I recently bought Foundry, and it is REALLY powerful. It definitely has a slight learning curve, but once you get the hang of it, and install the right modules, it really sings. In built dynamic lighting, dynamic sound and a wonderfully active community are all huge draws. There are some design quarks in the PF2 module that irk me a bit, but I have them mostly ironed out and will be starting my first Foundry campaign sometime in the next 2 weeks.
The one downside is that you have to jump through a few hoops to get online connections going. If you've ever port forwarded, you will be fine. You have the option of renting server space as well, but that's an additional cost, so YMMV.
My group just directly connects to my machine, which means that our play by post campaign days are on hold for now, since I don't fancy running Foundry on my PC 24/7.
There are some very good tutorials on how to start using Foundry over at Encounter Library on YouTube. I cannot recommend Foundry enough - once you learn it, which does not take much time, it becomes so much easier to use than r20 and you end up saving more in the long run. You can even import stuff from your legally purchased PDFs!
Meanwhile Fantasy Grounds is cartoonishly expensive and has a UI that reminds me of AutoCAD.
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Foundry is definitely fantastic and the devs behind the PF2e module are awesome.
If you're not sure about it, an alternative I'd recommend is Astral. They have a free tier that includes dynamic lighting, fog of war, and other cool features right out of the box.
I'm the one who's made some recent updates to the PF2e character sheet template, so hopefully it's more convenient to use than it was before.
While they're still ramping up on creating compendiums (only have a D&D 5e one so far), I've been putting work into a spell compendium to help make things easier on spellcasters. It's a ton of work, so I've only got the first couple levels, but at least that way it's the most commonly used spells.
Why does it require networking and stuff? That sounds way out of my ability to learn range. o.O
What would you have used if not for the help with foundry?
Basically, Foundry itself doesn't do much of the networking for you. You have to port forward to give your players an access point to Foundry. Basically, you are opening a door through your Router and giving them a link (through the app) to directly connect to your machine.
It's really not very hard, but if you've never done any networking, it's not very intuitive. And if you have a Router that supports IPv6, then you should be good to go out of the gate, barring any settings that may interfere.
If you want a more simple experience, but with much more up front work, you can run a game perfectly fine using nothing but Discord and Google Drawings for maps. My group did so for the first several months of the Lockdown pretty successfully. I just decided to take the plunge and buy Foundry because when we do start in person sessions again, I want to use Foundry for battlemaps still. Easier to set up once you are used to it, and better than drawing out maps on a grid mat. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
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Roll20 does take a little bit of time to get use to, as will Foundry.
I like Roll20 and they do have some premade adventures. I am not sure if they have beginner box stuff or not.
That said, it is easy to share a table with one else on Roll20.
Any system will take a little time to get use to.
Beginner Box is indeed on Roll20! Which includes the Compendium, Player Token Pack, and the Menace Under Otari adventure.
What would you have used if not for the help with foundry?I would have stayed on Roll20 and just complained about the lack of functionality on their 2e character sheet. Any VTT that requires player buy in to use was a non-starter for my group due to varying financial situations.
The upfront cost of Foundry is a barrier, but really it's not too bad, and you only need 1 license for the group to play, provided you have a single GM. 10 bucks a person for a 5 person group is very manageable.
Roll20 on the other hand does have a free option, but it's quite limited. Lowish storage for images was what killed me. After a single campaign I was having to micro manage my Roll20 storage for each encounter, which became tiresome.
With Foundry, you buy it once and that's it. You have all the features, and the only way you can have a storage cap is if you use a server host, which also costs money. But with a little work you can bypass that as well.
Unless you manually put it in you have to buy it on Roll20. Once you buy Foundry you own it and don't have to pay again. There are tech requirements to run it (they are on their website).
So... I'm having some mixed messages. Can Roll20 do everything or no? Seems like it's limited but also okay to an extent. Also when I was messing on Roll20 it looked like you had to buy their version of the beginner box than use what you already have on Paizo. Not sure if there is a different way to work that?
Foundry seems super complicated but would also be good for long term campaigning. I don't mind the price point I just don't want to not be able to use it after buying it. lol
That depends on your definition of "everything". If you want to program in a lot of automation, it isn't the best platform. Many people don't do that. People range from "automate everything i can" to "it has tokens, a map and a dice roller. I need nothing else."
