There are several sales on digital tools for D&D and other table top RPGs going on. Since this is probably fairly limited interest, I figured I would just bundle everything together in here.
D&D Beyond
The official toolset for D&D, provides digital versions of offical books and search, character creation and management, encounter creation and running tools.
Through December 5th,
all books are on sale for $19.99 [dndbeyond.com] (excluding preorders). It does stack with bundle discounts if you already own the bundle but need to add a new book. The $20 for a $30 book I think has been their best sale price recently, which they typically only offer this time of year.
Roll20
Roll20 is a virtual table top for D&D and other games. They provide the whole service through a subscription (no license to purchase, on separate machine/cloud provider needed).
Humble Bundle
Humble Bundle has a couple of RPG related bundles on sale now:
The
Black Friday RPG Bonanza Bundle [humblebundle.com] is available for $25, containing PDFs of modules and supplements for D&D, Castles & Crusades, Bunnies & Burrows, and Dungeon Crawl Classis from Goodman Games and Frog God Games.
The
Maps Bonanza Software Bundle [humblebundle.com] is available for between $1 and $30 (depending on how much you want). It includes up to a Campaign Cartographer 3+ lifetime license, add on modules, and map packs. Campaign Cartographer lets you create maps ranging from battle maps to galactic maps. I think the software is pretty powerful but there is a learning curve to it.
DungeonFog * NEW *
DungeonFog is a web based map maker (primarily battlemaps).
Until December 25th you can get 25% discount on the premium annual subscription using the coupon code
WINTERWONDERLAND [dungeonfog.com]. The subscription is normally $49.90 for the year, so it should bring it down to $37.43.
Also, each day until December 24th they are giving away
"a small present every day" [dungeonfog.com]. You can claim them until December 31st.
Foundry VTT
Foundry VTT is virtual table top software supporting D&D and many other games. It just the license, you have to provide the machine or find a cloud service to host it.
It is on sale until December 1st for $37.50 [foundryvtt.com], a 25% discount. I don't think it has been on sale much, if ever, before. Expired
The Forge
The Forge provides cloud hosting for Foundry VTT, as well as a marketplace for Foundry modules. You still need a Foundry license though.
Currently there is a 10% sale for subscriptions [forge-vtt.com] using the coupon code BLACKFRIDAY21 which is ending today.
They also have modules on sale [forge-vtt.com]. Some of them say that you can download the modules to use outside of their service. Expired
Fantasy Grounds
Fantasy Grounds is another virtual table top. You purchase the license and provide your own machine to run it on.
The licenses are on sale until December 1st, 1:00 PM EST for 25% discount [fantasygrounds.com] They also have items such as modules and books on sale. Expired
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Really the two products are both amazing and I might pick up a Forge subscription again.
Primarily use physical books, so I had been holding out for a D&D Beyond sale just to see if it worked!
Primarily use physical books, so I had been holding out for a D&D Beyond sale just to see if it worked!
I still buy physical books too, but it is a great tool for helping players build and manage their characters as well as for the DM preparing and running the game. Have fun with it.
There are several different PBTA character sheets available in Roll20. I'm not sure about Fantasy Grounds. You can go into their marketplaces and search for rulebooks or modules by name or publisher to see if they have that stuff available, which might give an indication of the level of support.
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Primarily use physical books, so I had been holding out for a D&D Beyond sale just to see if it worked!
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One thing to be aware is that you cannot buy book content in Foundry like with Roll20. (Maybe you can in The Forge? But I don't think so.) But who wants to buy multiple copies of books on multiple platforms anyway? Not I! I just use a certain module that connects to 5eTools and boom, I'm good to go.
Another difficult thing with foundry (for some people) is setup for online play. The Forge is awesome for bridging that gap. But if you're a little tech savy there are better cheaper ways that allow for more customization.
I host my game on AWS and use a custom domain (URL) for my players. A custom domain costs around $12 for a year (using Google Domains). I then sign up for an Amazon AWS Free Tier account. With that Amazon will give you a small server which you can run for free for a full year. Then just use the following github repo to deploy a fully secure and online version of foundry! Seriously super easy to do and I highly recommend!
https://github.com/cat-box/aws-foundry-ssl
I'd point anyone looking for VTT software to Foundry or Fantasy Grounds.
Roll20 is good for quick throwdown games or maybe finding groups but the payment model (subscription + buy the books) and the way that the core engine is just a glitchy mess for browser hosting is not good for long term.
Foundry is probably the most agile as far as development and you can't beat the pricing model ($50, or currently $37,50 for a license to run unlimited players, and the only install restriction is that you can't host players in two places at once), not to mention it has online hosting support. If you're doing 5e, I'd look into the Plutonium module and the Rivet browser extension, but that's about all I'll say...
Our group is running on Fantasy Grounds currently. It's pricey for an ultimate license, and they expect you to buy books, but at the very least I'm not stuck in a subscription fee system so I own the license and the books, and the adventure books more or less give you a completely scripted adventure with maps with the line of sight drawn and all that. The core of Fantasy Grounds is old but they've moved it over to Unity engine a while back. So far the improvements are good, the line of sight system is great, but overall the engine still feels a bit clunky, particularly the UI. Lot of powerful stuff you can do with Fantasy Grounds, but I'd say Foundry is closing that gap.
I own foundry and a fair bit of stuff on DNDBeyond.
Foundry is amazing 🤩 community creates so much stuff that has been incorporated into the main releases and Atropos (the dev) is super responsive and in tune with the community that functions through the foundry discord.
Protip: start with base app and add extensions only one at a time as you get used to them, don't be me and go crazy with a bunch of em and just get massively confused by everything 😂
DNDBeyond makes creating characters a breeze from official content. Encounters, maps, and flavor text all there and importable into foundry via module extensions created and run by the community it's all great.
thanks OP, liked and repped
and then he can select the 4 books he wants?
He wants:
Xanthar's Guide to Everything
Tasha's Cauldron of Everything
Dungeon Master's Guide
Monster Manual
Thanks in advance. I have no idea what I'm doing on the D&D site.
and then he can select the 4 books he wants?
He wants:
Xanthar's Guide to Everything
Tasha's Cauldron of Everything
Dungeon Master's Guide
Monster Manual
Thanks in advance. I have no idea what I'm doing on the D&D site.
Buying the players bundle as a gift would just give him the PBH, TCoE, SCAG, and XGtE. It wouldn't let him substitute the DMG or MM for two of them.
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and then he can select the 4 books he wants?
He wants:
Xanthar's Guide to Everything
Tasha's Cauldron of Everything
Dungeon Master's Guide
Monster Manual
Thanks in advance. I have no idea what I'm doing on the D&D site.
Buying the players bundle as a gift would just give him the PBH, TCoE, SCAG, and XGtE. It wouldn't let him substitute the DMG or MM for two of them.
This bundle includes:
- Tasha's Cauldron of Everything
- Player's Handbook
- Xanathar's Guide to Everything
- Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide