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What VTT Do You Use?

What VTT Do You Primarily Use?


  • Total voters
    74

TheBig

New member
Wizard of Combat
We use Roll20, but I just discover Owlbear Rodeo and I am questionning myself to make the switch. Do anybody have any advice on the subject ?
 

Maskoz

Member
Platinum WoA
Gold WoA
Wizard of Story
Foundry is where it is at! Most major games have a dedicated group assisting with backend automation and character sheets. There are so many good tutorials out there and the mods just make the game that much better. I have run both DnD 5e and the Cypher system. Both games have worked really well in this medium.
 

ExileInParadise

RPG Therapist
Staff member
Adamantium WoA
Wizard of Story
As a lifelong 'IT guy' the last thing I want to do is more IT work so I can run a game.
<snip>
I find online play difficult and much less fun.

Exactly how I feel about the VTT online stuff - so much work and so little feel of playing a tabletop game.
I feel more like a TV show runner or producer or the multimedia newsroom switchboard operator than a DM or even player.
I don't know how folks do it and my attempts to VTT all felt like disastrous slogs.
You're definitely not alone and preferring face to face to VTT.
But in a choice between that and no gaming at all - I am doing my best to adapt (and thus far floundering pretty badly).
So, I keep on trying ... my next attempts will be purely based on Campaign Logger and Campaign Table Top to give these tool a serious workout.
 

Garpduardo

New member
Platinum WoA
Gold WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
I've been sharing an Affinity Designer file via Zoom, but I'm thinking of moving my 5e games over to Roll20 to consolidate windows/apps and (ideally) make prep a little easier. I hate the UI, but it has worked well for a few non-D&D games, and my players are all familiar with it.
 

StuartHelm

New member
Platinum WoA
Gold WoA
In the past I have only used Roll20 /Discord.
Now that Lets-role.com is available, I am switching to using it with Discord.
 

Stephan Hornick

Community Goblin & Master of the Archive
Platinum WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Borderland Explorer
Hmm… I have no idea about lets role.
Could you shortly point out its pros and cons and post a picture of its user interface? That would be greatly appreciated.
 

evenfell

New member
Platinum WoA
Gold WoA
For now after testing lots of different ones I've landed on Foundry.
I have invested some in fantasy grounds as they had vampire 5th Ed. But gave up on that due to the interface and that they took so long releasing new material for vampire.
In foundry I'm working on ways to import stuff I stead. And since I'm using obsidian for note taking I can import those into journals.

I've also looked at shard at that seems very cool but only 5e rules.

Other ones above vtt a chrome plugin on top of dnd beyond.

But for now foundry since you can mod it and it has support for lots if rule sets
 

Stephan Hornick

Community Goblin & Master of the Archive
Platinum WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Borderland Explorer
Wait, you can import into Foundry journals? How?
 

evenfell

New member
Platinum WoA
Gold WoA
Wait, you can import into Foundry journals? How?
Yeah.
You can use this foundry plugin
https://github.com/Praxxian/lava-flow
Screenshot 2022-08-19 at 06.14.04.png

When you the go to journals and press import you get this:
Screenshot 2022-08-19 at 06.14.53.png
You can then choose an obsidian folder and choose what you want to import.
You can make a folder which to import to in the folder path.
You can either choose the whole folder you have of obsidian, or a specific folder, and then it imports those .md files inside there
So far you cant export back. But if you update the file in obsidian and import again you can overwrite the existing with the same name.
I myself is using it to import lore about my world/campaign I am playing as well as adventures from obsidian.
 

Stephan Hornick

Community Goblin & Master of the Archive
Platinum WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Borderland Explorer
Wow. Great function. Thanks for explaining.
I‘m not using Obsidian but Onenote, but import/export would be great as I am usually very strong in world building, lore and other settings stuff and summaries.
 

JochenL

CL Byte Sprite
Staff member
Adamantium WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Gamer Lifestyle
Borderland Explorer
When an integration of CL with Foundry? ;-)
This is high up on my wish list!

As there are so many different VTTs in use, it would be unfair to focus on Foundry exclusively, and for supporting more than one VTT, we don't have the capacity at the moment.

BUT: If someone wants to create that integration, I will happily support them in accessing CL.
 

