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Good questions! I normally try to be more concise but in the interest of full disclosure I'll try to be as thorough as possible.
1. Relative to Roll20, how hard is it to set things up?
Roll20 is definitely easier to learn, whereas I find Foundry is easier to do things once you are already familiar. That is to say there definitely is a larger learning curve with foundry. Part of this is due to setting-up foundry as a server (i'll talk more about this in #2). But once you have foundry set up, things get better and are at least comparable to roll20 if not better. I always found dynamic lighting incredibly fiddly in roll20, both in terms of setting up the walls and then setting up tokens. Foundry is much easier there. Setting up the scenes is also much easier to add maps and especially map tiles. This is because you can set the grid width for the whole scene and then set the length/width of each image individually if needed. So if you set your grid to 100 pixels and you have a 6x6 map tile, you just set the pixels to 600x600 and it is now the perfect size. Same thing for flip mats (though the paizo edge bleed does complicate it somewhat if your images have that).
For learning, I watched this youtube series to learn the basics of foundry. Foundry is system agnostic so the things covered here applies to any system (Dnd, PF1, PF2, SFS, etc)
Foundry Basics
There's also the PDF to Foundry module which populates scenrios/modules for you (i talk about this in 5. pro/cons.)
2. I noticed your link is foundry.redeux.net. Is it necessarily hosted on a personal domain, or is there a hosted option?
There are three ways to run foundry, I'll describe each:
2a. Self-host. This is free option that anyone can do. It involves running foundry on your computer and players connect to foundry directly. It would require you to run your computer 24/7 if doing this for play-by-post so I wouldn't recommend self-hosting for PbP, but if you're doing virtual table top games then it is always a good option many people use. One complaint against self-hosting is that if your internet connection isn't the strongest then it might lag the game a little bit.2b. Pay for a "turn-key" solution. This is the easy to set-up and reliable connections speeds option. This ranges from $4-20/month. You're basically paying a foundry specialized company to host your server and they try to make it as easy as possible. There are three hosting solutions listed here: Molten Hosting, Foundry Server, and The Forge. When you use one of these options your game url might be "redeux.foundyserver.com" Also note that if your goal is to do play-by-post then having a 24/7 server in this manner is going to be pricey. For the most part these services are aimed towards live games where you might set up your server 2-3 hours before a game and then it shuts down after the game is done/inactive.
2c. Set up your own dedicated server. This is the most tech savvy and do-it-your-way option and is what I did. It is the most technical one since you have to set-up the server but it will be cheaper than 2b while still offering reliable connections. I'm not particularly tech savvy in this regard but was able to do it following this tutorial: Self Hosting Foundry in the cloud. My Digital Ocean server costs $5 per month running 24/7. So cheaper than my roll20 pro subscription.
3. How has customer service been with problems?
I haven't had any customer service issues. Though note there are two sides of this:
3a. Foundry itself -- There's the main development of foundry as a system-agnostic platform where you can run any game on. the main foundry dev(s) seem pretty responsive to fixing bugs.3b. Your individual system developers. For this game that's the PF2 developers/community. If there was say a bug or something with the PF2 subsystem within foundry then it would be up to the pfs2 developers/community to fix it. Note that this is all open-source, volunteer effort. So it really ends up being what the community can and is willing to do to fix something. Right now at least on PF2 (i don't do the other systems), the PF2 devs are super responsive and specifically with PF2 it's the most supported system outside of DnD (DnD being supported by the main foundry developer).
Some people I've talked to don't like that there's not a company behind the subsystems, and that's fair. But the advantage at least for me is if there is something I don't like--- I can change it. For instance in Roll20 I have all of the PF2 compendium ($$$) but they dont sell Lost Omen books. I've had players request to use a Gods and Magic spell before but it wasn't in my compendium to drag/drop. Which is lame. And to add insult to injury, even if i wanted to add that spell to my compendium I couldn't.
Contrast that with foundry where I have the power where I can make my own compendiums to use in my games. Say I homebrew my own classes or something, I can make a compendium with all those feats and stuff. And any of the OGL compliant content for PF2 is already in the system wide compendium for everyone to use for free. That is to say Foundry already has that Gods and Magic spell i needed, whereas roll20 likely never will.
4. How is the uptime? Any complaints?
I use Digital Ocean and the server has guaranteed uptime of 99.99%. I also have my foundry instance set up to auto-restart if it gets kicked off so hopefully any hiccup is only temporary.
I did have my first issue just yesterday after ~45 days though which happened to coincide with my billing cycle ending. I have my creditcard on file and it was charged but the server refused connections to the foundry app you are connecting to. I think digital ocean didn't recognize i paid my bill...not sure. I restarted my server when i woke up and it was fine again. So still need to research exactly why that happened because it really shouldn't have gone down like that.
In reality, foundry is by and large meant to be used for live games. Me offering play-by-post on it mostly has been to try to offer a different (and hopefully better experience). If that ever happened in a live-game then I'd be there to resolve it quickly, whereas in this case I was sleeping so there was some downtime where the traffic wasn't routing properly. Something I plan to keep my eyes on for play-by-post. I wouldn't anticipate this being an issue in VTT with me on the server. It would be no less disruptive than the frequent lag you get on roll20.
5. Pros/cons vs Roll20?
(minus sign and plus signs are relative to Foundry. Meaning a minus sign roll20 does better, plus sign foundry does better)
I'm sure I could think of more stuff, but that's some of what comes to mind. The big thing to consider is that Foundry isn't perfect. A lot of the community is very happy with it and will try to sell it to you without mentioning any of it's flaws. It's got some, but overall for me at least I have found it to be the better program. I consider myself a power-user and enjoy being able to do some stuff in Foundry that roll20 wouldn't let me do though.
