Foundry VTT Announces Official D&D 5e Support

[mdrichey]

This seems like the best place to start a thread on what "the competition" is up to. If that is not the case, then feel free to move or delete. Foundry VTT has announced official 5e support: https://foundryvtt.com/article/dungeons-dragons-arrives/. I for one am surprised at this, as I assumed WoTC would not want to grant any more VTT licenses while they are trying to develop their own VTT product.

[Jiminimonka]

This seems like the best place to start a thread on what "the competition" is up to. If that is not the case, then feel free to move or delete. Foundry VTT announced official 5e support today: https://foundryvtt.com/packages/dnd5e. I for one am surprised at this, as I assumed WoTC would not want to grant any more VTT licenses while they are trying to develop their own VTT product.

If WotC can make money on Foundry they will. Their VTT, if it ever appears, is probably 5+ years away.

[ddavison]

It is more competition, but it is also a good sign that they intend to continue working with third parties into the future. I doubt they would bring on a new partner if they planned to stop working with third party devs once their VTT launches.

[ddavison]

It is more competition, but it is also a good sign that they intend to continue working with third parties into the future. I doubt they would bring on a new partner if they planned to stop working with third party devs once their VTT launches.

[HywelPhillips]

My thoughts were the same as Doug's, relief because unless they are planning to acquire Foundry and use it to make an exclusive VTT, it sounds like WOTC meant it when they said they thought a range of VTTs supporting D&D was a good thing.

[Lo Zeno]

It is more competition, but it is also a good sign that they intend to continue working with third parties into the future. I doubt they would bring on a new partner if they planned to stop working with third party devs once their VTT launches.

This was my thought too as soon as I saw the announcement.

[Nyarly Dude]

Interesting. I'd wondered whether WOTC had some fundamental issue with FoundryVTT's business model, didn't think they had enough volume to bother with, or whether they just couldn't agree on a revenue share, etc. FoundryVTT already partners with Paizo, and Chaosium has made noises about supporting official FoundryVTT implementations as well, anyway, so such arrangements clearly weren't anathema over there.

I've been figuring that WOTC's VTT effort, whenever it comes out, is likely to be more focused on simplicity (well, as far as D&D 5E can be called simple) plus $-marketplace (e.g. asset sales w/ revenue share) and presentation with a lot less emphasis on capabilities with steeper learning curves (e.g. supporting complex extensions written in Lua, Javascript, w/e). If so, there's probably more value in continuing to partner with the more-complex VTTs... but it's not like their decision-making has gone entirely without question or controversy of late.

[LordEntrails]

Interesting. I'd wondered whether WOTC had some fundamental issue with FoundryVTT's business model, didn't think they had enough volume to bother with, or whether they just couldn't agree on a revenue share, etc. FoundryVTT already partners with Paizo, and Chaosium has made noises about supporting official FoundryVTT implementations as well, anyway, so such arrangements clearly weren't anathema over there.

I think they were simply waiting to see if Foundry was actually going to be viable for long enough time to bother investing in a partnership with them. Their second largest concern was probably IP protection. The FVTT community did not have a good reputation for honoring IP rights for quite some time. And they really are a new product without a track record. Look at how many VTTs have started and failed in the last 5 years.

I suspect now with FVTTs other partnerships they have convinced WotC that they are viable and a secure partner. And I think my thoughts are in sync with Doug's and others, it's a good sign that WotC does indeed mean to keep long term partnerships with independent VTTs. And competition is good for the consumers :)

[BaneTBC]

It might be interesting (and a scream from Foundry users) that WoTC could also be looking at having Foundry enforce their IP and prevent the backdoor use of 5E via D&D Beyond. Would kill two birds with one stone, first it would stop a platform from using their material without any contracts and second would get them revenue for said usage directly.