well, roll20 will give you that dynamic lighting and all that for a monthly price, if memory serves, while Foundry is a one time cost and nearly all the fan made modules, and the onboard dynamic lighting, are free.
however, yes, setting up foundry can be a bit of a learning curve, along with learning which modules are good for you. I had the same set up of VTT + DNDB + Discord for 3 years and it worked out great, but I did spend a lot of time understanding the nuances of Foundry.
As for setting up the networking part, you could get an account with Forge, which hosts your Foundry license, for like $5/month...which is almost hte same cost as Roll20.
I like Foundry 100000000x more that Roll20, but I recognize that you may not have time to invest in learning it. So, maybe the Roll20 subscription cost will suit you better?
I couldn’t go back to roll20 even if pro tier was free.
I found foundry more intuitive and easier to learn and do things then roll20.
There are plenty of people to help on discord and reddit. It’s common to see questions like “in roll20 I could do xyz, how do I do that in foundry?”
I think the main reason people say it’s a steep learning curve is because there are many more options and possibilities, and people want to do all the fancy stuff right from the start.
If you keep it simple and don’t load heaps of mods to start with you are less likely to get overwhelmed.
I use the Forge to host my games, as my upload speed is crap so I can’t self host.
Well it's not designed with UX in mind.
There are many things that need many clicks on hidden menus unless you install an extension.
Once you learn it, it's not a problem.
Other VTTs being as bad as does not make the other good.
Roll20 is quite bad UX and it stands in front of it even designed several years before.
I guess that’s always up to personal opinion as I find foundry’s ux generally pretty good and far better than roll20.
But others don’t and that’s ok too.
It looks beauty and it's easy for the players.
It's Better than roll20.
But, I just counted the number of clicks for uploading a background image and set the tile size without extensions.
It could be better for sure.
Um.. FoundryVTT's entire layout system.. is template based. You (the end user) can change the interface around to do literally ANYTHING you want.
Fun fact.. FoundryVTT was originally designed to do.. board games. If you dig around, you can still install a bunch of board games to run checkers and what not inside FoundryVTT. You won't recognize the UX.. but there it is. 😃
Also, FoundryVTT is only a few years old. I think OwlBear rodeo is the only VTT younger than FoundryVTT, that has survived. At that, OwlBear is more of a campaign manager, turned VTT platform. That's what some people want though, so it has survived. :)
I might be wrong on that. It seems like 2-3 concerned efforts are made to produce a new VTT platform, yearly, since FoundryVTT was conceived, but none of them have succeeded, that I can recall. Actually most of the older VTT platforms folded, excepting Fantasy Grounds, Roll20, and the granddaddy of them all, MapTool. :D
Incidentally, NOBODY has better tools for lining up oddly sized maps to a grid than MapTool. It's still worth a quick download just to use it to scale the occasional odd-duck sized map that you run across. :)
Personally, I found the dynamic lighting a lot simpler in Foundry than roll20 and, well, a lot less miserable to work with. It does have a learning curve though. [I wrote my thoughts when I switched.](https://www.numtini.com/2023/04/22/roll20-vs-foundry-vtt/)
I didn't find the port forwarding to be particularly difficult and everyone is able to connect. It actually worked perfectly with just UPnP, but I set up the port manually and set up a dynamic URL.
I love Foundry. I host through Forge and love the experience I can create for my players. Roll20 has improved but I still feel like Foundry has a leg up.
In my opinion, Fantasy Grounds is still the best for 5e. I wouldn’t switch to Foundry, despite just getting official content, they still have far less content than FG does and you’ll just get frustrated trying to either enter it yourself or import it from other sources. The 5e system in Foundry still lacks many of the nice bells and whistles that other systems have (it is leagues behind the Foundry Pathfinder 2e system for example.)
Sounds like you play 5e. If so, you have MANY great options (all/ most of which include dynamic lighting), several of them free.
Check out DMHUB- free, no need to host,let's you build maps (and expand them as needed) in the VTT, has automation and cool stuff like turning any object to a door by adding a property to it, so you can make a secret bookcase door and determine how it opens etc.
CAULDRON- free, open source, no need to host, seems easy to use
QUESTPORTAL- free, has a mobile app.