6. Worth the price?
For me, yes. This year alone I have spent $274 between my roll20 pro subscription and the various compendiums.
Contrast that with the $50 for foundry where i have the full compendium for pf2. Hosting costs for me is an exta $5 per month which is less than my roll20 subscription so foundry will quickly pay for itself. There's also the domain if you were doing your own 2c server. This averages $8-14 a year. This wasn't a cost to me since i already owned my redeux.net domain (for email).
That said, if you're just looking at doing something for play-by-post, then googlesheets is obviously free and hard to beat. I don't know if I would've bought foundry just for play-by-post.
One last thing to keep in mind, when you buy foundry, you buy a license to run a single instance. If you want to have two servers up and running at the same time, you'd need a 2nd $50 license. I personally went ahead and bought a 2nd license since i run games in both VTT and play by post and I didn't want to "black-out" the play-by-post server for a few hours during those games. You'd never need a 2nd license if you were only running live-games, or if you only did one-play-by-post game at a time. This still ends up being cheaper for me than roll20 but something to be aware of in the context of play by post.
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I'm actually considering it for VTT, not PbP. Google Slides is fine for PbP, and I probably wouldn't pay to improve that experience.
But on the live side, I'm very meh about Roll20, and the Foundry setup you have has been way more intuitive and smoother (at least from my end). No connection issues, not even on my phone (!!). Either it's a very smooth system, or you've done a great job setting it up.
I still have to decide how much it's worth to me money-wise ( I might just go with a free option first and then upgrade later), but I'd definitely pay a nonzero amount so my kids can play with their out of town cousins and their friends.
Is there a way for me to put a 15' emanation around Nina on Foundry?
On the left hand side there's the toolbar with some different icons. Click on the ruler icon. Then click on Nina and drag out to 15 ft. Or just tell me to do it. Note that right now I haven't figured out how to attach it to a specific character so if Nina moves you'd have to move the area separately. There is a Token Aura module we can use that is like Roll20's but the advantage of the ruler method is it will show the exact squares impacted, a player can do it, and you can drop it anywhere (such as a fireball if we weren't underwater).
No problem, I'm the same way!
Also sorry for not getting back to your other message sooner (busy week) -- If you want to try out Foundry from the GM seat I set up my 2nd server here
no gm password. It's set for "Perennial Crown" but only has maps in it and if you stick to the first page (ship start) then you won't get any spoilers. You won't be able to install new modules or anything, but any i have loaded already you can enable/disable. Don't worry about breaking anything, After we're done with this game I'm going to be swapping out all my tokens and deleting everything on the servers.
Only thing to watch out for is in the settings don't click "return to set-up" because it will ask for an admin password and you'll get locked out.
I'd recommend watching and following along with the "Foundry Basics" video linked above (question 1).
Let me know if you need any help/have questions.
Hi all, as you may have guessed this is the final encounter and it seems that the bunyip is not long for this world.
If everyone could do the following it'd be appreciated:
1. take a look at our muster sheet and make sure your info is correct.
2. do your downtime here (in discussion). If you're doing earn income my assumption your doing task at your level-2 for 8 days, but if you have anything that changes that (field agent, underworld lore, storied talent, etc,etc) just let me know so i calculate the right amount
We'll do a proper wrap up of rewards and everything once combat is over, but if you have any questions/need anything from me then let now is good time to ask as well as after the session. Cheers!
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Nina is retraining her spells. She will finish retraining sound burst to sudden blight, and begin retraining see invisibility to blood vendetta.
Begin: sound burst to sudden blight (1/7), see invisibility to blood vendetta (0/7)
End: sound burst to sudden blight (7/7), see invisibility to blood vendetta (2/7)
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Knab reads ancient cyclopean books on alchemy, gardening, and magic, counting as 12 days learning Cyclops (to 12/50 days cumulative progress).
The first 11 days he has to actually dry the texts out. Fortunately, though he is by no means a vocational reader, he does seem to building from a strange affinity for the language, and relying heavily on his eidetic memory.
He teaches himself the curse words first. Obviously.
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Ok Kang uses his downtime to craft stuff and he's a field-commissioned agent, i.e. 12 days.
(At the previous scenario, Kang was crafting a scroll of resist energy and was reducing the cost by 1 gp a day. He had already spent 4 days. So for this scenario...)
Spend 2 DT days to reduce cost by 2gp (6gp in total) to complete Scroll of Resist Energy
Spend 4 DT days to start crafting Scroll of Sphere of Invisibility (L3) and spend 15gp as raw material costs
==> Crit success so each additional day reduces cost by 2gp
Spend 6 DT days to reduce cost by 12gp (i.e. 3gp left)
Also, Kang will spend 12gp to purchase a Scroll of Darkvision and auto-learns the spell (Arcana Assurance to get result of 19 vs DC18).
Congratulations again!
CHRONICLE SHEETS are here and the session has been reported on Paizo.
The link to chronicle sheets is also now found in the header of this campaign. For those of you who imported your character sheets into foundry, I also added your foundry .json files to the chronicle folder. You're also welcome to update your character in foundry over the next few days and download the updated .json yourself (right click your Pc name in the sidebar Actor tab -> export Data).
If you have any new feedback about me as a GM, foundry as a google-slides replacement, etc then feel free to shoot me a PM. I appreciate any and all feedback
Lastly, If you have any questions or need anything from me then please let me know! Otherwise it has been a pleasure and thank you for playing! I'll keep the campaign active for a few days, and will keep the foundry serever up and running for the same amount of time.
Thanks again!