I can’t help you with a cracked version, but I can help you make your decision and tell you it’s very worthwhile. I bought it 5 years ago and have probably used Foundry for hundreds of hours (at least 500 hours based on some quick mental math) with different groups for a total of a dozen different players.
It requires a bit of tech savvyness to learn initially, but just from reading your post I can tell you’ll be fine. It blows every other competitor out of the water. It has a massive community of open source mods which augment it in various ways. Most game systems are also FOSS projects with large communities of developers supporting them.
It’s like the Linux of VTTs, though that’s not a perfect comparison because Foundry itself isn’t FOSS. But it’s highly configurable and moddable, and it really rewards an admin who likes to tinker, while at the same time being very usable right out of the box.
How tech savvy are we talking? I can troubleshoot the usual stuff on my pc, by googling. But I’m not a sysadmin and have 0 knowledge about how to set up or maintain a server.
My group has been looking at TTRPGs for a while now. We used Owlbear Rodeo for one campaign, and started our current one on Roll20 without premium, but… It’s so unintuitive. An honest to goodness UI/UX nightmare. I can see the logic behind some of the choices but it’s so uncomfortable to use. We want something with a bit more functionality (character sheets and dice rolling at least, dynamic fog of war being a personal bonus as a DM).
How tech savvy are we talking? I can troubleshoot the usual stuff on my pc, by googling. But I’m not a sysadmin and have 0 knowledge about how to set up or maintain a server.
My group has been looking at TTRPGs for a while now. We used Owlbear Rodeo for one campaign, and started our current one on Roll20 without premium, but… It’s so unintuitive. An honest to goodness UI/UX nightmare. I can see the logic behind some of the choices but it’s so uncomfortable to use. We want something with a bit more functionality (character sheets and dice rolling at least, dynamic fog of war being a personal bonus as a DM).
Depends on what you want out of it, the level if automation etc.
Installing a system ruleset, adding a few modules and other things on that level is easy. If you can use an app store you are set. Writing custom things I have no clue about.
Finally using it. I’ve found it smoother than roll20 and fantasy grounds. Just not having to deal with roll20’s technical baggare is truly awesome.
In the end my impression is that on a technical level it is much easier to handle. Less figuring out how not to have the platform work against you and actually work with it.
You, depending on your ISP, may have troubles self hosting. There is the biggest technical hurdle.
Are you savvy enough to search the internet for a guide on how to do something technical, evaluate if the guide you find is right for your situation, and then follow that guide to do the thing? That’s basically how I set it up for myself. You don’t need to understand the deeper workings of stuff. If you’ve ever modded a video game before or troubleshot a software issue, you’re probably savvy enough.
FVTT does all of the things you mentioned here out of the box. No need for tinkering.
Fantasy Grounds has a 30 day no questions asked guarantee. If you don’t like it they will refund your money. Their license goes on sale quite a bit so you might be able to get it at a pretty good discount depending on the timeframe.
Not aware of any cracks. I use the felddy image on my Unraid setup and the first window on a fresh install asks for the license. Same goes for when I run locally on Windows. I’m sure there’s a crack out there, but I’m not aware of it.
All I can offer is my full endorsement of Foundry. It’s worth the money. If $50 is a bit steep at the moment, I think they do offer a small discount with an anniversary sale each year. Not sure when that is exactly.
Switched from paying Roll20 an annoying monthly fee and it’s more than paid for itself now. There is even a tool floating around to export active Roll20 games for use in Foundry. I remember it being pretty inefficient, but better than starting from scratch.
That is good to know. Tried the free version of Roll20 before, and it definitely felt lacking in certain areas. Oh, and thanks for letting me know about the sale! I’ll definitely keep an eye out for that one :)
We found that too many features distracted from the game. Too often we would try to find out how to do something the Foundry way instead of just saying what we’re doing. We had more fun with something simple like owlbear rodeo while everyone just managed their character sheets and stuff themselves.
Yeah I love Foundry, but I’m convinced the DM needs technical knowledge to use it. I ran a server for non tech savvy DM and it was like working customer service.
With plenty of investment you can get the tabletop to be almost exactly what you want it to be, and for a popular system like 5e you can make it as automated as a Baldurs Gate game. You just need to download a lot of modules to get there and customize a lot of settings. Without that it just becomes a less intuitive Roll20.
And I must stress from experience, never offer to host/troubleshoot a server for someone else, especially if the DM likes to complain or can’t handle minor technical setbacks.
Yeah I tried actually joining a Foundry game because my friends wanted to use it instead of Roll20 for our next game. We only really played two sessions on it amd it was an absolute nightnare, so many technical problems that it completely soured the experience. The first session had a TWO HOUR delay because the thing wasn’t working and had to install a bunch of addons, and then I had to install a different browser because it didn’t want to work with what I had at the moment. Pissed me off, ngl.
That’s just because the admin didn’t make sure it was updated before game time. I have never had that problem because my server is always on and I connect to it a couple hours before game time. Also I never update the software before a game.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.
I can’t help you with a cracked version, but I can help you make your decision and tell you it’s very worthwhile. I bought it 5 years ago and have probably used Foundry for hundreds of hours (at least 500 hours based on some quick mental math) with different groups for a total of a dozen different players.
