VTT Meets 3D: Interview With Fantasy Grounds President About Acquiring Eldritch Foundry

Last week, Smiteworks, the developer of the virtual tabletop platform Fantasy Grounds, announced that it was acquiring the 3D character creator and STL printer Eldritch Foundry. EF not only provides players with the tools to create characters but also helps print them for their in-person games. It’s rare for two companies to combine like this in the TTRPG space, but it’s also the combining of two major software companies into one, with a lot of interesting implications down the line.

TTRPG Insider got to speak with Smiteworks president and owner Doug Davison about the merger, the company’s plans for the two companies, and more.

SmiteWorks announced last week that it had acquired Eldritch Foundry, a 3D miniature platform, with the aim of integrating its technologies more fully into the company, including future use of the 3D minis within Fantasy Grounds.

The deal arose after Eldritch Foundry founder Matan Gilat reached out to Smiteworks, Doug Davison told TTRPG Insider. The pair had a mutual contact through D&D Beyond creator Adam Bradford, who helped connect them. The pair shared an interest in expanding their offerings and decided to cooperate. Gilat decided to sell all of Eldritch Foundry’s assets to Fantasy Grounds while remaining as a separate legal entity. That will allow Eldritch Foundry’s team to continue operating on the 3D platform as consultants while also supporting future integrations of the two TTRPG software offerings. The two companies are now working to build the necessary API and models to enable the two software systems to interact appropriately.

“This is the ultimate multiclass for Eldritch Foundry,” Gilat said in a press statement. “Joining the SmiteWorks family is a major milestone, and I could not be more excited. I have immense faith in Doug and his team; they have set the standard for digital tabletop adventures for years. Bringing our character creator into the Fantasy Grounds ecosystem will give players and GMs new ways to bring their characters to the table. Eldritch Foundry brings significant creative and technical capabilities, and under SmiteWorks’ stewardship, the combination can deliver more for both communities.”

Combining the two companies will take time, but Davison assured users that most operations on both sides should not change in the short term. The sole change he mentioned is that SmiteWorks is re-evaluating what partners it will use to print the 3D miniatures that Eldritch Foundry offers and has paused that service for the time being. Davison hopes to move away from in-house direct printing and instead help customers work with local 3D printers to bring their figurines to life.

He also noted that he hopes to create an interface in Fantasy Grounds that will eventually allow players to import their character tokens from Eldritch Foundry and use them alongside 2.5D NPC tokens during play. The player figures themselves will be adjustable, allowing players to swap out stances, outfits, and even equipment during gameplay to better reflect their characters, similar to HeroForge’s customizability. While past Eldritch Foundry tokens only came in gray, Eldritch Foundry recently added the ability to color a character’s token in its character builder.

The new approach should not affect current pricing. Fantasy Grounds abandoned its subscription model last year, embracing a free-to-play model that relies on players purchasing content licenses for revenue. Davison says the company has about 500,000 active users. While Fantasy Grounds appears to have a smaller market share than Roll20 and Foundry, it remains one of the most active players and continues to add new content regularly.

Eldritch Foundry offers a subscription service that allows players to download unlimited STL files of 3D character models from its marketplace. Users can also purchase individual STLs from Eldritch Foundry’s marketplace. Eldritch Foundry has an estimated 200,000 users as of October, according to Davison.

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SmiteWorks’ 3-Phase Plan for Incorporating Eldritch Foundry

SmiteWorks outlined a three-phase plan to incorporate Eldritch Foundry into its business model.

Phase One: Full-Color Assets and Initial 3D Imports

First, SmiteWorks will add “default full-color views” to Eldritch Foundry’s 3D assets, allowing players to customize and create tokens that better reflect their imagination. It will also add improved options for character portraits, top-down tokens and 2.5D avatars. If a player buys an STL from Eldritch Foundry, they will also get a VTT-compatible version with fewer polygons that can be imported directly.

TTRPG Insider asked if the team was considering offering similar services for other STLs. Davison said they had not considered it, but that it would require tools to adapt traditional STLs to that VTT-compatible format, and that it would not be easy. He also hopes to offer imports for GLB formats, a simpler STL format that will better fit into VTTs.

Phase Two: Equipment, Poses, and Animation

A future update to Fantasy Grounds will allow character minis imported from Eldritch Foundry to come with multiple equipment options, multiple poses, rigging, and improved portrait support. Players will be able to import multiple versions of those tokens and swap between items or outfits.

Phase Three: Direct Application Connection

Finally, the teams hope to connect Eldritch Foundry and Fantasy Grounds so users can import EF minis directly and shift those character options more directly without having to export multiple VTT-compatible forms and import them manually into the website.

“Existing prepaid subscriptions and lifetime access entitlements will continue to be honored,” the company said. “SmiteWorks will share confirmed product plans, timelines, and any customer account or service updates as development progresses.”

Davison wasn’t able to say when the new options would become available, but noted that the offering would likely require a crowdfunding campaign to fund the necessary updates once he and the SmiteWorks team had a better understanding of what the next steps would cost. That campaign would likely be scheduled for the end of 2026 or early 2027, Davison estimated.

He also said that SmiteWorks would not make Eldritch Foundry’s exports system-exclusive, allowing users to download and use its portrait system and STLs in other VTTs. The main advantage of using Eldritch Foundry alongside Fantasy Grounds will be the previously mentioned Direct Application Connection, where PCs created in Eldritch Foundry can be directly imported into Fantasy Grounds (once that feature is finalized) and replaced.

At the end of the day, Davison emphasized that the company’s goal was to make things people would enjoy. “Let’s give you cool stuff, and if we make it cool enough you’ll want to buy it,” Davison explained.

Thank you to SmiteWorks for the interview.

For disclosure purposes, SmiteWorks provided TTRPG Insider with complementary subscriptions to test out its systems.

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