About Cauldron VTT

Cauldron VTT (virtual tabletop) is a free and open source virtual tabletop tool to play role playing adventures online. Of course there is more to tell about Cauldron than just that. So, this page gives you a bit more insight in what it is and what it has to offer.

The development of Cauldron

Why did I create Cauldron? The pandemic forced my friends and me to play our Dungeons & Dragons sessions online for a while. We used Roll20 for that, but in my experience Roll20 is a bit slow, specially to get it started, and its interface is a bit clumsy here and there. As I was already looking for a new hobby project due to the staying-home, I saw a nice challenge in building my own virtual tabletop. The result is what you see in front of you.

You can use Cauldron VTT freely. Since I'm a big fan and supporter of open source software, I also made Cauldron VTT open source. It's available at my Gitlab page.

Lightweight

One of the main reasons I created Cauldron VTT is because I wanted a lightweight VTT. There are a lot of great VTTs out there with many cool features and fantastic 3D graphics. The downside of that all is that they take a lot of time to set up and to prepare your adventure. What I wanted is a VTT that just offers the digital version of a real tabletop. Nothing more. Specially in the pandemic time, I wanted to be able to switch between a session at a real table and an online session quickly. My VTT must therefore also allow my players to switch quickly. So, no character sheet replacement and no spell and magic item lists. Just use what you are used to.

Another reason I want my VTT to be simple, is because I want my role playing sessions to stay what they are: fantasy games. I admit that those modern VTTs with 3D graphics look amazing, but to me they turn the game too much into a 3D computer game. Role playing should be about the story the DM and the players create together, in their imagination. The attention should fully go to the story, not to the 3D eye candy on the screen.

The only thing I implemented in Cauldron VTT which you don't have on a real table is Fog of War. Simply because it was fun to make and cool to have. ;)

Rule systems

There are a lot of role playing game systems. I think Dungeons & Dragons is one of the more well known systems. It's the system that I play, so that's of course the system I implemented in Cauldron. However, during development of Cauldron, me and my group also started playing Cyberpunk Red and Dune. I have no intention to implement a lot of other rule systems, but I'm trying to keep Cauldron useful for other rule systems. Therefore, I kept the support for Dungeons & Dragons 5E to a bare minimum. You can simply do manual in-game dice rolling for other rule systems. After all, that's what every rule system needs. The roll of a dice.

I hope you like what I've made. You can take a look at the screenshots to get an impression of what Cauldron has to offer. If you want to try it yourself, use one of the available demo accounts and take control of one of the characters in the demo game. When you log in, an online manual is available to get you started. Have fun!

Hugo Leisink