Virtual Roleplaying part 1 - Choosing a VTT

As has probably not escaped everyone's notice, the world has gone just a wee bit mad of late. Enough that (unsurprisingly) my regular local face to face party isn't going to be face to face again any time soon. Hence. we're looking at running via video and some kind of Virtual Table Top (VTT).

Again, if you're as old school as I used to be, the idea of a VTT is going to be a bit alien to you. There many to choose from - heck, you can go with screen share and moving objects around on a Powerpoint document for the most basic. Essentially you're looking for something that allows players to see where their characters are on a map, chat and roll dice. Anything else is gravy - managing character sheets, importing monsters etc is cool but a bonus extra in the grand scheme of things.

There are two main players in the VTT world - Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds - both are pretty full featured, even allowing you to buy content from WOTC so that your VTT can apply/implement rules from various compendiums and handbooks as needed. There's also a number of newer alternatives.

So which one did I pick and why? Well, you can guess the former from the title of the post, but as to why?

• I can't put my finger on why I'm not fond of Roll20: it just feels off in some way - counter intuitive.
• I actually use FG as a player in my Tuesday online game of Pathfinder 2E. It's excellent fun, and seems to work fine. But the major issue is until FG Unity comes out, it won't run on my 64bit-only MacOS Catalina iMac except under Crossover or some other Windows emulation, and that has some really strange issues with (for example) importing maps, where opening the map seems to take me to a Mac app rather than FG. 
• Both of the above have the issue that if you want content from WOTC, you have to pay for it. As I've already paid for it once, in D&D Beyond, I really don't want to do it again, 
• One of the new kids on the block is FoundryVTT: supported by Patreon, it's in Beta with a very committed developer who's doing some really neat stuff. It has a configurable API for third-party modules, a number of core game modules including D&D 5E, and all the cool stuff (in various stages of development) like lighting, fog of war, vision etc. It's going to support (soon!) direct import from my dungeon mapping program of choice, Dungeondraft, so... The demo videos look cool. I figured I'd bite the bullet, support the little guy (as it were) and dive in.

So off we go. Next up? Getting it installed.