The Foundry VTT is something I’ve been considering trying out ever since GMShadow first ran me through some games powered by GURPS using it. I was impressed by the graphical interface, the character sheets for GURPS were useful, and it seemed pretty stable.

Today, having had some discussion with my Mystamyr group about getting off Roll20 (which I find very difficult and non-intuitive to use), I decided to take the plunge and see what Foundry offers.

For our game of Mythras Classic Fantasy, my group seems to want three bits of functionality: a character sheet that’s easy to use; clear resolution of die rolls that show success at various difficulty levels; the capability to provide a battle grid and tokens. Those are, of course, probably the basic asks for most gamers from a VTT.

While I couldn’t find a specific character sheet for Classic Fantasy, the Mythras basic sheet is largely fine. The functionality is geared to the Mythras Core Rules, so distances and such are metric and the Action Points are defined as per the rulebook – small differences that are probably easily fixed by someone who knows how to code, but a small road bump for me. That said, we can make do.

I was pleased with the die roller and the functionality that shows the outcomes by difficulty level, just as it was in Roll20. I found the interface more intuitive, however, and was able to get my first character working in very little time. Little touches impress me: for example, the ability to delete an entry on the Chat Log is very handy.

Not quite got as far as fiddling with the maps and tokens yet but I am pleased that the core functionality of Foundry offers lighting and lots of bells and whistles which cost extra on Roll20. I think I might actually enjoy setting up some maps because the interface appears easier… but time will tell.

So far, so good. I am going to see this as an experiment and see how it might also be useful for my other online games using GURPS. As with all new tools, the real test will come when I get players to the table.

Game on!