I want to preface that if you want to see my live Foundry world, send me a PM and you're welcome to take a look at my own world and campaign. It's just a single link, no sign up required. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So in another post, there was a question about what VTT and other services to use for moving online. As a huge advocate of Foundry, I shared my opinion--and one of the comments was that Foundry can be perceived as very video-gamey. Which I understand and thought it was worth diving deeper into.
But the answer to that is such an interesting topic, that I thought I'd share my experience with you all, and why I've found it to have brought D&D to a completely different level than it had been in the past. Not that it's perfect, but that the benefits far, far outshine its flaws; likely in ways that you, and I certainly, had never really thought about.
There are plenty of other factors, such as price, learning curve, and security that are all valid--but what I'm discussing here is how it changes fundamental gameplay vs both other VTT's and the traditional table-top experience. The Critique: Foundry is too video-gamey. I thought exactly the same thing when I started using it. It was my #1 concern. It was the concern of my friends when I mentioned it to them as well. When you look at videos people make, it looks nothing like what D&D looks like in your mind--full visual animations, auto-rolling dice, fancy animations etc. Yeah, just like a video game. Where's the imagination if you don't need to imagine anything? Isn't narrative what the DM does to engage players? That's where I was at when I started. But I decided to see for myself after several glowing reviews, and after being frustrated by Roll20 for many reasons.
I first learned that the crazy scenes that you see in the videos and marketing is usually with over 100 mods, that's not what its really like. I realized also that there are zero animations and automations by default. In fact, it was fundamentally the same as Roll20, except a way better interface and user experience. It was so smooth. I ran my first combat test, and found that it was basically the same as Roll20, except less clunky. That whole video-gamey concern vanished when I saw that at its core, Foundry was the same as Roll20, except just a greatly more polished product. Kind of like going from Windows 95 to a modern Mac OS (interface wise).
That was the end of that concern. I saw that Foundry was really only video gamey if the DM desired it to be that way. It's an option, but its certainly not what you get by default. If you're defining video-gamey as meaning highly automated, Foundry presents you with the choice to manually calculate all things, or automated as much of the math and physics as you see fit so that you can focus on role playing. Players can choose individually.
What I was looking for: Immersion and Less overhead I was looking to create more immersion for my players. As someone who love survival mechanics, D&D really stood out to me as a game that often defeated itself in its attempts at this. Sometimes it defeated itself inherently, and sometimes it was not avoidable. And then, preparation and management can be a huge burden. I was hoping I would find a way to reduce both ongoing overhead, and preparation time.
Immersion Problems Lighting and Vision/Sensing Survival often depends on lighting and vision. D&D has a variety of vision/sensing types and clearly outlines the conditions that occur in each of them. But what does that look like on the table top experience? How do you simulate lighting conditions with a piece of paper and tokens? Well, you can maybe cover up parts of the map until they're revealed. But realistically, it ends up being a self-defeating meta-gaming trap. All the players see what has been revealed, and they pretend that they can't see and act accordingly. They know where the enemies are, they know what the terrain is, they know where their allies are. It's an inherent problem that isn't easily avoidable. Realistic lighting meanwhile, is a total impossibility.
Roll20 introduced some functional lighting and vision though! I loved it. A bit manual, but it greatly improved the application of vision and sensing mechanics. It had lots of problems, but a good step forward. Foundry was like "Hold my beer". Vision in Foundry makes vision, sensing, and darkness exactly what you want it to be.
In Foundry, they literally see nothing in darkness. They actually tell the other players "uhh..I can't see anything! I don't see any creatures!" "Where are they?" They hear the fight. They're terrified to step into the darkness. "Nope nope nope!". It's fantastic. Darkness is truly scary. When true meta-gaming is taken away, their heart rate goes up. This makes vision really special, and just this aspect alone added so much realism and grit to the game, like I never thought it could have. I've never seen players afraid of the dark until I used Foundry. Night time has weight to it. Hello darkness my old friend!
