Fabletop is dead

I've been visiting Fabletop from day to day, just checking in how it's holding up and, if there were any open tables, participate in them. But lately I've been seeing that there are mostly no players at all. The Mystic Glade is almost always empty, almost no scheduled games, close to zero open tables hosted per week. Seems like Fabletop is dying.
What are your thoughts on this? If you are still alive on this website, do tell about it in this thread.

It's 2024, and Fabletop is simply not living up to the standards of many other free VTT-s.

- I'd rather play D&D on Foundry where I can give my players a fully free access with animations, open-source integration tools, D&Dbeyond imports, and support for literally all other TTRPG-s.

- Fabletop is a Play By Post game, but it requires you to write actively at the PC. Why not just play a Discord PBP RP where you can go to work, and send 1 emote in your lunch break and go back without having a headache with schedules for a written rp.

- It's easier to understand RPG rules nowadays with all the tools, and some sites require no webcamera (lack of webcamera and microphone requirement was the attraction for Fabletop for people who are anxious about their voice or looks, or lack of TTRPG knowledge.)

- There is no concrete world and ruleset for Fabletop. You either do a "whatever the DM says" (which turns into anime-esque results), or you do your self integration. I seen other DM-s (including myself) wasting lowkey years of their lives making a table ruleset for Fabletop. But guess what? We have to rely on third-party software, cause all we got is a Forum which is sometimes buggy, sometimes not.

I like Fabletop cause it entertained me for years, but let's be real, it's just outdated. This is not a company or a dedicated software. This is a love-project / portfolio piece from an amazing programmer dude (Frost).

I would say, Fabletop is either the Dog of Kings, or King of Dogs.

NGL I didn't know Foundry looks that good thanks for mentioning it trotrigar.

And on the topic of the forum: It has been dead for like 2-3 years.

The idea of "quick, almost hit-'n-run games" was so inviting for me. I really liked the concept, as well as open table style games. I tried a lot of times to start something new on Fabletop, and people did come, but for a session or two. Then they are just gone.
I've moved on to other VTTs, and currently am using Owlbear Rodeo with friends. It's sad to see Fabletop in this kind of state.
There is a little bit of hope though, in the recent Q&A post, I asked a question "Hey Frost, are you still active on fabletop and are you planning to keep developing this website, or have you moved on to other projects? Should we expect any updates at all?" and Frost responded with "I have mostly moved on to other projects, but I will probably re-think Fabletop in the next year or so, as it relates to another RPG project I've been working on."

Fabletop is dead. Long live Fabletop.

How did we get here? Personally I think it's the following factors:

-The rise of D&D: Stranger Things, Critical Role and a million other things have put D&D into the almost mainstream. However, the same cannot be said for TTRPGs in general. I think if people are looking to get into this sort of thing, they look for D&D specifically, something FT's dice system is not set up to do. This leads them to other virtual tabletop platforms, and there are many, many more of these that are free to use than there were ten years ago.

-The fall of flash gaming: I used to love playing Flash games online in my browser. Since the death of flash and these related games, I think people are less likely to look for games in a web-based application. They are more likely to look on steam or the app store of their phone.

-We are too darn creative: Fabletop users, I love y'all. You are a very creative bunch; but the designing of huge worlds, pages of lore and custom rules is NOT what this site was designed to. This isn't to point fingers, because I'm as guilty as the next guy. But, the core idea of this site was to have one simple rule set that was quick to grasp and could work in any genre. I think the vision was to have several games a day in all sorts of worlds and settings, but with zero learning curve. TTRPG fans are naturally interested in creativity and in game design and this led to so many of us to run our own modified rule-heavy games, which has in-turn under mined what this website in meant to be.

What can be done?
-We can keep trying? We can try and form a small but tight knit community of people who want to both host and play games and can take part in each other's campaigns.
-Maybe a launch of some kind of app or steam version of FT could see an uptick in it's use? But I'm sure there are costs associated with this and it would not be a straight forward task.

Final thoughts:
I love Fabletop. I think it's light rule set to encourage RP and allow flexibility of setting is the best TTRPG system ever made. I like that it's text based and not voiced based. I like that it is simple to learn. I like that there is little crunch and maths - but I do not think these great traits of it are what the majority of TTRPG players are looking for these days. Which is a shame.

