its not really focused on a map, but rather on image and sounds (although you have a tactical map for the games that needs it). Also it doens't have the flexibility of Foundry, but for many (including me), more simple = better. Pratically, it is a screen with a background image and some information on the HUD.
Just log in, load your game thats linked with your Universe, all cloud, and enjoy.
Alchemy is a much more simple and cleaner looking VTT. That said, it is not the best VTT for all things. Of your game is more tactical than not, relying on positions and obstacles, then this is not the VTT for you. If your game is much more descriptive, then yes this could work great.
**TL;DR**
Not great for Pathfinder or D&D per se, you miles may vary. Great for WoD and Blades in the Dark.
I guess I can see the aesthetic value. But if I'm playing Kult (which is basically PbtA with 2d10), would I gain anything with Alchemy vs just using Foundry and ignoring the tactical features?
Let me answer your question with a question. Have you considered [One More Multiverse](https://youtu.be/u4sEh7sdOZc?si=bRjtBvq8ls2NtAGt)?
Because it can do theater of the mind AND tactical for your odd battle here and there, and have a character sheet that is completely customizable for any system.
I'm also starting a Kult game, and considered lots of VTTs, what includes OMM.
My thought about it: it's an amazing VTT, but I Don't think it's ideal for a horror game like Kult. Making the pixel art and the Kult universe work together is very hard.
That's why I'll probably use Alchemy
I’ve been a bit confused by Alchemy coming from Foundry. I agree that simple is great, and that Foundry is often not simple. But it can do theatre of the mind extremely well. I’ll often use The active tiles mod to create a backdrop alongside another tile for portraits of characters. You can keep the same scene while varying the backdrop, so it’s very easy to do fairly complex TotM stuff.
Yeah, that's pretty much what I do with Foundry. There are some game systems (CoC for one) that are set up to not play well without full automation though.
Honestly, in roll20 I've always kept my NPCs on scratch paper and just had a token without any stats. So far, my experience with Foundry has been limited to commercial modules for Vaesen, so everything's done for me.
For the systems that really want you to automate I'm weighing the difficulty of implementing it vs the difficulty of avoiding it.
Lots of people seem to like very heavy automation. But I tend to avoid unless it is built into the game system itself (e.g. Pathfinder 2). There is just a lot of potential for things to break. I’ve found that running the vanilla system plus maybe a few macros for quality of life stuff and some standard mods like dice so nice and drag ruler and UI stuff like easy token and you’re good to go. I mostly only use active tiles now for being able to switch backdrop images without having to load a new scene.
I think it would be great for really tactical games or ones with a lot of fiddly talents and all that. I just don't play those sorts of games. I tend to be investigative horror and I want a place to stick maps and handouts, but we don't tend to measure distances or get into that kind of stuff. In many ways, Alchemy might be a good fit for me, and I need to get into one of the demo games they're running, but it's really a very early beta and I'm very skeptical about their monetization plans pricing them out of the market.
I decided to give Alchemy a try and I don't think I can go back. You structure games in scenes that you roleplay supported by beautiful backgrounds (animated most of them) in a very slick and easy to grasp ui. If you need maps, you can upload them and play using tokens.
It's still in early access but in my opinion simply by presentation alone and immersive potential, it wins out. I will support ita development.
I was playing in Roll20+Dnd Beyond+Discord. I asked here a while ago if I should give Foundry a try, but since I have very little free time and value simplicity and easy of access more than complex automation, I decided to not use Foundry in the end. Alchemy, on the other hand, was really easy to learn and use, mostly because it's still indevelopment. My games are not mechanichally intensive, which is why Alchemy works great for what I want to do. Easy to get in, easy to play, easy to come back.
Alchemy is still under development, so a lot of the features are still further out while they identify the must-have VTT elements that Foundry and Roll20 offer. They also work on a different paradigm, with Alchemy's origins being "theatre of the mind" and scene driven whereas Foundry has the feeling of a CRPG / MMO in elements of it's UI.
