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I like Fabletop cause it entertained me for years, but let's be real, it's just outdated.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.