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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    Daemon

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    Default Help me decide on a virtual tabletop?

    So I'm just finally giving 5e more than a cursory glance, and am going to be running my next campaign in it. Also, said next campaign is looking like it'll be mostly online, what with the whole *waves vaguely at the surrounding world*. "Aha, I know about Roll20!" And then I read about Fantasy grounds. And then Foundry VTT. And then I actually start looking at D&D beyond, and I'm down the rabbit hole :P.

    What do you fine folk prefer to use for running & playing online? And what are people's thoughts on books through D&D beyond? I see on Fantasy grounds that you have to purchase the licenses for books, but that's different than having a pdf to read through, I assume. Whereas the abilty to just connect your Beyond purchases and use them in Foundry seems like a selling point. I only own a couple physical books in 5e, but before I go binge-ordering more it might make more sense to purchase through Beyond instead if it would be a handy thing while running online. This is primarily 5e oriented, but the option to play stuff like 3.5/pf/other systems would never be a bad thing.

    Any opinions/preferences/soapbox rants would be greatly appreciated!
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    Zhorn's Avatar

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    Default Re: Help me decide on a virtual tabletop?

    if playing for free: roll20
    if paying ANY money: Foundry VTT

    I'm not a fan of the subscription model, if I'm going to pay for a platform to run my games on, I'd rather the one off version.
    I can see the others being cheaper if you're only going to DM for a couple of months, but you'll soon reach a point after that where roll20 and fantasy grounds are just bleeding out a constant expense that would have been capped if going to Foundry from the get go.
    Plus, storing your assets locally rather than on some other server just gives you more control over the whole deal.
    It really sucks when the servers go down for maintenance

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    ProsecutorGodot's Avatar

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    Default Re: Help me decide on a virtual tabletop?

    Quote Originally Posted by Zhorn View Post
    if playing for free: roll20
    if paying ANY money: Foundry VTT
    I'd never heard of Foundry VTT prior to this, the small amount of research I've done now makes it look pretty appealing. How easy is it to start setting up a 5E game from scratch with it, how easy is it to integrate existing adventures?

    For me personally, we went with Roll20 due to ease of access and relative user friendliness. We do tend to buy the adventures there as well since implementing all of that information by hand would be tedious and it cuts down on cross-referencing between DND Beyond or Hard Copy. I wouldn't recommend any of the core books other than perhaps the Monster Manual but even that is entirely dependant on how much you care about "presentation".

    For simply being a table you can put things on Roll20 does enough with zero investment.

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    Default Re: Help me decide on a virtual tabletop?

    I barely dabbled in using VTTs, so I'm not sure how much I can help here. I'm actually also interested in hearing what people have to say about this.

    I know Roll20 is free, with a subscription model for more advanced features. I'd only use this if you want a free VTT; if you're paying money, I'd look elsewhere.

    I've heard a lot of good things about Fantasy Grounds. Practically speaking, you need to pay for this one, but you can choose either a one-time price or a monthly subscription. If you're unsure, you can try the subscription for a month, then buy it if you like it. Normally, everyone will need the standard version in order to play together, but if one person has the pro version, they can DM for people with the free version.

    I know nothing about Foundry, but it looks like it's cheaper than Fantasy Grounds, but less developed. Foundry sounds like it's more homebrew/mod friendly, while Fantasy Grounds has better official ruleset support.

  5. - Top - End - #5
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    SwashbucklerGuy

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    Default Re: Help me decide on a virtual tabletop?

    So I don't know much about the Foundry VTT, but I will just give you a bit of personal experience here.

    When the pandemic first started, the two groups that I'm in went different directions with their choice. One group went Roll20, and the other went FantasyGrounds. We just took the group that went Roll20 through a one-shot in FantasyGrounds, and they were amazed at how easy it was to learn and use, and how clunky Roll20 felt by comparison. However, FG doesn't have any official tie-ins with things like DNDBeyond, so it can get a bit expensive having to buy things multiple times. But it's been sooo easy and fun to use. Any errors or quirks that come up are pretty easy to fix, too. Which is nice.

    Just did a quick demo with a friend of FG Unity, their updated version of the platform, and it was pretty nice. Same overall setup as FG regular, but does things like field of vision and fog of war nicely.

  6. - Top - End - #6
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    Zhorn's Avatar

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    Default Re: Help me decide on a virtual tabletop?

    Foundry is still being developed, but all my experiences with it thus far have been positive.
    It's doing somewhat of a minecraft style release, where you buy the full version, and as updates are made, you get those installed onto you version without additional/ongoing costs.

