Standard Action: Virtual Tabletop

vtt

#1

Hi everyone, I am trying to spread the word about Standard Action, my virtual tabletop. If you’re looking for a web-based, free online alternative to other VTTs, read on:

I am the developer of Standard Action: a lightweight, browser-based virtual tabletop application. Standard Action supports dynamic lighting (and darkvision), drawing tools, customizable chapters, pages, and layers, live chat, dice rolls, a turn tracker, splitting the party, and much more! Standard Action is simple and lightweight, but flexible. It runs in your browser, you don’t have to download or install anything. On top of all this, it is free! There are no ads, and no paywalls. Please try it out and leave me some of your feedback! Thanks!

Also, I am currently looking for as many ways as possible to spread the word about Standard Action. If you know any podcasters, bloggers, publications, or content creators of any kind that would be interested in Standard Action, let me/them know!

https://standardaction.net

EDIT - answers to questions from the thread below:

to roll dice, type in the chat box (for example): /r d20+1
to disable the grid, set the grid type to None in your page settings


#2

Can confirm! It’s a great VTT! And the guy updates almost every week! :smiley:
The Discord community is small but growing and pretty relax! :+1:


#3

Welcome to the Runehammer Forum, and congrats on your VTT. :v: :herocoin: :+1:


#4

Hey, welcome! :v:t2:

First off, congrats on your VTT and you writing here gives me/us the opportunity to thank you in person. It is not a simple job.

I have seen your VTT a couple of weeks ago. I was eyeing Foundry VTT at that time and SA looked too simple for me and I skipped it. This is not on you, but squarely on me (though you could work on your landing page).

I currently use Fantasy Grounds but I really don’t want to so I’m looking for alternatives. By the way, I wrote this post on these forums so I’ve done my research:

This post is going to receive an update sometime this fall and I’d be more than happy to include Standard Action. Therefore I have a couple of questions.

Do you intend to keep your VTT free forever? Or for some time? Do you intend to work with donations or do you want to monetize it eventually?
Do you intend to open source it? Will you accept contributions (code, documentation etc.)?
What are your short/medium/long term goals?
What is the tech stack you are using? Looks like Angular.

These are important questions for the longevity for the project.

I’d like to know about the features as well but I can (and will) register and play around to see what’s what. You writing them would be better of course, if you happen to have the time for it.

Edit: Registered.


#5

Hey, thanks for this response! Yeah, the landing page sux right now, I definitely have to work on that.

Glad you have signed up! As for ur questions:

I intend to keep the current core features free forever. I currently accept donations thru locals but I would like to add premium features or an asset marketplace in the future.

I don’t intend to release the source code, and I’m not looking for code contributions.

My current short term goal is getting the word out as widely as possible that Standard Action exists and is a viable VTT. Its biggest issue to me right now is that nobody knows about it. Medium term I would like to try monetizing it in some way. I haven’t thought that much about long term, it depends on if I can get it to take off or not. If I could turn it into my job that would be awesome, obviously.

Yep, I am using Angular.

As for the features, it’s easiest to see if you play around with the site a bit. If you have any other specific questions let me know. Sorry for the delayed response btw. If you want quicker answers to other questions, i am easiest to reach on the site’s discord.


#6

I did play around and figured out almost everything. I didn’t try to guess the macro syntax because I didn’t have time.

Being able to create multiple map layers is really cool. I didn’t see a way to create a journal entry and pin it on the map though. That would be a nice feature.

SA looks very nice and I suspect it will work wonders for simpler systems like ICRPG. With some more polish, documentation and other improvements, it can be a total Roll20 alternative. It is way faster than Roll20 and Astral.

However there is a big downside, at least for me:

This is a bummer because

  1. One man show + closed source means that the project has a very low probablity of surviving.
  2. A propriatery platform is just that and there is no difference between SA, Roll20, FoundryVTT or anything else in that regard.
  3. My content is not in my possession.

I can’t fault you for any of these of course. Obviously it is your project and you do whatever you feel is right.

At this point I would probably go with Foundry because a) it can support more complex systems better (I do play D&D too), b) I can create my own extensions/modifications, c) I can host my own content, and d) I can sell my creations.

I am currenty using Fantasy Grounds but there are a lot of things wrong with it and they ruin the great parts for me and I’m looking to switch to some other platform.

I’ll play around with SA some more.


As a feature request, right click panning interferes with my mouse gestures in my browser and it switches to another tab, which is annoying. I’d humbly suggest middle mouse drag for panning the map.

Another request would be adjustable grid color because that black hurts on certain maps. It’s too harsh.

Also I forgot to ask, what is the storage limit of uploaded assets?