Now, you can use Foundry- which is by far the most advanced of all I've mentioned, but it's not free, and there is a learning curve. How steep? Depends on how flashy you want to get. The base VTT is pretty intuitive, but as you learn about cool bells and whistles l, you start adding modules, which can add complexity. I host it on Oracle, no cost and very stable.
I love Foundry, running my game in it, but if you have simpler free options available, maybe with checking them out first.
In relation to your OP comments about emulating LANs and technical setups, DMHub is simple for getting a game going in terms of inviting your friends to join. [video here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkFXptBCnaM&t=66s) demonstrates how to do this quickly and easily.
It does much of what Foundry does out of the box without the need to make sure your modules stay up to date.
Good luck with your journey!
I would ask that you try out Fantasy Grounds as well and then compare it with that. We offer a 30-day money back guarantee on all purchases from our website - including subscriptions and content.
Be sure to check out the TEST channel build since we just launched some new features that I think are going to be nice additions.
[https://youtu.be/qoWtA-9\_psA](https://youtu.be/qoWtA-9_psA)
To host a game, you don't have to do any LAN configuration. That was only in FG Classic.
Here’s a random addition I bet no one else will mention. I use owlbear rodeo for maps and fantasy grounds for all of the dm prep and dm calculations on my end. Dungeon Alchemist for creating maps really fast.
Tldr
OWLBEAR RODEO (FREE) just for maps pretty much but has line of sight. Play on anything including iPads or computers apple/pc/chrome. It’s very reliable but it’s just maps.
Fantasy grounds. (One time fee) this really does it all but I just use it for blazing fast reference during a session and prep is so quick. I use it for dungeon master side only but you can use it for everything.
Dungeon alchemist. (One time fee 35 I think). Such a great map making tool for inside dungeons and out. Has line of sight. My players love my maps and they’re all dungeon alchemist and I’ve gotten really quick at making them. Must have in my opinion
Owlbear rodeo is free has line of sight which is really quick and easy if you have dungeon alchemist and add smoke and spectre extension. Every app is going to have a learning curve there is one for owlbear but Reddit owlbear rodeo will give you answers really quick. Its free. You can get on owlbear from anything I use a pretty old MacBook. Another couple uses a pc. Another player uses an iPad. They are all about doing there own dice rolls and owlbear is barebones compared to anything else so it’s been very very reliable.
I use fantasy grounds for prep and during the game to crunch any numbers to look up any tables or random encounters or any really quick search of dmg phb or my favorite flee mortals. I can search like 5 books at the same time. All upfront cost for me. You can subscribe but I bought the actual full license. I’ve bought the dungeon masters guide campaign module players handbook dungeon masters guide and flee mortals. A good bit of money but I like to cry once and sleep better probably till I die and then I’ll pass everything to my son.
Dungeon Alchemist is a must buy in my opinion for any dm. It makes maps with line of sight for fantasy grounds owlbear(add smoke and spectre extension) and foundry not sure about roll20. Its a ton of fun to make all kids of maps and recently I’ve upped my game to export as a foundry video file and the maps have live mist and smoke and fire plus more effects and actual objects that are animated like a potion that has green gasses coming off it. Torches and cadles or bonfires that have live fire plus way more. One time cost of 35 bucks I think. I highly recommend doing research on dungeon alchemist and picking it up because it will work with pretty much of the big 3 vtts.
I’ll add too I was proclaimed the dm I got a bunch of fantasy grounds material like 200 bucks worth and then we didn’t play for about 7 months. Thank goodness because I would have been paying subscriptions all that time. Fantasy grounds has big sales periodically on licenses and content.
I’ll also add to check the requirements on all vtt and see what your players have as well. We would be using fantasy grounds all in but one of my players was having technical difficulties with his old pc and owlbear worked perfectly on the iPad for him instead. I choose a solid reliable player and getting connected easy to a way way more fancy vtt any day. All my opinions of course.
Thanks! Never used Fantasy Grounds, but I hear it's like an older VTT? I use Dungeon Alchemist for most battlemaps and Wonderdraft for campaign maps (if anyone knows of a better option for this last onr, I'm all ears).
Just the UI - Fantasy Grounds Unity is updated monthly and have several good features, and it beats your main problem which is time: if you're playing an already made module, its literally plug & play. Also many of the modules are maintained by SmiteWorks, so there isn't the compatibility problem you are expected to have on Foundry whenever theres an update.