    Roll20 is by far the most user friendly version out of the box, and fantasy grounds has a ton more polish, but both of those can be attributed to having been developed and in use for so much longer, while Foundry VTT is still relatively new, but that gap is shrinking drastically, and in many areas already overtaking in quality.

    When it comes to buying WotC content, I'm more inclined to point people to physical copies only. DRM being the way it is, the versions you buy on digital platforms tend to not really be your property, and when the medium your viewing it on goes down, your digital copy goes away with it. This is another reason I'm keen on Foundry, being how easy it is to load in content and modules not attached to some marketplace, be it fan generated content, inserting the official content yourself from legally purchased and owned sources... or an undefined other that I am not suggesting, but don't have an issue with as long as you have purchased a physical copy via legitimate methods first

    As far as integrating existing adventures, the DM that first showed Foundry to me was previously running on roll20, and used a program to copy and import all character sheets, tokens, and campaign docs from roll20 directly into Foundry, but I'm pretty sure this was a 3rd party fan made thing.
    Foundry's character sheets and inventory system is far more detailed with expandable/collapsible notes and details, so while you get the base name/quantity/weight details from roll20, you'll still want to get under the hood in foundry and all all the other stuff you want in there (my last character had a bunch of books and scroll with sections detailing each's content that I was adding to as the game progressed, it was neat).
    Last edited by Zhorn; 2020-11-24 at 09:38 PM.

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    Ogre in the Playground
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    Default Re: Help me decide on a virtual tabletop?

    So, if you are using D&D Beyond, use Roll 20. There is a chrome plug-in that lets you click on a skill/spell/weapon/etc. in D&D beyond, and it will make the roll in Roll20 for you. The plug-in is called "Beyond 20". Since you and your players are going to have D&D Beyond open to view their characters anyway, you might as well let it do the die rolls for you.
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    Halfling in the Playground
     
    Goblin

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    Default Re: Help me decide on a virtual tabletop?

    Another option is MapTool from RPTools (www.rptools.net).

    We have been using it for a few years for both online and in person gaming. Be warned, it doesn't do anything out of the box, other than give you the tools to make it do whatever you want. We've used it for 3.5, 5e, Advanced Hero's Quest, Katan, etc. We tried Roll20, FantasyGrounds, and a few others (Pro something or other was one of them). There were quirks or limitations that we couldn't get around, then we came across MapTool and haven't looked back.

    Be warned though, MapTool is its own rabbit hole. It is flexible enough to do about anything you want, but you have to tell it how. Out the door it is just a tool set. There are frameworks available that can get you most of what you need, but we rolled our own as we went. So far there hasn't been anything that we wanted it to do that we couldn't make it do. You do need to have a firm grasp of logic and scripting.

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  9. - Top - End - #9
    Pixie in the Playground
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    Default Re: Help me decide on a virtual tabletop?

    Quote Originally Posted by Mutazoia View Post
    So, if you are using D&D Beyond, use Roll 20. There is a chrome plug-in that lets you click on a skill/spell/weapon/etc. in D&D beyond, and it will make the roll in Roll20 for you. The plug-in is called "Beyond 20". Since you and your players are going to have D&D Beyond open to view their characters anyway, you might as well let it do the die rolls for you.
    If you're using D&D Beyond, use Foundry.

    Beyond20 (as mentioned above) lets you click on an ability, spell, attack, etc. on your D&D Beyond character sheet, and it'll automatically send the results over to Foundry for you. (It also works on Roll20, but since it works for both, it is not a selling point for one over the other.)

    There's another add-on in Foundry that will import things directly from D&D Beyond into the VTT. It's called Virtual Tabletop Assets, and it gives you the option of using your D&D Beyond content in the VTT without having to have multiple windows up. It does require updating character sheets between sessions, though, so I typically just stick with Beyond20 for my games.

    Here's my real reasoning for switching to Foundry:
    If you're using D&D Beyond, it's kind of a given that you're going to be paying for online content. If you want all the features, not just a stripped down version of the software, you're going to be paying at least $50/year for Roll20, maybe as much as $100/year, AND you have a cap on how many maps and other images you can upload, unless you buy them directly from Roll20, which costs even more money.

    With Foundry, you get the full program, with access to all the add-ons... all the bells and whistles... for a one-time payment of $50. And there are some features of Foundry that make it SO MUCH easier to use than Roll20, especially if you're running a longer campaign. #1 improvement, as a DM of a longer campaign, is the ability to organize maps into folders. Roll20 is still stuck on a binary organization tool where all the maps are either in your navigation bar, or are archived, with no other options.

