My opinion FGU vs Foundry 4 years later

[Morenu]

First off NOT LOOKING TO BASH EITHER VTT. (and this got long winded, so good luck)

I am just going to give my first impressions of Foundry vs FG(U) both from 4 years ago and my best guess of it now.

4 years ago during the Plague, I decided to dive into VTTs because I was DMing for my daughter's friend group for 5 months prior to the outbreak.

I looked at Roll20 (I am leaving that out as I only remember I dropped that option right away), Foundry and Fantasy Grounds (classic), and I peeked at many others since then out of curiosity.

Foundry was very new and I know that was one of my major concerns, would it survive and what would their focus be? I knew I would want to be able to mod things and take advantage of the computer's abilities in automation, database and so on. I was NOT looking for a video Game experience, I have those already.

Once I narrowed it down to 2 choices I began asking questions in the communities. The FG community was easy to find, friendly and helpful all in an above average way compared to what I see across the normal internet. For Foundry? I found it extremely difficult to even find a place to ask, let alone receive help on questions.

So, with my questions happily answered, I ultimately chose FG for its long history, its adaptability and Its user base & developers interaction.

Fast Forward 4 years...
FG has become FGU. Updates and bug fixes, as well as store content are consistent and typically well done.
I had to pay for another Ultimate License (I fell right outside the refunding of some of my classic purchase), not all that concerning as I snagged FG and FGU ultimates on sale.
The major upgrade from FG to FGU as far as I can tell was amazing in that all FG material essentially moved to FGU mostly painlessly (not extensions I am sure).
The addition of the Forge IMO is huge as I no longer have to search forums and DMsguild for updates and manually DL and install them.
I continue after 4 years to be amazed at the community and developers. Even when there are disagreements on how SW does something, they respond and as much as they can, they do express their reasoning.
The fact that I can run 30 - 50 extensions to improve the QoL for both my DM and our players and have VERY few issues (yes I am aware of the past month) is amazing. we have missed 2 play sessions in 4 years due to broken extensions that we couldn't play without. most I can turn off and reload and play is fine, there are only 3-5 extensions that can truly shut us down.

So yes, I am extremely happy with my choice 4 years ago. I own thousands of dollars in FGU related items. 3 ultimate licenses (FG & FGUx2), several hundred in extensions (5e mostly), A LOT of books to play campaigns in D&D 2e & 5e, PFrpg, PF2, and more.

But I recently got curious... I hear people say that FGU is hard to learn... so I went back to foundry a week ago to poke around (I got 6 foundry adventures in my last Humble Bundle)

I wanted to see how quickly I could setup and play a PF2 adventure using a purchased Adventure Path.

its been 4 years.... and yet I definitely had to use my understanding of computers and such to to find and figure out how to DL and install PF2 (FYI, I could not find a PFRPG option). It was barely any easier than it was 4 years ago. Getting my 7 owned adventures to show up was clunky. and after 3 hours, I gave up trying to open even 1 of the APs I owned just to look around. Are there people that would disagree with my assessment? I am sure. and I am positive that if it is running right it would be a good experience. but if someone with my 30+ years of computer experience from DOS to Windows and MacOS plus other dabbling, can't get a bought adventure up enough to READ it in 3 hours, then I do not want to hear about FGU being difficult.

I am impressed with the balance SW seems to have in its approach. yes I am partial to the TT feel and have little need for the more video game / VR like qualities other VTTs strive for. But I do honestly love that we have choices, that the game I lived for as a kid, that gave me SO much that I didn't realize until much later in life, has seemingly again become popular in so many ways.

It is my genuine hope that there is enough room for all of the quality VTTs to coexist, each meeting the needs of the users.

Thank you to everyone that has made my time here, fulfilling and enjoyable.

[Jiminimonka]

Exactly right!

[jasonthelamb]

Love this post! I will say that the biggest issue that I see for both Foundry and FG is the lack of developer integration.

There are A LOT of really cool mods in the forge - some would say that there are mods in the forge that make FG a lot more usable and should probably be core functionality, but whenever an update is released for Foundry or FG, mods break and so you either have to roll back or be very careful about when you update. Personally, I think it's unrealistic to think that people won't click the "UPDATE" button whenever it is glowing. I would love if there was some maturity in this space, such as Forge mods having a specific version (or versions) they are for, and if FG changes versions it will alert that it hasn't been tested/updated to give the user better awareness as they are checking mods - also having the console report (as best as possible) which mod(s) are causing issues.


Overall - I LOVE fantasy grounds - over 5000 hours and that's not counting before it came to steam. I love to see the effort that is put into every release, I'd just love to see some attention to the experience of the people making forge mods (and people consuming them).

[YAKO SOMEDAKY]

I've been a Fantasy Grounds fan since the Classic era, but as a player, I can inhabit both worlds, the Unity world and the Foundry world, and I can say that both are compatible with many useful and interesting modules and extensions. The biggest difference between the two is that most of the Foundry modules are free or implemented on the platform, while in Fantasy Grounds most are paid and are not implemented on the platform natively.
The LoS, Vision and Lighting resources are more complete in Foundry, and the Audio can also be affected. Yes, I know it's a bit silly, but it's something that brings more immersion to the games...
I'll still continue to like and consume Fantasy Grounds, but I'll also continue to consume other VTTs, but I also know that the best thing about FG is automation! And yes, this saves lives... and speeds everything up
One day I believe I will achieve my dream, having audiovisual equipment that is just like or even better than Foundry, and also unparalleled automation.

[dmbrown]

I have both and agree with Yako. Foundry’s lightning and sound are better and I wish that FG would take some inspiration from it, such as having sound for individual players and having it where you could drop sound on a map and have it act similar to a light with a radius. I don’t like how Foundry handles content though. They have it where you open a table of contents and then that in turn opens separate reference manual equivalents.

[Mytherus]

I own foundry. I bought it almost three years ago (if I remember I think the official three year mark will be this December) . I still haven’t ran a single game with foundry. As ironic as it may sound to some but FGU is just easier for me to setup and run games. FGU makes sense to me but yeah ok I’ve used FG for six years now. Foundry drew me in because the visuals and sound is amazing. But the lack of easy support and lack of straight forward answers just deflated my interest. Fantasy grounds has a learning curve but the distinction is the community support is fantastic. That’s night and day imo to when I was seeking help to figure out foundry. So disclaimer I haven’t tried touching foundry at all for the past year so in that time of they got their act together for new users I’m not aware.

[YAKO SOMEDAKY]

Adding a new comment, mentioning friends who migrated from FG to Foundry.
We never managed to finish an adventure in Foundry but in FG...we finished them all!
And yes, FG support is incredible!
Unfortunately I lost the adventures, because I had them on a YouTube channel that was hacked, I managed to recover the channel, but all the content was lost...

[fabiocm]

I use both as a GM. I prefer FG since it is easy to set up. I agree with the first post.

Unfortunately, I can’t use FG for everything since the programming language here is not as easy to learn as the JS of Foundry. So, Foundry has a larger availability of rulesets.

I don’t use hundreds of extensions, though. Therefore, I don’t encounter any problems with updates. To be honest, it is Foundry that causes me the most issues since the lesser-known rulesets don’t have a developer to update them for every Foundry version.