a Public space which doesn't mean it is property of random joe that walks in, i am very aware how IT works, for a very long time now. My point was not to debate moderation publicly either, which again, is a flawed interpretation from you. The point i was making is that you have no qualms with attacking, and preventing a response from someone being dogpiled on while they are down, being indifferent to those dragging the situation down to that. In name of propaganda. Rather than have an open civil discussion about a topic, and enforcing that instead of a campaign against someone's credibility. My credence would have changed responses and be counter productive.

speaking of, my market research venture in this forum has been very informative, and the purposes of that have been achieved. the people I work with will be moving forward with our previous insights into the TTRPG digital space and we all wish you the best for your TTRPG related time.
I appreciate the professionalism of the FG dev that spoke on topic, in the conversation i was a part of, a very different attitude than some other examples.
It was precisely the "Flag bearer" voices that were of interest to us, as they are the best encapsulation of the hardcore audience's views, under a certain light. It has become clear, in the past events, that some users are best remaining on some platforms since they serve as the prime showcase of why to use something else.
The ever pervasive and present flood of FGU users begging for features in every public conversation about FGU are very telling of another big portion of the userbase and status quo. It's a bit annoying to try and have conversations and always assist these users jumping at the chance to beg for mostly things from a past age of the modern digital industry.

to posters like loco among others, thank you for your positive participation.

to the Jiminimonkas out there, you can rest easy, you have vanquished the foe! you may cross the bridges ahead in peace, my work here is finished.
in less than 20 years i will be in a room much like the one i am now, among laughter and pity regarding some words we will see then.

to all, have a nice day, nicer TTRPG playing and don't forget to love each other, even those that you despise.

Jiminimonka

January 20th, 2022, 07:45

Nope. I'm still not seeing your point.

Doswelk

January 20th, 2022, 10:58

At the end of the day Strei you have made a total of 11 posts and all are only in this thread and all are "advertising" Foundry.

Whilst this thread is about comparing VTTs therefore some leeway can granted to promoting Foundry, in the last 24 hours you have been reported twice (not by people posting in this thread) as being a Foundry Troll.

It seems you have departed and I am not sure you will be missed, but while open discussion is encouraged, I suspect anyone repeating your statements on the Foundry Discord (I assume it has one, I have never looked) would get a more hostile response I suspect. If you have really departed then you will not read this, but if you are still out there, enjoy Foundry and let us enjoy FGU, and we can all agree to disagree about the best VTT.

Valyar

January 20th, 2022, 12:57

His writing definitely improved in the last post. He discovered the shift button and the rules to put capital letter at the start of new sentence, following them from time to time. Few other things to figure out though.

seycyrus

January 20th, 2022, 23:33

...The point i was making is that you have no qualms with attacking, and preventing a response from someone being dogpiled on while they are down, being indifferent to those dragging ...

For the sake of posterity and those who might go through this thread in the future, the above statement is blatantly and demonstrably false.

The moderators removed a response from me to strei. A response that they apparently felt was too snarky, unproductive, and perhaps uncivil.

After reading his latest (at the time) harangue I merely pointed out that contrary to his obvious desire that his discourse convey a sense of astute observation, it showcased an inept understanding of many rather fundamental principles.

Be that as it may, moderators stepped in and removed my offensive post.

In his defense, strei was probably ignorant of this fact when he committed the aforementioned lines of written dialogue to the virtual ledger. But his ignorance on this fact does not mitigate the fact that his statement was/is incorrect, just as his obtuse understanding of the other points he attempted to raise allay the general falsehood of his statements.

MostTornBrain

January 22nd, 2022, 06:27

On the plus side of this surreal collection of posts coming in this past week by someone claiming to not be defending Foundry, but who then would write lots of stuff in defense of Foundry, I thankfully became aware of the existence of this thread (due to it showing up as recent posts in the forums).

I have been using Roll20 for the past two years with a group that games about once a week and we wanted to "kick the tires" on some other options for VTT play (FGU and Foundry being two). Without a large investment of time, it's not easy to make a comparison of 3 different VTT systems (nor is practical for most people to get their group to agree to switch for a bit to try a new system), so being able to point my friends at the comparisons at the start of this thread will be very helpful. Thank you for taking the time to write those detailed comparisons!

I am my gaming group's "volunteer" to try to get familiar with FGU, so I recently took advantage of the Humble Bundle Pathfinder deal for a bunch of content on FG (Pathfinder 1st edition being our game of choice). For the past month or so I've been trying to get myself educated on creating and running a Pathfinder campaign using FGU. Coming from Roll20, FGU was initially extremely overwhelming - to the point that I almost gave up. I initially told my friends that FGU was looking way more complicated than I expected and it would be a while before I would be able to host a one-shot campaign for the group to try a sample session with FGU. The biggest hurdle for me initially when trying to create a campaign was understanding the organizational model FGU used with gaming content - the focal point being the "story" section to organize and link everything together.

