A Lesser-Known Marvel in the VTT Space – Encounter+ Review

There are some great Virtual Table Tops out there: FoundryVTT, Fantasy Grounds, Owlbear Rodeo. I have tried a number of them. Owlbear could not be simpler to use, which can be nice for the tech-adverse. And I dearly love the "for nerds, by nerds" approach that Foundry takes—if you can think it, it can exist, and that's fun to experience. But over and over, I keep coming back to Encounter when I need to get the "job" done. Partly because it's wholly Apple-centric, and works so well on both my Macs and iPad. Partly because in so many ways it's much easier to just get going: throw up a map, load in some players and monsters, start an encounter. You can get that with Owlbear, too, but Encounter is amazing because it can be as simple or complicated as you need it to be. This is something that is actually more difficult to achieve when using FoundryVTT…IMHO, Foundry is rarely "simple", and my players can speak to this, too. They prefer Encounter . If you want or need more than a basic combat tracker, Encounter doesn't offer user-created modules that extend your play, but there are some incredible developers that seem to live all day in the official E Discord that have built some freaky amazing tools of their own that work within the confines of this app. Want to write your modules in markdown and then import them into Encounter ? You're looking for @JacobJ. Need to import content from dndbeyond.com? @rrgeorge has your back. The community is scrappy, helpful, hard-working, and supportive. Yes, the documentation is extremely sparse, but find the community using this app and you'll be A-OK. Don't hesitate to start using this incredibly well-made one-man-show of an app to bring your TTRPGs to life (remotely or in person!) just for one or two elements of your game. You'll pick it up in no time, and when you're ready for more, we'll see you in Discord!
Review by MatthewBivins on Encounter+.