Realism & Survival Metrics: Weight, Encumbrance, Food, Water, & Movement D&D, is truly awful, at survival elements. It tries--it outlines mechanics, but the practical nature of the overhead required to manage it all makes it untenable, unless there's just a spice of it. Survival games exploded in the 2010's, and D&D didn't really evolve in this sense--instead they just kept bumping legacy content through the revisions, and now we're using 2024 rules with 1986 survival mechanics. Some aspects are below:
Inventory Management For many groups, D&D eventually defaults into an infinite backpack because tracking it is such a chore. Likely your group has hundreds of items. My level 7 group has 171 items, combined in their current inventory. Most DMs simply don't have the bandwidth to track this manually at the table without slowing down the game. It's a burden for players to keep track of their own current inventory. It's a lot of overhead. And so, many groups just introduce the Bag of Holding, and problem solved. Now it makes sense that a player can carry 800 items. But then this strategic layer is erased.
Welcome to Foundry: this issue doesn't exist for the DM or the Players. It's perfect, all of the time. Used items automatically delete themselves. Gold automatically subtracts per purchase.
Encumbrance D&D has mechanics, but they're its just not feasible to keep track of. Anyone here track this in detail? I know some tables do. You'll need to track weight first. Some tables have dipped their toes into a homebrew adaptation to create varying degrees of realism in this regard--but basically the strategic layer that is encumbrance really doesn't exist.
Welcome to Foundry: This is tracked in exquisite detail, requires zero overhead. This strategic layer is always in effect.
Food & Sustenance This is core to survival games. It's also one of the areas where D&D defeats itself. D&D has clear consumption mechanics spelled out. This one is maybe the easiest to manage, but still is a decent amount of overhead to track. Here D&D just simply destroys their own sustenance mechanics with spells, abilities, and items that give infinite water and food. "Good Berry" alone means world-hunger is no longer an issue. In fact, why is anyone buying food at all in any D&D world? Several druids running a road-side stand in every town cures world hunger. Orphanages is where you'll find all the chubby kids. Farms wouldn't exist as a result; druids would be gods. D&D outlines consumption and survival elements--then trivializes them instantly by carrying over legacy content. (Goodberry, 1986).
Well, welcome to foundry: I'm now able to fully utilize survival mechanics as a component of play. My players must consume X food per day. And this food is auto-tracked and real-time represented on my screen. Spells and items that provide infinite water or food don't exist in my world. If they want food, they can buy it or find it.
Players must harvest every creature and carry food with them. Now they have to work together to harvest, to eat it before it spoils, and then be really careful with weight. It doesn't matter that they have 400lbs of meat if they can only carry 200lbs and then most of it will go rotten within a day or so. Food has become a true aspect of survival with foundry. They need to plan, hunt, harvest, store, and eat every long rest. Players love hunting and working together to harvest. This strategic layer is fully active.
Movement: a small detail This one alone is awesome due to the added immersion. We all know that on a grid diagonal movement isn't accurate, then we all use whatever trick we can to calculate long distance hypotenuse quickly. At my table, grids no longer exist and diagonal movement is now calculated perfectly (realistically). We count in feet, not squares. It's flawless. I never could stand grids because they break immersion and uglify maps. Now, when a player goes to move their character, it tells them how much they've moved. Each token is exactly 1 square size, so positioning is no issue since each token is considered 5ft. With diagonal movement using precise math, movement accuracy is now precise, and the bonus is never having to use a grid anymore. Immersion: check!
Other Benefits
General DM Overhead Reduction I don't want to waste my life with DM prep overhead. I want to work on character design, building dynamic encounters, creating awesome maps, and great narratives. Satisfaction for me is creative expository, not overhead. Foundry has eliminated maybe 90% of annoying overhead.
After using foundry for some time, I started a face to face group. Session's 1-3, it was physical tokens and paper maps. I had forgotten how exhausting it was. "Wait whose turn is it?" "hold on, lemme write down all the initiatives" "oh wait, I need to keep track of all these HP, AC, and skills of enemies" "Oh wait, now I need my reference books and documents to check on things (DM screen)". "Oh, time to read the flavor text" "you'll need to imagine all of the ambient sounds." "you hear soft, minor-key violin music in the background, along with a faint heart-beat sound--instilling a sense of foreboding". I remember thinking "oh god, I forgot how much physical work it was to prepare all this." "I forgot how not-engaging this is." "oh, no actually you can't see that far over there; player 2 can though. I mean, you can, but pretend that you can't. And pretend that you're not going move intentionally towards that chest you spotted".
Initiative? HP calculating? Track status effects or concentration? It's an issue of the past. I use my time making battles more awesome.