It's all very obvious now in hindsight, but when FGU first launches, to a first time user, the help system (or breadcrumbs leading to the help system) is somewhat lacking. If I view the "Basic Guides" that is presented as one of the main options for links to help within FGU, the fact that is is listed in alphabetical order is not very helpful. There isn't an obvious place to start reading in the help system on how to go about creating a campaign (other than, click on the "create campaign" button). The giant "Quick Start Guide" link from the main splash screen takes me to a web page that again links to the "Basic Guides" wiki, as well as suggesting visiting forums or discord. But nothing along the lines of, "if you are player looking to join a game, click here for a guide" and "if you are trying to create a campaign or want to know how to GM a game, click here for a tutorial". It was more like, "Here's an encyclopedia that describes everything, starting with the A section."

I was eventually able to figure stuff out (I am still here a month later, afterall, and I liked what I gleaned enough to buy a FGU ultimate license :-) ), but as someone who likes learning by reading (I'm not a great learner from watching videos), it took a while to find the material I needed to get going and most of the information I did eventually find offering tutorials were not produced by Smiteworks. But it's possible I just wasn't looking in the right places in the Wiki or my google searching skills were off.

That said, now having used FGU over the course of the past month to port over a physical Paizo one-shot module I own (as a bit of way to get familiar with creating all sorts of content in a FGU campaign), I like FGU quite a bit and really really want to convince my group to at least give it a try.

So far I've only hosted some test sessions with a second FGU instance on my own computer to better understand what a player sees vs. the GM, but the whole combat tracker thing with automatically calculating hits and taking into account effects and such (even better with some extra extensions from the Forge), combat is night and day different from Roll20. I spent a lot of time writing Roll20 combat macros for my character, but what FGU offers is sooo much better, being able to handle dynamic effects or conditions on the fly in a fairly straightforward way via the UI.

I plan host a game with my friends running my ported-into-FGU one shot module, likely within a month or two (when we have an off night where everyone can't make our regular night). Once I do this, I'll try to post some feedback on how it goes along with our impressions vs. our regular use of Roll20.

Cheers,
Brian

HywelPhillips

January 22nd, 2022, 10:02

I would have found a step-by-step written tutorial for the GM (and players) very useful too, Brian.

I might see if I can put one together.

Cheers, Hywel

Zacchaeus

January 22nd, 2022, 10:42

Jiminimonka

January 22nd, 2022, 11:06

Kelrugem

January 22nd, 2022, 12:08

See video five here https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?55797-How-do-I-in-Unity&p=492112#post492112

Also clicking on the query icon at the top right of any window will take you to the wiki article about that window,

I think the review was especially about that there is no written form of a quick starter guide :) I am also more the type of reading person. Some reference guide just showing the pure basics to run a first game would be nice, like a check-list which one can look at (1. Import images, 2. ...) :) One could avoid the automation stuff in that guide, and reference that in the end with a note that this is then for more experienced users, but still mentioning its use. That may also be useful for new users who want to quickly know what FG offers :)

Bonus points if such a tutorial would be actually in-built, like a pop-up in FG which only pops-up at the first time (or if one forces it; many games offer a reset tutorial option) :D (So, like an extended thing like the already existing pop-up, but maybe also already a pop-up in the launcher itself)

LordEntrails

January 22nd, 2022, 13:21

Great feedback Brian..

Admittedly I haven't looked at them, but doesn't the wiki have two Getting Started guides? It's totally possible those are not sufficient, but if someone could take a look as I won't have a chance for sometime.

MostTornBrain

January 22nd, 2022, 14:22

See video five here https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?55797-How-do-I-in-Unity&p=492112#post492112

Also clicking on the query icon at the top right of any window will take you to the wiki article about that window,

Actually, it was some of your videos and forum posts that helped me along the way and helped me get to the “aha” moment where the FGU model started to click in my head.

But again, these are all individual “how do I do individual task X”, but not a conceptual higher level view of _why_ I need to even need to know X. While I was stumbling along in my free time on nights after work, trying to build a decent mental map of how FG works conceptually, it was very tempting to just throw up my hands and give up and conclude FG wasn’t for me, which I now feel would have been a disservice to what FG offers.

I’m a programmer in real life (been my day job going on 35 years now) and the analogy for me would be learning a new programming language. A lot of people jump start with writing a “Hello World” application in the target new language - something that uses the language semantics to produce a message on the screen that says “Hello World”. By doing that simple task, one gets a quick idea of how to use the tools enough to at least get started and work through any issues with a small enough example where you don’t get overwhelmed or lost in too many details that are needed initially. Then, after you have a very simple program working, one can more easily expand and then have more specific ideas of how to do other things within the language, or where to look to learn more.

I’m thinking a tutorial on making a very simple campaign - like one map item, one encounter, an npc, a parcel, a story item, etc. and also a character to go along with it, then how to test it all locally with a second FGU instance (it’s not obvious how to run a second FGU instance on a Mac for example, but it is doable). I realize this is further complicated by all the different supported rulesets, but even one representation with any rule system would go a long way I think.