    For context, I've been using Roll20 since 2016, with 1500+ hours in the program, and I'm currently a Roll20 Pro subscriber ($100/year). I will not be renewing my subscription next time. I've switched to Foundry and I have no regrets. Foundry does all the great things that Roll20 does, but for a single $50 purchase, plus Foundry does some really cool things that Roll20 doesn't.

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    Troll in the Playground
     
    DruidGuy

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    Default Re: Help me decide on a virtual tabletop?

    I vote Roll20, I've used it for years and enver had any real problem with it (I've used it for free as a Dm for the bulk of that time too with no issues...). If you use D&DBeyond the n the extension works just fine, my personal reasons for not going foundry:

    -$50 is a lot of money for a product that is in development and will not give oyu a consistent experience

    -My understanding is that you need to set up a server to run it anyway, which can get problematic with global groups and ISPs

    -One time purchases are not enough to sustain a VTT model under active development. They currently have a Patreon that I assume most of the support is coming from, that doesn't fill me with confidence in a product I'm meant to be trusting with my limited D&D time
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    HalflingRogueGuy

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    Default Re: Help me decide on a virtual tabletop?

    To kind of piggy back on this topic, what would people recommend as a good 'quick and dirty' VTT? My current group doesn't do a whole lot with our battle maps, we just draw lines on a laminated grid, and the enemies are all dice. Trying to do extra stuff like building character sheets in the VTT is too much overhead for my group since we all use an app that does most of the work for us.

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    SamuraiGuy

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    Default Re: Help me decide on a virtual tabletop?

    I've been using PlanarAlly (website https://www.planarally.io/docs/ github repo: https://github.com/Kruptein/PlanarAlly). I have it hosted on my own server so I can manage the users, backups and all that. It works really well for me and my group. It does require a bit more manual work than some other VTTs since you have to make everything yourself, but I personally enjoy doing that, so it works for me.

  13. - Top - End - #13
    Troll in the Playground
     
    DruidGuy

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    Default Re: Help me decide on a virtual tabletop?

    Quote Originally Posted by Xoronis View Post
    To kind of piggy back on this topic, what would people recommend as a good 'quick and dirty' VTT? My current group doesn't do a whole lot with our battle maps, we just draw lines on a laminated grid, and the enemies are all dice. Trying to do extra stuff like building character sheets in the VTT is too much overhead for my group since we all use an app that does most of the work for us.
    For something super basic you could probably just do a shared Google sheet?
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    HalflingRogueGuy

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    Default Re: Help me decide on a virtual tabletop?

    Quote Originally Posted by Dork_Forge View Post
    For something super basic you could probably just do a shared Google sheet?
    That's... not a bad idea, actually. I just might try this. The only pain point is that google sheets comes in rectangles rather than squares, but that's not too bad to work around.

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    Default Re: Help me decide on a virtual tabletop?

    Quote Originally Posted by Xoronis View Post
    To kind of piggy back on this topic, what would people recommend as a good 'quick and dirty' VTT? My current group doesn't do a whole lot with our battle maps, we just draw lines on a laminated grid, and the enemies are all dice. Trying to do extra stuff like building character sheets in the VTT is too much overhead for my group since we all use an app that does most of the work for us.
    Shared whiteboard app, simple to use and with a good tutorial: https://awwapp.com/

  16. - Top - End - #16
    Troll in the Playground
     
    DruidGuy

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    Default Re: Help me decide on a virtual tabletop?

    Quote Originally Posted by Xoronis View Post
    That's... not a bad idea, actually. I just might try this. The only pain point is that google sheets comes in rectangles rather than squares, but that's not too bad to work around.
    It's pretty quick to fix: tutorial
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    HalflingRogueGuy

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    Default Re: Help me decide on a virtual tabletop?

    Quote Originally Posted by Dork_Forge View Post
    It's pretty quick to fix: tutorial
    Yeah, while I didn't see that specific tutorial, a quick google search showed me how easy it was to resize multiple columns. I think this will work perfectly.

  18. - Top - End - #18
    Pixie in the Playground
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    Default Re: Help me decide on a virtual tabletop?

    Quote Originally Posted by Dork_Forge View Post
    I vote Roll20, I've used it for years and enver had any real problem with it (I've used it for free as a Dm for the bulk of that time too with no issues...). If you use D&DBeyond the n the extension works just fine, my personal reasons for not going foundry:

    -$50 is a lot of money for a product that is in development and will not give oyu a consistent experience

    -My understanding is that you need to set up a server to run it anyway, which can get problematic with global groups and ISPs

    -One time purchases are not enough to sustain a VTT model under active development. They currently have a Patreon that I assume most of the support is coming from, that doesn't fill me with confidence in a product I'm meant to be trusting with my limited D&D time
    -For what it's worth, it's on sale for 25% off right now. :-)
    -You can set up a separate server, but it's not necessary. You can self-host with no additional setup. You just have to be connected to the Internet.
    -Perhaps a fair point. I think it helps the situation that Foundry VTT has a development team of only one person, so the amount of cash flow required is far less than Roll20, with somewhere between 11 and 50 employees (according to LinkedIn). Roll20, on the other hand, appears to have plenty of cash flow, yet releases updates and fixes at a glacial pace. And their servers have issues far too often for my liking.