I'm loving Foundry, and some community-made modules for it are a real treat.
The only thing I'm finding a bit hard with it is making macros, and being a software engineer I usually don't have such problems. Maybe I'm getting old :D
I absolutely LOATHE Roll20's drawing interface. I like to draw my maps free hand at the table, but trying to do that on Roll20 is like trying to gargle shards of glass.
So... I'm having some mixed messages. Can Roll20 do everything or no? Seems like it's limited but also okay to an extent. Also when I was messing on Roll20 it looked like you had to buy their version of the beginner box than use what you already have on Paizo. Not sure if there is a different way to work that?
Foundry seems super complicated but would also be good for long term campaigning. I don't mind the price point I just don't want to not be able to use it after buying it. lol
Base Roll20 with no purchased content or subscription is a blank canvas. You can upload images to use as maps and adjust Roll20's grid to match it. You can upload images for character pawns/tokens and whatnot. You can add descriptions and, from what I remember, create basic character sheets.
But all of that is custom, you have to do the legwork yourself. I think there are ways to bypass some of that, but largely your experience on Roll20 will be as good as you make it personally.
With purchases you can get access to things like premade creature tokens with character sheets, already formatted maps and other resources that just make life easier.
But no matter what VTT you use, I highly recommend you take a couple days or a week or two and just play around with it until you fully understand how it works. Tutorials, either written or video formats, are a huge help in finding your way around and getting your game up to your standards.
As an example, I was having just the Worst time getting a Map to sync up with the grid on Roll20. An hour or two looking at tutorials had me using the alignment tool like a champ, and resizing my images to more "round" numbers to help.
I'll talk a bit about my preferred VTT -- Fantasy Ground (Classic).
It has problems -- high cost for GMs (if you want players to be able to play for free), atrocious UI design and fails to keep consistency with various of its own design decisions.
However it also does a lot of very useful things, compared to roll20 at least (not sure how many of these have been added to Foundry, I suspect some have and I know more will as time goes on)
* Secret rolls are easy -- the player still 'rolls' and can still add in any modifiers they need to before rolling, and only the GM sees it
* Persistent damage can be added as a condition, the game automatically rolls the damage and the recovery check.
* Regen and fast healing are likewise handled at start of turn, most spells have the correct tags to disable regen when appropraite, (but something I still double check)
* Resistance/weakness/vulnerability are all handled close to perfectly (alignment damage still appears broken)
* AoE damaging/condition giving spells are handled beautifully, player/gm selects the targets, the VTT rolls all saves/applies the damage/conditions
* The 'parcels' and 'party inventory' pages are amazing for distributing loot that you expect people to use during the adventure.
I'd say most of the benefits show up more for long running campaign, than random one-offs though, just do to the upfront setup cost of building/maintaining a character in their system.
I run FGC primarily for my local PFS lodge with a fairly stable pool of players, and for my two AP groups. I run Roll20 at most conventions as I know that's the more common platform there.
I've tried them all, except fantasy grounds, due to the oppressively high cost, and Foundry is the best hands down. Yes there's a bit of a learning curve but you're going to have a learning curve to use any VTT efficiently/effectively. Foundry is only going to get better faster than all of those other platforms because while not open source it's the closest thing to it. This means that the number of people working on it at any given time dwarfs any of the other platforms.
However it also does a lot of very useful things, compared to roll20 at least (not sure how many of these have been added to Foundry, I suspect some have and I know more will as time goes on)* Secret rolls are easy -- the player still 'rolls' and can still add in any modifiers they need to before rolling, and only the GM sees it
* Persistent damage can be added as a condition, the game automatically rolls the damage and the recovery check.
* Regen and fast healing are likewise handled at start of turn, most spells have the correct tags to disable regen when appropraite, (but something I still double check)
* Resistance/weakness/vulnerability are all handled close to perfectly (alignment damage still appears broken)
* AoE damaging/condition giving spells are handled beautifully, player/gm selects the targets, the VTT rolls all saves/applies the damage/conditions
* The 'parcels' and 'party inventory' pages are amazing for distributing loot that you expect people to use during the adventure.
As far as what's in Foundry so far for this list:
-There's a module for "actually secret" rolls, otherwise you can roll and have only the GM see it, it just shows in chat as "Player 1 rolled something" with some ??? and it can be set to GM and Player rolling see it, or only the GM. The module hides that chat message so it's super secret.
