this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2024
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Are there FOSS alternatives to Roll20? (dice.camp)
submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
16 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Are there FOSS alternatives to Roll20?

@dnd

I did a little googling and spotted Foundry Virtual Tabletop, but I haven't been able to explore many alternatives yet. Which ones are good?

#foss #opensource #DnD #ttrpg #rpg #dungeonsanddragons

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

Foundry is outstanding. My groups moved to it after being frustrated with Fantasy Grounds and Roll20. Only parts of it are open-source, but I don't mind in this case. It can be self-hosted, only one copy is needed, the price is reasonable, and the money goes to a small team of independent developers rather than a big corp.

(My one notable criticism of Foundry is that their official support community is on Discord, which I won't use. This hasn't kept me from using the software, though. There are plenty of other users out there, so it's pretty easy to find information when I need it.)

We use Mumble for voice chat. Open-source, lightweight, cross-platform, low latency, good noise filtering (RNNoise), great sound quality. You can self-host, or pay for a super-cheap hosted server.

For the sake of completeness, here's a VTT Wiki:

http://rpgvirtualtabletop.wikidot.com/the-vts

A few random virtual tabletops that I bookmarked during peak pandemic:

https://www.diceright.com/

https://www.mythictable.com/

https://www.planarally.io/

https://new.tableplop.com/

https://tarrasque.io/

https://www.shardtabletop.com/

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Don't forget owlbear rodeo.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

I remember Owlbear Rodeo being mentioned from time to time a few years ago, but I didn't keep track of it. Wasn't it originally free? Did it go commercial?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I can vouch for Foundry VTT being really nice to use, overall.

It's not free though, so I'm not sure it falls under the FOSS label.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

It’s not free though, so I’m not sure it falls under the FOSS label.

Parts of it are MIT-licensed, and therefore qualify as FOSS. (The "free" in FOSS is not about price.) Example: https://github.com/foundryvtt/dnd5e

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Oh I did think the F in FOSS was about the price. Good to know!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

@mox
Thank you. This was very thorough, and very helpful.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

@Shkshkshk @dnd Foundry is great, the feats are marvellous but the learning curve is steep in the beginning (loads of youtube videos explaining how to get ready if you are curious). Bright side is you only pay once and all the updates are included

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's also self-hosted, which is great. You're not beholden to yet another cloud service. The other players of your group just connect to your server with their web browsers, so no extra licensing required for them.

If you don't want to, or can't self-host, there is The Forge, which offers a hosted Foundry service, but I don't know what the costs are as I've never used it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

IIRC the forge is like $15/month or something, which makes sense since I pay around that for my server on AWS, and I turn it off when it's not in use.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

@Shkshkshk @dnd Foundry is good, i like it and use it, but it's not FOSS at all.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

it’s not FOSS at all.

Foundry's core is not, but other parts of it are FOSS.

For example: https://github.com/foundryvtt/dnd5e

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

The old version of Owlbear Rodeo is open source now https://github.com/owlbear-rodeo/owlbear-rodeo-legacy but no longer supported.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

PlanarAlly has been fantastic for my group so far!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

@Shkshkshk @dnd

I can't comment much as to quality.

I'm aware of http://fari.app which is FOSS. That's the one I've had my eye on to try.

I've also used a much much older and also free MapTool from http://rptools.net ; the quality there is perfectly fine on the functional end but lower on the aesthetics.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

@[email protected] @[email protected] cauldron vtt is good