These days I play a lot more D&D 5e, because that's what my real-life friend group have asked me to host. But I would honestly rather play FT with them if they were interested in it. I've been on Fabletop for 11 years. and have 11 years of great memories. I have played with people who I came to truly consider friends - only to sometimes have them disappear from the sight. I miss some of you very dearly.

If this is the death of Fabletop, well that's a very sad thought. I will miss those games and you all who have played them dearly. I hope you find joy and adventure in other system and in the real world.

And yet it may not be... there have never been hundreds of users on this site, and we do not need hundreds to make some games work. Perhaps there is still joy to be had and we will look at this thread in another ten years as an overly dramatic doom-and-gloom thread.

Fabletop is dead? Long live Fabletop!

> We can try and form a small but tight knit community of people who want to both host and play games and can take part in each other's campaigns.

That's true. We can keep going. But Fabletop is not making it easy for us to see who is online, who is actuve, who is looking for games, lurking around, or who's just visiting. There is an option to recieve emails when people that you are following host a game, but this feature doesn't work, so you mostly rely on your pure luck to stumble on a game.

To fix this, we can create a Discord server, where people will get actual notifications about the games. I've been thinking about this for a long time and I'm still surprised Fabletop doesn't have its own Discord server. What do you think about that?

I really am fond of the novelty of Fabletop. Especially the figures, characters and battlemaps of it all.

But the way things were designed wasn't always how they played out.
I would have liked to see more sessions without custom rules. That turned me off a lot of potential games.

I remember doing a game with Oman. It was fun.
Take care all.

I fully agree with you, fatness. I think one of the things that killed Fabletop were people creating elaborate house rules for their games. I wish more people would keep it simpler and basic like the rules intend

I've Rped on many different platforms. I'm planning on bringing in as many people as I can as well as consistently hosting. I think Fabletop can still grow a decent community. I think we just need to bring new ideas and concepts to the site.

More coming soon. Please DM me on Discord or Email me.

Discord: tyegamer
Email: (email hidden)

We may have let Fabletop fade into obscurity, in turn it is also up to us to resurrect it as a Lich Lord. Let's face it: Fabletop never had the same level of advertising as Roll20 or other major roleplaying platforms. With that in mind, here's my humble suggestion: invite your friends, make LFG (Looking For Group) posts on Reddit specifying that the game will be hosted on Fabletop, and spread the word. Together, we can breathe new life into this platform.

while sad to see the state of fable top still holds some greet memories

Fabletop will live deep in my core memories.
I'll make sure that my sons and daughters, or my friends' will remember how great TTRPG Fabletop is.

I still dream of creating a game, where I can run it on my own. Hopefully Fabletop may be 'dead' but please keep the system alive as I visit it when nostalgia hits me dry.

Are we not going to discuss the elephant in the room? Too many trolls on the site.

What trolls? The site is effectively dead with no new (or single digit at most once in a blue moon) people coming in because the tables that are indeed hosted still are generally private with a few specific exceptions. Bugs riddle the site (I haven't had music work for me for literal years at this point), the concept of a site running a quick couple minute cc is no longer novel (if it ever was) with various systems doing it far better by this point.

Few if any 'trolls' would waste their time on a site this nearly dead player wise. Because there wouldn't be anything to gain on their end. (you're more likely to get hackers that come along to %#@& the site up, than trolls.)

I joined back in 2014, ten years later, I'm still occasionally checking in. I've played in dozens of games and hosted dozens more on this website and off; from single shot sessions to long-term campaigns; from simple Fabletop rules to complex get-out-the-calculator rules.

Here are my thoughts on the matter, to whomever cares;

Most of the 'solutions' I've read about 'reviving' Fabletop revolves around using the community to generate more community, but I don't think that's really addressing where things actually need improvement.

People aren't filling this website with their presence because it isn't very developed/stimulating/expansive as so many other, baseline, free options are.

A quick example; Roll20. Roll20 is WAY more expansive and offers SO many more features; from people who want a simple Fate system, to those who want DnD 3.5 systems; there's no real attraction this website holds over an equally free competitor. Let's also look at how you're social on this platform, arguably the biggest thing one needs to manifest with this type of website (since it's trying to attract multiple people for social group collaborations); you have no friends list, incoming messages are a long list, and, if you want to check what you sent, you have to go to another long list on a separate page; there's no contained, easy, intuitive back and forth like many modern social systems.

