I’m trying to get away from corporate owned software and support FOSS stuff.
Normally if I wanted to play a game online I would use a discord server and some kind of vtt. Since discord is not looking great rn, where would you guys recommend playing?
Any vtt recs are good too but I don’t strictly need one. A way to chat and roll dice is essential though
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FoundryVTT. It’s a one time license fee and though the code is not completely open source, it’s mostly just client side JavaScript that is completely unobfuscated and supposed to be able to be viewed so everyone can modify it with addons. The server is obfuscated JavaScript.
It’s completely and easily self-hostable.
So far, the company/people behind are just TTRPG nerds just wanting a good and friendly VTT (…wanting to make money with it).
It is a full VTT though. If you really only want chat+dice rolling, I would suggest a matrix server with a dice roll plugin/bot.
Probably worth mentioning foundryVTT has voice chat integrated.
I personally use FoundryVTT, matrix, and rallly.co (with 3 "l"s) for my games
I’ll look into Foundry. Not sure what the specs are that I would need in order to host.
How would I set up a dice bot for matrix? Would I need to self host or is there an existing server I could create a space in?
The foundry specs are so low you can probably use a toaster for the hosting. The client (web browser) uses graphics for the tabletop so the requirements are a bit higher, but still every device currently available will be able to run it I’m pretty sure.
The main difficult requirement is the networking, whereever you host it will need an open port for people to connect to. I don’t know how hard that will be for you.
Don’t know much about the Matrix stuff, I’ve just seen it before.
Ok, gotcha! Thanks for the info!
Finally! A use for my 486!
I run a West Marches server on Foundry that had a few dozen active players at it’s height. I ended up just renting a server on ForgeVTT, a cloud hosting service for Foundry. I believe they had a free option that’s good for more casual users but even I’m only paying like $5/mo.
I have really enjoyed using FoundryVTT. A one time payment for the software and then you can self-host the server easily. I don’t know if that is outside your criteria. If you aren’t looking for VTT battle mapping though, it’s probably more than you need. I’m still using Discord for voice since that is where my players are at but I want to get away from it too.
I’ve mostly run Lancer games since last year, so my go-to tools were Owlbear Rodeo VTT and WitchDice for rolls, and recently upgraded to Foundry. However, when it comes to Voice Chat, we were still using Discord.
With the recent news, I’ve been considering moving our channel to Revolt and testing out how its Voice Chat works, even if its not as good as Discord.
For anybody else that hates needless acronyms, FOSS apparently stands for Free and Open Source Software.
I’m surprised anyone on Lemmy isn’t aware of that one. I 100% would have spelled it out of not for the fact that this audience is 95% Linux nerds.
Although it’s now unmaintained, I’ve used Fari as a place for dice, index cards, and clocks.
It is still a bit maintained. When the backend provider broke, it has been updated. Nevertheless, the provider is still a company. I don’t have the experience to switch to peer.js to make is really open source and free.
I used to stick with Discord for most of my group gaming until they changed a bunch of policies and the overall vibe shifted. Now, I’m mostly on Matrix for chat and dice bots and sometimes set up Jitsi if we need voice. The flexibility is nice and feels less corporate, like you said. IRC is solid if you don’t mind something simple, and I’ve even tried hosting with Galene, which isn’t too tough once you get the basics down. On another note, when I want something different from the usual TTRPGs and MMOs, I check out iSabong sometimes since they offer more game variety plus live streams. It’s a neat way to experience games that aren’t usually online.
Rolisteam is a FOSS (and self hosted) VTT. However, it hasn’t evolved much in the previous 15 years. It has all the main function (Shared white board, load map with fog of war and move token on-it, roll dices, chat) even has a character sheet manager.
But definitely not as fancy as a modern payware one
I’ll still keep it in mind, thank you!
Mostly roll20. I asked my crew sometimes ago to try Foundry (mostly because it’s self host if I understand it correctly) but they declined
Albion is a FOSS friendly game. There’s a Linux installer available on their download page, and a huge Linux guild.
I don’t think that’s a ttrpg, no?
I saw software mentioned and thought you wanted an MMO. My bad.
Still, you should check it out. It’s a good game.