-Persistent damage can be added as a condition as well, as far as automatically rolling it I believe there is also a module for it.
-Same for regen. Not quite base, a module.
-For resistances and stuff, you can shift+click the damage and modify it[+10, -15, etc etc] to automatically apply to the token, as well as having take half or take double buttons. Also a shield block and healing button as well. For automatically applying them, I don't believe that's in yet, or I just haven't found the module...
-AoE in Foundry you slap down the template for the spell and it targets the creatures in it for you. If it's a save spell, the GM just has the creatures relevant selected and hit the "DC ## Save" button on your spell card and it rolls their saves and says the level of success achieved.
-You can make an actor sheet for Loot, and players can drag items onto their sheet from it, put their items on it if they want, and automatically distribute coins evenly among the players.
I haven't tried Fantasy Grounds myself, it's mostly the crazy high cost that kept me from ever attempting it, though I wish I had. Kinda feel like I blew too much money on Roll20 now that I've moved to a nicer system. I feel like a lot of the module creators for Foundry must have tried FG as well cuz a lot of things I see about FG end up being a module eventually.
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One thing to keep in mind is that technical merits of one platform or the other is only part of the picture
Right now by far the most common technology being used is roll20. Which means that it is far easier to find games on roll20 than on the other technologies.
How much that matters to you is, of course, totally up to you. If you have a group that you plan to mostly play with its no big deal.
Another factor that may or not matter is that roll20 is completely free. As a practical matter eventually you'll be tempted to spend some money (tempted, not required) but you can easily play free for several years
All the main VTTs are quite capable of doing what is required (as hundreds of succesful campaigns clearly show). They differ in ease of use but they are ALL quite, quite functional
Foundry is King.
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I paid for R20 for years
I have used Fantsygrounds for the past 4 years
I own and have used Foundry for quite a while (I was a patreon supporter before it "released" earlier this year, and am a current user)
R20: It has a free option and runs via web browser with the campaign hosted. This is its only advantage imo.
Fantasyground Unity:
- Client/Server setup results in less latency for me.
- Port forwarding is handled by their "cloud" option working as a lobby server.
- Automation is simple to handle in game and built in, easy to teach to people who have zero coding experience as they aren't dealing with macro scripts.
- Superior image tools barring the weird lack of text option.
- Fastest character creation for 5e and PF2e and guided level ups.
- Automation is far more comprehensive.
- More homebrew friendly than foundry or R20 and easy to save homebrew into modules in program.
- Wider range of useful GM tools that are automatically categorized and don't require 3rd party modules.
- The combat tracker is FAR superior to the initiative tracker of the other two.
- 3D dice are drag and drop from the bottom left, rather than having to type /r 1d20 or /r 3d6. Modifiers are right next to it.
- Traits can be double clicked to bring up a window telling you the rules text for that trait, conditions can be ctl or alt clicked (forget which one) to bring up a description of how it works.
- Expensive if you don't purchase pdfs (if you buy everything, personally I find it super easy and fast to add in custom content. The playtest documents took me 50minutes and 20ish minutes respectively.
- Ugly themes and visuals overall aren't as polished as Foundry yet.
- Interface takes getting used to (but is overall superior for the GM imo, for players they will just wonder why it cannot be like R20/Foundry)
- Doesn't have BGM/Sound Effects built in. I have to use a second user on discord/teamspeak to accomplish this.
- Dynamic Lighting only accounts for line of sight atm, although this is scheduled to be changed late this month / early next month. Listed for completeness.
Foundry
- Only $50, although you won't be forced to support paizo as much... plz buy the books or pdfs the industry profit margins aren't great outside of maybe 5e.
- Has all released content in its compendiums
- Visually pleasing and has modules that bring it 60-70% of where FG is.
- Intuitive if you don't try and automate too much.
- Dice so Nice has dice that are so nice to look at, sadly it stops you from making more rolls until the dice has stopped rolling. So I have ended up turning it off. But if you are okay with slow sessions dice so nice looks great.
- Second easiest line of sight tools, not quite as good as FG:Us overall, but pretty great compared to R20's.
- Pretty character sheet with nearly every option and item being given an icon.