Truncated

New member
Wow. Great function. Thanks for explaining.
I‘m not using Obsidian but Onenote, but import/export would be great as I am usually very strong in world building, lore and other settings stuff and summaries.
Love Onenote! Using Snagit, I screen-shot all the screens and settings for programs I'm learning or configuring, like Foundry's dozens and dozens of modules... lol. The automatic OCR scanning of the images let me search right away for words in the screenshots!

Do you use that feature? Any particular way you use it that you really like?

I can't imagine trying to some of these things without OneNote....
 

Truncated

New member
This is high up on my wish list!

As there are so many different VTTs in use, it would be unfair to focus on Foundry exclusively, and for supporting more than one VTT, we don't have the capacity at the moment.

BUT: If someone wants to create that integration, I will happily support them in accessing CL.
>.>
<.<
So I'm not a programmer, let me say that. :)
I AM a Solution Architect with enough knowledge and experience to be dangerous, though. ;)

I had come to the forums to see if Foundry VTT was being integrated already, so since we're here at the start of the concept, I'd like to get a sense for how and what people would like to see this feature. Here's a rundown of how I use Campaign Logger and where it fits in my overall process, for context to my questions below.

------------------
When I'm doing campaign prep, I'm writing heavily in OneNote to start. The ability to copy/paste text and pictures from anywhere and automatically get links to the source is critical for me and my process. I don't have a lot of time, so I end up doing it in fits and starts and will totally lose track of what I was thinking or where I got ideas / content from. Attribution is important to me, as well, and this helps me keep track.

My prelim writing is cleaned up in either OneNote, Word, or Scrivener depending on what I'm doing and how much I'm writing from scratch. This content will be a combination of Foundry Journal Entries and Player's Guide material (PDF I share with my players).

Campaign Logger is what I use to keep notes during play. Content there is for reminding me between sessions and while I'm prepping what happened and what I need to prepare for the next adventure.
As a result, Session 0 is where CL comes into use for me - I use it to record the responses and details that come out of background questions, connections to PCs and NPCs, actions, rewards, reminders to create resources or things to support what we thought up and decided on during this "fleshing out the party and world" parts.

This then continues in a cycle, where CL feeds what I do in OneNote / Foundry, and sometimes info gets put into CL.

If i were writing adventures from scratch, I feel like I would prefer to use CL to do the initial planning and it would get more use in my prep. Since I'm mostly running pre-made adventures (even though I customize / re-write some still), I usually end up with a PDF that I use PDF Viewer to Highlight / comment in with different colors. The comment coloring separates "in-between session prep items" for stuff I want to get into Foundry or work on between sessions and "during play items" like room descriptions, stat block, maps, etc. This is much easier than trying to scan through a PDF for a few sentances about a room's decor. lol
------------------
Given all that, and the fact that I'm just now transferring to and learning Foundry so I'm no expert, I'm running into the following challenges; just thinking it through out loud here:

  1. I want my journals in Foundry to be formatted differently, by default. i.e. Have a few types of journal with their own default style automatically, like a hand-written letter that is a script font at a larger font size and a background of parchment with a wax seal graphic at the bottom, along with a newspaper format, public announcements, dialogue between characters that maybe looks more like a book page, etc.
    1. I'm not sure this is even possible right now and I DO know that Foundry v10 is completely revamping the Journal elements of Foundry. I have not looked into exactly what has changed programatically from v9 to v10, but it's likely to be much more feature-rich and robust from what I've read about it so far.
    2. I'm currently using Custom Journals and Monk's Enhanced Journals, but Custom Journal isn't really well supported and I'm afraid it's going to break in v10 without truly being "integrated".
  2. I honestly don't think I care if I can open CL directly in Foundry. I'm sure it would be super easy to do - Foundry essentially runs on Chromium, but I can't drag windows to tertiary monitor screens and the Pop Out! module currently is broken / incompatible with some of my mods. Just opening up CL in a browser window on the side is just fine for note taking. I don't think this is the answer for everyone (or even most people).
  3. So what would I want CL and Foundry integration to DO?
    1. Bi-directional integration of CL Entries <--> foundry Journal Items. If I write a journal item OR a CL entry, I want to be able to click and drag it or click and generate the opposite type from the one I wrote.
      Metadata questions:
      1. CL Entries hold Foundry Item ID to make go-to link to/from generated item?
      2. Assuming the formatting options can be worked out, being able to assign a journal type/template/formatting options to the generated entries probably would require building a pick list at minimum in CL. That would likely need to be cached to allow CL not to require Foundry to be up and running all the time.
    2. Drag and drop Foundry Actor objects onto a CL page, which grabs the name and makes a @ link?
    3. Drag and drop Foundry Item objects onto a CL page, which make the appropriate quartermaster, money, etc. style links?
    4. Query a tag in CL for a person (@), and automatically add / update the results into the Notes section of the linked / matching Foundry Actor Item, with the entries in order by date descending. Same for locations and other similar types to item links.
    5. Allow CL to be a target for log output, just as the foundry chat window is. Even better if we can parse specific sources or types of messages to auto copy from the Foundry chat log (ignore weapon attacks, for instance, but purchases).
Anyone else have a wish list or thoughts on what's above? This is all first draft, just thinking through it now, so apologies if it doesn't all make sense. :)
 

