This Is The BEST VTT (And Its Not Even Close)
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- čas přidán 22. 05. 2024
- Hello and welcome! In this video I talk about how Foundry VTT is what myself, and many others consider to be the current best virtual tabletop that's out there. However, just because I consider it to be the best, doesn't mean that you have to as well. Each VTT has it's own ups and downs that can make them perfect or not so perfect for your game sessions. I hope you enjoy the video, and be sure to leave a like if you did! 👍
• All battlemaps used in this video were made by Forgotten Adventures.
• The animated forest background is made by James' RPG Art.
❗Go check em' out❗
#dnd #ttrpg #dungeonsanddragons #vtt #virtualtabletop #pathfinder - Zábava
I currently have something like 141 modules installed in Foundry ranging from map packs, automation improvements, music packs, UI, Level design improvement, and even one that puts an image of the Pathfinder rules lawyer up on a banner whenever someone hit's by a +1. Can't name another VTT that allows me to do all that at no extra cost with just a button click. Foundry is truly one of a kind, and imo the best at what it does.
Bro I imagine you have some information about format choice and scene management that makes all that run well? Do you self host or use a service? I've been trying to go webm/webp when I can.
@@Numberi i self host, and most of my stuff is automation, macros, ui, stuff that isn't too hefty, so far my players have no complaints other than the occasional slow down if I have a particularly large encounter or map. I also have a beast PC which likely helps.
For real, Foundry's pay-to-own model on top of the incredible support means that it has no peers! I seriously look forward to prepping for the next session, especially in new systems, because I get to push the envelope and learn more about what Foundry can do.
I run Lancer, a tactical mech ttrpg, in foundry with an isometric mod, with animations and automations. I’ve made interactive narrative scenes and player menus that allow players to pull up their own codex in an immersive UI, or check the mission brief in an imbedded animated external page. I payed 30$ years ago and none of my players need to pay for or even download a single thing.
I can’t imagine going back to anything else. You can do SO MUCH.
Foundry _is_ what other VTTs _aim to be_ some day.
How hard is it to find a group on it?
@@Iridescence93 How hard is it to find one on Fantasy Grounds or your home play table?
Why are you using a VTT to find a group? This isn't a MMO group finder.
@@christopherg2347 I don't have people where I live that are into TT RPGs so I don't have much choice. Roll 20 is probably the worst site as a VTT but it has the most people playing on it so that is a consideration for me.
I downloaded foundry and ran my first session that weekend. Easy to learn, easy to run, and powerful. I had never used a VTT before, and kind of figured that Foundry was a normal VTT.
I've looked at other VVTs recently, and I'm extremely confused as to how they even exist.
Foundry is crazy good. Great ongoing creator support and an exceptionally helpful community with endless mods. Beautiful, functional, reliable. I cannot say enough good things about it, honestly.
I have tried most of the main VTTs. I think owlbear rodeo and roll20 are fine starting points for beginners. They both offer free jumping in points with a small learning curve. I played through one campaign in Fantasy Grounds. The automated combat was excellent however the UI for me was not very intuitive. I feel like Fantasy Grounds has the highest learning curve and unless you are a big fan of the 90's style aesthetic, Foundry VTT does what it does better in my opinion. Foundry VTT having the one time purchase, easy UI and modding community easily make it the best for me.
I completely agree. Roll20 is great for beginners and even moreso in Owlbear Rodeo's case since it's free and fairly intuitive.
That is an interesting point. Fantasy Grounds seems really really awesome to me, as it can do so much work for you if you want to, but has the flexiblity to easily ignore that automation. (Also the classic edition really will run on a potato PC just fine). But having been a FG user for a very long time now (as it was the only particularly good business model VTT and just about the only VTT that worked with many rulesets and the coreRPG engine lets you play any other rules), so that learning curve is so far in the past for me, and its pretty easy to teach your players any bit that isn't immediately apparent to them.
Foundry looks good, actually is pretty similar really, but it definitely falls short of FG in some areas as well. So if I was starting out now I'd be at least a little torn.