Again, maybe this already exists and I just somehow missed it. But the items I was able to find within FGU itself (like the ? help icons for individual UI features) were helpful if I already had an idea of what I was trying to accomplish, but they didn’t help at all with my initial lack of understanding with FGU concepts.

Cheers,
Brian

Zacchaeus

January 22nd, 2022, 14:55

More getting started type videos here https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?42440-Tutorial-Video-Series although the interface is very different now and those were made for Classic rather than Unity but the principles are the same.

I'm more video oriented than written but I get it that some people aren't. I think Smiteworks have engaged someone to do a series of introductory videos so those are probably in the pipeline. As for a written guide I think that's probably more difficult to do. There is the starter campaign for 5e but nothing as far as I know for other rulesets - but the principles would be the same. The starter campaign pretty much does what you are asking for as far as building a campaign is concerned.

HywelPhillips

January 22nd, 2022, 14:57

Ulric

January 22nd, 2022, 15:05

MostTornBrain

January 22nd, 2022, 15:13

Five hours later, here is my first attempt at a written Quick Start Tutorial. This is one for how the parts of FGU fit together to prepare an adventure to run.

If useful I will make another for GM's for character generation and for running a session.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xvvqdjvcS1oO5GbLzk7rxob5d8ZSQrec86ATBKaM1ag/edit?usp=sharing

Cheers, Hywel

Oh wow! That’s exactly what I had in mind! I haven’t looked at it detail but that’s the type of intro document I was sorely missing a month ago.

Thanks so much for taking the time to put that together! It will definitely help others new to FGU in the future.

Cheers,
Brian

WishX

January 22nd, 2022, 21:03

Five hours later, here is my first attempt at a written Quick Start Tutorial. This is one for how the parts of FGU fit together to prepare an adventure to run.
If useful I will make another for GM's for character generation and for running a session.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xvvqdjvcS1oO5GbLzk7rxob5d8ZSQrec86ATBKaM1ag/edit?usp=sharing
Cheers, Hywel

That is excellent work! I'd very much like to see a GM's version for char gen as well.
I'll see if we might be able to incorporate them into the wiki somehow.

Thanks!

HywelPhillips

January 22nd, 2022, 21:38

And here's one for generating a party of Pre-Gen characters to run your first game. It's from the GM's perspective (as is the previous one). Part three will be how to actually run a game (for the GM learning) - combat tracker etc.

Happy to figure out a way to incorporate them into the Wiki once I've slept on them and re-read them a couple of times to catch the most obvious mistakes.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZqviC9XaGdYNZzTMNzwRRIM4d36yU-ltXuDwK85sIlY/edit?usp=sharing

Cheers, Hywel

Nylanfs

January 24th, 2022, 16:58

Also maybe find somebody that is interested in FG, but hasn't started and use them as the proof readers so if they have questions it can be incorporated into the doc. Alternately using the rubber duck method would help, but outside feedback would probably be better.

WishX

January 24th, 2022, 17:06

And here's one for generating a party of Pre-Gen characters to run your first game. It's from the GM's perspective (as is the previous one). Part three will be how to actually run a game (for the GM learning) - combat tracker etc.
Happy to figure out a way to incorporate them into the Wiki once I've slept on them and re-read them a couple of times to catch the most obvious mistakes.l

Excellent work! Looking forward to Part 3!

HywelPhillips

January 24th, 2022, 17:46

WishX

January 24th, 2022, 19:06

Part 3: A dry run of the game
https://docs.google.com/document/d/12FN6Sy-x_-d5Z_wZm2HP_ssI_-_28TaiTGFHpchDW0I/edit?usp=sharing
Or I can hand these off to someone for inclusion in the wiki and maintenance (he says, hopefully...)

That would be me. I'll be reading through everything today and, unless there are glaring inconsistencies or outright incorrect information, will likely format it and get it added to the wiki in the near future.
What are the odds I could get you to do one as a newb who's never touched FGU before? :D

Thanks so much for all your work! We here at Smiteworks and the community at large appreciate it!

HywelPhillips

January 24th, 2022, 19:17

Fantastic. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help.

For the newb, do you mean one from a newbie player's point of view playing their first game? Or how to install and run FGU? Or both?

Cheers, Hywel

WishX

January 24th, 2022, 19:25

For the newb, do you mean one from a newbie player's point of view playing their first game? Or how to install and run FGU? Or both?

Either! I'm happy to have a look at whatever you feel like putting together. If you like, you can also contact me directly on our Discord server so we don't monopolize this thread: wishx#9236
Thanks!

Weissrolf

January 26th, 2022, 21:30

I keep using FGU for my original Pathfinder 2 group and use Foundry for a second "beginners" group.

- The barrier to entry for players joining in on the fun is a *lot* smaller in Foundry. If everything else fails you can join a Foundry server via smartphone/tablet, even when it is not fully supported. No need to create an account, no need to download and install the software and get it going through your router/provider as player (though still as GM).

