Another point for Tableplop: It is 100% mobile friendly, not something you see everyday and I love it as a Player (not a very good GM experience on mobile though).
To be fair though, I don't think that there will ever be a good mobile friendly vtt from the DMs side of the screen. Particularly if we are talking d&d or anything similar. I tried to do so on roll20 once, maybe twice, completely out of necessity and it was so terrible I have sworn off doing so for life....
I’ve been running some stuff on Tableplop recently. It can definitely handle stuff other than 5e/PF, though the only public templates are for those. The discord community is constantly working on templates they can share for other games
@Schemage22 Encounter+ is every bit as good as Tableplop, in my opinion, and it’s iPadOS app is a first-class citizen, on equal parity with its MacOS app, and has amazing external monitor support. The main annoyance with Encounter+ that I have is its current syncing solutions between the two systems-it’s a bit of a job. But it’s workable, for sure. Give it a look!
RIP Astral. I did my own comparison a couple years ago and Astral was the best one for the functionality I needed, and they kept adding cool new features to it. I'm using Foundry now because I love the customization and the fact that I own it for life after one fee, but there's a definite learning curve to it. But I was able to recreate my last Astral session in Foundry with only a couple days of learning, and I'm already seeing things Astral didn't do in it, so I'm pretty confident in my choice to use Foundry.
Saying Fantasy Grounds has a higher pricetag is misleading. You're showing the one-off license fee, which means you then don't have to pay again (unlike the subscription services), but they also have a subscription that's the same or cheaper price than Roll20 (free tier excluded). You even highlighted that Foundry's price was one off, but ignored that point for FGU. If you buy modules, they're almost always cheaper on FGU than Roll20 marketplace too, and you can get an FGU license from Steam for a lot cheaper during their sales. (I don't even own FGU, I have a Roll20 pro sub and Foundry, I just think you were very unfair on FGU's pricing)
That's fair. I was more coming at it from the perspective of someone who plays a looot of different systems, and having to buy a lot of them on FGU and whatnot. So yeah, I have to admit I fell short in my presentation of it. I still personally don't like it much at all, but this video wasn't supposed to focus on my preferences. Sometimes it's hard to keep that mental distinction in mind when putting these videos together
"Hey Klaus, those scores and info on the side seem kind of arbitrary. You don't even reference them. What does the character sheet and dice one represent???" Look...sometimes you spend two months trying to put way too ambitious of a video together and the script goes through a few....revisions. And sometimes a bit of context and meaning is lost, but you refuse to give up assets you worked on, no matter how little they seem to matter. But if it helps, the character sheet and dice icon is kind of an overall score of functionality (integrated sheets, dice rollers, journals and so on). Scores are subjective, if that helps you be less mad about them. But they are also absolutely correct, so be mad I dunno.
Wow, this was enlightening. You gave just a right amount of information to make a decision, should I invest time to try some of these out or not. It was funny and well edited too, so it was a pleasure to watch. Thank you!
@@TheDungeonNewbsGuide And oh, I'm one of those "Astral fans" too. I posted this video to their Discord, because there's many of us looking for a new home.
Fun fact about Foundry, you can put it on a cloud server for free due to the low requirements it needs to be run on everyone's computer. So the "small fee" negative point doesn't exist. Now you do have to build it and there are guides or you can have someone do it for you on your behalf.
Nice overview. Personally, for those who are playing D&D, I think Shard is vastly easier and better than other VTTs. I still have a Roll20 account for playing other TTRPGs, but for D&D, Shard just makes all the things you need/want to do completely natural and painless. By not trying to be all-things-to-all-people, and instead focus strictly on D&D, the designers have created a interface that just plain works, and does exactly the things D&D players and GMs need. The lack of official WotC content is a pity, but it is SO easy to import content and to create your own content that this becomes a non-issue for me. The small amount of effort required to being content in ends up being just the right level of engagement to get me, as a DM, familiar with the material that I'll be running folks through.