That's the first video Iof yours that I've seen, and it is great, so definitely not the last video of yours I'll watch 😊
Welcome aboard! Happy to hear you enjoyed the vid! 😁
That accent at the beginning got me! That was really good
Hahaha 😆 well I'm happy to hear you got a kick out of it!
I played on Roll20 for years. Tried Rodeo which I wouldn´t even consider being a VTT because of the lack of character implementation. Alchemy is very limited in their support for different systems. Everybody told me how complicated Foundry is and the paywall (55 €) held me always back. But now I am using it for 5 days (on Mac OS btw) and it is brilliant- and I am not a tech or software guy but the support and help on CZcams alone makes the entry easy and I love to learn more about the tools and free modules. There is no way back.
Foundry is just leagues above the others.
I started playing 5e on roll20 and used that platform for like 7 years. I tried other platforms but kept coming back to Roll20.
Then foundry came out and I got it when it was in beta and super cheap. I liked it so much I moved over my D&D campaign to it and never looked back. Eventually I switched over to PF2e because it just had better support on Foundry.
Recently I was talking to my friend about trying out some 5e and I figured I would run a game on Roll20 because I already own so much content for 5e over there.
I tried opening a game up, and oh my gosh does it feel so clunky. I could never go back to Roll20 nor could I ever play on other platforms. Once you've been spoiled on foundry vtt it's really hard to go back to systems that are outdated.
What's the mod you're using that puts the initiative order at the top? That would make it so much easier for my players to keep track of it without having to tab over to that section of the menu.
Carousel Combat Tracker by theripper93. 🧙♂️
I've played 2 different campaigns on Foundry now, and while it's really good and objectively the best VTT, it takes away some of the organic "table top" experience for me; meaning that it feels more like a slow paced video game than a roleplaying experience. Personally, my favorite is Owlbear Rodeo v2. Quick and Easy. It doesn't have a ton of mods but it's got the ones I need for managing status effects. That's all I need! I enjoy the Fog of War in Owlbear Rodeo as well. I just find it way easier to get playing right away.
I haven't used owlbear, but I'm willing to bet that foundry could become a clone of it, if you set it up properly.
@@abettermind I could spend time setting up Foundry to mimic Owlbear, or I can just use Owlbear :P
Yes, You can do everything you can do in Owlbear with Foundry and much more. It's not about having the fanciest tool, it's about having a tool that does what you want it to and that I can use with swiftness and ease. That's the appeal of Owlbear, it's simplicity; It's so quick and easy to use.
So just out of curiosity, how many times saying "VTT" out loud did it take before it started sounding weird?
No joke, I considered adding a counter to the video when I was editing it. Towards the end of editing I just started hearing vee-tea-tea. 😂
I've played through roll20 and foundry, and i can say that foundry takes the cake by far, in every single aspect.
I tried foundry once, but I had to do port forwarding and all this extra stuff for multiplayer.
That's for if you want to self host, which is worth it imo if you don't want to pay for a third party to host your server. However if you do want it to be hosted, most of the third party hosting services that I know of offer hosting for fairly cheap.
my current favorite VTT that's free is bag of mapping - it doesn't have all the features that foundry does, but it's so much easier to use. Though it is brand new
I'll have to check it out! Sounds interesting. 😁
Wait how do you do mutlileveled scenes without mods? I've been using the levels mod to do that
I mentioned this in another comment, but I'd definitely still use the Levels and Wall Height mods because they work a lot better than the non-mod method detailed below. 👇
You can combine foreground and background images for a scene to achieve a multilevel effect, and then if you add in some tiles for things like wooden guard towers, tree tops, building roofs, and stuff like that, you can place a token on top of it if you change the tokens elevation. But, things get a little wonky with walls and vision, which is why the creator of the Wall Height and Levels mod expanded on this basic feature and made it so much better. From what I understand the FVTT team want to eventually make these features a part of the base software, but with great mods like Levels and Wall Height existing, it's probably not on their priority list.
Hope this helps! 🧙♂️
Talespires customisation puts Foundry in the dust
I have used Roll20, Tale Spire, Owlbear, and about half a dozen others. I have nearly 700 hours of use with Foundry. Nothing else even comes close to it. Just nothing.
