Thought I would post this up to see if anyone else out there uses alternative VTTS that don't take hours of practice to learn and are free to use.
Been playing online for a few years now and have recently figured out a way to run games using a very easy free VTT method that might be useful to some of you DMs out there. If you are reading this, you already have a D&D Beyond account, so the rest of your game will require no cost whatsoever. Let me share what I use and if you have any suggestions or tips to share, I'm all ears! (Roll 20 and Fantasy Ground fans won't likely be interested in this, but hey - read on if you like!)
MY SETUP FOR GAMES:
D&DBeyond - character sheets, campaign builder, encounter builder, initiative tracker and reference books. *If you are going to spend any money, this is where to lay down some investment IMHO.* (Free, but strongly recommend investing some gold pieces here)
Beyond20 extension to link character sheets to Discord (Free)
Discord Channel (Free)
VTT - a white-board website called MIRO. Free to sign up with Google account. (Free)
MIRO is basically a giant white-board site. I slap down a map that I want, share the link with my players, add some tokens, and away we go. Need fog of war? Use a black sticky note on top of places you don't want them to see. Need a token or image? Drag and drop or import whatever you want. Need to remember a spell effect on a monster/player? Use the comment bubbles to type in the effect and duration. It is easier to use than falling off a chair drunk. Took me about 20m of fooling around to understand how it works and my players love it. Best part - cost is zero.
If you don't need all the fancy bells and whistles of Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds this is a great alternative. I find it NEVER lags or screws up. With Discord and all the functions available on D&D Beyond, I am super happy with this option as it was so simple to set up, can be shared with your players and just plain works.
Do any of you DM's use similar free VTT platforms? I would love to hear your experiences.
I do something similar with Jamboard, which is part of the Google Suite that I also use for work. Each slide of the Jamboard is fixed dimensions, so I've gotten pretty good at snipping maps into appropriately sized picture files to use as the backgrounds, so that when players move their tokens they don't accidentally grab onto the map.
Not free but definitely mind-blowing, our group started using Talespire recently. It is essentially a fully 3D-rendered VTT with 3D "tokens" as well though I would probably call them miniatures at this point.
It's still an Early Release on Steam but wow, it really makes the world feel alive. We've been playing Curse of Strahd on it and our DM has mostly sniped fan-made maps left and right and modified them a bit. Not too difficult to learn how it works either. This combined with DnDBeyond is fantastic. It really works better if you have two monitors though or if you don't mind using the DDB app on a phone since Talespire is not browser-based. You need to install and run it. Hopefully some kind of integration with DDB will be possible in the future.
They do have a browser extension called "Beyond the Spire" which is alright as well and can roll whatever you want from your DDB character sheet (or the DM's monsters) into Talespire complete with bonuses already applied.
Hey all!
Thought I would post this up to see if anyone else out there uses alternative VTTS that don't take hours of practice to learn and are free to use.
Been playing online for a few years now and have recently figured out a way to run games using a very easy free VTT method that might be useful to some of you DMs out there. If you are reading this, you already have a D&D Beyond account, so the rest of your game will require no cost whatsoever. Let me share what I use and if you have any suggestions or tips to share, I'm all ears! (Roll 20 and Fantasy Ground fans won't likely be interested in this, but hey - read on if you like!)
MY SETUP FOR GAMES:
MIRO is basically a giant white-board site. I slap down a map that I want, share the link with my players, add some tokens, and away we go. Need fog of war? Use a black sticky note on top of places you don't want them to see. Need a token or image? Drag and drop or import whatever you want. Need to remember a spell effect on a monster/player? Use the comment bubbles to type in the effect and duration. It is easier to use than falling off a chair drunk. Took me about 20m of fooling around to understand how it works and my players love it. Best part - cost is zero.
If you don't need all the fancy bells and whistles of Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds this is a great alternative. I find it NEVER lags or screws up. With Discord and all the functions available on D&D Beyond, I am super happy with this option as it was so simple to set up, can be shared with your players and just plain works.
Do any of you DM's use similar free VTT platforms? I would love to hear your experiences.
I do something similar with Jamboard, which is part of the Google Suite that I also use for work. Each slide of the Jamboard is fixed dimensions, so I've gotten pretty good at snipping maps into appropriately sized picture files to use as the backgrounds, so that when players move their tokens they don't accidentally grab onto the map.
I've always wanted to try google Jams. I think theres a way to automatically set a grid as your background now.
D&Dbeyond and AboveVTT. That simple. Works really well for my group.
Wow, compared to things like Roll20 this is so simple and effective. Thanks for adding this to the thread!
Mind blown, thank you, i'll check this out!!!
Not free but definitely mind-blowing, our group started using Talespire recently. It is essentially a fully 3D-rendered VTT with 3D "tokens" as well though I would probably call them miniatures at this point.
It's still an Early Release on Steam but wow, it really makes the world feel alive. We've been playing Curse of Strahd on it and our DM has mostly sniped fan-made maps left and right and modified them a bit. Not too difficult to learn how it works either. This combined with DnDBeyond is fantastic. It really works better if you have two monitors though or if you don't mind using the DDB app on a phone since Talespire is not browser-based. You need to install and run it. Hopefully some kind of integration with DDB will be possible in the future.
They do have a browser extension called "Beyond the Spire" which is alright as well and can roll whatever you want from your DDB character sheet (or the DM's monsters) into Talespire complete with bonuses already applied.
We use Above VTT with DnD Beyond now.