Stephan Hornick

Community Goblin & Master of the Archive
Platinum WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Borderland Explorer
Love Onenote! Using Snagit, I screen-shot all the screens and settings for programs I'm learning or configuring, like Foundry's dozens and dozens of modules... lol. The automatic OCR scanning of the images let me search right away for words in the screenshots!

Do you use that feature? Any particular way you use it that you really like?

I can't imagine trying to some of these things without OneNote....
OCR with snapshots? Wiz! No, I never knew that was possible.
 

JochenL

CL Byte Sprite
Staff member
Adamantium WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Gamer Lifestyle
Borderland Explorer
The ability to copy/paste text and pictures from anywhere and automatically get links to the source is critical for me and my process. I don't have a lot of time, so I end up doing it in fits and starts and will totally lose track of what I was thinking or where I got ideas / content from. Attribution is important to me, as well, and this helps me keep track.
I guess the attribution could be added to CL. We have a browser plugin way in the backlog that lets you mark text and images for copying to CL comparable to OneNote's or Pinterest's.

I usually end up with a PDF that I use PDF Viewer to Highlight / comment in with different colors. The comment coloring separates "in-between session prep items" for stuff I want to get into Foundry or work on between sessions and "during play items" like room descriptions, stat block, maps, etc. This is much easier than trying to scan through a PDF for a few sentances about a room's decor. lol
Another one from the backlog: Scan and AI-process an adventure PDF for import in CL. I don't know of international copyright law, but at least in Germany, you are allowed to make backup copies, so, here, it would be OK.

I want my journals in Foundry to be formatted differently, by default. i.e. Have a few types of journal with their own default style automatically, like a hand-written letter that is a script font at a larger font size and a background of parchment with a wax seal graphic at the bottom, along with a newspaper format, public announcements, dialogue between characters that maybe looks more like a book page, etc.
  1. I'm not sure this is even possible right now
Foundry journal entries can be HTML, so you can have any kind of formatting you want. Somewhere in our WoA Zoom calls, an expert in converting adventures to Foundry talked about this.

Just opening up CL in a browser window on the side is just fine for note taking. I don't think this is the answer for everyone (or even most people).
Sometimes I prefer just being in one app with as few open windows as possible. My idea would be to have journal entries directly linked to CL. When you create a page or an entry in CL, it shows up as a journal entry; when you create a journal entry, it shows up in CL. Also, I would like to be able to save the chat log to CL.

  1. CL Entries hold Foundry Item ID to make go-to link to/from generated item?
  2. Assuming the formatting options can be worked out, being able to assign a journal type/template/formatting options to the generated entries probably would require building a pick list at minimum in CL. That would likely need to be cached to allow CL not to require Foundry to be up and running all the time.
There are profile settings in CL you could use to store any kind of settings and mappings. Some user-defined "foreign key" field would also be possible.

  1. Drag and drop Foundry Actor objects onto a CL page, which grabs the name and makes a @ link?
  2. Drag and drop Foundry Item objects onto a CL page, which make the appropriate quartermaster, money, etc. style links?
Cool!
 
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