I’m seeking recommendations for any fairly flexible online whiteboards to use as an alternative to a VTT. I play with folks who run older machines and aren’t likely to upgrade anytime soon. VTT’s like Roll20 grind their old hardware to a near halt.
I don’t need the fancier features of a VTT anyways. Just somewhere to post up maps and images, and to move tokens into specific rooms. No need for a grid/hex system, virtual dice, character sheets, etc.
Does anyone have good recs?
Shmeppy! A digital wet erase mat.
That looks promising! How is it on performance? My main issue is players with old hardware.
If you’re using discord you could try Excalidraw?
I used Miro for less map-focused games a bit (GURPS & FATE), but these days you never know what will bring older laptops to their knees. I had enough times where the video chat software was causing all fans to run…
If that isn’t the case, though, just sharing video might be a good solution. You can use anything for drawing, MS Paint, Powerpoint, Photoshop, AutoCAD, who knows, and just present it to the group. The video chat’s share function might be enough, but you can also use the streaming solution OBS to have a “virtual camera” that you can connect. This allows you some neat tricks like changing “scenes” or even have green screen “fog of war”.
Another option is MapTool, which was a common enough VTT before Roll20 and its web-based copies. Older technology, runs better on some systems, and I think the drawing tools are good enough for whiteboard usage. And now after I presented a Java solution as “lighter”, I need to take a shower.
I’ve never had an issue. Low CPU usage compared to Foundryvtt for sure. You can see me use in in this video:
We occasionally use https://excalidraw.com/ and are pretty happy with it. The ability to upload images is especially useful if you have many handout materials.
I’m in a dungeon crawl where the GM is sharing their screen. They use GIMP and erase the top layer to reveal the map as we go.
Combat is abstract, so we don’t need the tactical positioning of a grid.
I didn’t expect it to work as well as it does.
@mhd links to really good video on a great way to implement this.
Excalidraw looks really promising. My group is using Discord so it’d plug in well with that.
Also a great point about just sharing my screen. I don’t have any performance limitations. Ideally I’d prefer something collaborative, so that players can move their own tokens or add comments, but retaining full-control isn’t the worst outcome.
I think I’ll try Excalidraw next session and see how it goes.
Schmeppy also looks neat. I might give that a try regardless just because I like to see how different VTTs handle stuff.
It costs money, but if you already have it through work, I recommend Figjam. It’s Figma’s Miro competitor and it rules. It also comes connected to the rest of the Figma ecosystem. Again, not really a great pick for most people, but if you have it through work, it’s a no brainer.
Have you tried owlbear rodeo? I know its a VTT, but we came from Jamboard and settled here after trying a few others.
Someone is keeping the old version of Owlbear running, I used that for some live games with an ancient Thinkpad, one browser “local”, one browser maximized on the second screen connected to the room’s TV, and it didn’t bring down the system. Core 2 Duo approved 
I’ve used Rocketbook notebooks with what they call the Snapcast mode. Rocketbook is an eraseable notebook that has a free app. You write or draw on the notebook and then use the app on the phone to take a photo of the image. In the normal mode, it turns the image into a JPEG or other file and sends it to a cloud location like Dropbox or sends you an email.
In snapcast mode it sends the image to a website (the app gives you the link) When I was using it to run an online game, I would make the drawing on the board, grab the image with my phone and have it open in a browser window. I would share that browser window over Discord video chat or Zoom when we were using that. It’s a little slow and can be clunky but’s fairly low cost, very easy to learn and can be used for other note taking tasks.
They also have a product called “Beacons” which are little orange triangles you attach to a physical whiteboard that tells the app the edges of the image it’s taking.
I used Drawpile for a game of WorldWizard recently and it’s probably going to be my go-to for online games now. It has a chat, lets you input layers and paste image which is a plus over Excalidraw, which I find can distort things. You can set roles in Drawpile too so theoretically players can’t see or draw on certain layers but haven’t tested that yet.
I’ve always wanted to try Shmeppy but the subscription based model is just a hard no for me though it does look soooo fun.
I just discovered tldraw. A few pokes and I’m pleasantly surprised by how easy it works. Even with a pen and tablet.