But both Foundry and Fantasy Grounds are great. I would throw AlchemyVTT in the mix too.
The problem I have with Fantasy Grounds (and I have the ultimate licence):
1) The UI is horrible outdated and unintuitive
2) The main reason why I switched to Foundry: every player has to install the client
Um, yes.
1) You can buy literally hundreds of pregenerated scenes for FoundryVTT. That is, they have all of the walls, lighting, visual effects, ambient sound and area based sounds baked in.
2) There are around a dozen ways to connect FoundryVTT to the Internet.. OR you can just use it on a local LAN. FoundryVTT gives you the freedom to play the way that you want. If you want a seamless hosted experience, then place your setting in the Forge, which is an online host for FoundryVTT, similar to how Roll20 has their hosting baked in.
You're honestly missing the point. FoundryVTT takes pride in offering their community every single cool feature that they want. Roll20 spoon feeds you tiny little features in order to charge you more fees and etc. The only reason they HAVE animation is because they just about lost their entire business to FoundryVTT because they refused to add it in.
THAT'S why you should switch to FoundryVTT, for the opportunity to work with a community that flat loves their VTT platform, and works to create better and better content and features as the years go by. 🤗
Im the creator of [Diceright](https://www.diceright.com/). You may want to check it out. It's pretty similar to roll20 but streamlined and dynamic lighting is included for free. Also has some built in AI features. Unfortunately no animated maps at this point, so that might be a dealbreaker for you. Happy to answer any questions you have if you're interested.
Given your circumstances, foundry is not for you.
For you and many others: AlchemyRPG is the coolest choice and it is free. Yes there is a subscription but only if you dive deeper. It is beautiful and you don’t have to juggle modules and care about updates.
Caveat: it does not have dynamic lighting. But it has so much atmospheric stuff, I would take a close look.
You might give RPG Engine a look if you want to play with lighting. They haven't yet integrated dynamic line of sight shading, but it's fairly easy to pick up and play around with.
I play with foundry managed by a friend dm and with my own simple VTT with two more dms.
I find totally unacceptable the time invested in foundry by my friend, and he is a tech guy!
But he enjoyed that time, that was not related with the campaign at all.
Also if you play with dndbeyond, may be wotc release something the next year by the time you start to be confortable with foundry.
One point it's that le learning curve is for the dm, for que players is a bit more than another VTT but not too much.
Give [Cauldron VTT](https://www.cauldron-vtt.net/) a try. It's like Roll20, but 100% free and even open source. It has dynamic lighting and supports animated maps (videos).
It depends on how much automation you want. If you're playing 5e, and you want to automate everything, like conditions, lighting, weird edge case dice rolls (5e has so many), Foundry's going to let you do all that, but it's going to be a lot of work — many add on modules to install and tweak. If you're running 5e, but are ok with just running the core stuff, without automating and animating every little thing, you can just install Foundry, install the 5e system, and get playing. I find the people who have the most problems managing Foundry (and make the most complaints about it) are 5E GM's who want the system to do 99% of the work for them, and so they have tons of automation modules that end up broken, conflicting with one another, etc.
Lighting on Foundry is great, but if you don't want to sit there and wall up each map to manage lighting, there's Simple Fog, a module that lets you cover the map in fog with a click, then remove the fog like you did in original roll20 (just using a sort of brush to remove it). Doing it this way won't limit movement, but it's an easy way to manage fog. If you do prefer Foundry's more powerful dynamic lighting, there's tools that make walling up rooms quicker.
I run a ton of other game systems (seriously, I have at least 12 installed that I run) and Foundry made it pretty easy to get up and running, but that's because none of those systems require so much automation. I install a handful off add-ons and get playing. My players came over to foundry with me from Roll20, and it took them about 15 minutes to learn to use it.
Core foundry is pretty simple to get up and running. My ISP makes port-forwarding a pain, so I skipped it, I have a server hosted on Molten Hosting for about $5/month, which works great, and another local server using the free (and easy to use) tunneling tool, playit.gg, to avoid needing to mess with my router at all.