Shard and other D&D centric VTTs will probably go away next year. Sadly WOTC has a VTT policy, covering those... with releasing their own VTT in 2024, they will most certainly change the policy to only allow their own VTT.
Any VTTs with good art tools that any player can use, not just the GM? Owlbear can do it but I'm wondering if others have better or prettier or more flexible art tools
I've used most VTTs and Shard is by far my favorite. For DNDBeyond users, it includes a very simple character import feature that allows you to pull in your ddb characters, including purchased features. And while it takes a little work, they have a great way to import campaigns easily as well as 3rd party content. Lastly, it's a homebrew masterpiece, enabling users to create their own extensions and conditions...and you can even add these to your character sheet. Very cool!
Astral was very pretty but I never used it much to know much more than that.... Also, you were way too kind to Tabletop Simulator. The couple of cool things that you stick in a tech demo doesn't outweigh the mountain of issues it has..... So for this I will continue to say, Foundry VTT continues to be the best. And really if you were going to put in the time to learn Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds, you will have no problem with Foundry. :)
Just giving you a few names for VTTs that are coming soon, Menyr, Questhaven, Dungeon Full Dive, Legends and Lore, and RPG Stories. Allare 3D VTTs that were funded via kickstarter.
Fantasy Grounds with Discord is better for pathfinder modules and adventure paths. I like Foundry and Roll20 for DnD, and for custom games, but the server goes down whenever we play with more than three players. We play pathfinder more than DnD, though. DnD seems almost basic to us, anymore.
Yeah, I saw that as well and it really bums me out. Sooo much potential there! My only problem, and I think the thing that ultimately really hurt them, was that it was just not easy to get into. I spent dozens of hours in it, and even still it was tough to navigate or find things i needed to mid-game. And trying to get my players comfortable using it was always a huge challenge. I think they just needed the time to be able to continue to improve the use experience and it could have been revolutionary. Sadly, time is money, and they ran out of both.
@@flotante5 Yeah, just saw they announced that a week or so ago. I am definitely wishing the team a lot of luck and hope they can continue to develop it into a more approachable vtt, as I have a lot of love for it!
This is an amazing video! I dearly miss TTRPGs, so when I can play again, this will be a great reference to help me figure out what VTTs to try! I'm impressed that Questline lets you preset 1-click action/attack rolls, like the custom macros on Roll20. Features like that really improves a sessions flow and I wish every VTT did this, even if they don't want to integrate full character sheets.
A fantastic video that really covers the pros and cons of the more popular VTTs that are around currently. Really appreciate the work that went into this!
I'd dispute that Fantasy Grounds is more expensive. Sure the Ultimate licence costs, but its a One Time purchase that you then own. Forever. No ongoing costs that add to big bucks if you want features. And the price of their official content is frequently way less than other digital outlets like Beyond and 220. Most of the others don't even have that access. You totally skipped over the importance and usefulness of all the automation it offers. It makes being a GM so much easier. Links and drop pins make keeping track of adventure plot points and campaign settings with encounters a breeze. The community support and company support is awesome and one of the main reasons that I've mostly stopped bothering with Foundry and r20.I'd rather have a tool that helps myself and my players play easier that looks good than some that looks jaw-droopingly fabulous but involves being a coder extraordinaire and still have to keep track of all the content separately. Money well spent, IMHO
There have been a Lot of upgrades done to "The RPG Engine" since this video. Also, flat maps using an image or URL is an easy to use included option. Makes interesting maps to pull in an image then place 3D objects on top. Of which there are more than 8 thousand currently, with more being added frequently.
I started with Roll20 back in 2012, and eventually had to graduate to Fantasy Grounds. It's just so much better. We justified the cost by everyone chipping in $20 or so towards one copy of the Ultimate License. Our 2 main systems are 5e and Cypher, so it works great for that. Been using it (original, then Unity) for the last ~8 years or so, and we never went back.