- The Pathfinder 2 system incorporated a lot of functionality that originally was only available through modules (extensions). But for many quality of life things I *personally* still want 100+ modules. That being said, I also use 24 active extensions in FGU and would use more if they were not broken since the switch to Unity or supported 5E only.

- With a large group of developers (+project management) working on the PF2 system, there are quick turnaround times for any new product published by Pathfinder publisher Paizo. Furthermore the system is growing quite quickly and with some tremendously great features that easily rival the FG implementation. They had less of a head-start compared to FGU, but they make that up with the sheer enthusiasm and motivation of "I want to play that myself" and maybe getting a bit of community fame. They do not get licensed material from Paizo, which is an advantage and disadvantage.

For end-users this has some ramifications: End-users are only customers of Foundry, but not customers of the PF2E system. As such the PF2E team owes end-users "nothing", not even politeness and some *few* will let you know. That being said, in practice I don't see much of a difference to being a paying SW Pathfinder customer in that regard and the larger team allows end-users to pick those team members for any dealings that they get along with best.

Using Foundry for Pathfinder 2 sure is less expensive than using Fantasy Grounds. Something like the Core Rulebook costs as much in FG as buying a hardcover print ($60 currently), while with Foundry I am happy using my PDF version ($10). Adventures also cost less, because again I only have to pay the PDF from Paizo and then can import that into Foundry via the free PdfToFoundry module. The latter is exclusive to the Pathfinder 2E system, though, so other systems like 5E don't have that advantage.

- Some automation that is available for D&D 5E in Foundry is not available for PF2E, though. For one, because some of the largest modules (Midi QoL) are not available outside of 5E. For another, because the PF2E system developers strictly adhere to Foundry's basic philosophy that only "owners" of characters can apply any changes to them.

The latter means that a player is only able to roll attack against a NPC, but the player is not able to apply damage to the NPC, as the GM is owner of the NPC. The idea is that at the table only the owner of a paper sheet makes changes to said sheet. So the player does a damage roll, but the GM then presses a button to apply the damage (applying whatever modifications necessary on the way). And a player healing another player again only gets to roll the healing result, but the target player has to press a button to apply the rolled healing.

Since the PF2 system on Foundry does not offer resistance automation yet, this approach even is kind of necessary (so the GM/player can apply resistances/weaknesses manually). But once this system is automated I quite strongly disagree with the approach to not solve VTT related problems by VTT related means. One example of this "philosophy" failing is D20 bards' "Inspire Courage" that applies bonuses to their allies. In PF2 the bard sometimes has to reapply that every single round, which means that every single player of a group has to reapply that to their character every single round. This is a VTT produced problem, because you need to tell the computer all modifiers for proper calculation (telling you hit or miss). This is different from the table and as such should be solved by VTT/computer means.

That being said, there are modules that break the philosophy and allow players to apply their results to others. I gave our bard's player a macro that combined with a module applies Inspire Courage to the whole group, so only the bard has to push a button. He also has another button to prolong the duration via "Lingering Composition" roll and then automatically apply that longer duration to the whole group. But, this is fighting against the system/philosophy of Foundry via Javascript "sockets" instead of expanding the system. So it may easily break with future updates.

- Foundry is marketed as "developer-friendly" platform, not as player-friendly! Players are only ever mentioned as being able to connect to "you" via browser and for free, written in third person as some kind of inevitable attachment to developer customers. And for being "developer-friendly" it sure could use more thorough API documentation. The current form is more of a quick reference than a full fledged manual and the assumption seems to be that knowing your way around object oriented programming will lead developers to the correct answers themselves.

Some developers seem to prefer studying the Foundry client source-code instead of relying on the API (docs).

- "Create a module" is something too often read on the Foundry Discord. One reason very likely being that the regulars there all seem to be developers in one another capacity. The advantage of that is that users are dealing with many capable individuals on the Foundry Discord, who know more than to click some buttons. When I created a module for easier token elevation changes it literally got thrown code snippets at me to make it happen. I still had to learn some Javascript, coding tools and Foundry API in about a week, but I was able to find someone holding my hand throughout the process (Git was the worst part of it).

Could I have done the same in Fantasy Grounds? Maybe. Surely not with the ongoing support of ever-online developers easily accessible. And then I would have to learn Lua, which mostly seems only useful for games related stuff, while Javascript is more universally useful to learn and much more modern than the Lua 5.1 engine used in FGU.

And one thing needs to be underlined: Modules can extend/change/improve Foundry to such an extend that there even was a module that fundamentally changed/improved the whole lighting system of Foundry, which then lead to the next Foundry version incorporating much of its design in cooperation with the module's author. Such fundamentally creative solutions are not possible in FGU where end-users have to rely on a rather understaffed Smiteworks to make things happen (or not). When a new major versions breaks module compatibility, though, then only those modules get updated along with it which still have someone to maintain them on a voluntary/self exploitative basis.

