Greetings Metanthropes,

It’s been quite some time since we communicated what’s been happening on the Virtual Tabletop (VTT) environment for Metanthropes, so we’d like to bring everyone up to speed with what we have been working on. Last time we blogged about it, we came up with a few key features that the ideal VTT should possess. To summarize, we wanted the VTT for Metanthropes to meet the following criteria:

1.     Free to play

2.     No installation required

3.     Support our new D100 system

4.     Assets that support multiple genres

5.     A plethora of effects during gameplay

6.     Integration with our website

Based on our analysis of what was available at the time, we went with Astral VTT as our chosen platform. We spent a great deal of time and effort to bring Metanthropes Open Alpha to Astral VTT and we were quite pleased with the results. From our initial set of criteria, Astral was a great fit, without however the possibility of integrating with our website. Fast-forward to today, the Astral VTT platform has closed its doors and shut down their servers and service offerings. We have been searching for a new home for Metanthropes ever since Astral initially announced their decision to shut down their services, and we would like to inform you that this search is now over.

Over the past couple of months, we have been prototyping and testing with our esteemed Patrons and Closed Beta members the new VTT home for Metanthropes: Foundry VTT. We are extremely pleased with the work that has been done so far in bringing Metanthropes into Foundry VTT and the feedback from our early testers has been overwhelmingly positive!

We have been keeping an eye on Foundry’s development over the past couple of years and we were quite reluctant to jump onboard at first, as there was a definitive need to bring on board a full-time developer in order to be able to take advantage of Foundry’s capabilities. Since early 2023 and with the help of AI tools such as ChatGPT we have been able to kick-start development of our own set of modules for Foundry VTT and work on this will proceed with haste until we reach our set of milestones.

You can see our planned release schedule & milestones in more detail over at our repository on GitHub but here is a brief summary of what to expect in the coming months:

1.     First and foremost, we want to bring the full ruleset of Metanthropes RPG to Foundry VTT, to ensure our players and Narrators get the best possible experience.

2.     We want to leverage Foundry VTT’s powerful platform in order to help automate a lot of the things that traditionally take time to happen with Tabletop RPGs. Automating all the math required to calculate the results of the dice, automating damage and healing done and many other small things that take time to track properly and distract players and Narrators from the actual gameplay.

3.     We want to utilize the amazing community of 3^rd party developers and module creators that have enhanced Foundry VTT’s baseline features with some amazing extra capabilities. We will officially support and take advantage of the best from the plethora of available mods to create a smooth and exciting gameplay experience for both Narrators and players alike.

4.     We will be integrating Foundry VTT with our own website, in order to give Protagonists, the possibility to synchronize their character sheets and enable them to gain access to all the content they have unlocked, while giving everyone access to the latest available content updates.

5.     Create unique visual and audio effects for every Metapower, Combo and Dimension, to make playing Metanthropes a truly unique and immersive experience.

You may find the most up-to-date information on the current status of the Metanthropes RPG System for Foundry VTT by viewing the latest release notes on our GitHub repository and you may also create a new issue for submitting bug reports and feature requests.

The current version of the Metanthropes System for Foundry VTT is not yet available for everyone, as we continue to develop our features for the initial release with the exceptional help and feedback of our Patrons and Closed Beta Members. New members can enjoy a demo via an Introductory Session.  If, however, you would like to gain access to the current development builds for your own playtesting, please reach out to us via Discord. If you have a great deal of experience running games with Foundry VTT, we would love to hear your feedback and suggestions. 

Stay Legit,

Stay Meta.