Don’t worry about people not knowing about you. SA looks like a solid platform and I think you’ll get the userbase you want probably sooner than you think.


#7

the macro syntax is just !{name} to run the macro text in chat. So !attack for example.

To move journal entry to the map, just drag and drop from the journal onto the map.

I agree that a closed source one man project is not confidence-inspiring. I also know that if I spent tens or hundreds of hours building an awesome campaign in a VTT and then the developer lost interest and the project died, and I lost all my work/progress, I would be extremely frustrated. So that’s a totally legitimate concern. I’m not sure how to solve that yet.

A way to customize the panning control is probably a good idea.

The grid color is customizable using the page settings.

There is no storage limit.

I hope so!


#8

For macros I meant how can I use a token’s attributes to make a roll (like using its strength as a bonus to a roll).

Ha, I didn’t try dragging & dropping a journal entry. Should have tried that. :slight_smile: Using the same token system for creatures and journal entries is simple. I like that. Having markdown solves the issue of long ugly text blocks. :+1:t3:

I obviously missed the grid color in page settings. My bad. I looked at it again and saw it.

My last big feature suggestion is campaign export/import. I’d say you need a community of creators around SA if you want gain traction. Again I give Foundry as an example; It being semi-open where people can create game systems, modules and eveything else, it already gained a lot of creators, content and traction in the last few months.

Great to hear that there is no storage limit. With unlimited storage feature, you can easily kill Roll20 and Astral I think and at least I hope you can steal many users from those platforms. They are the worst of all worlds from my point of view - they are totally closed and limited.

Since you are aware that a one man show can be concerning for some people, I consider my job done. Like I said it is your project and your decision, and there is nothing we can do but to respect it. It is not an easy problem to solve unless you go the opensource way and even that it has to be carefully planned.

Good luck with whatever direction you choose!


#9

Can you turn off the grid and snap to grid anywhere on your current map page? How do you roll dice? The zoom in and out takes a little bit to adjust to since it works off the location of your mouse pointer when you scroll in / out but once you get used to it I really like that feature more than Roll20.

@EricBourland

EDIT: Joined the discord and found the doc in the newcomer channel for how to use it. May want to edit your initial post with those details.


#10

edited my post, thx!


#11

Ok everyone – this thing is pretty cool!

Keep in mind I have only used it to make a map and load my images.

Right click to pan around the map
Middle mouse to zoom in and out
Simple macro creation: /roll 1d20
Hit the EYE to make the macro appear at the bottom of the screen
Players will only see their macros so they have to make their own but it isn’t hard and is quick to edit!
Rolls stay on screen in the chat window

Hit the wrench on left hand side if not already open
When on your PAGE hit the GEAR to turn off the grid

It also has layers on the map for the tokens which you can LOCK; I like this more than switching between layers in roll20 which was always a headache when you want to move something but can’t remember what layer it is on – instead you open a tab that displays all your layers and you can customize them or add new ones.

To rotate a token outside of the limited 45 / 90 degree defaults start spinning it and then hold cntrl – if you hit cntrl first and then spin it spins on an axis and doesn’t work right; to make any of this work your pointer has to be a plus symbol near the edge of the token border

CONS

When you drop art into your page it is shrunk to grid size and you have to resize each piece by a lot

Macros are ordered numerical by placeholder so a D10 trumps a D4 in the macro name. This makes the dice appear out of order at the bottom of your screen.

D10, D12, D20, D4, D6, D8 – > That bugs my brain… So if you used it for stats and did bonuses for ease of use – > cha, con, dex, int, str, wis would be how they displayed


#12

Now I feel like a jerk. I knew most of these things but didn’t write them above. Duh.

Use /r 1d20 as a shorthand for dice rolling.
You can create multiline macros like:
image

I used underscores because apparently it is not allowed to have spaces in macro names.
The result is this:
image

I hadn’t seen any way to share a macro with a player (like in Roll20). Players can create their own but we’ll have to guide non-technical players through that, which is a pain.

Layer system is miles ahead of Roll20 here.

Thans for the spinning tip.

Cons are real.
When an image is shrunk to grid size, it ruins the aspect ratio of the image and you have to eyeball it while enlarging it.
Right click panning is problematic like I said above.
I couldn’t find a way to style the text in a macro. That would be nice.


#13

I forgot to say…

Type /h in the chat and it displays the commands you can use. It is not much at this point.
Type /h r to see the syntax for dice rolling command. There are a couple of options there.


#14

u can now maintain the aspect ratio of your images by right click+dragging them onto the map.
u can also lock the aspect ratio while resizing by holding shift.