MostTornBrain

January 26th, 2022, 23:31

Part 3: A dry run of the game

https://docs.google.com/document/d/12FN6Sy-x_-d5Z_wZm2HP_ssI_-_28TaiTGFHpchDW0I/edit?usp=sharing

If you have feedback, let me know. Or I can hand these off to someone for inclusion in the wiki and maintenance (he says, hopefully...)

Cheers, Hywel

You did a fantastic job with these tutorials!

One minor cut-and-paste thing with tutorial 3. One of the leading sentences says "This tutorial will take you through generating a party of four pre-generated player characters ready to run a one-shot adventure." which I believe is accindetally left over from the intro to tutorial 2. When I first read it, I thought I opened the wrong tutorial. :-)

Also, nice tip for the Mac launching a second instance of FGU. I had done a more wasteful method of creating a second copy of the program and named it something different so I could just double-click on the icon, but that is a bit of a waste of disk space. I like your method better and despite using the Mac terminal on a nearly daily basis, I had no idea that I could launch applications that way.

Cheers,
Brian

HywelPhillips

January 26th, 2022, 23:39

Fixed, thank you. We’re in the process of adding them to the official wiki :)

Hywel

celestian

January 27th, 2022, 00:17

I keep using FGU for my original Pathfinder 2 group and use Foundry for a second "beginners" group.

Detailed information. Very insightful. Thanks for taking the time to write it up.

Hagedreper

February 23rd, 2022, 19:36

This has to be the most biased and condescending language I've seen in a good/bad comparison of products.

SilentRuin

February 23rd, 2022, 20:00

Why I chose Fantasy Grounds and why I think people don't always like it... (copied from another post because I'm lazy)

I think people don't like Fantasy Grounds because of the "bling" factor. Other apps have more flash and simplicity with basic simple things.

However, FGU is the only app I use to run my campaigns. I like it because I can be ultimately lazy in how I run the game. I can actually spend time crafting the experience rather than constantly managing every little roll with all that can effect those rolls. I like the fact the LOS/Lighting is completely flexible (albeit new and still under development) and I can design/add/change things on the fly as I need them on the map during actual game play. I like my players can play for free with no costs - as host I've bought the ultimate license and all the books. I ESPECIALLY like that anything annoys me in the app I can override by writing my own extensions (note: EXTENSIONS = RISK) to make it do what I want to do in my games. Nothing has this kind of flexibility or power.

In the end, what I've crafted for myself makes running the actual games simple where I can be lazy. But to get to that state - mastering the flexibility and power? That can be a chore. And have some complexity with it. Granted, once the issues are solved and implemented, I could be lazier than any other DM in any other app. But to get to that point required a learning curve and effort. Granted, I don't do DATA and pretty much bought the FGU modules for PHB, MM, and DMG and supplemental data from DMsG to make my life even lazier with extensions. Though I have also written a huge amount of data myself - to run my own SW5e variant campaigns - so I have that flexibility to do it if I want to go through that pain and effort. But that is a learning curve even if you don't do any of it yourself and get free/paid for modules/extensions to use in your campaigns.

So in a nutshell, people don't like FGU because of the learning curve and overhead in mastering it.

But I would use nothing else. I like being the master of my universes and not having to do much during game play. Even if it costs me an inordinate amount of time to get to where I wanted to be in crafting/running the campaign. Now I can craft a campaign in no time. But yeah....

Was not easy to get to that point. And if you don't want that level of power and control - stick to the simple apps. In the end, the game is what you and your players make of it. These "apps" are just tools and can only provide as good an experience as the people that are running them.

Jiminimonka

February 23rd, 2022, 20:04

Weissrolf

February 23rd, 2022, 22:24

Detailed information. Very insightful. Thanks for taking the time to write it up.
Well, I just got a bad rep from a forum regular, so opinions on that seem to differ. ;)

Jiminimonka

February 23rd, 2022, 22:26

Well, I just got a bad rep from a forum regular, so opinions on that seem to differ. ;)

Yeah, that was me, and it was a mistake. Sorry Weissrolf.

LordEntrails

February 23rd, 2022, 22:33

Well, I just got a bad rep from a forum regular, so opinions on that seem to differ. ;)

Yeah, that was me, and it was a mistake. Sorry Weissrolf.
I just Rep'd Weissrolf to offset that for you.

Jiminimonka

February 23rd, 2022, 22:34

Thanks. Lord Entrails.

Weissrolf

March 4th, 2022, 13:37

I think people don't like Fantasy Grounds because of the "bling" factor. Other apps have more flash and simplicity with basic simple things.
Both of which are important, because "flash" is what you look at for hours while sitting alone in front of a screen and "simplicity" lowers the bar to get things rolling.

However, FGU is the only app I use to run my campaigns. I like it because I can be ultimately lazy in how I run the game.
This is the strongest point in favor of FGU, at least when you throw money at it to buy ready-made content.

