Sure - I just enjoy seeing people and listening to them, in the same way Roll20 does it, on the same screen :-) Its closer to the tabletop experience for me at least, that way.
But yes, Foundry is really nice, and impressively being done by one man only. It does rely on the ton of mod makers that makes systems and mods for it to be functional, and automates less than Roll20 does - at least without mods.
For instance - There are no native 3D dice in Foundy, but DicesoNice, a mod made by some , adds that and its brilliant - so many options.
I watched that whole dice video; fun! I was especially curious whether it would support the Star Wars FFG dice, and sure enough, there they are! I had already checked to see whether Foundry supports that game, and indeed it does. It’s my favorite tabletop RPG other than D&D 5th edition.
I think Foundry is definitely the best VTT at the moment. I’ve used both Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds in the past but they feel dated in comparison, creaking under many years of old code.
It’s pretty interesting to read through the early posts in this thread to review what we all thought or heard was going to happen versus how it actually shook out.
5E is going to suck because Hasbro sucks and/or 4E sucked. It turned out that 5E was pretty good right out of the gate. Of course there were (and are) rules that can be clarified or done better, but overall Wizards knocked it out of the park. 5E successfully moved the system back to something that pleased old-timers while being welcoming to new players.
We already have Pathfinder. Crazily, Pathfinder wound up losing their lead by falling into the trap D&D did years ago. Too many supplemental books, an ever-expanding set of complicated rules that made casual gaming hard, and 5E became the “new shiny” while Pathfinder ended up looking stale. With Pathfinder 2E, Paizo seems to have embraced a different path, but they’ve got to work to catch up.
D&D is doomed because they haven’t embraced the digital age. It took a little time, but Wizards learned their lesson with 4E, and the community stepped up anywhere they could.
The official online tools are pretty good and the subscription price is fair, at least most players seem to think so.
The free intro pdf is a great no-risk way to get started. Beyond that, the cheap basic boxed set wound up in retail and every online outlet and thankfully never went out of print.
The rise of dozens of online virtual tabletop services swooped in and filled the void for players to connect and play digitally. It’s a party market here. You can choose between a number of free sites, cheap apps, subscription services, or one-price licensed software to play tabletop games.
D&D is a hobby that (unfairly or not) has a reputation for attracting some awful people that repel new players. This point, I’m glad to say, was soundly stomped by something none of us saw coming. The rise of game streaming services like Twitch and YouTube gave a much-needed boost of young, cool (well, cooler than us) players and DMs that people could watch. This not only acted as great marketing, but the sessions acted as terrific teaching tools for the community. I don’t know how quickly Wizards jumped on this, but they really can thank their lucky stars that this streaming phenomenon happened when it did.
As requested over in the Christmas thread! Yes, I was the DM, and we ran the Tyranny of Dragons campaign (which is actually two put together, Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat). But it was also kinda homebrew, since I added a whole section involving the land of Murghôm, pitting our heroes against the sapphire dragon prince Domborcojh and allied with the gold dragon prince Chelnadatilar.
Technology-wise, we used Roll20 for the characters and maps. Originally I tried using it for video chat too, but it really didn’t work well for me, kept cutting out and generally failing. So I ended up setting up my own JITSI server and that worked great for the most part.
All the summary reports are in the campaign forums as linked in the other thread, starting with March and ending in December. We had a few folks join and drop out along the way, but four stuck it out the whole time: @Chappers, @Otthegreat, @JoshL, and JoshL’s elder daughter.
I actually ran the campaign three times, 'cause it was lockdown and what else are you gonna do with all that time? The QT3 group, my known-these-guys-for-20-years gaming buddies (recaps here), and a group of local folks that in normal times I’d be playing MTG and board games with (recaps here). There was a pretty significant difference between the three groups: my old buddies group was very much “rush in and kill all the things”, the local folks were more cautious and diplomatic, and the QT3 group favored stealth (that was mostly @Chappers) and lateral thinking (@JoshL’s daughter always had oddball ideas, and sometimes they worked). There was one spot where all three groups wiped, fighting a green dragon, so maybe I could have been a bit more free with the hints of how to handle that scenario. But it worked out since it let me Reincarnate them all into different races (and sometimes genders), one of the more interesting roleplaying bits. My favorite of these was when a dragonborn fighter was turned into a dwarf, but that caused her to lose some special dragonborn-specific abilities that she really liked, so later I added an extra reward from Chelnadatilar that turned her into a half-dragon, half-dwarf fighter.
It was all good fun, and I’m considering doing something similar in the new year, though probably not three at once again. Even if we don’t all get stuck inside for another year (we hope!), it’s nice to have a weekly chance to game away a few hours with good people.
@ineffablebob, thanks for indulging my request for more info on your campaign! I’m amazed to hear that it was in fact 3 campaigns. Wow! I guess by now you’re an expert on that adventure. I own Hoard of the Dragon Queen but haven’t run it with anyone yet.
Also, I’m actually glad to hear all three parties wiped. As I’ve posted before, I think D&D is more fun when there is a risk of a real calamity like that.
I’m glad Roll20 worked for you. I’ve been following the discussion of Foundry here, and eventually I’d like to try that. But Roll20 does work.
Anyway, thanks for taking the time to post this! I’m still amazed that you did all this in 9 months, all online.