Shops Oh wow, this is just so much better. Stores have an interface, players can all purchase independently, gold math is automatically done. I only pay attention to things being sold back to me and the content of the shops. Players can still haggle as normal. All that preparation time that went into a shopping experience, is now re-directed into making really cool bespoke shops. Every item is carefully chosen, priced, and with specific quantities--meticulously.
Audio Benefits It's so easy in foundry. You can set precise moods. Roll20 can do this, but it's like using Netscape 1.0 vs Chrome. Another layer of realism added. You could certainly argue that you can just play background music--which sure, helps. But playing simultaneous tracks (crickets, owl, heartbeat, creepy wind) is really simple, and reusable.
Better Battles So much better. How many enemies are in a typical fight do you think? Maybe 4-5? DM's know that massive battles are unwieldly or impossible. Side-Initative exists because the overhead that managing multiple combatants is a nightmare. In foundry I can pretty easily manage up to 15 combatants all rolling and checking individually. I love that I can have complex battles where 90% of the time in a round is players time. This creates a huge variety of battles.
Resources I can use all my DDB source material 100% and it costs nothing.
Dice Rolling My players still roll most dice right on the table. One has pixel dice where they roll it on the table and it appears in game. Still rolling traditional dice.
So does it reduce imaginative play and engagement? Is it too videogamey?
Foundry has allowed for a level of immersion I have never experienced in face to face table play. I've noticed zero drop in imaginative engagement from players by having great visuals. I've included some animations--and my table cheers when they see a huge fireball explode. Yes, I'm now the person with 105 mods, but all my mods gear towards increased immersion.
In terms of narrative quality, I don't see visuals as detractors, because your narrative exposition now includes a baseline visual; the visual doesn't replace narrative, it gives you a starting point. Keep in mind, nice visuals and great narratives are not mutually exclusive--as a player I would rather have a great visual than a poor narrative description, because poor narration is just as limiting as anything else. Consequently, nice visuals improve the engagement, not detract from it. A foundational image removes argument, not imagination.
So--the final answer is: no, not even close. The added layers of realism from vision and survival elements are a huge value added. The reduction in preparation and operational overhead have allowed me to focus on the stuff I love making and players love doing.
Anyway! I'm not marketing for anyone--just sharing my experience from an interesting comment on a different thread, and hope that this information provokes some thought on the subject.
Greetings!
I want to preface that if you want to see my live Foundry world, send me a PM and you're welcome to take a look at my own world and campaign. It's just a single link, no sign up required.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So in another post, there was a question about what VTT and other services to use for moving online. As a huge advocate of Foundry, I shared my opinion--and one of the comments was that Foundry can be perceived as very video-gamey. Which I understand and thought it was worth diving deeper into.
But the answer to that is such an interesting topic, that I thought I'd share my experience with you all, and why I've found it to have brought D&D to a completely different level than it had been in the past. Not that it's perfect, but that the benefits far, far outshine its flaws; likely in ways that you, and I certainly, had never really thought about.
There are plenty of other factors, such as price, learning curve, and security that are all valid--but what I'm discussing here is how it changes fundamental gameplay vs both other VTT's and the traditional table-top experience.
The Critique: Foundry is too video-gamey.
I thought exactly the same thing when I started using it. It was my #1 concern. It was the concern of my friends when I mentioned it to them as well. When you look at videos people make, it looks nothing like what D&D looks like in your mind--full visual animations, auto-rolling dice, fancy animations etc. Yeah, just like a video game. Where's the imagination if you don't need to imagine anything? Isn't narrative what the DM does to engage players? That's where I was at when I started. But I decided to see for myself after several glowing reviews, and after being frustrated by Roll20 for many reasons.
I first learned that the crazy scenes that you see in the videos and marketing is usually with over 100 mods, that's not what its really like. I realized also that there are zero animations and automations by default. In fact, it was fundamentally the same as Roll20, except a way better interface and user experience. It was so smooth. I ran my first combat test, and found that it was basically the same as Roll20, except less clunky. That whole video-gamey concern vanished when I saw that at its core, Foundry was the same as Roll20, except just a greatly more polished product. Kind of like going from Windows 95 to a modern Mac OS (interface wise).
That was the end of that concern. I saw that Foundry was really only video gamey if the DM desired it to be that way. It's an option, but its certainly not what you get by default. If you're defining video-gamey as meaning highly automated, Foundry presents you with the choice to manually calculate all things, or automated as much of the math and physics as you see fit so that you can focus on role playing. Players can choose individually.