I can actually spend time crafting the experience rather than constantly managing every little roll with all that can effect those rolls.
This is somewhat debatable. Not all automation is equal in any of these VTTs, but mostly depending on which system you play. And even with all its automation I often find having to handhold my players to accomplish mechanical tasks in FGU, because of the missing "simplicity" and the mechanics often taking a front-seat.

I like the fact the LOS/Lighting is completely flexible (albeit new and still under development) and I can design/add/change things on the fly as I need them on the map during actual game play.
Which at least Foundry offers, too, no idea about Roll20. And since Foundry's lighting and walls are more powerful one could argue that it offer even more flexibility. Foundry especially offers light cones and copy & paste of light sources. It does not offer changing multiple lights at once, though, which FGU does. Theoretically you could emulate copy & paste via layer duplication in FGU, but merging layers doesn't seem to be offered (and UNDO of light layers fails, while undo of wall layers works).

You cannot do this kind of lighting in FGU:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/947533646858944523/948943171344273479/SPOILER_966f5943-8a2b-4ca9-943a-343cd37412f2.gif

I like my players can play for free with no costs - as host I've bought the ultimate license and all the books.
Same for Foundry, one-time purchase for the GM, no costs for the players. Not even the need to create an account or install software. This is the lowest possible hurdle for players.

I ESPECIALLY like that anything annoys me in the app I can override by writing my own extensions (note: EXTENSIONS = RISK) to make it do what I want to do in my games. Nothing has this kind of flexibility or power.
Again, same for Foundry. And since it uses Javascript and offers direct connection to other developers in real-time it is even easier to start writing your own extensions. I published an extension for Foundry (Token Elevator) in short time, because it was easier and more motivating to get there compared to FGU's Lua 5.1.

Granted, I don't do DATA and pretty much bought the FGU modules for PHB, MM, and DMG and supplemental data from DMsG to make my life even lazier with extensions.
And this is where systems matter. Can you even buy any kind of digital image/PDF maps for original 5E adventures outside of FGU or Roll20? This seems more a limitation of the DnD license than a limitation of each VTT system, though.

With PF2 in Foundry it is as easy as importing the adventure PDF file via PDF Importer module (only paying for the Paizo PDF). Both FGU and the PDF importer suffer from the walls not always been drawn properly. This is most problematic when wall lines are put exactly on the outer edge of map walls, so all players get to see is blackness instead of the wall texture, often also not revealing doors properly. And for some reason these pre-made maps always use sight-blocking walls at the outer edges of maps, instead of using see-through walls that allow players to see the map graphics around caves/ships/extra-dimensional pockets that add to the mood of a map.

With Foundry Starfinder GMs have to export the map images from the PDFs manually and then draw their own walls and lights. Theoretically only one person in the world would have to do that and then could share their JSON export file, so anyone with the same PDF based map can use the same walls and lights (regardless of resolution). Practically there is no place where these are shared even though a Discord thread was started lately and would be minimal work do export and upload them.

Encounters outside the Alien Archives need to be imported via Statblock Importer module (works well) or manually entered. But FGU offers the additional option to throw money at the problem and get ready-made maps and encounters from their shop. I also expect FGU's implementation to have hit vs. AC automation, which the Foundry implementation of SF does not (yet) offer.

So in a nutshell, people don't like FGU because of the learning curve and overhead in mastering it.
On top of the necessity to successfully create an account and install the software. The software also is more restricting to use (no multi-window option for multiple screens), harder to configure (obscure chat commands to change graphic settings) and quickly disabling problematic extensions or reloading the session because of performance problems takes much longer.

Was not easy to get to that point. And if you don't want that level of power and control - stick to the simple apps. In the end, the game is what you and your players make of it. These "apps" are just tools and can only provide as good an experience as the people that are running them.
What kind of power are you missing from Foundry then? It's much more extensible via modules than FGU is via extensions and even systems can be modified by users, too (not so in FGU for anything bought via shop). So one could argue that it is even more powerful for a uses who like to take that kind of control.

SilentRuin

March 4th, 2022, 17:25

As I don't use Foundry or Roll20 - but investigated them both before I went with Fantasy Grounds - I'd have to state that I only have a feel of them from videos I've watched of games using them.

So if you have the ability to have LOS/lighting, token visibility, real time map editing during game, coding to make a wide range of data (modules) or change the core ruleset behavior (or make a ruleset) with extensions and ruleset coding, plus the bling factor (which means nothing to me as I just want the best tool for making my life simple running the game as a DM - I don't care about the look/feel of the UI as long as it does the job) and the ability give all this to those that play in your game for free (you still have to pay a pretty penny as host)...

Then I don't see why they don't advertise this more in the other apps. For sure they did not show me that when I looked to the extent I wanted (or even as I look now at games broadcast using these apps - maybe I'm just not looking in the right places).