It requires a bit of tech savvyness to learn initially, but just from reading your post I can tell you’ll be fine. It blows every other competitor out of the water. It has a massive community of open source mods which augment it in various ways. Most game systems are also FOSS projects with large communities of developers supporting them.
It’s like the Linux of VTTs, though that’s not a perfect comparison because Foundry itself isn’t FOSS. But it’s highly configurable and moddable, and it really rewards an admin who likes to tinker, while at the same time being very usable right out of the box.
How tech savvy are we talking? I can troubleshoot the usual stuff on my pc, by googling. But I’m not a sysadmin and have 0 knowledge about how to set up or maintain a server.
My group has been looking at TTRPGs for a while now. We used Owlbear Rodeo for one campaign, and started our current one on Roll20 without premium, but… It’s so unintuitive. An honest to goodness UI/UX nightmare. I can see the logic behind some of the choices but it’s so uncomfortable to use. We want something with a bit more functionality (character sheets and dice rolling at least, dynamic fog of war being a personal bonus as a DM).
How tech savvy are we talking? I can troubleshoot the usual stuff on my pc, by googling. But I’m not a sysadmin and have 0 knowledge about how to set up or maintain a server.
My group has been looking at TTRPGs for a while now. We used Owlbear Rodeo for one campaign, and started our current one on Roll20 without premium, but… It’s so unintuitive. An honest to goodness UI/UX nightmare. I can see the logic behind some of the choices but it’s so uncomfortable to use. We want something with a bit more functionality (character sheets and dice rolling at least, dynamic fog of war being a personal bonus as a DM).
Depends on what you want out of it, the level if automation etc.
Installing a system ruleset, adding a few modules and other things on that level is easy. If you can use an app store you are set. Writing custom things I have no clue about.
Finally using it. I’ve found it smoother than roll20 and fantasy grounds. Just not having to deal with roll20’s technical baggare is truly awesome.
In the end my impression is that on a technical level it is much easier to handle. Less figuring out how not to have the platform work against you and actually work with it.
You, depending on your ISP, may have troubles self hosting. There is the biggest technical hurdle.
Are you savvy enough to search the internet for a guide on how to do something technical, evaluate if the guide you find is right for your situation, and then follow that guide to do the thing? That’s basically how I set it up for myself. You don’t need to understand the deeper workings of stuff. If you’ve ever modded a video game before or troubleshot a software issue, you’re probably savvy enough.
FVTT does all of the things you mentioned here out of the box. No need for tinkering.
If you want to roleplay a sysadmin on top of GM, it’s the VTT of choice.
Fantasy Grounds has a 30 day no questions asked guarantee. If you don’t like it they will refund your money. Their license goes on sale quite a bit so you might be able to get it at a pretty good discount depending on the timeframe.
Not aware of any cracks. I use the felddy image on my Unraid setup and the first window on a fresh install asks for the license. Same goes for when I run locally on Windows. I’m sure there’s a crack out there, but I’m not aware of it.
All I can offer is my full endorsement of Foundry. It’s worth the money. If $50 is a bit steep at the moment, I think they do offer a small discount with an anniversary sale each year. Not sure when that is exactly.
Switched from paying Roll20 an annoying monthly fee and it’s more than paid for itself now. There is even a tool floating around to export active Roll20 games for use in Foundry. I remember it being pretty inefficient, but better than starting from scratch.
That is good to know. Tried the free version of Roll20 before, and it definitely felt lacking in certain areas. Oh, and thanks for letting me know about the sale! I’ll definitely keep an eye out for that one :)
To counter that:
We found that too many features distracted from the game. Too often we would try to find out how to do something the Foundry way instead of just saying what we’re doing. We had more fun with something simple like owlbear rodeo while everyone just managed their character sheets and stuff themselves.
Yeah I love Foundry, but I’m convinced the DM needs technical knowledge to use it. I ran a server for non tech savvy DM and it was like working customer service.
With plenty of investment you can get the tabletop to be almost exactly what you want it to be, and for a popular system like 5e you can make it as automated as a Baldurs Gate game. You just need to download a lot of modules to get there and customize a lot of settings. Without that it just becomes a less intuitive Roll20.
And I must stress from experience, never offer to host/troubleshoot a server for someone else, especially if the DM likes to complain or can’t handle minor technical setbacks.
It’s the VTT of choice for sysadmins.
Yeah I tried actually joining a Foundry game because my friends wanted to use it instead of Roll20 for our next game. We only really played two sessions on it amd it was an absolute nightnare, so many technical problems that it completely soured the experience. The first session had a TWO HOUR delay because the thing wasn’t working and had to install a bunch of addons, and then I had to install a different browser because it didn’t want to work with what I had at the moment. Pissed me off, ngl.
That’s just because the admin didn’t make sure it was updated before game time. I have never had that problem because my server is always on and I connect to it a couple hours before game time. Also I never update the software before a game.
Player demo: https://demo.foundryvtt.com/join
It’s worth the money, I’ve bought it twice.
If you can’t afford 50 bucks right now, try it owlbear rodeo. Foundry usually goes on sale later in the year.
My buddies share their copy. So it’s probably just a matter of sharing a session token.
It’s been a dream for Pathfinder 2e, would recommend buying it.