I think the streamers were the latest and greatest version of community outreach the DnD team had been working on since at least as far back as 4e. Back then, anecdatally, I jumped back into DnD after listening to (paid endorsers) the Penny Arcade guys trying out fourth edition’s intro adventure in podcast format. It was a Let’s Play before the term found widespread use. I don’t mean to contradict anything you wrote, Telefrog. This was a great analysis.
In the last two or three months I’ve played a couple of sessions as a player and done one session as a DM with Foundry. As a player, it’s pretty terrific compared to Roll20 or (due to pandemic) not playing at all. As a DM it’s a whole new hobby, with dozens of new rabbit holes to dive down. I got a discounted license for Foundry in a Black Friday sale. Great, one stop shopping, right? Well, there are a ton of modules available. Modules here are not in the sense of “X5 Toppling The Harpy Queen, a module for 3 to 5 players level 4 to 6”. Instead, modules are technically optional mods but are often so handy that either you need to get them immediately or hope the Foundry designer puts that functionality in the next update. So be prepared to scout websites and subreddits to see how you can solve problems with an appropriate module. Then, you’ll find that while most modules are free, some module designers will be happy to let you download their modules… if you support them on Patreon. And after a few of those you might find that now you’re potentially sending $20 a month to various moduleers. Which is okay, because you want to compensate them for their effort and time, right? And then you realize you need a way to have your players actually join you online. I was able to do some port forwarding on my router so my players were able to connect directly to my desktop PC. A buddy who also DMs pays one of these module makers for use of his hosting service. My friend doesn’t have to worry about reassigning IPs or bandwidth constraints or making sure his PC is on whenever a PC wants to jump on his PC to check out their PC sheets, but that’s another monthly expense. (It’s called Forge and is a good service.)
So so far I’m mostly enjoying Foundry. Just be sure that if you’re a player to use Chrome to join, not Firefox. And if you’re a DM, be prepared to roll a saving throw vs. sticker shock and/or get very good at tinkering with the program.
Finally grabbed the main 5E books over the holidays. Never had the 4E but most of 5E feels pretty familiar to someone who cut their teeth back on the Basic Blue box set. But I do notice that there aren’t any simple campaign source books. The books I see all seem to mostly be what used to be sold as 3 or so different modules now sold as a single book. Not a bad idea, but how do they not have a basic Forgotten Realms source book? I do see one for Ebberon (yuck) and whatever the Critical Role world is (get off my lawn!). But other than the various module-like books, no simple FR sourcebook.
So, which of the modulebooks would yall suggest for mostly just background stuff as opposed to running the book’s campaign?
Ed Greenwood himself published a Border Kingdoms supplement of FR lore on the DM’s Guild service:
Apart from that, unfortunately, not a lot of official, setting-guide-style material for FR yet. It is definitely very odd that Wizards isn’t really pushing campaign settings much this edition, apart from Ravnica from MtG, the Critical Role book, and Eberron like you mentioned.
Thanks! That was the closest to what I was looking for even though the reviews for it weren’t all that great. I had it in my cart once but will actually purchase it now. 😬
I’ll try that Border Kingdoms book! I got the Solo Toolbox thing from DMguild already. The BK one will be my next purchase from them.
In a general sense, yeah. It’s still the same core d20 mechanic, the stats are largely the same. There’s some changes to things like Saves (one for each Attribute now) and Skills (slightly different list), but the biggest change is the bounded math of accuracy/AC/DC/saves. This helps make bigger crowds of low Challenge Rating foes more threatening (and thus useful to GMs), even versus high level parties, and means that with a bit of luck and planning, characters have a shot against some tougher foes (though I think it works less in that direction - a Level 3 party attacking an elder red dragon might get a couple of hits in, but only until they get melted in one breath attack, hah).
Anyway, you can Google conversion guidelines for old monsters/NPCs, if updated versions of them don’t already exist in a 5E source book, but it means you do need to rethink encounter design a little bit from what might have been written up in either 4E (no more one hit minions, rules as written, in 5) or older 3.5/AD&D/etc content (maybe doesn’t leverage crowds of weak foes as well as it could, probably doesn’t have enough opportunities for extra actions by “boss” type opponents in the original version write ups).
As for the fluff, there were pretty big plot events going into 4E and 5E Forgotten Realms (the Spellplague and the Second Sundering, respectively) that players who’ve “kept up” might expect you to address, and that you might not know about if you’re working from an old 3.5 Ed FR book. Unfortunately a lot of that is also held in adventures or hard to acquire 4E materials, but if you’re okay rolling your own canon and shutting down story lawyers who try to know your own setting better than you, I really don’t think it’s that big a deal. Baldurs Gate, Waterdeep, Calimport, etc are all still there, in one form or another, and I’m sure some version of Elminster is still fucking around out there cuz Greenwood loves him too much to ever let him go.
My copy of the Sword Coast guide came in. I have no idea what the review complaints are about it just being for those who want to only use it as a structured campaign. It’s not all of the FE but after a quick flip through it, it sure is exactly what I want from a guide. Lots of interesting bits and info of the people places and things of the area. Even if I never use it to play it’s something I’ll read from time to time just to get the feel of DnD and FE specifically.