To keep in contact socially, the answer is go to a third-party website/platform. Which, if I'm not able to keep my socials for this website in one place, and have to go elsewhere, why would I not just use Roll20, for instance, instead of this?

For the socials some considered solutions might be, make a better communication system; make a friend's list that shows when people are on or offline, let people customize say, an avatar for their picture, give players rewards for achievements, such as simple pixel borders for their social avatar, have individual messaging boxes that tracks the prior conversation in one place.

Beyond that, it's outdated in terms of content/excitement; it hasn't changed what it's offering in ten years, so, obviously, one can expect it to lose its shine, especially when we're talking about a product in the entertainment space.

Some solutions might be;

Make a new/better interface; make it WAY easier to load/save maps. It's so weird and clunky to have to remember names and use "/" commands; make it a list that shows saved maps and loads with a button click. It's much more inline with modern audiences.

For the dice rolls, instead of relying on "/" commands, just add some buttons on the side that will automatically roll an "agility" +/- whatever var you put into a text slot. A "GM charcuterie board" if you will; do this for players too, instead of having to open a character sheet each time, add it as a UI on the side of the table that they can access just by moving their mouse and clicking.

Maybe consider bigger maps to make things on; it's a very small space to actually construct on; I've always disliked how restrictive the map system was in collaboration with the weird load/saving, where I need to get out pen and paper just to remember more than three maps.

A better place to share table info may be something worth considering; instead of a list of forum pages, maybe a UI on the same page as the table itself that people can scroll through.

Moving beyond UI talk, the front page is very bland and unwelcoming, especially in it's modern state; for a first time user, they see a nearly empty glade, a few tables that play "whenever" with no easy way to join or ask to join, they see a mostly black page, and, to gather any meaningful content about the website they have to scroll through forum pages, which, when you click forums at the top you only get the most recent 10 instead of all of them that you have to go to the side and click to figure out, and even moving into requesting to join a game is trying to communicate through the weird social system.

Why not add exciting fabletop map images to the front page? Why not clean up the forum info? Why not instantly put people who join into the mystic glade? Why not add a special button that, when someone clicks it, automatically requests permission to join a GM's game; why not have it stay next to the game so the person can see red(Denied)/yellow(Pending)/gr to know if they got approved? Why not make it easier to communicate with GMs instead of just a follow button?

Bottom line is, Fabletop isn't going to grow unless things on the website change; the community, I don't really believe is going to be able to "encourage" others to adopt playing on here, when, again, so many other free services offer a better/accessible/updated product.

Things can be changed and can generate more awareness and retention if that's Frost's intention, but, honestly, that might not even be where they're at with what they want for this website; this might be a product, a place, they created to enjoy what they wanted to, which, I completely respect.

It's just, I wanted to state, I don't think the community "banding together" is how this site thrives or steps back up into a more active state; I think Frost needs to update the website in certain areas to encourage people to want to stick around.

I've loved my time back in the day when I played on here, and the bonds/relationships I had with people are still ones I carry in my heart with warmth and joy, so my intention isn't to trash the website; I'd love to randomly come back here and see 15-20 people like it used to be on some crazy nights, but that requires work, change, and effort, mostly on Frost's part IMO.

Regardless, I've had my time here, I've enjoyed the memories, so, either way, thank you Frost for generating a platform for fun. I would join back if things changed; here's hoping to a better tomorrow.

Hope your dice roll favorably.

I agree with almost everything nightcraw240 has said. As a community, we can't do much to revive Fabletop. Only Frost can do something to make this website more suitable for newcomers.

I still don't want to abandon Fabletop, though. I really like the system, the way you make battlemats, the art style of the minifigures, it's all very wholesome to me. As a regular user, the only thing I can do is to host and participate in games, keep the community alive, and hope for Frost to do something. And if he won't do anything, I'd still enjoy my time spent here, with the small community we already have.

I can add some context to Fabletop's current state.

It took a massive, MASSIVE amount of work to design and develop the site. This was before Roll20 and all the other web-based VTTs were a thing. In fact, NodeJS (which the chat system is written in) was still in Beta back then.

That same year, WOTC had started building their own VTT, and then scrapped the project.