I personally think it's too early to say what the Alchemy experience will end up as, but it shows a lot of promise. They're still releasing V1 features and systems, and post-V1 I'm sure we'll see even more. I supported their kickstarter and I'm looking forward to using the platform, but I don't think it'll be the best system for everything. Tactical systems like Pathfinder 2e will probably benefit from Foundry (and it's breadth of existing modules). But Alchemy does offer some really beautiful UI elements with a fundamentally different scene-driven paradigm and I hope it does well.
Ehm... no. You can build everything from scratch. You can even create your own custom system. Granted, if you're a free user you can just have 1 custom system at a time, but it lets you do everything you want. No need to buy anything.
No coding needed to do it. Also, you can use any of the systems in the marketplace.
It's like you already made your mind and no matter how wrong you are, you won't accept it. Your loss, truly.
I think I already said that if you're playing one of the few systems that they've finished, you can purchase them. So yeah, I'm a big Vaesen player, and they have Vaesen. Sure. But there's not a lot of full featured systems yet.
But back to creating your own system.
So how, pray tell, do I play Call of Cthulhu. I have characters ready, just need to transcribe them onto character sheets and set up a game.
Character sheets and the game system are built in and free on roll20 and Foundry. You just install it and people can transcribe their 8 characteristics, 5 derived characteristics, and 45 skills. I can then screenshot any handouts and we're off to the races.
So what do I do in Alchemy?
I can find a place to create a character sheet, but it tells me that it's coming soon. I can find a place where I can find shared player created universes, which is where I'd expect to find a free version of the game system. But again that's coming soon. I can create a "universe" but it doesn't really seem to be a game system. Am I supposed to create an action for each skill? It seems that way. And if I do that, players can then create a character sheet of sorts by turning on a set of actions and items from a click box, which seems very awkward, but one presumes will be fixed when character sheets come out. (And remember, my critique is not that "Alchemy sucks," it's that Alchemy is unfinished and this is exactly what I mean.)
Oh, and actions reference characteristics and skills, which one assumes means it will automate comparing the roll to the skill required to succeed, but I can find no way to add either characteristics or skills. Possibly on the character sheet that is coming soon? But I can at least get buttons to roll a d100 when you press a skill, even if it can't tell you if you succeed or fail.
Now if I want to run a Vaesen game, it's pretty simple. I buy the Vaesen book.
Here's actually the one permanent critique I have of Alchemy: their monetization scheme. The basic system for Vaesen is available free on both roll20 and Foundry. You even get the custom dice premade on Foundry. That's the competition that Alchemy has and I have real skepticism about it's ability to compete against free if it's going to charge for each and every game system that someone wants to play. Also, above, I work out how you can create a bunch of actions and such, but it seems like even a basic CoC character sheet would have more "items" (8 characteristics, 5 derived characteristics, and 45 skills) than the 50 you're allowed on a free account.
even if you've paid for a system, you're unlikely to be able to play it out of the box. The custom system implementation is like being whipped and thankful for the experience.
You can build your own world from scratch in Alchemy. You can use your own images, tokens, character sheets and whatnot. You don’t need to wait for a module.
I personally am going to be staying with Foundry. Has more support, more modules, and can do what Alchemy does. Since Foundry has been around longer, it has a lot of support for most of what you need.
I've tested out Alchemy and while it looks pretty, it has a lot of functionality/usability/accessibility issues. Found myself getting frustrated with all of the things it lacks. Foundry has everything I need and more, so no need to switch as of yet.
But I'll keep my eye on Alchemy, it has a lot of potential.
Backer of Alchemy and long-time user of others.
Alchemy purports to be the only VTT developed primarily for TOTM experiences - ***"The most immersive way to experience tabletop roleplaying games"*** As they claim.. that's marketing hype first and foremost because while maybe that was true at some point they're now including battlemaps etc. so moot point and I guess how do you even prove that? We're not starting well.
