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Virtual Tabletops make the process of Dungeon Mastering so much easier. While simpler than competitors, Fifth EditionDungeons & Dragonsstill has some heft in the assortment of books you need to reference and rules you need to memorise. Digitising the process lets you automate the boring parts and focus on creating challenging gameplay and engaging stories.
Foundry’s contribution to the scene of digital game mastering is in the ability to tailor your experience. It allows you to modify the system to implement house rules, automate your game with macros and import commonly used third-party resources. Here’s what you need to get started:
Running A Dungeons & Dragons Game In Foundry
How To Set Up A Game
The process for setting up a game in Foundry is relatively quick and painless. Navigate first to the Game Systems tab and click Install System.From here you’ll want tosearch for ‘DnD5e’ and install it.
Both systems and add-ons are developed via GitHub repos, meaning thatthe code is open source and developed communally.Be sure to thank the volunteers!
The World tab will only be available after you’ve installed a system, and from here you may set Foundry up to host a game.
If you’re running Foundry via your computer rather than a dedicated server you’ll need to configure port forwarding. The specific process for this will be specific to your internet provider.
How To Import Maps
Lots of map-making tools have optionsfor exporting to Foundry.It can still be a bit fiddly to get right. A mistake in the configuration will have the grid misaligned between the visible map and the movement of the tokens.
If you need to make changes to the map, such as a wall being knocked down or a light being extinguished, those are both located in the toolbar on the left. Some map-makers will configure doors and windows automatically, allowing the players to see through them or open and close them without DM intervention.
Animated maps can look nice butcan have buffering issues on the computer not running the server.Reserve maps with visual effects for small areas with special importance, like boss arenas isolated from their dungeons.
How To Run Combat
People familiar with virtual tabletops will find Foundry’s UI broadly intuitive but has the occasional hurdle that requires you to know how the pieces fit together.
Slotting these pieces together lets you run combat quickly.A co-DM can manage the mechanical parts of combat while you interact with the players.
You’ll want topop the initiative ladder out by right-clicking on its icon.This lets you watch both the activity log of dice rolls and the initiative ladder.
How To Make The Most Of Foundry
The true standout ability of Virtual Tabletops is their customizability. Most allowpeople savvy with scripting to put together their own macros or repurpose ones found online. Foundry simplifies the process a good deal, having a compendium of macros that you may import without needing to copy script from forum pages.
How To Configure Your Hotkeys
Trying to do everything with your mouse gets very awkward quickly, but Foundry is limited in the amount of tutorialising it does because somany tools will be specific to different types of gamesanddifferent groups playing them.
A poorly sorted folder of character sheets is a nightmare to navigate but when you’ve got itnarrowed down to the tokens in a scene, you can click on oneandpress ‘C’ to open its sheet.
System-specific hotkeys and Hotbar tools you’ll need to configure manually. Here are some relevant ones for Dungeons & Dragons.
Use
Hide/Reveal a character from stealth
Move things quickly from being visible to DMs to players, allowing you toplace multiple characters into a scene and then make them visible to players as they become relevant. This is often quicker than searching through the character sheets folder and dragging in each character as they appear.
Apply Commonly Used Status Effects
If your party have some tried and tested methods, you can apply them quicklyrather than needing to open a directory of status effects and reverse engineer which of the stick figures means “prone” and which means “unconscious”.
Call For Perception Checks And Saving Throws
Having a button that you can press to automatically send a level-appropriate skill check to the party makes DMing much easier. Perception checks especially, you’ll be calling for often.Depending on the group, you can roll automaticallyrather than make everyone fumble to click a button whenever something worth perceiving happens.
How To Use Add-Ons
The biggest advantage of Foundry over competing Virtual Tabletops is the ease of applying mods and add-ons. These can make managing a lot of features that would be tiresome in a normal game easier: you’re able to apply scripts toautomatically consume ammoandrations when players shoot and sleep, making one of the most ignored rules easier to track and enforce.
They can also make running premade content easier:There are officialandunofficial modules that can assist with running specific booksandscenarios, such as by having preconfigured maps, tokens and character sheets.
When making your own game setting it can still help to use add-ons for some functions, although what features are default, optional or installable add-ons will change with time.
Here are some features you should attempt to have fully automated:
At the time of writing, D&D on Foundry has recently beenofficially supported by Wizards of the Coast. The system is being developed and compatibility for many add-ons will need to be updated regularly. This process is largely automated.