But right now - I have my players only see things on their clients that are visible LOS in the map (overrode CT [Combat Tracker in raw FGU] to not show them anything of a different faction and/or of a different combat group). I can treat the control of PC/NPCs for my players (clients) as the same as the host would have where they fully control the NPC and can use the CT to trigger their combat features just like in host CT (my biggest beef with 5E ruleset is NPC sheets are so different form PCs FYI). I can drop loot out of the PC/NPC when they are dead without doing anything and players can pick it up without me as DM doing anything if I want to allow it (plus they get marked in map and CT with token showing they are dead or dying). I can implement many things in 5E that FGU does not support simply, like generic action conflicting die rolls, application of range rules, etc. I can make any polymorph type of transformation (wild shape, polymorph, animal shapes, etc.) a simple thing that requires no effort on my or my players to make it happen or change back - following the existing 5E rules for what was done or not (homebrew). I can preset up as session where all the encounters I expect my players to run into (or ones that I wish to be permanent) as combat groups pre placed on the map but separately controlled for visibility in CT (part of that earlier thing I mentioned where I like to disassociate the map visibility from what is visible in CT I mentioned earlier). I can drop persistent containers (parcels) on the map that the players can interact with - or not interact with without unlocking.

I can setup a session where I, as DM, literally have to do nothing as the players are all controlling all the PCs and NPCs (I have one or more players running the opposing NPCs) on the map. I just concentrate on the flow of presentation of the game experience. No tracking of rolls - no having to run NPCs myself - just run the game. Or the odd NPC when its required :)

Gist is - none of what I just mentioned is in FGU 5E raw. I made those things because I wanted them.

If you are telling me foundry and roll20 has that power to do these things? Great. Glad to hear it.

I am, now, an expert in this one. So here I'll stay :) My previous post is just why I like FGU and why I think others like the more simple world of the other apps. If you say they are equally rich in complexity that I can modify to my desires - I'll believe you - as I am by no means an expert in those.

Springroll

March 4th, 2022, 18:32

I posted earlier in this thread that Foundry is the least GM friendly of the three VTT's mentioned and I stand by that statement. I've tried so many times to get into Foundry because there's quite a vocal community that raises Foundry as the best VTT there is, and for me it's just to fiddly, to many moving parts, jumping through hoops just to make a grid work for you or change from the selection tool to a measuring tool. I'm sure that if you are used to the program all that becomes second nature but for me it's just not intuitive. I'd rather use Roll20 than Foundry and I only use Roll20 when I feel that the version available on Fantasy Grounds is lacking or if it's a niche game and it would be impossible to find players here.

But at the end of the day we are spoilt for choice and that is a good thing.

Weissrolf

March 4th, 2022, 19:17

Foundry is marketed as "developer-friendly" platform, not as player-friendly! Players are only ever mentioned as being able to connect to "you" via browser and for free, written in third person as some kind of inevitable attachment to developer customers.
Guilty as charged.

That being said, "change from the selection tool to a measuring tool" seems like an odd example, because it is easily possible to switch via both always available buttons and ctrl+drag combination (for distance, not area templates). There are no modifier keys for easily placing area/spell templates (instead of using buttons), though, so that would need a module/extension to make possible.

Weissrolf

March 4th, 2022, 20:45

Foundry is marketed as "developer-friendly" platform, not as player-friendly! Players are only ever mentioned as being able to connect to "you" via browser and for free, written in third person as some kind of inevitable attachment to developer customers.
Guilty as charged.

That being said, "change from the selection tool to a measuring tool" seems like an odd example, because it is easily possible to switch via always available buttons and ctrl+drag combination (for distance, not area templates). There are no modifier keys for easily placing area/spell templates (instead of using buttons), though, so that would need a module/extension to make possible.

YAKO SOMEDAKY

March 5th, 2022, 13:03

My conception of the 3 platforms:
Roll20 if you are lazy, leave things to the last minute and don't want to pay to have something, go firm and strong with Roll20.
Fantasy Grounds was a pioneer but is losing ground, not for lack of quality, but for "beautification" and immediacy that the vast majority of people want.
Foundry is new and agile, it's a way to discover new programmers who work for free, have their "stolen" for the benefit of the community.

But I am patient and I know that the Master (FG) was always calm and fulfilled all our expectations, while many Students (Other Platforms) always fall...

Valyar

March 5th, 2022, 18:48

But I am patient and I know that the Master (FG) was always calm and fulfilled all our expectations, while many Students (Other Platforms) always fall...

I don’t think it will play this way with Foundry. But it is good to have finally some competition, as competition moves products forward. Unfortunately the speed Unity moves is not good enough. We will see, I am optimistic for now.

Marquis_de_Taigeis

March 5th, 2022, 20:18

Cant we all just get along and agree that just using multi user voice call and imagination is the most powerfull platform

Weissrolf

March 5th, 2022, 23:47

Hardly, the table is the most powerful platform, because it allows multiple people to talk at the same time.

Jiminimonka

March 6th, 2022, 10:20

Hardly, the table is the most powerful platform, because it allows multiple people to talk at the same time.

Agreed!

I know....