    As for a quick and dirty option, what functionality do you need from the VTT? If you want REALLY bare-bones, you could just run theater of the mind in Discord and trust people to roll their own dice. I've also heard of folks using Google Jamboard, but I haven't tried it myself, and I think it's limited to G-Suite accounts.
    Last edited by Copper_Dragon; 2020-11-25 at 03:27 PM.

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    Troll in the Playground
     
    DruidGuy

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    Default Re: Help me decide on a virtual tabletop?

    Quote Originally Posted by Copper_Dragon View Post
    -For what it's worth, it's on sale for 25% off right now. :-)
    -You can set up a separate server, but it's not necessary. You can self-host with no additional setup. You just have to be connected to the Internet.
    -Perhaps a fair point. I think it helps the situation that Foundry VTT has a development team of only one person, so the amount of cash flow required is far less than Roll20, with somewhere between 11 and 50 employees (according to LinkedIn). Roll20, on the other hand, appears to have plenty of cash flow, yet releases updates and fixes at a glacial pace. And their servers have issues far too often for my liking.


    As for a quick and dirty option, what functionality do you need from the VTT? If you want REALLY bare-bones, you could just run theater of the mind in Discord and trust people to roll their own dice. I've also heard of folks using Google Jamboard, but I haven't tried it myself, and I think it's limited to G-Suite accounts.
    -Thank you for the heads up, I may look into it in the future when it is further along in it's development cycle, as it stands I currently am happy with Roll20 and am running through gifted credit for my subscription anyway (personally the most I get out of the subscription are the free monthly assets and access to the Dynamic lighting to teach how to use it in seminars, I'm not fond of it myself)
    -Self hosting is setting up a server, which puts pressure on your PC and internet that some users can't afford
    -Roll20 is a full company, not all of its staff are developers and it is also a marketplace, a key source of revenue (that I believe FantasyGrounds uses to make the single purchase model work). Foundry being a single person is not an encouraging thought, as that person can get sick, have life events come up and so on that effect the entirety of development.

    On the Roll20 server performance, the only times I've personally had any issues with it is since Covid and that's pretty understandable given the sudden spike in traffic no one could have foreseen.

    I'm not sure if you thought I was the person asking for a quick and dirty solution? You may want to quote the user that asked about it to make sure they see your suggestion. To add on to Discord, there's bots that can handle the dice rolling and a screenshare can work for battlemaps and imagery.
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    Barbarian in the Playground
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    Default Re: Help me decide on a virtual tabletop?

    I use a combination of Discord and Table Top Simulator on steam.

    Just make sure you deny permissions for the table flip button.

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    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Default Re: Help me decide on a virtual tabletop?

    I do a low-budget version of screen sharing pc on discord, and I use paint.net (a free photoshop like program) to make tokens and I just move the layers around to do movement. I like being able to have a "fog" layer that I slowly erase, or just turning off layers for later when surprise kruthiks burrow up from the ground, or a portal opens on the cave wall.

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    PirateGuy

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    Default Re: Help me decide on a virtual tabletop?

    Quote Originally Posted by micahaphone View Post
    I do a low-budget version of screen sharing pc on discord, and I use paint.net (a free photoshop like program) to make tokens and I just move the layers around to do movement. I like being able to have a "fog" layer that I slowly erase, or just turning off layers for later when surprise kruthiks burrow up from the ground, or a portal opens on the cave wall.
    We also do a screen-sharing on discord. We bent a teensy bit further, having a small webpage on a browser running locally (screen shared) that has the map, and our DM has the same map open in gimp (which is like paint), occasionally saving it and then refreshing the page. In the sidebar there's some extra info like initiative order and stuff.

    After the first go I threw together some quick hacky javascript to be able to zoom in on the map and drag and drop some tokens around for the players and monsters, which enhanced the experience quite a bit, enough to be quite usable.

    We do trust-based rolling, which is basically that each player rolls and then tells the rest on the chat, and we assume they're not lying. We did first have a dice-cam which was basically a webcam aimed at a dice tray, but that was so bothersome we dropped that idea.