I can't wait to watch your in-depth review of OMM. Thank you for introducing me to so many awesome VTTs. I probably only heard of 3-4 of these before your videos. Keep it up! You do awesome work.
Wow, amazing and concise video! I have been looking for a vtt to run a (potential) city of mist game, and this came at the PERFECT time. I forgot that I had bookmarked a tiktok video about one more multiverse and might be giving that one a shot, as I still enjoy using discord to keep things organized and chat with my friends that I play with, but would like a better way to make maps that isn’t subscription based (and the fact it gives me a chance to improve and show off my pixel art is even better)
Fantasy Grounds Unity is not that expensive; players do not need to pay, the standard licence (or above) has over 12 systems built in. A regular 5e player can easily get the VTT and play without purchasing anything. When you purchase it is either a system that is not built in or buying the book that will add information. The best part I like about Fantasy Grounds Unity is everything I do is saved in my drive so I can just download a map, add line of sight, add light and done. I can save this as an add-on and later I can use it in my other games. Foundry also has similar capabilities but they do not offer Steam support sooo third world country residents like me can not afford it.
It's true, I should have included the caveat that's it's expensive for some folks, depending on a variety of factors. For me, with a lot of the games I play and already own the books of, it would be really expensive for me to repurchase all of those again. But for many folks just looking to play 5E or PF2e, it wouldn't be nearly so bad! Solid point
Could you do a video for running a theater of the mind campaign in One More Multiverse? Since I feel the interactive nature of it leans more towards battlegrid system instead.
I always just used roll20 because why would I want to switch to something else when it already gives me everything I need for free, bit I might finally give AboveVTT a shot just because I want to use my digital dice with it lol.
@@TheDungeonNewbsGuide You betcha! You do great, long-form reviews on your channel and I figured you'd be fascinated with this small, one-man-team project that's produced some very beautiful graphical interfaces!
i can't imagine we are in 2023 and no single VTT is good foundry is good and provide everything that can help ur imagination but bro its heavily dependent on community modules like foundry VTT on its own is nothing
It's really true. I play a LOT of different systems, and when there is Foundry support it is great. But literally the last 5 games I've wanted to play, Foundry has had no community support and is therefore useless. It's why I've become a huge supporter of VTTs that allow the easy creation of custom sheets/systems, but most of yhose are limited or too complicated right now.
Great video. Our group mostly used Owlbear Rodeo and played around with Tableplop. I'm going to have to check out Dungeon Club. Our last couple of sessions we've been trying a recently released VTT, Tabula Sono. A very simple 3d VTT.
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Incredible video, you just gave me a few new VTTs to check out (fari and just role, keeping my eye on alchemy hoping they would open up to other systems because they look amazing). I don't know if you are able to change this after you uploaded, but the "roll 20" transition screen is for "role".
Excellent video. For some reason, RU-vid wasn't showing me your videos (that old chestnut, THANKS RU-vid) so I had completely not realized you had been posting some videos. This one is spectacular! Going through all this trouble to show us the ins and outs of SO MANY VTTs is such a nice thing for you to do, especially when some of these can be pretty expensive! It is a huge help to the TTRPG community as a whole to have a video like this as a resource. Everyone should have a VTT they can call their own, and this video shows that there's so many options that there should hopefully be one for you, and if there isn't, then you at least know what features to ask for. My favorite VTT is certainly Foundry, I'm all in on that one. One time cost, incredible mod support, unparalleled customizability. I want a VTT I can do _whatever I want_ with, and I also really want a VTT I can use all of the gigs upon gigs of TTRPG content I already own from various sources without having to buy it over and over again. It's complicated, but I know I can always ask the community for help and get what I need. But that's for when I need all the bells and whistles. When I'm playing just theater of the mind, all I need is Discord, but I really do love Fari and I'm working on setting that up for my current Fate game. I think Fari is going to be my prime theater of the mind VTT of choice, because it's the one that most closely recreates "sitting at a table with pages of notes laying around you can grab" right down to drawing out vague shape maps on the back of a takeout menu. So Foundry and Fari are my two go-tos, Foundry for big maps and cool mods, Fari for organized notes and simple theater of the mind day to day gameplay. I own Game Master Engine, I believe the creator was doing a sort of giveaway on Reddit where it was either very cheap or free for a bit, and I think that's all I need for 3D VTTs. I'm not a fan of 3D VTTs; they seem too clunky, too complicated, and oftentimes the models look too much like they're N64 models. Talespire does look really nice, but I struggle to design things visually, so I feel like sitting down with a bunch of random 3D models and trying to make a map would give me a headache. Just give me a static PDF map I can plop some tokens down on and I'm perfectly fine. All that said, I am very interested in One More Multiverse, I'm a sucker for that pixel art, and it looks very nice and sleek. Possibly customizable enough for me as well. You mentioned doing a full video for it, and I hope you do because I want to learn more about that! Oh, and Alchemy! That Alchemy one looked GREAT! I'd love a more deep dive on that one, if you have the time!
