[OQ] What are people's opinion of Role VTT?

Newt

Rune Priest
I think I have a winner for the VTT I will use and support for OpenQuest going forward - Role.

After getting stuck on Foundry for a good while, Role seems to have everything I want that supports OpenQuest's more Theatre of the Mind style of D100 play. Setting up a character sheet was child's play, and the collapsible categories really sort out the eye-bleed of the skill lists (which is minimal in OQ anyway because that was a big design choice).

I also like that the system promotes "openness". When I release all the sheets I can do so under a variety of licenses that allow others to not only use but remix and adapt them. This means that all the 3rd Party publishers can use them as a base for their games, as well as folk who want to add more features and release alternative sheets. Also in a more drastic sense, if for any reason I stop actively developing it, someone can pick it up and continue supporting it.

Here's it in action - admittedly its just me. But look I just rolled a critical!

2023-05-01.png
I'm actually a bit giddy and looking forward to taking it out for a spin. I can see it supporting other D101 Games. It even has a card deck that I could potentially use for Monkey.

Asking folk who have experience here is there are any obvious downsides?
 
As you may know, I am a big fan, and use it extensively. It is my favourite VTT. What it focuses on it does very well.

Downsides can be in the eye of the beholder. Acknowledging their roadmap, and the very likely uplift to the map and token capability, these are the improvements I would particularly like to see:

Map, Token and Initiative: As a minimum the inclusion of a simple Host controlled Fog of War and a way of labelling Tokens. I don't believe this needs to be competitive with features in Foundry and others, as this is not the main focus of Role. 'Simple' polygon drawing and erasing by the Host would be a big step up. I have long managed initiative tracking through a simple shared Note field, but it is fiddly and time consuming in play. Automating Initiative on sheets and presenting results during map and token mode would be great.

Sheets: Condensing the inputs to make more viewable in the left screen panel. Pop out too. A Sheet toggle to have dice rolls execute automatically without further clicks.

Dice Roller: Most of what we want to do we can manage through eye-balling dice results. More dice functions would be cool though. This would include:

1. Flexible management and counting of dice pool successes (instead of summing results).
2. Roll and keep the highest/lowest (or two or more).
3. Custom dice for Genesys etc (or even dice pools where a d6 might be a success on a 4-5 and two successes on a 6)

Asset Uploads: Upload multiple assets of the same type together (especially images and tokens). Folders for asset management (maybe Tags will help with this aspect?)

User Name and Avatars: Increasing the size and distinctive labelling of the user name in the video boxes would be good for streaming and legibility, especially when the video cameras are at full size.

Map and Token and Asset Uploads are coming on the roadmap. Custome dice too.
 
Wot @First Age said. In addition, I'd also like the option of logging on simultaneously through multiple machines. I do that all the time with Roll20, using the little laptop with the camera and headphones for A/V, while doing all the tricky stuff on the big screen of the desktop. Failing that I'll prefer to default to using Discord for voice on the laptop, which works fine.

Is Role going to go subscription one day?
 
I long ago realised there is no perfect VTT and different games have differnt needs:
  • I would always run Pathfinder 2e on Foundry VTT - the sheet handling, status effect handling and integrated dice rolling make everything really simple, even when dispensing with maps and going theatre of the mind.
  • By contrast Paranoia XP works best in Roll20, (although using Role with Google Sheets to handle the character sheets is a solid alternative).
  • Roll is perfect for OSR or PbtA.
  • At the moment I'd probably use Foundry for most Free League games, but Alchemy looks like it might be a great alternative. I'm risking it and backing the kickstarter (at the one bundle level).
  • And for on the fly unplanned games I use either Owlbear Rodeo, or just Discord with a dice bot.
However there are a few VTTs I would never use by choice:
  • Talespire and VoxStory - 3D maps are way too complex and add nothing to the game (personal opinion - not neccessarily fact). (Someone needs to explain this to WotC).
  • Fantasy Grounds - The pricing for Fantasy Grounds seems excessive (personal opinion again). There is now way I could justify this (and thats coming from someone who bought backed Roll20 and keeps a sub, bought Foundry, backed Roll and is backing Alchemy).
 
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Yes, just to say that I currently use two VTTs:

Foundry - where the game system is available and well presented. I'm running Conan 2d20 on Foundry soon.
Role - everything else, and most likely if the underlying system is light/simple.
 
Yes, just to say that I currently use two VTTs:

Foundry - where the game system is available and well presented. I'm running Conan 2d20 on Foundry soon.
Role - everything else, and most likely if the underlying system is light/simple.

Those would be my first too choices too.. however I've found that Roll20 is the most likely to have system support for a game. So for example Role has great support for Paranoia Red Box Edition and a version of Paranoia I don't recognise which I presume is the forthcoming "Perfect Edition", but if you want to play Paranoia 1st ed, 2nd Ed or XP you need to head over to Roll20 (or make your own character sheets).
 
