Fria Ligans forum

Greetings Fellow Loremasters,

I am just starting The One Ring and I am interested in playing with a group of friends remotely. We all live on different coasts and have varying tech available (one only has an IPhone). What would be the best VTT to use.

Does anyone have any advice or suggestions on how to run The One Ring remotely? This would be my first GM attempt virtually so I want to make sure the system would work. I’ve tried to find video tutorial but can’t really track anything of note.

Thank you all so much in advance. I look forward to your suggestions!

We are using roll20. It is not ideal – a bit clumsy in parts, lots of idiosyncrasies, and not a lot of development that we benefit from, and to work well one group member has to have a paid membership ($5/month). For TOR, roll20 works pretty well once you get the hang of it. TOR 1 and 2 character sheets are provided and also work quite well. We do not use the built-in video but keep a parallel Zoom or Jitsi session (when we started virtual roleplaying some years ago - different system, not TOR - the roll20 video support was not up to the task, that may be different now – but one of us has Zoom Pro, so we stayed with that).
We also tried to use the MIRO virtual whiteboard. It worked, but since I had premium roll20 anyway (for boardgame prototype testing) we decided to use the roleplaying support roll gives. We use Wordpress (again, an existing account) for the log and for support. I built a pretty extensive roll20 help page there. It is in German, but if you think it helps I could provide an export of that page.

I’m playing in a 1e game using Roll20 which works fine.
I’m preparing a 2e game using Roll20 right now which I expect to work fine.
Both games use Discord for voice chat and messaging outside of game sessions.
I’m trying a 2e Strider mode game using Discord and Narvi and it’s working fine.
I suspect that with one of you just having an iPhone that the Discord and Narvi method would be best.

I'm using Foundry, and like it a lot. I used Roll20 for years (not for TOR though), and found it to be clunky and inconsistent. Foundry is well written and imminently tweakable.

On the downside, Foundry requires you to host it somewhere, which can be a challenge.

We're using Roll20 for multiple games, and it's useable, if not very sophisticated. If you do anything more complex, you need to mess with the API code, either using fan made stuff or just mess with the code yourself. There's character sheets for most games, and limited number of ready made modules. Monthly/yearly subscription for the Pro version, was the standard version with limited features free?

I am moving my TOR game and possibly others (Alien, Blade Runner) to Foundry VTT, and I am using the Forge to host my games, so there's the one time cost for getting Foundry, and monthly/yearly charge for the server. Not too bad. Loads of really cool features and modules to add, so you can really go to town to customize your games. Like Roll20, there's limited number of ready made modules, but I think a bit more than for Roll20. I am only learning to use Foundry, there's so much more stuff you can do with it. And loads of fan made modules for adding features, so you don't really need to know how to code yourself.

I've been using Roll20 for 2+ years now. The TOR 2e character sheet is great once you know where everything is and how it works. The adversary sheets also work well.

+1 on clunkiness, but we're most of us Gen X so the bar is low for immersive experience and a step up from paper and pencil and vinyl battlemats of yesteryear.

Maptool! (rptools.net)

Maptool is free and is infinitely programmable. I'm in the midst of building a framework for TOR 2nd edition. I'll share it once I have something presentable.

If one of you only has a phone, I would say Discord and Narvi is the best option by far.