I’m here because of the upcoming DAGGERHEART beta release. I saw that Tal’Dorei Reborn is also in the works.
I’m not only Old-School gamer but I am a grumpy old man.
I have been playing RPG since AD&D first came out (yeah, THAT old).
I have a difficult time with the concept of AMAZON PRIME : “Buy something full-price (like a movie) but you can only watch it IF you pay an Extra Monthly Fee.”
I was on DDB until the OGL-gate and dropped everything WOTC. (When you come back on your bad decision because you realize how much money you’ll lose and it has NOTHING to do with the actual fans and creators, you don’t deserve my money, anymore).
Now I’ve basically lost hundreds of dollars because those books I’ve bought is still owned by WOTC.
I own many PDFs of my favourite games (DriveTrhuRPG loves me), I own Foundry VTT and have GOOGLE account.
My grumpy ol’ question is : Why then should I use DEMIPLANE ?
Convince me…
(FYI, this is all tongue-in-cheek for those who didn’t get the “second level,” here.)
Hey, I’ve been playing since the old Basic Box set my step-dad bought for us in 1980. If an older and grumpier geezer like me can do use this newfangled gizmo, you can too!
But, in all honesty, it’s not for everyone. If you have an established library of books in the game line of choice, just use those. Demiplane is definitely not a VTT. It’s a library, it’s a character builder, it’s a group organizer.
However, Demiplane Nexus is pretty cool. Yes, it has a subscription model. BUT the free account is all you actually need for up to so many characters (I forget, I think it might be 3 or maybe 7?). The subscription is only if you need more characters and/or you need (or want) to share your books with your friends or campaign.
Personally, I have multiple copies of many of my favorite games.
In general, I have a hardcopy, a PDF copy, a Demiplane copy, a Roll20 copy, a Foundry Copy, an Alchemy copy, etc. … though it is rare that I have a copy in every format. Some supplementals, I’ll skip the hardcopy. Most games I skip Foundry, because I’m not a huge of the application. Demiplane doesn’t carry all my favorite games (yet?). But I still tend to own multiple copies of everything.
My current plan is to drop Roll20 and Foundry, in favor of Alchemy… and just buy [maybe] Hard Copy, always PDF, and either Demiplane or Alchemy (depending upon system and support). But I’m not there yet.
Thank you very much for your input!
This clarifies things very well.
I love Foundry/Forge and its modules, but two of my players don’t have powerful enough PC to play with all the bells and whistles.
I will definitely check out Alchemy for a VTT (it looks gorgeous!), thanks for the tip !
Demiplane is the equivalent of DDB but with more games and some group stuff. It’s actually built by the former DDB devs (before it was sold). They’re just not limited to DnD now.
Fellow grumpy old man, I was there 3000 years ago too.
We can’t predict politics and OGL things - that could all happen again no matter which company you back. I still use DDB for a dnd game but since OGL my main game switched to Alien. We’d already planned to do that before OGL shenanigans.
All I can comment on is how I have used Demiplane. I came here because they’d partnered with Fl and I was also interest in Coriolis and other FL games etc so, it seemed convenient. What I wanted was a character generator (it wasn’t here at the time but it was coming and a year later here it is). I know character gen is pretty easy in Alien, but they do die a lot…and I’m a lazy grumpy old gamer. It wasn’t until after I got the demiplane content (also after I also bought the actual books) that I got into Foundry. So once again … I bought the content from FL for the foundry stuff - I planned to use a tabletop tv for the maps etc. The content from all of the books in there too and if you’re really into foundry that would probably be enough on its own (for alien).
What WOULD be nice is if the demiplane content came with the foundry maps though - or all of the Foundry content in general. I don’t see that happening because FL need to make their $ too.
Devs are nice and responsive for Demiplane too so that a plus but they are taking on a LOT of systems, so I hope they don’t get spread too thin. I’d also suggest that if the system you want isn’t live yet then wait till it is.
What it comes down to is how you want to play I think, and to a large extent what you already own. Your players too are a factor - of the 6 I’m running in alien only two have really embraced the electronic side of things but that might change now the Demiplane character gen is there.
If you’re looking to play Pathfinder 2nd edition, save yourself the money and use Pathbuilder. It is WAYYY cheaper and you don’t have to pay extra to use content from the physical or PDF books you have.