Wot @First Age said. In addition, I'd also like the option of logging on simultaneously through multiple machines. I do that all the time with Roll20, using the little laptop with the camera and headphones for A/V, while doing all the tricky stuff on the big screen of the desktop. Failing that I'll prefer to default to using Discord for voice on the laptop, which works fine.

Is Role going to go subscription one day?

I'd like that feature too. At some point Role must move on from faery dust and go to a paid subscription. For Foundry I pay for hosting and LiveKit AV, which is probably close to the summit of what I want to spend per month. Once Role costs to use, I will have to have a hard stare at everything...
 
Asset Uploads: Upload multiple assets of the same type together (especially images and tokens). Folders for asset management (maybe Tags will help with this aspect?)

They said that this was coming in the last announcement.
 
I'm finding it's working well for the theatre of the mind style I use for my game.

I'm now using it actually to build a narrative system for an upcoming game I'm writing.

Reboot the Future is also getting a character sheet and other assets written for it, which means I'll probably do a Liminal version because I'm long overdue for some playtesting for an adventure arc/setting for @dr_mitch.

Obviously I love the drag-and-drop character sheet creator, but agree that it could either do with a tabbed or pop out version.
 
There will almost certainly be a Liminal sheet there already.

Yes, always do a Template search first, and even if there is one close, you can copy it and make something of your own from it. I look forward to seeing what you get up to @Newt ! I assume you will post on the Role Discord too?
 
Yes, always do a Template search first, and even if there is one close, you can copy it and make something of your own from it. I look forward to seeing what you get up to @Newt

Yes, Dad :D

That be said its interesting that there are three Liminal versions by three authors and they have both taken different approaches which I've learnt from One of them is almost a playbook approach, where rules are explained underneath each field. One of the reasons I like Role is as pro-web developer the CSS styling is nice and clean (and works on mobile devices!). But I'd bewarey of cluttering up the interface with notes against every field, except where necessary (such as in actual PbTA playbooks).

I'm now officially past my "play with it" stage. Time to logically think what I want to achieve - especially in light of additional sheets for npcs, reference etc. Also read/watch some tutorials. I'm already redoing my OQ character sheet because I've learnt about Gameplay elements after just diving in and doing the initial pass using the plain text fields.

I assume you will post on the Role Discord too?

Eventually.
 
We had our first session with two players from my regular OQ Thursday group. Characters were successfully copied into the character sheets. Features were fiddled with. Audio Video worked nicely. Dice were rolled. All in all, everyone thought it was very intuitive and was impressed. We shall be proceeding to play more with it.

All looking good for official release/support from me :)
 
I ran Role for my full group last OpenQuest Thursday, and it was effortless. Got a bit of work to do on the character sheet - to cover @dr_mitch's Shaman and his spirits, but the ability to collapse sections and thus hide unused bits of the character sheet is golden. Because of this I've got one character sheet instead of three or four.

I've added a short form sheet for monsters, who just need combat abilities and very little else, and a combat tracker sheet, that helps me track who is alive and what magic is active on a per-character basis. The players have one sheet that they can all edit to enter and update their character's details, and I'll have one for all the groups of monsters they could encounter.

Tokens and sketch maps are on my radar to test next session.

Also ran Lost Fools of Atlantis for my playtest group this morning and that was a breeze too :)
 
I ran Role for my full group last OpenQuest Thursday, and it was effortless. Got a bit of work to do on the character sheet - to cover @dr_mitch's Shaman and his spirits, but the ability to collapse sections and thus hide unused bits of the character sheet is golden. Because of this I've got one character sheet instead of three or four.

I've added a short form sheet for monsters, who just need combat abilities and very little else, and a combat tracker sheet, that helps me track who is alive and what magic is active on a per-character basis. The players have one sheet that they can all edit to enter and update their character's details, and I'll have one for all the groups of monsters they could encounter.

Tokens and sketch maps are on my radar to test next session.

Also ran Lost Fools of Atlantis for my playtest group this morning and that was a breeze too :)

Delighted to see you enjoying Role!
 
Signed up with the Creator's program, so OpenQuest will probably get a free release (Quickstart + Character Sheet, link to the OQ SRD for the rules) and a paid release (as Free + PDF rulebook + companion, and the combat tracker and other sheets I'm developing to support online play, which KS backers will get free).

In other news, Lost Fools of Atlantis is getting official support since its been funded by the Kickstarter Backers :)

At some point Role must move on from faery dust and go to a paid subscription.

Graham probably knows this, but for those of you following the discussion, Role had a Kickstarter that funded reasonably well three years ago

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/role/role-a-new-kind-of-platform-for-the-rpg-community

From looking at it the marketplace must be making them enough, with some fairly big players (Modiphus for example) selling though it.
 
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