FGU user. Have been for ages. Recently picked up Foundry just to try it out. I keep reading how the UI is better, and I don't know wtf everyone is talking about. Can someone give a SPECIFIC EXAMPLE of how it's better? I haven't found anything in Foundry to be a better experience for me than FGU, especially as a DM. Adventures/campaigns have been harder to build, creating a monster manual to reference in a campaign has been a mess, and currently I've got 40+ modules installed to kind of mimic what FGU does out of the box, all of which require me to count on a host of developers to update them (the all broke recently with v12) and also hope they don't decide to require patreon someday. I bought my ultimate license for FGU when it came out, and I've never looked back.
Everything in FGU just... works. Nothing in Foundry has felt more intuitive, or more streamlined, or better arranged. What am I missing?
I wanna preface this by saying that if you prefer Fantasy Grounds, then don't let anyone force you into using a VTT you don't like. While many people like Foundry, it doesn't mean that it's for everyone. 🔨
I think that the reason many people like the Foundry UI is because it feels more modern and (in my opinion) is easier to navigate than other VTTs that offer the same features that Foundry does in the way of customization, modding, automation, and organization. Plus, from what my players have told me, it feels a lot more neat and they appreciate that you can customize the UI with mods. And from a gamemaster's standpoint, I really appreciate how easy it is to manage my worlds, game systems, and mods. Plus, there are tons of settings and features that you can easily tweak in a world to customize your mods, game system, and rules however you would like.
I'm not sure what you mean by "monster manual" but I assume you mean like a monster NPC sheet, compendium, or something like that. 🤔 In my experience i haven't had any issues making monsters or organizing them, but if you're having problems then I'd recommend popping into the Foundry discord server and asking for some assistance because they're extremely friendly over there and are more than willing to help you if you're experiencing some issues with mods, compatibility, hosting, etc. 😁
Regarding using newer versions of FVTT and mods, sadly with Foundry's current policy of not sharing new/in-progress builds with modders, it makes things tricky. The way things currently are, you shouldn't upgrade to the newest version of Foundry as soon as it's released AND expect to keep mod compatibility. This is because Foundry versions normally come with a lot of new code, features, and changes, and it's unrealistic to expect modders to release a new version of their mod the day of or week when a new version of Foundry comes out. ☹️
When a new version of Foundry is released, it normally takes the modders anywhere from a week to a month to get things sorted out because many of them are not being paid to maintain their mods, so they work on them in their free time (and sometimes they do it without any help). So as a general rule of thumb, the modding community advises that if you want to continue using mods in your worlds, you should wait for a stable build of a Foundry version to be released, then check every now and then to see if your favorite mods have been updated to work with the new version of Foundry. And sadly, not all modders work on a set schedule or are very vocal about when they plan to release a new version of their mod that's compatible with the new version of Foundry. I know it's a bit annoying, but that's the give and take of using mods on Foundry as it currently is.
I hope this was useful in explaining things or clearing things up. Happy gaming! 🧙♂️
Just don't update your foundry after you have it set up how you want it set up. There is no reason to update your mods or OS if everything is working for you.
I don't know FGU, but I'm willing to bet that foundry could be set up to operate just like it, while offering other options, should you want them.
I have a theater of the mind campaign, a tactical shooter, and a traditional VTT style game running on foundry. If you didn't know better, you would think they were entirely different VTTs, due to how drastically different they operate.
I had my first game up and running 2 days after I downloaded Foundry, and it was my first VTT. Maybe it's not as intuitive as some others, I don't know, but it's definitely intuitive enough.
Not sure what game system you're working in. But if you are referring to the character sheets for monsters in d&d, I can understand your frustration. I would very much recommend tidy 5e sheet which will give you a much better sheet for NPCs and frankly players. While the new player sheet looks nice, it still has a bit to go before it is holy featured.