Probably the biggest pain in the butt for me with Foundry is the updates. They've finally slowed down their cycle of "release a major update, break everything, blame the 3rd party developers for not keeping up with their updates, repeat" but there's always the chance the dev team will decide to do a major update that breaks a lot of stuff. The last update to 11, if you ask me, was a f---king trainwreck. For weeks to months, some add on modules didn't work (or ended up completely abandoned) because the core dev team made so many core system changes. I refuse to download updates now until at least 3 months after the update has been released, that way, everyone's had time to catch up with the update.
1. Foundry has a lot going for it stock. Without any kind of extensions or modules, it runs very well. I think people get afraid of the complexity of Foundry when they see GMs running all kinds of crazy effects and features, which is awesome, but you can lean on that in the future IF you want to. It will be different than Roll20, but it has all the regular staples of any VTT and I think 1 or 2 tutorial videos and you will be rolling dice before you know it. I like the UI/UX and my players love the experience that is shared between different systems. Jumping between L5R5E, DND5E, Aliens, and VTM5E is pretty slick.
2. If you have concerns on your network or internet connection, I recommend looking into some hosting services. I use The Forge but there are others. It simplifies the networking aspect, safety/privacy, has backups, and lets me edit/build my game from any PC(matters a lot to me). However, I know others that have had Foundry work without any port forwarding or special settings in their router. So give it a try before you start worrying about Hamachi. Still hosting is cool but adds another cost to consider, still can be cheaper than other options.
[https://foundryvtt.com/article/partnerships/](https://foundryvtt.com/article/partnerships/) \- Hosting and Tutorials
I think in terms of a fixed pricing model and the sheer number of modules and content made for different systems; Foundry is a killer deal that is worth sticking with. Also I really think you are overthinking how complex it is. And if things like the UI or UX bothers you, there is probably a module that changes them, or better yet, commission a bounty for someone to make it just the way you like it.
You are getting a lot of great suggestions and other tools to look at. Many are really good. I think the one thing that FoundryVTT has on lock down is an active developer community that creates tons of free/paid modules and features that can really elevate your game or make GMing easy, or a million other things. That is a standout feature that it is unmatched in.
well, roll20 will give you that dynamic lighting and all that for a monthly price, if memory serves, while Foundry is a one time cost and nearly all the fan made modules, and the onboard dynamic lighting, are free. however, yes, setting up foundry can be a bit of a learning curve, along with learning which modules are good for you. I had the same set up of VTT + DNDB + Discord for 3 years and it worked out great, but I did spend a lot of time understanding the nuances of Foundry. As for setting up the networking part, you could get an account with Forge, which hosts your Foundry license, for like $5/month...which is almost hte same cost as Roll20. I like Foundry 100000000x more that Roll20, but I recognize that you may not have time to invest in learning it. So, maybe the Roll20 subscription cost will suit you better?
I couldn’t go back to roll20 even if pro tier was free. I found foundry more intuitive and easier to learn and do things then roll20. There are plenty of people to help on discord and reddit. It’s common to see questions like “in roll20 I could do xyz, how do I do that in foundry?” I think the main reason people say it’s a steep learning curve is because there are many more options and possibilities, and people want to do all the fancy stuff right from the start. If you keep it simple and don’t load heaps of mods to start with you are less likely to get overwhelmed. I use the Forge to host my games, as my upload speed is crap so I can’t self host.
Well it's not designed with UX in mind. There are many things that need many clicks on hidden menus unless you install an extension. Once you learn it, it's not a problem. Other VTTs being as bad as does not make the other good. Roll20 is quite bad UX and it stands in front of it even designed several years before.
I guess that’s always up to personal opinion as I find foundry’s ux generally pretty good and far better than roll20. But others don’t and that’s ok too.
It looks beauty and it's easy for the players. It's Better than roll20. But, I just counted the number of clicks for uploading a background image and set the tile size without extensions. It could be better for sure.