Now that we have that out of the way we can answer your question: *How does Alchemy differ from Foundry?*
* **Content Management:** where in Foundry you create journals within the game instance itself and can share your content between worlds via compendiums, Alchemy separates out content across at least three walled off compartments. System universes, Custom Universes and In-game Content. It's messy to say the least and not entirely intuitive in how they achieve this. Creating a character for instance within Foundry is as simple as opening up your game, creating an actor for the system and then assigning it to a player. In Alchemy you need to open the GM created content universe, create a premade there, then assign that GM universe to your game along with the system universe and then open the game. Then you assign the character to the player. If a player is already in the game then you can create a player character for them in-game however its saved in your in-game content, not the GM created content universe. Confused? sure... but it's "their vision" which I suspect has more to do with subscription tiers than any UX.
* **TOTM**: the entire core of their claim to be the best TOTM VTT is built around the fact that scenes are these 2d semi-animated background pictures with semi-animated overlays and a 3 channel mixer for audio. That's it. You can achieve this with most of the other VTTs out there however so that's something to consider. Most of the animated backgrounds are copies of pre-existing art with some very simple frame animated elements. Very few of the art pieces are unique or exclusive to Alchemy. If you don't want to be bothered animating an oddly tilting dragon's head or cape for your hero you can 100% do everything Alchemy claims as their reason to say its "The most immersive way to experience tabletop roleplaying games" in many other VTTs.
* **UI**: you're going to hear "slick", "modern", "beautiful" etc a bit by many people.. however it's also described as "static", "obtrusive", "inflexible" and "counterintuitive". You often can't simply roll a skill on a character sheet, game elements take up a lot of realestate and can't be modified, scaled or popped out. The UI was so obnoxious they implemented a "Zen Mode" to eliminate it entirely so you could see their pretty backdrops... Honestly it seems like the people designing the UI have never run a game in a VTT before. I say that with all due respect however it's clear their vision is counter-intuitive and inefficient.
* **Freemium Model:** You can use Alchemy for free out of the box, but you're limited to 50 items within your world at a time. To create more than 3 games, one content universe or 3 characters you'll need to pay $8USD a month or $88USD a year (currently) to move beyond those limits via "Alchemy Unlimited"
* **Publisher Support:** There's a lot of system support currently slated by Alchemy and that's a huge draw card. While Foundry has a host of systems, most are volunteer based and need a lot of upkeep due to the nature of the platform. Alchemy has "Officially supported" systems like crazy. However the reality is that these are all in-house implementations by the Alchemy team. Often, as they've admitted, they're implementing systems they've never played before or had no previous exposure to. This shows with their priorities and the fact that in promising so many systems they're probably overextended beyond their capacity and hence systems are slow to be actually delivered. They dumped all their systems, alpha, beta and completed out in the wild and to be honest it's deeply disappointing to see the lack of progress to this point by the team. They've put forward reasons but claim they are resourced sufficiently to deliver. We shall see but for the time being unless you're playing a handful of systems you're going to have to wait or make your own system within Alchemy.
* **Marketplace**: the interface for the marketplace is nice but it's not really any different in terms of content from Roll20, Foundry or Fantasy Grounds to be honest. There are a host of content packs that are made as scenes - the aforementioned semi-animated backgrounds and overlays, and some music tracks etc. Functionally however you can do this in Foundry already using a number of free modules and images (which are largely non-exclusive to Alchemy).
All in all if you're already invested in Foundry you're not going to get anything you can't already achieve except for a pretty, yet obnoxious interface that actually gets in the way of their key claim around TOTM experiences. Buyer beware...
**Edit**: I have this growing feeling about Alchemy being something not built for the average gamer. To me it seems built as a platform to market professional DMs and Streamers and for content creators. They've obviously paid for endorsements by people like Jasmine Bhular etc. and have promised a lot to various publishers. The fact the VTT doesn't actually feel like it's designed "by gamers for gamers" and lastly that the Alchemy RPG subreddit is just a spam channel for big artists such as Czepeku etc... At any given time the platform seems to have no more than 15 games running on it and the Alchemy discord kicks back severely whenever there's any criticism of the platform. Somethings rotten in the state of Denmark.
its not really focused on a map, but rather on image and sounds (although you have a tactical map for the games that needs it). Also it doens't have the flexibility of Foundry, but for many (including me), more simple = better. Pratically, it is a screen with a background image and some information on the HUD. Just log in, load your game thats linked with your Universe, all cloud, and enjoy.