- Shift click allowing for modifiers to a roll is great.
- Moderate automation with modules
- BGM and sound support
- Animated map support (although FG's FX system is more useful to me for general use)
- Option for no 3D dice, resulting in speedy rolls (even if the automation isn't quite there this is really nice)
- More formatting options in journal entries.
- Painfully slow NPC creation, and certain elements of NPCs from the compendium aren't able to be modified (drag across a black dragon you want to reskin into another creature, now remove the swim and fly speeds)
- Traits, senses and similar options are all check box options that are slow to enter, or in the case of senses really limiting without going adding them to the ruleset.
- Alchemists are a pain to handle, in both programs but significantly fiddlier in Foundry because of how it handles proficiency, inventory and spellcasters.
- Scene / Image control is pretty rudimentary
Overall I would recommend them as:
- Fantasygrounds Unity: If you have the money and have basic computer literacy skills and a willingness to learn how to use it.
- Foundry: If you can spend $50 and want a powerful and flexible program but don't want to go too far into the automation side of things, intermediate computer skills helps.
- R20: You cannot justify spending any money but want to play online. Don't pay for it, foundry is a better option if you would have to pay.
Oh and if you run 5e as well, just go fantasygrounds because with a couple of user extensions it is by far the most automated and smoothest experience you can have with a VTT.
I am still using Foundry for PF2e btw, However I tend to limit it to oneshots where having automation is less important and the visuals / audio tools help more.
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Damn, I really am the only one using Astral in this thread, lol.
I tried Astral a little bit, and it looked nice. I liked how I could design maps in-game.
What I really don't like about it (and about Roll20) is the fact that it runs on a remote server, and all your work resides there. This means that you have got limited space and that you lose access if they are down for some reason (and you lose everything if they go out of business). Having a subscription-based license worsens this, because if I don't keep paying I lose my stuff.
I'd much rather pay up front for a software that I can use forever.
Damn, I really am the only one using Astral in this thread, lol.
My group tried astral before switching to Foundry and ran through all of Plaguestone. It was such a resource hog and lacked so many features that we switched. Just having the character sheet open in a separate window slowed everything to a crawl. For what it's worth none of my players have high end computers or gaming rigs and my laptop doesn't have a discrete GPU, so I'm sure it's different for other groups. None of my players have had any issues in Foundry despite it recommending a discrete GPU.
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Cyanomys Guide To Playing RPGs Online could be a useful read for those evaluating different VTTs.
For myself I have settled on Tableplop which in my experience is everything I wanted Roll20 to be - minimum hassle, maximum ease. It's not anywhere as sophisticated as Foundry, which is probably the top choice for real-time groups, but it is very simple and good for PbP, especially on mobile. Also there is no upfront cost!
I tried Astral a little bit, and it looked nice. I liked how I could design maps in-game.
What I really don't like about it (and about Roll20) is the fact that it runs on a remote server, and all your work resides there. This means that you have got limited space and that you lose access if they are down for some reason (and you lose everything if they go out of business).
Fair enough. That is definitely a risk of any online tool.
Having a subscription-based license worsens this, because if I don't keep paying I lose my stuff.
I'd much rather pay up front for a software that I can use forever.
Also fair. In this case, I wonder if the free tier would be enough, depending on how heavily you lean into the map making.
My group tried astral before switching to Foundry and ran through all of Plaguestone. It was such a resource hog and lacked so many features that we switched. Just having the character sheet open in a separate window slowed everything to a crawl. For what it's worth none of my players have high end computers or gaming rigs and my laptop doesn't have a discrete GPU, so I'm sure it's different for other groups. None of my players have had any issues in Foundry despite it recommending a discrete GPU.
Oh god, yeah, super reasonable. It wasn't great. Depending on when you tried it, I would say it's worth giving another shot. They've put a ton of work into performance with the sudden surge of people in the past year.
Cyanomys Guide To Playing RPGs Online could be a useful read for those evaluating different VTTs.
I DM'd them a while back, but while that guide is definitely a great starter, it's showing its age with all of the awesome updates that various VTTs have put in in this past year. Like how with Foundry alone, this hasn't updated since before Foundry's official release.
For Astral, here are the updates since that list:
* Major performance improvements
* A freehand drawing tool, with effects like poison gas and lava!
* Fog of War fully implemented.