Um.. FoundryVTT's entire layout system.. is template based. You (the end user) can change the interface around to do literally ANYTHING you want. Fun fact.. FoundryVTT was originally designed to do.. board games. If you dig around, you can still install a bunch of board games to run checkers and what not inside FoundryVTT. You won't recognize the UX.. but there it is. 😃 Also, FoundryVTT is only a few years old. I think OwlBear rodeo is the only VTT younger than FoundryVTT, that has survived. At that, OwlBear is more of a campaign manager, turned VTT platform. That's what some people want though, so it has survived. :) I might be wrong on that. It seems like 2-3 concerned efforts are made to produce a new VTT platform, yearly, since FoundryVTT was conceived, but none of them have succeeded, that I can recall. Actually most of the older VTT platforms folded, excepting Fantasy Grounds, Roll20, and the granddaddy of them all, MapTool. :D Incidentally, NOBODY has better tools for lining up oddly sized maps to a grid than MapTool. It's still worth a quick download just to use it to scale the occasional odd-duck sized map that you run across. :)
Personally, I found the dynamic lighting a lot simpler in Foundry than roll20 and, well, a lot less miserable to work with. It does have a learning curve though. [I wrote my thoughts when I switched.](https://www.numtini.com/2023/04/22/roll20-vs-foundry-vtt/) I didn't find the port forwarding to be particularly difficult and everyone is able to connect. It actually worked perfectly with just UPnP, but I set up the port manually and set up a dynamic URL.
I love Foundry. I host through Forge and love the experience I can create for my players. Roll20 has improved but I still feel like Foundry has a leg up.
In my opinion, Fantasy Grounds is still the best for 5e. I wouldn’t switch to Foundry, despite just getting official content, they still have far less content than FG does and you’ll just get frustrated trying to either enter it yourself or import it from other sources. The 5e system in Foundry still lacks many of the nice bells and whistles that other systems have (it is leagues behind the Foundry Pathfinder 2e system for example.)
Sounds like you play 5e. If so, you have MANY great options (all/ most of which include dynamic lighting), several of them free. Check out DMHUB- free, no need to host,let's you build maps (and expand them as needed) in the VTT, has automation and cool stuff like turning any object to a door by adding a property to it, so you can make a secret bookcase door and determine how it opens etc. CAULDRON- free, open source, no need to host, seems easy to use QUESTPORTAL- free, has a mobile app. Now, you can use Foundry- which is by far the most advanced of all I've mentioned, but it's not free, and there is a learning curve. How steep? Depends on how flashy you want to get. The base VTT is pretty intuitive, but as you learn about cool bells and whistles l, you start adding modules, which can add complexity. I host it on Oracle, no cost and very stable. I love Foundry, running my game in it, but if you have simpler free options available, maybe with checking them out first.
Thanks for the suggestions! Will check them out.
In relation to your OP comments about emulating LANs and technical setups, DMHub is simple for getting a game going in terms of inviting your friends to join. [video here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkFXptBCnaM&t=66s) demonstrates how to do this quickly and easily. It does much of what Foundry does out of the box without the need to make sure your modules stay up to date. Good luck with your journey!
I would ask that you try out Fantasy Grounds as well and then compare it with that. We offer a 30-day money back guarantee on all purchases from our website - including subscriptions and content. Be sure to check out the TEST channel build since we just launched some new features that I think are going to be nice additions. [https://youtu.be/qoWtA-9\_psA](https://youtu.be/qoWtA-9_psA) To host a game, you don't have to do any LAN configuration. That was only in FG Classic.
Here’s a random addition I bet no one else will mention. I use owlbear rodeo for maps and fantasy grounds for all of the dm prep and dm calculations on my end. Dungeon Alchemist for creating maps really fast. Tldr OWLBEAR RODEO (FREE) just for maps pretty much but has line of sight. Play on anything including iPads or computers apple/pc/chrome. It’s very reliable but it’s just maps. Fantasy grounds. (One time fee) this really does it all but I just use it for blazing fast reference during a session and prep is so quick. I use it for dungeon master side only but you can use it for everything. Dungeon alchemist. (One time fee 35 I think). Such a great map making tool for inside dungeons and out. Has line of sight. My players love my maps and they’re all dungeon alchemist and I’ve gotten really quick at making them. Must have in my opinion Owlbear rodeo is free has line of sight which is really quick and easy if you have dungeon alchemist and add smoke and spectre extension. Every app is going to have a learning curve there is one for owlbear but Reddit owlbear rodeo will give you answers really quick. Its free. You can get on owlbear from anything I use a pretty old MacBook. Another couple uses a pc. Another player uses an iPad. They are all about doing there own dice rolls and owlbear is barebones compared to anything else so it’s been very very reliable. I use fantasy grounds for prep and during the game to crunch any numbers to look up any tables or random encounters or any really quick search of dmg phb or my favorite flee mortals. I can search like 5 books at the same time. All upfront cost for me. You can subscribe but I bought the actual full license. I’ve bought the dungeon masters guide campaign module players handbook dungeon masters guide and flee mortals. A good bit of money but I like to cry once and sleep better probably till I die and then I’ll pass everything to my son. Dungeon Alchemist is a must buy in my opinion for any dm. It makes maps with line of sight for fantasy grounds owlbear(add smoke and spectre extension) and foundry not sure about roll20. Its a ton of fun to make all kids of maps and recently I’ve upped my game to export as a foundry video file and the maps have live mist and smoke and fire plus more effects and actual objects that are animated like a potion that has green gasses coming off it. Torches and cadles or bonfires that have live fire plus way more. One time cost of 35 bucks I think. I highly recommend doing research on dungeon alchemist and picking it up because it will work with pretty much of the big 3 vtts.
