News Roundup: Daggerheart Warms Up to Foundry

Daggerheart comes to Foundry, and the indie TTRPG scene abandons Roll20 over its decision to remove political speech are the top stories in this week’s news roundup. We also have new playtests for D&D, Origins awards and more!

In This Edition

• Daggerheart Enters the Foundry

• Roll20 Feels Heat After Rascal Report

  • In Other News

  • Other Stories We Wrote

Daggerheart Enters the Foundry

Daggerheart has been garnering significant interest among online forums and creators, confirming the allegations that it appears to be a viable competitor. However, one element has caused tension until recently: Darrington Press’s approach to VTTs.

The company had initially restricted its licensing so that Daggerheart could only be hosted on Roll20 and Demiplane, two of the most popular VTTs right now. This came at the cost of Foundry, which is one of the more sophisticated VTTs and the most likely to compete with Roll20’s dominance.

Foundry’s community developers had been excited to create a module (the system element required to run the rules within Foundry) after the playtest was released. Still, they claim on Reddit that Darrington Press told them to delay development until the full release. That development got a bit messier after an FAQ seemed to imply that Daggerheart’s CGL (the license that lets others create supplements without risk of plagiarism or copyright theft) restricted the software to companies with which it had reached business arrangements.

While this may sound mundane to most readers, it’s essential to note that fans, rather than official developers, create many of the modules and rules used by Foundry. The current module for Candela Obscura, for example, was made by a fan rather than Darrington Press. Those fans can’t reach a business arrangement since they’re not a business.

Part of this is because of how expensive it is to develop these things, and the other part is how important fan-created content like mods and worlds are in the TTRPG online ecosystem. If fans don’t make it, then it’s likely that a lot of online support for TTRPGs would disappear.

Darrington updated the CGL on Friday to include Foundry, and devs have already begun work on an unofficial conversion of the system. Software development is a fickle subject, so it’s unclear when the game will be ready on Foundry. However, this new system will significantly ease the process of getting started with the game online.

I know that I've been waiting for the Foundry update, as it's the primary system I use to run TTRPGs myself, and that this will make it a lot easier to get people to try the game.

Roll20 Feels Heat After Rascal Report

One of the bigger stories this week for TTRPGs was Rascal News’ coverage of how Roll20 (one of the prominent VTTs and owners of several websites that sell and publish TTRPGs) decided to remove Rebel Scum, a Star Wars-inspired TTRPG by 9th Level Games due to language in the foreword involving language that Roll20 categorized as “overt political agendas or views.”

Rascal broke the story, so I urge you to read that first. It went a bit viral, after all.

What caught my eye was this wave of indie designers who stated on Bluesky that they were withdrawing their games from Roll20’s platform.

Jumpgate Games, owned by Going Rogue author Jess Levine (who we did recently interview) decided that it would pull all of its games from the platform.

CzePeku, one of the more prominent map designers in the TTRPG industry, also pulled their maps from the platform.

Several other designers are taking similar actions, withdrawing their games from the platform.

Many of these designers are independent, so it’s unclear if this will have a significant impact on Roll20’s bottom line in the future.

Roll20’s team didn’t respond to requests for comment.

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My Work from This Week

I wrote a deep dive into actual play-related copyright law that revealed the legal greyness that shows like Critical Role exist in and how Congress might be able to fix it. They won’t, but it’s the thought that counts, right?

I spoke with Jay Dragon about their new role at Steve Jackson Games and how it’s empowered Possum Creek but also arrived at a really risky time for game devs.

Finally, I spoke with Elliot Hanson of the Roll Report about TTRPG Insider, the recent news with Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford, and touched on my favorite class.

And that’s all this week! We appreciate every one of our readers and hope you’ll join us in the coming days.

We’re also going to GenCon! We’ll be there all four days in partnership with The Fandomentals and are trying to set up interviews. Want to talk games? I’ll be there on-site and happy to chat about what excites you in TTRPGs, the state of the industry and more!

Did you find our coverage helpful? Share it on social media and tag us on Twitter, BlueSky or Reddit. Also shoot me an email at [email protected] if you have scoops, thoughts or just want to talk about TTRPGs.