I'm new to DM'ing, and new to Foundry VTT, and this blog post of Action Jay's work on how he's running the Curse of Strahd was a great resource to modules, tools, and approaches to improve my own gameplay.
I'm new to DM'ing, and new to Foundry VTT, and this blog post of Action Jay's work on how he's running the Curse of Strahd was a great resource to modules, tools, and approaches to improve my own gameplay.
I like it, but, there are upsides and downsides.
I usually play with a team that has some remote members, so Foundry is the mechanism by which I create shared visuals and battlemaps. I don’t go as far as to run the whole game with Foundry – PCs have their character sheets, they make their rolls themselves, and I still track most elements of the game myself (except initiative-order and NPC/monster HP).
Even with just this light usage, there are downsides – for example, my prep as a DM takes longer because I have to create or adapt a map/visual for everything, as opposed to just describing it. I’m preparing an adventure right now that I might be done with if I didn’t use Foundry; it’s all documented, but not visualized.
Many (for example, the linked article) add more capabilities to Foundry until it runs and automates more and more of the game. I think I’m concerned about creating a slippery slope with that, to the point where we’re playing a multiplayer video game rather than an TTRPG, and the flexibility of the game is lost. But!, I add a thing here or there, trying to make my players’ experience better, and so far it’s all been great.