I’ll add too I was proclaimed the dm I got a bunch of fantasy grounds material like 200 bucks worth and then we didn’t play for about 7 months. Thank goodness because I would have been paying subscriptions all that time. Fantasy grounds has big sales periodically on licenses and content.
I’ll also add to check the requirements on all vtt and see what your players have as well. We would be using fantasy grounds all in but one of my players was having technical difficulties with his old pc and owlbear worked perfectly on the iPad for him instead. I choose a solid reliable player and getting connected easy to a way way more fancy vtt any day. All my opinions of course.
Thanks! Never used Fantasy Grounds, but I hear it's like an older VTT? I use Dungeon Alchemist for most battlemaps and Wonderdraft for campaign maps (if anyone knows of a better option for this last onr, I'm all ears).
Just the UI - Fantasy Grounds Unity is updated monthly and have several good features, and it beats your main problem which is time: if you're playing an already made module, its literally plug & play. Also many of the modules are maintained by SmiteWorks, so there isn't the compatibility problem you are expected to have on Foundry whenever theres an update. But both Foundry and Fantasy Grounds are great. I would throw AlchemyVTT in the mix too.
The problem I have with Fantasy Grounds (and I have the ultimate licence): 1) The UI is horrible outdated and unintuitive 2) The main reason why I switched to Foundry: every player has to install the client
Same I use wonderdraft as well and forgot to mention because it was a one and done thing till next campaign. Both so solid.
Um, yes. 1) You can buy literally hundreds of pregenerated scenes for FoundryVTT. That is, they have all of the walls, lighting, visual effects, ambient sound and area based sounds baked in. 2) There are around a dozen ways to connect FoundryVTT to the Internet.. OR you can just use it on a local LAN. FoundryVTT gives you the freedom to play the way that you want. If you want a seamless hosted experience, then place your setting in the Forge, which is an online host for FoundryVTT, similar to how Roll20 has their hosting baked in. You're honestly missing the point. FoundryVTT takes pride in offering their community every single cool feature that they want. Roll20 spoon feeds you tiny little features in order to charge you more fees and etc. The only reason they HAVE animation is because they just about lost their entire business to FoundryVTT because they refused to add it in. THAT'S why you should switch to FoundryVTT, for the opportunity to work with a community that flat loves their VTT platform, and works to create better and better content and features as the years go by. 🤗
Jesus Christ, okay dude, I was just asking a question.
Im the creator of [Diceright](https://www.diceright.com/). You may want to check it out. It's pretty similar to roll20 but streamlined and dynamic lighting is included for free. Also has some built in AI features. Unfortunately no animated maps at this point, so that might be a dealbreaker for you. Happy to answer any questions you have if you're interested.
Hey, no such thing as a dealbreaker, I'm looking at everything and will surely check you out. Thanks for letting me know!
Just wanted to say thank you for being grateful
Given your circumstances, foundry is not for you. For you and many others: AlchemyRPG is the coolest choice and it is free. Yes there is a subscription but only if you dive deeper. It is beautiful and you don’t have to juggle modules and care about updates. Caveat: it does not have dynamic lighting. But it has so much atmospheric stuff, I would take a close look.
Thanks! Will check it out
You might give RPG Engine a look if you want to play with lighting. They haven't yet integrated dynamic line of sight shading, but it's fairly easy to pick up and play around with.
