Review of Virtual Table Tops

 I have tested several VTT (Virtual Table Top). VTTs are basically taking a table top game such as Dungeons and Dragons (DND) and making it digital for remote play. VTTs allow the host (game master-gm or dungeon master-dm), to modify the game on the fly.

Along with items listed above all VTTs I looked at and tested bragged about the following:

• How great their dynamic lighting is

• Ability to rotate the camera.

• Weather patterns

• Available 3d/2d models for use

• How good their system is at creating maps, scenes

• Campaign tracking

• Audio to use in different maps for a variety of scenes, market sounds, tavern sounds, wolves howling, etc...

    When reviewing VTTs I based my reviews off my ability to just jump in and start creating without having to look at documentation or how to videos on youtube.

The host can change out:

• Monsters add/remove

• Change monster health

• View players character sheets

• Roll virtual dice,

• Change time of day

• View spell lists available for players and monsters

    Some even allow you to do weather and fog of war. Fog of war keeps part(s) of the map hidden, until the players discover that part of the map.

    VTTs can also do line of sight. Line of sight meaning if you standing in a hallway, you cannot see what is in the room in the hallway, unless you are standing in that door. And then line of sight could be blocked by people, objects or both.

I did not look at what the VTTs bragged about. The main things I looked at was:

• Character sheet creation for Dungeons and Dragons (DND)

• Ability to adjust font sized for those visually impaired

• Ease of use in the UX/UI

• How easy it was to jump in and start creating a world or map

    For Character Creation I will be comparing everything to DND Beyond (dndbeyond.com) and roll20 (roll20.net) as these are the gold standards for the items listed above. Even creating worlds and campaings in DND Beyond and Roll20, are extremely difficult, though they are still the standard that everything is measured by.

    Character creation in DND Beyond, the process is very simple. You select character or create new character, and then it walks you through the entire process.

FGU Fantasy Grounds Unity (FGU)

    When using FGU the font for the UI is so small, that I had to press my nose up against my monitor. I had to reach out to support to ask about changing the font size to bigger. Changing the font size is not easily done.

    Creating character sheets required moving allot of windows around in FGU so I could see my character sheet. In order to create my character sheet I had to drag and drop different classes and races onto this card. This is not intuitive.

    To get to character creation and finding the right icon, was not obvious. I had to refer to poorly written documentation, which was out of date and several versions old. Creating a character sheet involved loading different rules and assets.

    Once the assets were loaded, I then had to go into the rules, and click on race, then drag and drop that race onto a blank line under race on my character sheet. This is not intutive and a very steep learning curve for experienced and new players alike.

    When reaching out to the forums for support on FGU, the community stated that this VTT while being one of the best, was not designed for character sheet tracking, and more for creating campaigns and maps.

FGU also has the highest priced among all VTT’s.

In Summary: FGU has been around the longest, since 2004, its steep learning curve, high cost, and lack of well written how tos based on very older versions, very difficult character creation, and lack of font sizes for visually impaired are what turn people away. I listened to several DND podcasts, and some of those Gms and players have commented very briefly how awful FGU is.

Recommended as a VTT: No, Character sheet creation needs to be easier, and an intuitive way to easily adjust font size.

Playrole.com

    Character creation is difficult. You have to know the grid size of your maps, in order for it to work properly in the application. Other wise your tokens (monsters and NPCS) may not work properly on your map. It is easy to upload assets into the Role.

    I could not see if playrole.com kept track of your hitpoints and other stats automatically or not. The UI and documentation are far easier to grasp, and understand than that of other VTTs.

Recommended as a VTT: Not in its current form.

Lets-role.com

    Easy to create character sheets. Easy to jump in as a new player and a GM. Unable to figure out how to upload assets into the application from my PC.

Recommended as a VTT: Not in its current form.

Astraltabletop.com

    Uploading assets is easy. There are premade ones. Creating character sheets is easy, though drop downs for race, class etc.. are needed. User interface is very simple and easy to grasp. Upon login there is a tutorial that walks you through everything. The free plan is more than eneough for most people, though the paid plans offer allot more for higher end gamers.

Recommended as a VTT: Yes, once they fix their character sheets. Over all UI could use some minor tweak and adjustments. Fan favorite so far.

Talespire.com

    Recommended as a VTT: Unable to review as it is locked behind a paywall, with no free demo available. This is bad marketing. A free demo should be available, even if it is download only.

Beyondtabletop.com

    Creating a character sheet was fun and pleasant. Trying to upload assets for maps to use in a campaign was difficult. This feature was in a beta, and this may be better in its final release.

Recommended as a VTT: For character sheets, yes. Waiting until final release to render final judgement.

Gamemasterengine.com

    Free demo on steam. Even most of the positive reviews on steam, had allot of negative viewpoints.

Recommended as a VTT: No.

Foundryvtt.com

    This is far more difficult to use than Fantasy Grounds. Had to buy Foundry in order to download and test it, and then request a refund. This is not ideal. They do have a limited web demo on their site. The demo already has a map created, and you view it as a player. This tells creators nothing. All it shows is what you can do, not how to do it.

    You can do a self hosted server, which is incredibly difficult to set up. The difficult set up is outside of modifying networking settings and installing Node JS. For self hosted servers, you have to know how to set up a web server and modify your network. Or you can pay for a hosting service that is licensed to host a foundry. Paying for a hosted server is ideal.

    Also advertised on the site is that you can create maps and worlds, and then share that on more than one monitor. I saw no way to do this, as I could not get past the world creation part.

    In order to create a world, you have to select a rule set. Creating a map should be seperate from picking a rule set. I understand the logic behind this, some creators want a way to modify things on the fly with out a rule set. This is the only VTT that requires this.

    I could not just jump in a create a map. Creating maps, is incredibly difficult. I uploaded a background image I wanted to use as a map. Every time I zoomed in the custom image was off the screen. I could not figure out how to center it to properly zoom in. I wanted to use this background image as my map, but that failed epically.

Recommended as a VTT: No.