So I’m doing a deep-er dive into Alchemy RPG and I’m sad to say that there is a subscription fee for all the bells and whistles. If you want to upload hundreds of assets (because your campaign has been going for years) you’ll have to pay. Because every NPC is an asset, and you’re going to hit 50 pretty quick. On top of that, you’ll likely be paying for whatever module, rules, and/or dice that you want. Not necessarily, but it is possible that you’ll be paying $8 monthly, and purchasing their digital assets. Worth considering.
Yeah, they've been making a lot of updates and changes since I did this video that definitely make it more costly than it had looked at the time. If it eventually allows more customization or starts supporting a LOT more systems, I would still be on board, but barring I'm not so sure
@@TheDungeonNewbsGuide agreed. I tried to hack the current system to see what it would look like to run a non D&D game, and it wasn’t pretty. Did it work? Sure? But for right now that lack of versatility + a monthly subscription kinda kills it for me. However, they did say that they plan to launch a system-less setup so that people can create whatever they want. Time will tell.
I feel there was some information related to MapTool that should be added. It had during the creation of this video, and still has a year later, at least all the map and character related features of paid Roll20 (really it’s just missing audio and video chat). It also has a community that has made and continues to make character sheets and macros for rulesets for anything from DnD 5e to CoC 7e. It also has a well written wiki which helps with its admittedly high learning curve. I’d much more liken it to Foundry with a functional base state, meaning it doesn’t require a community made system (called a Framework in MapTool) to use, with all the features and customization it supports. Its major downside to me is that its community isn’t as large as Foundry’s so there are not as many community made options. Its major benefit over Foundry is that it is much more stable between releases and community content from when it first released still works just as well today.
With the exception, a photographs drawings, what are the representations of people, places or things I am a theater of the mind GM. But I did spend the fifty bucks to get Foundry. And as klaus mentioned I can't think of one thing. I wanted it to do that it hasn't.
Is there anything with custom character sheets on par with Astral Tabletop? It saddens me to see it go and I'm looking for something like it for my friends' campaigns.
Ok, my friend. I watched both of your videos (very nice) and you really do rip on Tabletop Simulator. While I do not disagree with any of your points (again, very well made videos), I fear that you barely scratched the surface with the potential for TTS. Just one thing: One World! One World makes this game so amazing, and while the setup can still take a while, One World allows you to save all of your work, and visually keep it intuitively organized. I've been running a Mage: the Awakening game, set in Chicago, for years now, and it is great. I challenge you to build and run a one-shot of anything, and see how you enjoy it. I know the learning curve is still very real, but it pays off in spades. If you would like to save some time, I could just show you my table, and the kinds of things we get up to.
RIP Astral if only for 2 things; The character sheet creation was DRAG AND DROP and FUNCTIONAL and because you could just copy a monster and have two that were separately fully functional without some weird script or running into issues where they share the same hp pool. My whole group misses Astral. One More Multiverse looks incredible. I kinda wish I'd seen this vidya before I just dove into Foundry. Also, in all my 25+ Years of playing TTRPGS this is the first time I've ever heard them called taterpigs and I absolutely love that and will be using it from now on. Thank you.