With regards to foundry V12 , I don't believe that is even unstable yet. Foundry does make it quite clear that you should not upgrade major versions until they are stable. And as the video author mentioned, most mods are not going to be updated on day one. I will push back on him saying that foundry doesn't give module developers early builds. They definitely do. The issue. Is that the builds change rapidly. The big modules that have large patreon support bases can be updated on lunch day or within a few days. But, the smaller mod developers who either don't actively follow the updates to the core software or get around to it once it's completely released due in fact, take a little bit of time.
But is there a mod that allows you to watch the entire Bee Movie in Foundry?
There is a CZcams widget premium mod, and I think there's a browser widget mod, so probably! 😆
can i pirate the PDF and put them i foundry?
Especially as a PF2E fan I really like Foundry but after using Talespire and now RPG Stories for years 2D VTTs can never be the best for me anymore. 2D just looks like...well, what it is - a map. 3D is a much more immersive world.
I love using 3D VTTs as well. The scenes you can create on a VTT like Tailspire will always be more immersive than a 2D scene/map, but they also take a lot longer to make (or at least in my experience).
@@nattertotThey definitely can take a lot longer. Thankfully RPG Stories and Talespire both have the option to share & download community creations. RPG Stories also has a quick room builder option if you just need something simple, and is adding AI generation in their upcoming expansion so you won't have to worry about extra prep time.
@@Oniphire I've been meaning to check out RPG Stories since they're one of the newer ones, but I haven't gotten around to it quite yet. I might need to make a video about it and Talespire sometime soon. 👀 I need to give the 3D VTT community some love and appreciation.
FoundryVTT is good, but it misses a big thing for me. Well, not for me, I'm fine without it, but my players. My players are from the generation that do everything with a touch screen, to the point of fully ignoring a laptop's trackpad.
Foundry simply does not work with touchscreens or smaller, iPad-sized screens. There are mods for it, such as TouchVTT, but that has problems in itself (e.g. registering a tap as a hover and a click at the same time, triggering two separate actions from Foundry).
Yeah it is definitely lacking in that aspect. There have been votes to to better integrate mobile support but they never win. I must confess I never vote for it just because I don't use it and none of my players do either. All are late millennial or early gen z so they aren't nearly as touch screen dependent.
Foundry has it all don’t get me wrong. That being said, Alchemy’s UI designer needs a pat on the back. Shit is beautiful. And the features will get more plentiful overtime with their weekly updates.
Recently started messing with Foundry and it’s great.
Multi level maps without mods?
Haven’t seen that yet.
You can combine foreground and background images for a scene to achieve a multilevel effect, and then if you add in some tiles for things like wooden guard towers, tree tops, building roofs, and stuff like that, you can place a token on top of it if you change the tokens elevation. OR, if you want to get a little more complicated for the sake of making super intricate multilevel maps, you can download the "Levels" and "Wall Height" mods. I'd heavily recommend looking into them. 😁
@@nattertot I used those mods to set up a 5 story Wizard Tower, home made maps and everything, it took a while yes, but damn did the players love it. =)
Any product should strive for community first.
It’s awful when the community needs to wait developers to make a simple feature, the community itself could have solved their needs long time ago already…
While this is a glowing review of Foundry's advantages, you fail to mention the downsides and tradeoffs. Self-hosting, inconsistent behaviours from one game to another (because they use different mods), and the sheer quantity of mods available can be substantial turn-offs to people looking for a simpler experience.
"The best" will always be dependent upon needs and perspective. But with regard to hosting, there are services out there that will host your games for relatively cheap (I pay $4.50/mo for The Forge).
@@this_epic_nameAbsolutely, but this rather undermines the review's emphasis on "only one thing to buy, ever!" stance.
You can also use radmin/hamachi or any apps that simulates network to do it so. I prefer the self hosting because my pc and internet can handle it but it's too much for you or you don't feel safe, try the ones I mentioned (or go to the cloud configuration where you can get a free cloud server to host foundry, you fan find on the wiki ai think)
Sorry,,, but TALESPIRE is the one,,, and has mods and is in early access AND is just getting better and better
My issue with tailspire is that it has been in beta forever and the features are not coming in in any reasonable sort of time. Also, at this time they don't really have much plans for rules implementation for any game systems. Everything is rather manual.
Say no to digital dice
Say no to screens. Say no to digital.