The future of the Fari App VTT

It's time to move forward.

Buckle up folks.

Highlights

• In August of 2019, I started the development of a free and open-source virtual tabletop application.

• Over the years, working on the app has become less and less rewarding.

• As a result, I want to make an official statement that the app is now in "maintenance mode". This means that major bugs will be taken care of, but no further features will be implemented.

• One last big update will be released soon to upgrade the tech stack for the years to come.

From Fari App to Fari RPGs

This is where everything "Fari" started. I wanted to play Fate with some of my friends who lived far away, and there were no online solutions to play the game that pleased me. So, as a software engineer, I created my own VTT. I shared it on Reddit, and some people started playing around with it, giving me feedback, etc.

Over the following years, I implemented tons of new features, fixed bugs, and made it grow to around 3000 to 5000 monthly active users. This was a lot of fun as I had plenty of technical challenges to solve, and working on the code of this was honestly a fantastic learning experience. However, one of the less enjoyable aspects of it all was interacting with the "free and open source software" community. I don't mean the community as a whole, but I'm talking about some specific toxic individuals within this concept of a community.

Some people who were using the app were wonderful. We started a Discord server and built a truly wholesome community. Others, though, weren't as great. For every comment like "this is such a cool app," I received dozens of comments or DMs in the vein of "I'm never going to use this if you don't do XYZ," "this is how XYZ should work and the fact that it doesn't is stupid," etc.

I spent over 2000 hours of my personal time designing tens of thousands of lines of code on an app that thousands were using for free. It generated no revenue apart from a small-scale Patreon ($100-$300 monthly). That being said, I wasn't developing the app for monetary reasons, I made it for fun and for the TTRPG community because I cared.

What I've learned, the hard way, is that in the free and open-source community, many usually expect to have everything they want without contributing anything, whether it's time or money. Some critical pieces of software in the world rely on the shoulders of burned-out developers looking for a way out.

For me, my way out was the creation of the Charge RPG and the fari.community website. Through Charge, I discovered how much I loved designing my own games, and through the Fari Community website, I was able to get in contact with many indie designers that I'm beyond thrilled to be calling friends today. From there, I designed more games, got coverage over on Dicebreaker, ran an overly successful Kickstarter campaign, was interviewed on podcasts, and had my games played in some fantastic actual play series such as the One Shot Network.

Around the time when I started designing my own games, I had my first kid and had to make a choice: where should I be spending my now reduced hobby time?

And the answer came to me easily.

I would spend my time in things that were rewarding and that brought me joy. People were saying so many beautiful things about my games, and yet others were so extremely distasteful of anything related to the VTT that I just gradually spent less and less time on the app.

For the past two years, I have essentially left Fari App unchanged. I have addressed bugs, updated technical dependencies, and added new character templates with the invaluable assistance of some wonderful community members (shoutout to you Lynn ❤️ !).

What I want to announce today is that the way I’ve treated the app for the past 2 years won't change. I will continue to fix major bugs, update dependencies here and there, but I will not improve the app. I won't develop new features. I will not spend more time than necessary on Fari App, and I want to be transparent about it so that you know where to invest your time and resources.

I have two kids now, a thriving career as a TTRPG designer, plenty of renovations to do in the house, and I still have a day job on top of it all.

At this point, I won't go over all the many aspects that affected my decisions. I also don’t want to introduce a subscription service and what not to make it all “worth it”. That's because my interests have changed drastically over the past 5 years, and I want to invest time in things that make me happy. And, sadly, Fari App hasn’t made me happy in a very, very long time.

I would like to thank everyone who's been with me throughout this whole journey. I have a lot of TTRPG-related plans for the future, so let's move forward together.