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Virtual Tabletops
Intrepidations:
What does everyone use for virtual table tops? I am looking for one that I can use a variety of games on.
Currently looking at Astral, has anyone here used that?
Thanks
Siltoneous:
Good question. Given the current state of affairs wrt Covid19, lots of people looking. Here's what I understand:
One of the big differentiators is where the VTT is hosted: Server or private machine. I.e. Roll20 (and IIRC Astral) use dedicated servers everyone logs into and the game is run there. The systems do not have individualized gaming rules, making it easy to run whatever you want. The community provided characters sheets on each system can be complex, allowing the player to click a button right from the sheet (say for a Perception check or an attack). Don't know about Astral, but in Roll20 the GM pays for some kind of subscription (monthly or yearly) at some level (Plus or Pro), and the players simply join the game. Roll20 does provide voice through the Web (WebRTC), though it's pretty common to hear of people having connection issues with voice, so a lot of gamers run Discord/Zoom/etc... No official RM support there, and while there are a few RM character sheets, they too are old and not supported. There is an end-user effort to get an updated character sheet built; look to the forums here.
The other main type is private machine hosted. Fantasy Grounds (FG) and Foundry are taking this method, where the GM hosts the game off their own machine and people join to the hosts IP. FG requires a FG client to join a game, whereas it seems Foundry is taking the standard WebBrowser and HTML route.
Fantasy Grounds is either pay monthly or one-time flat fee. Std license only allows other Std client owners to join, whereas the Ultimate license allows anyone to join (with the free FG client). Pricing is complex now due to the release of a new FG client (Unity). FG does have gaming rules built into the engine. Thus you can buy rule-sets right in FG, and have them ready to go for whatever game system you want. Need to look up a table or chart? Simply use the tools built into the client, no need to pull out your books (GM or players). Supported systems typical have fully enabled game systems, like rolling up characters right in the client and fully fledged combat trackers (tracking aspects of combat like stun, bleeding, prone, etc...). For supported games, it's quite nice; however not all games are officially supported (quite a few community resources exist). You can also simply fall over to the generic client (CoreRPG), similar to what Roll20 provides, and you play off that. Voice is not provided via the client, so people usually fall over to Discord, Zoom or something like that. RMC is sold via FG, and while the Character Sheet is functional, it's old. Rumor has it that a replacement is being tested; no idea if it's community based or official though, but I'd bet the former.
Foundry is still new; beta (release supposedly happening the end of March, 2020). You can get the client only via Patreon support currently, but it's expected to sell at ~$50-$60 with $ breaks for backers sometime near the end of the month. It seems with Foundry everything behind the scenes is HTML, and seems quite interesting, with what appears to be some solid Fog of War functionality. While it does have some gorgeous community provided character sheets (i.e. Warhammer Fantasy 4th Edition character sheet is stunning), not a lot is built for it yet.
Lot of people go by price frankly. Pay once, or pay a little each month. That said, Roll20 is pretty popular. I.e. look at the GaryCon Virtual convention (26th of March ) and of the 160+ listed VTT games, Roll20 has about 90, while Astral shows up with 2, FG with 20, and other @ 56.
Zhaleskra:
I've used Roll20, but find the programming for character sheets to have a very steep learning curve. I like Fantasy Grounds as well, having purchased it well before having a Steam account. Layout wise, I prefer Fantasy Grounds. Rolling Dice wise, it's Roll20.
Siltoneous:
I'd agree with the Roll20 character sheet complexity. I looked at one of the RM sheets a few weeks back; I then had a stiff drink and slept badly due to reoccurring nightmares of the code. ;)
FantasyGrounds (FG) uses XML and LUA scripting, and seems pretty straightforward. Having never touched FG scripting before, I was still able to work up all the ShadowWorld races in a module that could be loaded during character creation fairly easily. Not that I'm any kind of power programmer, rather I think it speaks to the ease of which the code can be manipulated. Plus (and the primary reason I was able to do what I did) the Rolemaster Forum on FG's forums has some very helpful people, with more than a few from these forums I suspect. =)
With Fantasy Grounds Unity going open beta two days ago, I'm itching to see how the official RMC ruleset behaves with it. Lets hope we are blessed to see the CoreRPG RM sheet I've heard rumored.
Hurin:
Thanks for all the information Siltoneous; it was very helpful for me as I look to incorporate more online tools into my game. My friends far away have been clamoring for me to start a VTT game too, and I might take the deep dive into it once RMU comes out. So your summaries were great.
I think getting RMU up on Roll20 will be vital to its success, given how important the VTTs now are to the marketing and buzz of games.
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