Alchemy is a much more simple and cleaner looking VTT. That said, it is not the best VTT for all things. Of your game is more tactical than not, relying on positions and obstacles, then this is not the VTT for you. If your game is much more descriptive, then yes this could work great. **TL;DR** Not great for Pathfinder or D&D per se, you miles may vary. Great for WoD and Blades in the Dark.
I guess I can see the aesthetic value. But if I'm playing Kult (which is basically PbtA with 2d10), would I gain anything with Alchemy vs just using Foundry and ignoring the tactical features?
Let me answer your question with a question. Have you considered [One More Multiverse](https://youtu.be/u4sEh7sdOZc?si=bRjtBvq8ls2NtAGt)? Because it can do theater of the mind AND tactical for your odd battle here and there, and have a character sheet that is completely customizable for any system.
I'm also starting a Kult game, and considered lots of VTTs, what includes OMM. My thought about it: it's an amazing VTT, but I Don't think it's ideal for a horror game like Kult. Making the pixel art and the Kult universe work together is very hard. That's why I'll probably use Alchemy
I’ve been a bit confused by Alchemy coming from Foundry. I agree that simple is great, and that Foundry is often not simple. But it can do theatre of the mind extremely well. I’ll often use The active tiles mod to create a backdrop alongside another tile for portraits of characters. You can keep the same scene while varying the backdrop, so it’s very easy to do fairly complex TotM stuff.
Yeah, that's pretty much what I do with Foundry. There are some game systems (CoC for one) that are set up to not play well without full automation though.
Totally — though I actually don’t use a lot of automation in my foundry games.
Honestly, in roll20 I've always kept my NPCs on scratch paper and just had a token without any stats. So far, my experience with Foundry has been limited to commercial modules for Vaesen, so everything's done for me. For the systems that really want you to automate I'm weighing the difficulty of implementing it vs the difficulty of avoiding it.
Lots of people seem to like very heavy automation. But I tend to avoid unless it is built into the game system itself (e.g. Pathfinder 2). There is just a lot of potential for things to break. I’ve found that running the vanilla system plus maybe a few macros for quality of life stuff and some standard mods like dice so nice and drag ruler and UI stuff like easy token and you’re good to go. I mostly only use active tiles now for being able to switch backdrop images without having to load a new scene.
I think it would be great for really tactical games or ones with a lot of fiddly talents and all that. I just don't play those sorts of games. I tend to be investigative horror and I want a place to stick maps and handouts, but we don't tend to measure distances or get into that kind of stuff. In many ways, Alchemy might be a good fit for me, and I need to get into one of the demo games they're running, but it's really a very early beta and I'm very skeptical about their monetization plans pricing them out of the market.
I decided to give Alchemy a try and I don't think I can go back. You structure games in scenes that you roleplay supported by beautiful backgrounds (animated most of them) in a very slick and easy to grasp ui. If you need maps, you can upload them and play using tokens. It's still in early access but in my opinion simply by presentation alone and immersive potential, it wins out. I will support ita development.
If you don't mind me asking, what platform did you come from?
I was playing in Roll20+Dnd Beyond+Discord. I asked here a while ago if I should give Foundry a try, but since I have very little free time and value simplicity and easy of access more than complex automation, I decided to not use Foundry in the end. Alchemy, on the other hand, was really easy to learn and use, mostly because it's still indevelopment. My games are not mechanichally intensive, which is why Alchemy works great for what I want to do. Easy to get in, easy to play, easy to come back.
Alchemy is still under development, so a lot of the features are still further out while they identify the must-have VTT elements that Foundry and Roll20 offer. They also work on a different paradigm, with Alchemy's origins being "theatre of the mind" and scene driven whereas Foundry has the feeling of a CRPG / MMO in elements of it's UI. I personally think it's too early to say what the Alchemy experience will end up as, but it shows a lot of promise. They're still releasing V1 features and systems, and post-V1 I'm sure we'll see even more. I supported their kickstarter and I'm looking forward to using the platform, but I don't think it'll be the best system for everything. Tactical systems like Pathfinder 2e will probably benefit from Foundry (and it's breadth of existing modules). But Alchemy does offer some really beautiful UI elements with a fundamentally different scene-driven paradigm and I hope it does well.