After launch, Fabletop got very little traction. Incredibly disappointing, to say the least. So I put a lot more work to improve it, and eventually we got to where there were about 100 games posted per week. Pretty good!

But with more users, and being a centralized community, moderation was really taxing. I can tell you... my other web app (micromarching) is many times larger than Fabletop and it's mostly high school marching band kids, and they were never as bad as some of the stuff I had to deal with here.

(And a big thank you to the mods who took more of that over, but still some things always required my attention.)

Also, as apps like this get more popular, people want more and more features. But the popularity was never enough that I could get close to monetizing things in a way that would make all the extra work seem worth it. Sure, there's a kind of chicken-and-egg thing with users and features, but even if there were, say, a 5x increase in users, it felt hard to justify.

The main thing is that most players want a VTT just to play D&D and all the complex features that come with that. I never had any interest in spending all the time it'd take to build that, and as it turns out, lots of VTTs eventually flooded the space to fill those gaps.

So, especially after I got a new full-time job, Fabletop just kind of stayed where it's at. Activity started going down precisely when the email notifications broke. And TBH, I haven't fixed it all this time because... burnout.

Anyway, I agree with all your feedback on the things that "should" be improved in the UI, bugs that need to be fixed, etc. As a perfectionist, I don't like the state that things are in.

I AM heartened when I hear about how important the site is to many of you. That's the main reason I've kept it running all this time, rather than shut it down.

I'm actually better nowadays in terms of burnout. I have actually been developing a pen-and-paper RPG, with some inspiration from Fabletop.

But I can't say I'm sure what to do with Fabletop next.

As you probably saw, I set up a Discord server where, if nothing else, it will hopefully make some of the community stuff a bit easier to deal with.

Hi Frost,

I don't know if you'll check back on this forum and see this - but I hope you will.

I just want to say how heart-breaking I find it that your first engagement with Fabletop is a long time is on this thread - which is full of quite a lot of negative feeling, much of it directed at the 'lack of developer input' on the site.

Personally, I've always been very empathetic to your position, being a single person, running a passion project that doesn't make any income. I'm glad to hear you're feeling a bit less burnt out, and hope that if you pop your head back in here a bit more often, we can all be a bit less negative and not bombard you with requests!

As to 'what to do' with Fabletop - I don't think you need to do anything revolutionary or reinvent the wheel. Whilst the community is smaller now that it was a few years ago, those of who remain stay here because we like Fabletop for what it is :)

If you were to do anything, it would be a few 'quality of life things' such as fixing the password recovery button and a few other things that have been bought up on this forum.

From a moderation point - I just want to say that I expect this forum to see an up-tick is use now that Frost has posted, and I just want to remind everyone to be civil, and try not to overwhelm him with questions or demands for new features - that being said, a list of known bugs / things to be fixed could be worth listing?

Hey, Frost.

I'm happy to hear you're eager to return to Fabletop, and feel kind of guilty for starting this forum page in the first place. However, if you're unsure of what to do with the site next, let us help you decide on what to do first. I've talked with several members of the community and created a list of the most important bugfixes that are needed:

#1 priority: Fix email notification, so we receive an email for every hosted game from the individuals we follow. A lot of people will get a notification about a hosted game and remember this website exists and it's still functional.
#2: Password recovery fix, so that folks can get their accounts back.
#3: Chat auto-correction fix. When we post links with a lot of capitalisation, the auto-correction gets rid of the capitalisation, and the link no longer works. Also, it would be nice to stop censoring the word Monday (Mon-day in case it'll be censored on the forum), since it's a pretty important word for scheduling.
#4: Adding support for more unusual characters that can be posted on chat. A lot of time, when I try to copy the text from another document, that includes quotation marks, commas, apostrophes, em-dashes, etc. Fabletop doesn't allow me to post it.
#5: Music support. The command /music no longer works (though in my opinion this is very low priority)

I believe we shouldn't think about the new features before we fix the old ones.

It's very nice to see you are back and still thinking about this website. Welcome back.

Lovely to hear from you too frost! I love this site - over nearly six years it's been my favourite little online space and i'm glad you feel the same way. I've made so many happy memories here!

I was incredibly drunk when I first found this site. I'm less drunk now. That's evidently the reason fabletop has declined. We must all get hammered.