JohnnFour
Game Master
Staff member
Adamantium WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Gamer Lifestyle
Demonplague Author
Borderland Explorer
Here's a cross-post where I answer some questions about "what is the best VTT"?
I'd love to hear what VTT you use and why. Maybe we can make a final list of pros and cons for each VTT to help new GMs make an informed choice.
* * *
Now that we have great choices for VTT, we have the benefit of deciding what we want and then likely find a VTT that meets most of our requirements.
Each VTT has pros, cons, and features the others do not have or do not do as well.
Foundry offers more automation and larger inventory of cool community-built system libraries and plugins. But at a cost of bugs and issues when app upgrades break plugins. It's like the world of WordPress back in V1 and 2.
Roll20 has a bigger community so more GMs and players to game with. Its architecture has a lot of technical debt, but it's automations are great. Its interface is clunky in areas. But it has a large inventory of adventures and content via the marketplace, and it's easier to use for certain functions.
Astral has the alliance with DTRPG for a growing library of content.
RPG Tools is an old contender, a great community, and is free.
Arkenforge has some cool mapping features.
Our VTT, Campaign Tabletop, and Owlbear, are lightweight VTTs with very short learning curves. They do not have automations, plugin architectures, or large libraries of content. But you can get up and running in minutes.
If stuck, and you don't want to be a "DM DJ" with the tech and effects, I propose you start as lightweight as possible. That could be Campaign Tabletop or Owlbear. But even easier, use Google Slides and share edit links with your players.
I'd love to hear what VTT you use and why. Maybe we can make a final list of pros and cons for each VTT to help new GMs make an informed choice.
* * *
Now that we have great choices for VTT, we have the benefit of deciding what we want and then likely find a VTT that meets most of our requirements.
Each VTT has pros, cons, and features the others do not have or do not do as well.
Foundry offers more automation and larger inventory of cool community-built system libraries and plugins. But at a cost of bugs and issues when app upgrades break plugins. It's like the world of WordPress back in V1 and 2.
Roll20 has a bigger community so more GMs and players to game with. Its architecture has a lot of technical debt, but it's automations are great. Its interface is clunky in areas. But it has a large inventory of adventures and content via the marketplace, and it's easier to use for certain functions.
Astral has the alliance with DTRPG for a growing library of content.
RPG Tools is an old contender, a great community, and is free.
Arkenforge has some cool mapping features.
Our VTT, Campaign Tabletop, and Owlbear, are lightweight VTTs with very short learning curves. They do not have automations, plugin architectures, or large libraries of content. But you can get up and running in minutes.
If stuck, and you don't want to be a "DM DJ" with the tech and effects, I propose you start as lightweight as possible. That could be Campaign Tabletop or Owlbear. But even easier, use Google Slides and share edit links with your players.
- Make one Slide for battlemaps and when you want players to control their tokens. Give your players full edit rights.
- Make other Slide decks for when you want to have all control for moving and editing. Make a deck for each adventure, campaign, world, or section that's natural for you.
- Master your browser's bookmark management toolset so everything is at your fingertips.
- This is my favorite tool for making tokens right now.
- Use Discord, Zoom, Facebook Messenger, or Google Meet for video and voice chat. If you have a low-tech or low bandwidth group, just use a conference call in Whatsapp (@JochenL does Signal offer free conference voice/video?)
- You want to be a pro DM DJ, or want a lot of automation
- You want something with deeper features in a certain area such as mapping, content marketplace, or add-on libraries
- You want something fast and simple