* Dice syntax options have only gotten more advanced (not something that PF2e needs, true).
* There is now a 5e compendium again with a new implementation. This will slowly serve as the baseline for other compendiums, but for now I've been volunteering to build my own PF2e spell compendium like I mentioned before.
* 5e enemies and starter characters can be drag-n-dropped now. Again, this will serve as a baseline for expanding that to more systems in the future.
* Handouts are no longer restricted to PDFs.
* I've heard there's a workaround for the playing cards by basically having a playing card character sheet, but I haven't looked into it.
* While the community can't add modules nearly as freely as Foundry, there are at least some starting modules for a few systems now, including PF2e. I know they're working with the various publishers on expanding these in the future.
* Integrated video/voice chat is currently in beta. This is the only thing on this whole list that will be exclusive to the paid tiers.
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I've used roll20 (GM and Player, historical, some light player current), Astral (GM x2, actively, both 1e), and very briefly Foundry (Game may have died due to scheduling. I was a pf2e player)
Every system has it's pro's and cons.
For PF2, I recommend Foundry IF you can push the learning curve to get a game running as mentioned, for one reason, and one reason alone.
I use the Pathbuilder app frequently for both 1e and 2e, and Foundry has an import tool that will take something you built on your phone, and have it imported into Foundry in a usable format, in under 30s.
Considering that it can take me half an hour or more to input a single prebuilt L18 critter into Astral, that is a big deal to me. (Roll20 was previously about the same.) Considering the sheer number of improvements Astral has made in the last 8 months that I've been running on their platform, I have high hopes for something like this being implemented in the future, but I acknowledge that they're a dev team of ... three, and 5e is a very popular system.
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After reading through everything. I think I'd like to start with Roll20 for now just for simplicity sake. Does anyone have any advice on how to set up the box/adventure without having to rebuy it through roll20?
Will probably do some studying on Foundry and eventually switch to that if I can actually learn how to do it. A lot of people have been talking about how good it is. So I definitely want to give it a fair shot.
Thanks for all the input everyone !
This is Roll20's Tutorial playlist on youtube.
It has been quite a while since I've used Roll20, so I'm sure they've made a lot of changes, but my biggest piece of advice is to set up a test game world first and foremost and practice setting things up on it. Get a player or two to join you and practice moving tokens around and measuring and all that until it feels natural. In game is not where you want to learn how to use templates and all that for instance.
If it's okay to semi-hijack this thread with my own questions, I'm in a similar situation as the OP (I am more experienced with 2E and particularly PbP 2E, so our concerns aren't identical, only similar).
I've played on VTT several times, but I have some concerns.
Roll20
1. Every game on Roll20 seems to use Discord for voice. Is this by choice (Discord is better), or is it by necessity (Roll20 doesn't have voice, etc.), or just habit (people seem to expect that everyone's on Discord all the time anyway)?
2. I've had some pretty serious bandwidth issues with Roll20. The interface lags all the time, and reboots often enough that I stopped counting how many times it's happened. Because it seems to happen to many players, the games sometimes plod along as people take turns rebooting. Is this a problem with Roll20 in general? Is this a problem with VTT in general?
Foundry
3. I have a concern about the technical aspect of Foundry's non-hosted version - when people say that you'll need to, say, port-forward, where does that fall on the scale of difficulty? I'm not tech savvy by modern standards, in the sense that nobody but my family asks me to fix their computer; I know how to log into my router and change the password, but I've never heard of port-forwarding before. Can someone give a common task of equivalent complexity? Is it like turning off auto-correct on Microsoft Word difficult? Changing your oil by yourself difficult?
Both
4. I'm pretty familiar with making maps for PbP, so I have no problems, for example, lining up those Pathfinder Flip Mat tiles from PFS scenarios and whatnot. Do I always have the option of uploading my own maps, icons, and art (within space constraints), or am I forced to use theirs (especially with the Roll20 free version)?
Roll201. Every game on Roll20 seems to use Discord for voice. Is this by choice (Discord is better), or is it by necessity (Roll20 doesn't have voice, etc.), or just habit (people seem to expect that everyone's on Discord all the time anyway)?
Discord has the best sound. Roll20 voice works mostly, I used it initially many years ago. It doesn't recover as well from network problems. Discord is just more stable and better quality for sound.