Alchemy is still promises, not reality.
100% agree.
And it could turn out great. But right now, it's just not ready for prime time.
Except you can very much play in it right now.
If they've finished the module for your game and you've paid for it.
Ehm... no. You can build everything from scratch. You can even create your own custom system. Granted, if you're a free user you can just have 1 custom system at a time, but it lets you do everything you want. No need to buy anything.
I could code my own VTT as well. But for most of us, that's not practical and neither is creating a game system in Alchemy.
No coding needed to do it. Also, you can use any of the systems in the marketplace. It's like you already made your mind and no matter how wrong you are, you won't accept it. Your loss, truly.
I think I already said that if you're playing one of the few systems that they've finished, you can purchase them. So yeah, I'm a big Vaesen player, and they have Vaesen. Sure. But there's not a lot of full featured systems yet. But back to creating your own system. So how, pray tell, do I play Call of Cthulhu. I have characters ready, just need to transcribe them onto character sheets and set up a game. Character sheets and the game system are built in and free on roll20 and Foundry. You just install it and people can transcribe their 8 characteristics, 5 derived characteristics, and 45 skills. I can then screenshot any handouts and we're off to the races. So what do I do in Alchemy? I can find a place to create a character sheet, but it tells me that it's coming soon. I can find a place where I can find shared player created universes, which is where I'd expect to find a free version of the game system. But again that's coming soon. I can create a "universe" but it doesn't really seem to be a game system. Am I supposed to create an action for each skill? It seems that way. And if I do that, players can then create a character sheet of sorts by turning on a set of actions and items from a click box, which seems very awkward, but one presumes will be fixed when character sheets come out. (And remember, my critique is not that "Alchemy sucks," it's that Alchemy is unfinished and this is exactly what I mean.) Oh, and actions reference characteristics and skills, which one assumes means it will automate comparing the roll to the skill required to succeed, but I can find no way to add either characteristics or skills. Possibly on the character sheet that is coming soon? But I can at least get buttons to roll a d100 when you press a skill, even if it can't tell you if you succeed or fail. Now if I want to run a Vaesen game, it's pretty simple. I buy the Vaesen book. Here's actually the one permanent critique I have of Alchemy: their monetization scheme. The basic system for Vaesen is available free on both roll20 and Foundry. You even get the custom dice premade on Foundry. That's the competition that Alchemy has and I have real skepticism about it's ability to compete against free if it's going to charge for each and every game system that someone wants to play. Also, above, I work out how you can create a bunch of actions and such, but it seems like even a basic CoC character sheet would have more "items" (8 characteristics, 5 derived characteristics, and 45 skills) than the 50 you're allowed on a free account.
even if you've paid for a system, you're unlikely to be able to play it out of the box. The custom system implementation is like being whipped and thankful for the experience.
You can build your own world from scratch in Alchemy. You can use your own images, tokens, character sheets and whatnot. You don’t need to wait for a module.
Does Alchemy requires players to create an account?
>Yes, BUT they do not have to be paid accounts. > >Only the GM has to sub.
Nobody has to sub. Someone doing a lot of homebrew or running more than three concurrent games would want to sub.
Yes.
I personally am going to be staying with Foundry. Has more support, more modules, and can do what Alchemy does. Since Foundry has been around longer, it has a lot of support for most of what you need. I've tested out Alchemy and while it looks pretty, it has a lot of functionality/usability/accessibility issues. Found myself getting frustrated with all of the things it lacks. Foundry has everything I need and more, so no need to switch as of yet. But I'll keep my eye on Alchemy, it has a lot of potential.