Oh I should add that everything else about Astral was pretty epic except some minor performance issues that it turns out are NO BETTER ON R20! And they were still working on it so... yeah. Astral was amazing and we miss it so much.
Talespire has begun adding mods now. so character sheets are now a thing, dice rollers , etc. They hope to add player seats early next years and a miniataure creator should close too, They are already allowing people to test the tool to load in custom minis (can't import them yet though)
Great review! I was hoping you might be able to help me. I've looked at a bunch of different reviews on VTTs and sites like Dungeon Fog, but I still don't know if any of them are "right" for me. I'm looking for access to battlemaps (I'd rather get access to them for free, or pay for them if need be. But I don't want to make them myself). Given my preferences below, which site or system would you recommend. 1) Must have access to community battlemaps (either free or paid for). 2) Must have sci-fi interior settings (e.g. buildings, factories, ship interiors, laboratories, etc.). 3) Must have a hexagon mapping feature OR a blank feature where I can download the image, apply a hex grid in photoshop, then reupload it. But no "always squares" dependency. 4) Must have the ability to save data on the system servers, since I'll be switching between devices to "host" the battlemaps (so it looks like Owlbear Rodeo is out). 5) Prefer a system with fog of war that works well. 6) Prefer a system where players can individually move their tokens on their own devices. 7) Prefer a system that's easy-to-use. 8) I do NOT need the system to do any game mechanics for me, since I'm using my entirely homebrewed rules. Thanks for any advice you can help me with.
Wildshape is a 3D VTT. It was very promising, but the dev has not updated it in some time. If/when he does, it should be better. But, it is only really good at map making. There are few PC and monster tokens. I believe DMHub is new.....it is 2d.
19:09 Nice surprise to see the OMM Cypher System Sheet I made show up here haha Great video, especially Alchemy RPG seems really intriguing (and very aesthetically pleasing), hopefully it will support other systems soon.
Loved your version of it! Cypher was the first sheet I tried making in OMM (which also makes a brief appearance) but it was pretty clumsy for my first attempt. Yours is wonderful, and definitely the one I'll be sticking with using! :D
@@TheDungeonNewbsGuide Thank you very much, glad to hear that! (I actually recently updated the sheet) Funnily enough, I am using your Role Cypher System sheet template (which is also fantastic) for my current campaign, so funny how things turn out^^
Finding this channel was today’s win, for me! Subscribed and can’t wait to peruse these vids. And take a look at some of the VTTs on this list I’ve missed. One that I rarely see anyone talking about is Encounter+, which, while pretty much Mac & iOS only, is a pretty impressive VTT: a good bit simpler than Foundry, a lot more functionality than Owlbear, a tiny but freakishly smart fan base of nerds that work on cool integrations like dndbeyond importing, Foundry adventure importing, and a beautiful markdown-based module importer. And as far as I am concerned, there is no other usable option for people who want to use iPadOS. It’s fantastic. I flip back and forth from E+ for “quick’n’ez” and Foundry for “& the kitchen sink”. Thank you for this!
Think combining some of these wouldn't be terrible. Or at least when you were talking about Fari it seemed to probably pair well with all of the ones listed before.
What is a good suggestion for in person virtual table top? I am building a touchscreen tabletop arcade machine. I would like to include something for tabletop gaming as a selling point. what would you recommend? It seems all these are for remote players. I was thinking more of being able to use maps, sounds, maybe video clips, and actual physical mini's on the table as well as have an option for physical dice.
After recording the script I checked, and 1.0 was 2006, so 16 years from their official full version release. I considered updating that, but then went "I mean...I said over a decade so...good enough" lol
Maid is completely underrated and amazing experience, I never played something more oddly satisfying than to compete in serving our mutual master and embarrassing everyone at the table and their characters in the process. It's really something. :D