I game over Skype a bit as well. It works, I just prefer Discord.
2. I've had some pretty serious bandwidth issues with Roll20. The interface lags all the time, and reboots often enough that I stopped counting how many times it's happened. Because it seems to happen to many players, the games sometimes plod along as people take turns rebooting. Is this a problem with Roll20 in general? Is this a problem with VTT in general?
I've seen a bit more lagging over the last year. Maybe it's overloaded a bit. But then again I'm in Australia so we are going to have different problems in that regard.
Roll201. Every game on Roll20 seems to use Discord for voice. Is this by choice (Discord is better), or is it by necessity (Roll20 doesn't have voice, etc.), or just habit (people seem to expect that everyone's on Discord all the time anyway)?
Anecdote, not data, but in my limited sample size of 4 games using roll20's builtin voice/video (compared to ~150ish discord based sessions), we always lost at least 40 minutes if not an hour trying to get roll20's built in voice & video working. Every time there would be at least one person, no one could hear. And one person who couldn't hear anyone else. And once we fixed someone, someone else's setup would break. All four roll20 experiences were that way.
On Discord I would say I've had about 3 sessions that were problematic, and in all 3 cases, selecting a different server zone for the discord server fixed it.
2. I've had some pretty serious bandwidth issues with Roll20. The interface lags all the time, and reboots often enough that I stopped counting how many times it's happened. Because it seems to happen to many players, the games sometimes plod along as people take turns rebooting. Is this a problem with Roll20 in general? Is this a problem with VTT in general?
It seems to be a bigger problem with roll20 than other platforms, because they get the most traffic and maybe? haven't scaled their infrastructure as much as might be needed during this time of nearly 100% online gaming. In general VTTs don't use a lot of bandwidth (compared to streaming type things), unless you're using oversized maps, and even then it should only be when first loading a map.
Foundry3. I have a concern about the technical aspect of Foundry's non-hosted version - when people say that you'll need to, say, port-forward, where does that fall on the scale of difficulty? I'm not tech savvy by modern standards, in the sense that nobody but my family asks me to fix their computer; I know how to log into my router and change the password, but I've never heard of port-forwarding before. Can someone give a common task of equivalent complexity? Is it like turning off auto-correct on Microsoft Word difficult? Changing your oil by yourself difficult?
Both
4. I'm pretty familiar with making maps for PbP, so I have no problems, for example, lining up those Pathfinder Flip Mat tiles from PFS scenarios and whatnot. Do I always have the option of uploading my own maps, icons, and art (within space constraints), or am I forced to use theirs (especially with the Roll20 free version)?
3. This will depend on your router. If it's a newer router with uPNP you might not need to do anything. If it's an older router, you would log in, find the Port Forwarding section in the router settings, and figure out what port Foundry is using. There are guides on this online, try googling "port forwarding [your router's brand and model number"] and see what comes up. It's generally not super complicated if you're able to log into the router already.
4. Both Roll20 and Foundry will let you upload your own maps. Roll20, as many people have mentioned, has limits based on what you pay monthly. Foundry is just whatever you can store on your hard drive, or if you pay for web hosting, whatever the host allows.
I've used both, as well as Fantasy Grounds. My group overall prefers Foundry, but no system is perfect. Here are my quick thoughts:
Roll20:
- simplest to use out of the box
- clean UI
- very little automation. You can roll the dice and have bonuses added, but then it's generally easier to compare the numbers to the NPC/PC sheets and figure the results yourself.
- In my experience, slower to add premade content to their store/doesn't have as many options as the other two.
- Theoretically free. In practical terms the GM will run out of space very quickly, so you're looking at a monthly fee, and possibly more if you want premade content on top of that. Over a very long term, potentially more expensive than FG.
- the game data is stored on the web.
FG:
- most complicated of the three to set up custom content
- confusing UI
- best automation of the three (you can drag a die from a spell onto a monster, it will roll, use all the buffs and debuffs on the caster and the target(s), makes the saves, and apply the damage for you)
- but, you need to remember to track those buffs and make sure the spell is set up accurately for the automation to work.
- one time payments, but very, VERY expensive for the GM up front if you want the benefit of not entering in all the player and monster options from every book yourself. There is a monthly option but that's only for the base program, not the books, and is generally only useful to try the GM side out for a short time vs. buying a license.