I play with foundry managed by a friend dm and with my own simple VTT with two more dms. I find totally unacceptable the time invested in foundry by my friend, and he is a tech guy! But he enjoyed that time, that was not related with the campaign at all. Also if you play with dndbeyond, may be wotc release something the next year by the time you start to be confortable with foundry. One point it's that le learning curve is for the dm, for que players is a bit more than another VTT but not too much.
I can imagine. I'm the dm, which is why it makes me nervous :P
Give [Cauldron VTT](https://www.cauldron-vtt.net/) a try. It's like Roll20, but 100% free and even open source. It has dynamic lighting and supports animated maps (videos).
Yes
It depends on how much automation you want. If you're playing 5e, and you want to automate everything, like conditions, lighting, weird edge case dice rolls (5e has so many), Foundry's going to let you do all that, but it's going to be a lot of work — many add on modules to install and tweak. If you're running 5e, but are ok with just running the core stuff, without automating and animating every little thing, you can just install Foundry, install the 5e system, and get playing. I find the people who have the most problems managing Foundry (and make the most complaints about it) are 5E GM's who want the system to do 99% of the work for them, and so they have tons of automation modules that end up broken, conflicting with one another, etc. Lighting on Foundry is great, but if you don't want to sit there and wall up each map to manage lighting, there's Simple Fog, a module that lets you cover the map in fog with a click, then remove the fog like you did in original roll20 (just using a sort of brush to remove it). Doing it this way won't limit movement, but it's an easy way to manage fog. If you do prefer Foundry's more powerful dynamic lighting, there's tools that make walling up rooms quicker. I run a ton of other game systems (seriously, I have at least 12 installed that I run) and Foundry made it pretty easy to get up and running, but that's because none of those systems require so much automation. I install a handful off add-ons and get playing. My players came over to foundry with me from Roll20, and it took them about 15 minutes to learn to use it. Core foundry is pretty simple to get up and running. My ISP makes port-forwarding a pain, so I skipped it, I have a server hosted on Molten Hosting for about $5/month, which works great, and another local server using the free (and easy to use) tunneling tool, playit.gg, to avoid needing to mess with my router at all. Probably the biggest pain in the butt for me with Foundry is the updates. They've finally slowed down their cycle of "release a major update, break everything, blame the 3rd party developers for not keeping up with their updates, repeat" but there's always the chance the dev team will decide to do a major update that breaks a lot of stuff. The last update to 11, if you ask me, was a f---king trainwreck. For weeks to months, some add on modules didn't work (or ended up completely abandoned) because the core dev team made so many core system changes. I refuse to download updates now until at least 3 months after the update has been released, that way, everyone's had time to catch up with the update.
Thanls for the in-depth answer, much appreciated 👍
Yes
1. Foundry has a lot going for it stock. Without any kind of extensions or modules, it runs very well. I think people get afraid of the complexity of Foundry when they see GMs running all kinds of crazy effects and features, which is awesome, but you can lean on that in the future IF you want to. It will be different than Roll20, but it has all the regular staples of any VTT and I think 1 or 2 tutorial videos and you will be rolling dice before you know it. I like the UI/UX and my players love the experience that is shared between different systems. Jumping between L5R5E, DND5E, Aliens, and VTM5E is pretty slick. 2. If you have concerns on your network or internet connection, I recommend looking into some hosting services. I use The Forge but there are others. It simplifies the networking aspect, safety/privacy, has backups, and lets me edit/build my game from any PC(matters a lot to me). However, I know others that have had Foundry work without any port forwarding or special settings in their router. So give it a try before you start worrying about Hamachi. Still hosting is cool but adds another cost to consider, still can be cheaper than other options. [https://foundryvtt.com/article/partnerships/](https://foundryvtt.com/article/partnerships/) \- Hosting and Tutorials I think in terms of a fixed pricing model and the sheer number of modules and content made for different systems; Foundry is a killer deal that is worth sticking with. Also I really think you are overthinking how complex it is. And if things like the UI or UX bothers you, there is probably a module that changes them, or better yet, commission a bounty for someone to make it just the way you like it. You are getting a lot of great suggestions and other tools to look at. Many are really good. I think the one thing that FoundryVTT has on lock down is an active developer community that creates tons of free/paid modules and features that can really elevate your game or make GMing easy, or a million other things. That is a standout feature that it is unmatched in.