What I was looking for: Immersion and Less overhead
I was looking to create more immersion for my players. As someone who love survival mechanics, D&D really stood out to me as a game that often defeated itself in its attempts at this. Sometimes it defeated itself inherently, and sometimes it was not avoidable. And then, preparation and management can be a huge burden. I was hoping I would find a way to reduce both ongoing overhead, and preparation time.
Immersion Problems
Lighting and Vision/Sensing
Survival often depends on lighting and vision. D&D has a variety of vision/sensing types and clearly outlines the conditions that occur in each of them. But what does that look like on the table top experience? How do you simulate lighting conditions with a piece of paper and tokens? Well, you can maybe cover up parts of the map until they're revealed. But realistically, it ends up being a self-defeating meta-gaming trap. All the players see what has been revealed, and they pretend that they can't see and act accordingly. They know where the enemies are, they know what the terrain is, they know where their allies are. It's an inherent problem that isn't easily avoidable. Realistic lighting meanwhile, is a total impossibility.
Roll20 introduced some functional lighting and vision though! I loved it. A bit manual, but it greatly improved the application of vision and sensing mechanics. It had lots of problems, but a good step forward. Foundry was like "Hold my beer". Vision in Foundry makes vision, sensing, and darkness exactly what you want it to be.
In Foundry, they literally see nothing in darkness. They actually tell the other players "uhh..I can't see anything! I don't see any creatures!" "Where are they?" They hear the fight. They're terrified to step into the darkness. "Nope nope nope!". It's fantastic. Darkness is truly scary. When true meta-gaming is taken away, their heart rate goes up. This makes vision really special, and just this aspect alone added so much realism and grit to the game, like I never thought it could have. I've never seen players afraid of the dark until I used Foundry. Night time has weight to it. Hello darkness my old friend!
Realism & Survival Metrics: Weight, Encumbrance, Food, Water, & Movement
D&D, is truly awful, at survival elements. It tries--it outlines mechanics, but the practical nature of the overhead required to manage it all makes it untenable, unless there's just a spice of it. Survival games exploded in the 2010's, and D&D didn't really evolve in this sense--instead they just kept bumping legacy content through the revisions, and now we're using 2024 rules with 1986 survival mechanics. Some aspects are below:
Inventory Management
For many groups, D&D eventually defaults into an infinite backpack because tracking it is such a chore. Likely your group has hundreds of items. My level 7 group has 171 items, combined in their current inventory. Most DMs simply don't have the bandwidth to track this manually at the table without slowing down the game. It's a burden for players to keep track of their own current inventory. It's a lot of overhead. And so, many groups just introduce the Bag of Holding, and problem solved. Now it makes sense that a player can carry 800 items. But then this strategic layer is erased.
Welcome to Foundry: this issue doesn't exist for the DM or the Players. It's perfect, all of the time. Used items automatically delete themselves. Gold automatically subtracts per purchase.
Encumbrance
D&D has mechanics, but they're its just not feasible to keep track of. Anyone here track this in detail? I know some tables do. You'll need to track weight first. Some tables have dipped their toes into a homebrew adaptation to create varying degrees of realism in this regard--but basically the strategic layer that is encumbrance really doesn't exist.
Welcome to Foundry: This is tracked in exquisite detail, requires zero overhead. This strategic layer is always in effect.
Food & Sustenance
This is core to survival games. It's also one of the areas where D&D defeats itself. D&D has clear consumption mechanics spelled out. This one is maybe the easiest to manage, but still is a decent amount of overhead to track. Here D&D just simply destroys their own sustenance mechanics with spells, abilities, and items that give infinite water and food. "Good Berry" alone means world-hunger is no longer an issue. In fact, why is anyone buying food at all in any D&D world? Several druids running a road-side stand in every town cures world hunger. Orphanages is where you'll find all the chubby kids. Farms wouldn't exist as a result; druids would be gods. D&D outlines consumption and survival elements--then trivializes them instantly by carrying over legacy content. (Goodberry, 1986).
Well, welcome to foundry: I'm now able to fully utilize survival mechanics as a component of play. My players must consume X food per day. And this food is auto-tracked and real-time represented on my screen. Spells and items that provide infinite water or food don't exist in my world. If they want food, they can buy it or find it.