- the game data is stored on your computer.
Foundry:
- easy to use out of the box, though adding modules can make it more complicated.
- clean UI, very similar to Roll20
- limited automation. There's a little bit of this in being able to roll saves for multiple creatures and apply damage from the chat window to selected tokens. It's not near an comprehensive as FG, but also not nearly as complicated.
- Easiest to expand beyond the base program. There are a lot of modules that modify bits of the main program to change how things work.
- OGL content is drag and drop. That means that anything on Archives of Nethys save some of the art is ready and waiting.
- Community driven content and updates. This is both a pro and a con. Foundry updates much, much faster than either of the other programs when new content comes out. The Pathfinder 2e ruleset as a whole also has much faster and more extensive additions. On the flip side, there are some things that are a work in progress yet. This means the ruleset is constantly improving, but it also means if some particular feature you want isn't there and you don't know enough to code it yourself, you're doing workarounds until someone in the community decides to tackle it. Overall I think this is a net positive, but it could lead to frustration for some people.
- This varies by system. I have only run 2e in Foundry, from what I have seen as a player 1e also has a strong community, where Starfinder is a bit slower to adding things/has less people working on it.
- One time fee, and modules to import from Paizo pdfs. Foundry is the cheapest option by far, and the importer module will pull all the maps and images needed into the system, and apply the line of sight walls to most of the maps for you (I think there are a few still being worked on).
- the game data is stored on your computer, unless you use an optional service they've partnered with to pay monthly and store in on the web.
There's a lot more that could be said about all of them. As a GM I find Foundry the easiest to use. FG is my second choice, as I wanted to avoid monthly subs for something I've been doing for years and some of its automation is impressive, but it also has a lot of stumbling blocks in adding custom content, UI, and the like. Roll20 is easy and was great when I started, but the cost over time was too high and Foundry does a similar job in my players' eyes and is a lot more beneficial as a GM.
Foundry
3. I have a concern about the technical aspect of Foundry's non-hosted version - when people say that you'll need to, say, port-forward, where does that fall on the scale of difficulty? I'm not tech savvy by modern standards, in the sense that nobody but my family asks me to fix their computer; I know how to log into my router and change the password, but I've never heard of port-forwarding before. Can someone give a common task of equivalent complexity? Is it like turning off auto-correct on Microsoft Word difficult? Changing your oil by yourself difficult?
Both
4. I'm pretty familiar with making maps for PbP, so I have no problems, for example, lining up those Pathfinder Flip Mat tiles from PFS scenarios and whatnot. Do I always have the option of uploading my own maps, icons, and art (within space constraints), or am I forced to use theirs (especially with the Roll20 free version)?
For #3 if you know how to log into your router and mess with settings, you are most of the way there. This is a link to "portforward.com". It has all the information you will probably need get through the process.
If your router supports IPV6, then you may be good to go without forwarding anything. But you will need to test it out with Foundry to know for sure.
For #4 with either option you always have the ability to use your own image files as maps. Some will work better than others out of the box, and no matter what you will more than likely need to do some formatting to get them really synced up with either options grid. Roll20 does have the downside of a fairly limited storage, and from what I remember a fiddly file management system. Foundry (when self-hosted) has no such limitation, and uses files directly from your computer, so the sky is the limit.
Thanks, all.
I think I will try GMing a game on Free Roll20 and re-evaluate afterwards whether I want to try more or try less. I'll probably pay for Foundry if I decide to pay (I played one game on Foundry and really liked it).
If I choose the Foundry that runs off my computer, is it possible for my kids to connect directly into the computer through a LAN to save on Internet bandwidth?
Thanks, all.
I think I will try GMing a game on Free Roll20 and re-evaluate afterwards whether I want to try more or try less. I'll probably pay for Foundry if I decide to pay (I played one game on Foundry and really liked it).
If I choose the Foundry that runs off my computer, is it possible for my kids to connect directly into the computer through a LAN to save on Internet bandwidth?
Yes, there is an option for Lan connection.
I think the boys over at D20 Pro need a mention here. I previously ran campaigns using R20 and have also used Fantasy Grounds.
D20 Pro can very much be used straight of the box, and is superb for importing maps and characters/creatures on the fly.
I have been using D20 Pro for about 8 years now and would recommend.