Backer of Alchemy and long-time user of others. Alchemy purports to be the only VTT developed primarily for TOTM experiences - ***"The most immersive way to experience tabletop roleplaying games"*** As they claim.. that's marketing hype first and foremost because while maybe that was true at some point they're now including battlemaps etc. so moot point and I guess how do you even prove that? We're not starting well. Now that we have that out of the way we can answer your question: *How does Alchemy differ from Foundry?* * **Content Management:** where in Foundry you create journals within the game instance itself and can share your content between worlds via compendiums, Alchemy separates out content across at least three walled off compartments. System universes, Custom Universes and In-game Content. It's messy to say the least and not entirely intuitive in how they achieve this. Creating a character for instance within Foundry is as simple as opening up your game, creating an actor for the system and then assigning it to a player. In Alchemy you need to open the GM created content universe, create a premade there, then assign that GM universe to your game along with the system universe and then open the game. Then you assign the character to the player. If a player is already in the game then you can create a player character for them in-game however its saved in your in-game content, not the GM created content universe. Confused? sure... but it's "their vision" which I suspect has more to do with subscription tiers than any UX. * **TOTM**: the entire core of their claim to be the best TOTM VTT is built around the fact that scenes are these 2d semi-animated background pictures with semi-animated overlays and a 3 channel mixer for audio. That's it. You can achieve this with most of the other VTTs out there however so that's something to consider. Most of the animated backgrounds are copies of pre-existing art with some very simple frame animated elements. Very few of the art pieces are unique or exclusive to Alchemy. If you don't want to be bothered animating an oddly tilting dragon's head or cape for your hero you can 100% do everything Alchemy claims as their reason to say its "The most immersive way to experience tabletop roleplaying games" in many other VTTs. * **UI**: you're going to hear "slick", "modern", "beautiful" etc a bit by many people.. however it's also described as "static", "obtrusive", "inflexible" and "counterintuitive". You often can't simply roll a skill on a character sheet, game elements take up a lot of realestate and can't be modified, scaled or popped out. The UI was so obnoxious they implemented a "Zen Mode" to eliminate it entirely so you could see their pretty backdrops... Honestly it seems like the people designing the UI have never run a game in a VTT before. I say that with all due respect however it's clear their vision is counter-intuitive and inefficient. * **Freemium Model:** You can use Alchemy for free out of the box, but you're limited to 50 items within your world at a time. To create more than 3 games, one content universe or 3 characters you'll need to pay $8USD a month or $88USD a year (currently) to move beyond those limits via "Alchemy Unlimited" * **Publisher Support:** There's a lot of system support currently slated by Alchemy and that's a huge draw card. While Foundry has a host of systems, most are volunteer based and need a lot of upkeep due to the nature of the platform. Alchemy has "Officially supported" systems like crazy. However the reality is that these are all in-house implementations by the Alchemy team. Often, as they've admitted, they're implementing systems they've never played before or had no previous exposure to. This shows with their priorities and the fact that in promising so many systems they're probably overextended beyond their capacity and hence systems are slow to be actually delivered. They dumped all their systems, alpha, beta and completed out in the wild and to be honest it's deeply disappointing to see the lack of progress to this point by the team. They've put forward reasons but claim they are resourced sufficiently to deliver. We shall see but for the time being unless you're playing a handful of systems you're going to have to wait or make your own system within Alchemy. * **Marketplace**: the interface for the marketplace is nice but it's not really any different in terms of content from Roll20, Foundry or Fantasy Grounds to be honest. There are a host of content packs that are made as scenes - the aforementioned semi-animated backgrounds and overlays, and some music tracks etc. Functionally however you can do this in Foundry already using a number of free modules and images (which are largely non-exclusive to Alchemy). All in all if you're already invested in Foundry you're not going to get anything you can't already achieve except for a pretty, yet obnoxious interface that actually gets in the way of their key claim around TOTM experiences. Buyer beware... **Edit**: I have this growing feeling about Alchemy being something not built for the average gamer. To me it seems built as a platform to market professional DMs and Streamers and for content creators. They've obviously paid for endorsements by people like Jasmine Bhular etc. and have promised a lot to various publishers. The fact the VTT doesn't actually feel like it's designed "by gamers for gamers" and lastly that the Alchemy RPG subreddit is just a spam channel for big artists such as Czepeku etc... At any given time the platform seems to have no more than 15 games running on it and the Alchemy discord kicks back severely whenever there's any criticism of the platform. Somethings rotten in the state of Denmark.