Players must harvest every creature and carry food with them. Now they have to work together to harvest, to eat it before it spoils, and then be really careful with weight. It doesn't matter that they have 400lbs of meat if they can only carry 200lbs and then most of it will go rotten within a day or so. Food has become a true aspect of survival with foundry. They need to plan, hunt, harvest, store, and eat every long rest. Players love hunting and working together to harvest. This strategic layer is fully active.
Movement: a small detail
This one alone is awesome due to the added immersion. We all know that on a grid diagonal movement isn't accurate, then we all use whatever trick we can to calculate long distance hypotenuse quickly. At my table, grids no longer exist and diagonal movement is now calculated perfectly (realistically). We count in feet, not squares. It's flawless. I never could stand grids because they break immersion and uglify maps. Now, when a player goes to move their character, it tells them how much they've moved. Each token is exactly 1 square size, so positioning is no issue since each token is considered 5ft. With diagonal movement using precise math, movement accuracy is now precise, and the bonus is never having to use a grid anymore. Immersion: check!
Other Benefits
General DM Overhead Reduction
I don't want to waste my life with DM prep overhead. I want to work on character design, building dynamic encounters, creating awesome maps, and great narratives. Satisfaction for me is creative expository, not overhead. Foundry has eliminated maybe 90% of annoying overhead.
After using foundry for some time, I started a face to face group. Session's 1-3, it was physical tokens and paper maps. I had forgotten how exhausting it was. "Wait whose turn is it?" "hold on, lemme write down all the initiatives" "oh wait, I need to keep track of all these HP, AC, and skills of enemies" "Oh wait, now I need my reference books and documents to check on things (DM screen)". "Oh, time to read the flavor text" "you'll need to imagine all of the ambient sounds." "you hear soft, minor-key violin music in the background, along with a faint heart-beat sound--instilling a sense of foreboding". I remember thinking "oh god, I forgot how much physical work it was to prepare all this." "I forgot how not-engaging this is." "oh, no actually you can't see that far over there; player 2 can though. I mean, you can, but pretend that you can't. And pretend that you're not going move intentionally towards that chest you spotted".
Initiative? HP calculating? Track status effects or concentration? It's an issue of the past. I use my time making battles more awesome.
Shops
Oh wow, this is just so much better. Stores have an interface, players can all purchase independently, gold math is automatically done. I only pay attention to things being sold back to me and the content of the shops. Players can still haggle as normal. All that preparation time that went into a shopping experience, is now re-directed into making really cool bespoke shops. Every item is carefully chosen, priced, and with specific quantities--meticulously.
Audio Benefits
It's so easy in foundry. You can set precise moods. Roll20 can do this, but it's like using Netscape 1.0 vs Chrome. Another layer of realism added. You could certainly argue that you can just play background music--which sure, helps. But playing simultaneous tracks (crickets, owl, heartbeat, creepy wind) is really simple, and reusable.
Better Battles
So much better. How many enemies are in a typical fight do you think? Maybe 4-5? DM's know that massive battles are unwieldly or impossible. Side-Initative exists because the overhead that managing multiple combatants is a nightmare. In foundry I can pretty easily manage up to 15 combatants all rolling and checking individually. I love that I can have complex battles where 90% of the time in a round is players time. This creates a huge variety of battles.
Resources
I can use all my DDB source material 100% and it costs nothing.
Dice Rolling
My players still roll most dice right on the table. One has pixel dice where they roll it on the table and it appears in game. Still rolling traditional dice.
So does it reduce imaginative play and engagement? Is it too videogamey?
Foundry has allowed for a level of immersion I have never experienced in face to face table play. I've noticed zero drop in imaginative engagement from players by having great visuals. I've included some animations--and my table cheers when they see a huge fireball explode. Yes, I'm now the person with 105 mods, but all my mods gear towards increased immersion.
In terms of narrative quality, I don't see visuals as detractors, because your narrative exposition now includes a baseline visual; the visual doesn't replace narrative, it gives you a starting point. Keep in mind, nice visuals and great narratives are not mutually exclusive--as a player I would rather have a great visual than a poor narrative description, because poor narration is just as limiting as anything else. Consequently, nice visuals improve the engagement, not detract from it. A foundational image removes argument, not imagination.
So--the final answer is: no, not even close. The added layers of realism from vision and survival elements are a huge value added. The reduction in preparation and operational overhead have allowed me to focus on the stuff I love making and players love doing.
Anyway! I'm not marketing for anyone--just sharing my experience from an interesting comment on a different thread, and hope that this information provokes some thought on the subject.
Cheers!