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    Daemon

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    Default Re: Help me decide on a virtual tabletop?

    Quote Originally Posted by ProsecutorGodot View Post
    I'd never heard of Foundry VTT prior to this, the small amount of research I've done now makes it look pretty appealing. How easy is it to start setting up a 5E game from scratch with it, how easy is it to integrate existing adventures?
    I am using Foundry VTT for a 5e game. Currently I'm not using any of the character sheet stuff, just using the battlemap + rolling options. We're using D&D Beyond for character sheets (I have a full subscription there).

    Difficulty depends on your projected use. Preface--it needs decent hardware on both sides to run well, although there are options you can disable to slim it down for the clients.

    Self-hosted (ie on your own computer/network)? Trivial to get going. I'm not a fan of how you set up character sheets in it (took me forever to realize you had to drag out class entries from the compendiums to get features). Downside is that you're hosting it yourself, so your players are dependent on your upload speed. Which can be a drag over slower connections.

    You can pay for dedicated hosting (with one of their partners). That's dead simple to set up, but costs an ongoing fee and you're limited by the stuff they provide. Especially storage, that's the big one.

    If you have technical chops, setting it up in AWS isn't hard (there are guides). Laborious one-time setup, but not hard. And Amazon gives a year of free credit which is enough to pay for hosting for a year. And even after that, the free tier covers 90+% unless you're really pushing it hard (ie 10s of GB of stored data). So you trade setup pain for dirt cheap, reliable hosting that you can place near your players, using a really fast connection. That way it's persistent as well--players can log on and do character-sheet maintenance whenever.

    Overall, I've found it pretty good. Roll20 confused the crap out of me when I tried it, plus the free tier is horribly restrictive.

    Edit: I've also done photoshop/discord battlemaps. Super-hacky, but it worked. The advantage of a VTT is that it can handle things like lighting, vision, walls, and players moving their own tokens.
    Last edited by PhoenixPhyre; 2020-11-25 at 07:30 PM.
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    RedSorcererGirl

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    Default Re: Help me decide on a virtual tabletop?

    Quick, perhaps silly, question: if I get Foundry, do my players also have to get it? Or how does it work? Is there a free client-only version?

    Thanks

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    Daemon

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    Default Re: Help me decide on a virtual tabletop?

    Quote Originally Posted by Yukito01 View Post
    Quick, perhaps silly, question: if I get Foundry, do my players also have to get it? Or how does it work? Is there a free client-only version?

    Thanks
    Only the one running the server needs a license. Everyone else just connects in a web browser. Because that's what it really is, a mini web-server. Technically, you don't even need the DM to have a license as long as someone has it. So you can share a server with a bunch of DMs.
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    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    Kobold

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    Default Re: Help me decide on a virtual tabletop?

    Discord and Dndbeyond is what we are working with and it works really well. I was really reluctant and didn't like beyond at first. But I love having everything at a click.

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    Default Re: Help me decide on a virtual tabletop?

    Quote Originally Posted by Xoronis View Post
    That's... not a bad idea, actually. I just might try this. The only pain point is that google sheets comes in rectangles rather than squares, but that's not too bad to work around.
    Google Draw has exceeded my expectations for handling battle board duties.

    The best part is you can drop photos, and overlays in, very easily.

    I grabbed my old copy of the module, The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, snapped a quick photo of the map, dropped the photo into Google Draw, created some fog of war and some icons for the PCs, and off we went.
    Last edited by Thunderous Mojo; 2020-11-26 at 04:20 AM.

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    RedSorcererGirl

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    Default Re: Help me decide on a virtual tabletop?

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre View Post
    Only the one running the server needs a license. Everyone else just connects in a web browser. Because that's what it really is, a mini web-server. Technically, you don't even need the DM to have a license as long as someone has it. So you can share a server with a bunch of DMs.
    I see! Thanks for the explanation.

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    Default Re: Help me decide on a virtual tabletop?

    I've done just Discord, and a spreadsheet set to a square grid. Screenshot, save as jpg/png/gif, upload. Setup costs minimal, costs none.
    Resized images work as tokens for players, but I recommend having enemies be names/numbers so it's easy to identify which target the players are attack (S1, S2, etc.).

  30. - Top - End - #30
    Dragon in the Playground Moderator
     
    Peelee's Avatar

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    Dec 2009
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    Default Re: Help me decide on a virtual tabletop?

    The Mod on the Silver Mountain: Closed for Thread Necromancy.
    Last edited by Peelee; 2023-07-29 at 10:34 AM.
    Cuthalion's art is the prettiest art of all the art. Like my avatar.

    Number of times Roland St. Jude has sworn revenge upon me: 2

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