Weissrolf

March 6th, 2022, 11:51

:p

That's really my main beef with VTTs. Only 1 person can talk and everyone is disciplined to keep the voicechat free for the GM to talk. So interaction is down to a minimum and players waiting for another one's turn to finish can't even whisper with each other. Instead players browse the web, watch videos or do other stuff while waiting to do anything useful. This is why I am a proponent of "flash" to keep players' eyes on the VTT scene.

Valyar

March 6th, 2022, 12:32

HywelPhillips

March 6th, 2022, 12:33

I agree that the main drawback of VTT play is not the VTT's fault - it's the "one person at a time" nature of voice & video chat. I've been trying to encourage people to use the VTT chat window for the in-character asides to keep them amused, but Twitter is right there...

I also agree that it's one of the reasons to provide immersive visuals via the VTT - if the map is showing relevant stuff, it helps keep player's attention on the game. Like making sure that the stuff depicted on the map can be used for clever ideas and manipulation of the environment (I jump on this stack of boxes and throw the torch to set fire to the barrels of oil, then swing on the rope across to the other side of the room). In person I went theatre of mind most of the time, but via VTT I definitely prefer really detailed maps for this reason. Ditto it helps to have LOS, lighting, etc..

What other techniques have people found useful to stop players' attention wandering?

Cheers, Hywel

Egheal

March 6th, 2022, 13:03

Cant we all just get along and agree that just using multi user voice call and imagination is the most powerfull platform
No, no, no. Quicker, easier, more seductive. Like the Dark Side. Patiently learning the way of FGU you must.

Weissrolf

March 6th, 2022, 13:26

What other techniques have people found useful to stop players' attention wandering?
Make sure that sight blocking wall lines are within wall textures and not at the edge, else players only get to see blackness (often also missing windows and doors). And keep all walls see-through that don't hide other rooms, especially around the edges of maps and in caves and extradimensional pockets. Keep as much of the map graphics visible as possible (including crates not higher than PCs).

Outside (wall on the edge = black wall of nothing) vs. inside (can see atmospheric art outside):
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/713259405667205193/949626189050429520/unknown.png https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/713259405667205193/949626189276930068/unknown.png

Walls see-through, but still blocking sight around edges:
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/713259405667205193/949627745908965386/unknown.png https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/713259405667205193/949627746336800828/unknown.png https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/713259405667205193/949627746601033748/unknown.png

Marquis_de_Taigeis

March 6th, 2022, 19:11

No, no, no. Quicker, easier, more seductive. Like the Dark Side. Patiently learning the way of FGU you must.

oh ive already learnt and enjoy using FG, i was just throwing in sarcasm at how ridiculous this thread and similar threads get

similarly

March 7th, 2022, 10:03

My biggest concern with foundry is still content. Apparently, there are extensions that allow you to import from D&D Beyond and even Fantasy Grounds (of dubious legality at best, and I've heard DDB is considering blocking this because WotC is uncomfortable with it), but I've heard that these extensions are tied to patreon subscription, which means I'd STILL be paying monthly fees above and beyond the cost of the software.

Quite frankly, I prefer to get my content by legitimate and legal means, and if I'm going to pay, I'd rather pay up front than pay a subscription, and would rather pay smiteworks than pay into someone's patreon.

Weissrolf

March 7th, 2022, 10:32

similarly

March 8th, 2022, 00:58

That concern is very system specific, mostly only concerning DnD. And it's more a problem of DnD's license than a problem of VTTs. Even without VTTs I prefer digital content to be available at a one-time fee and being usable for our private sessions in whatever form we like. Having to pay a subscription is the next step, but then I absolutely expect the content to be usable for private sessions in any form we like (including VTT usage).

For Pathfinder 2 we can automatically import PDF content, of which copying is explicitly allowed by Paizo. For other systems it needs to be done manually, like my Starfinder example, where I exported the map image from PDF, loaded it into Foundry and then build walls and lights on top of it (which then can be shared with others without the image file). For systems like Starfinder this means more work for GMs, though, as the VTT ready content is not available for buying and sharing of finished scenes within the community seems rather scarce.

There are systems like Warhammer or The Dark Eye where original publishers are offering Foundry content themselves.

This is the big plus of Fantasy Grounds (and I supposed Roll20), that you can buy content readymade to start playing right away. Less of a problem for Pathfinder 2 specifically, but more of a problem for all other systems.

It's content-specific only so far as Paizo is concerned. FGU has content from a lot of systems. I've bought D&D, Alien and Call of Cthulhu. Foundry has modules with system rules, which, from what I understand, is fine as long as it doesn't contain any non-OGL content, such as spells, equipment, words, etc. Foundry's official position is to publicly offer ONLY these modules, but discussions of Foundry I've read on forums, reddit etc, I see a lot of wink-wink-nudge-nudge attitude towards copyrighted material, and I'm not comfortable with that. A lot of these game companies are, in fact, very small companies with limited budgets, and I think they deserve every penny I can pay for their products.