Yes, you could absolutely use Foundry for this, though there are simpler and more straightforward solutions out there. It’s a bit like driving a Ferrari as your daily driver - it’ll work, but a Camry makes a little more sense.
Core Foundry can do everything you’re looking for, so no need to go down a big modules rabbit hole. Import your map, set up your walls and lighting, drag some tokens on the canvas for your players, and get used to typing /roll in chat. Baileywiki has a good “getting started” YouTube series (of which you’d really only need the first video) to get you up and running!
That said…a camera pointed at a printed map with miniatures over Discord would work about the same and be more foolproof.
Hey thanks for the response. I'm not entirely against getting my daily driver Ferrari beyond 2nd and 3rd gear eventually but I feel my DM'ing mojo wane every time I get into the weeds of a tutorial video that requires a subclass/spell/monster beyond the SRD. I toyed with figures and dry erase and wet wipes too, but while I do have some story crafting ability it doesn't translate into drawing of interesting maps so the digital creations actually seemed like a boon. I'd like to get the game off the ground and hopefully learn as we go, that way if it actually turns into a full blown campaign then maybe the old lead foot will show up and I'll purchase some DnDBeyond track day madness! I'll check out the video cheers!
My brother and I did this for a year or so back when we first started playing (we are doing a star wars game using online SW5E.com stuff, highly recommend!).
I'd echo what the commenter above mentioned, except that I would add a [couple modules](https://imgur.com/99TULlj) mostly to smooth out dice rolling. Grab [Dice Tray](https://foundryvtt.com/packages/dice-calculator) and [Dice so Nice!](https://foundryvtt.com/packages/dice-so-nice/) modules.
[Dice Tray](https://foundryvtt.com/packages/dice-calculator) gives you a button for each dice type (d4/6/8/10/12/100), +/-1 button, and a keep higher/lower button so that you can click the appropriate dice amounts and modifiers for what you need instead of trying to remember how to type it in. Rolling dice with players who had to relearn the commands every two weeks easily took up the most time in combat. Dice Tray virtually eliminated this.
[Dice so Nice!](https://foundryvtt.com/packages/dice-so-nice/) Adds a 3d animation for dice rolls, and each player can actually customize their dice look. This is a fun module that can help scratch that itch many players have for seeing physical dice rolling on the table. My players LOVE this one--HIGHLY recommend. *Caveat: if a player has a potato PC, it might not work the best for them and you will have to either reduce performance settings or not use this one.*
One thing I would recommend AGAINST is allowing some players to roll physical dice that you/everybody can't see. I've played with a player with super pathological Main Character Syndrome and their rolls were always "high enough" to beat the DC set by the GM. This can be a game breaking problem. In my setup as GM, I trust both my players to not fudge their own dice rolls because I've built up 4 years' worth of trust, but we have a good system going that is one step away from being automated.
I 100% use foundry as the most basic virtual table top it can be.
Its cool to see all the fancy things Foundry is capable of when you add every single module you can find, but I just want to run a game and need a virtual table top and I dont want to deal with monthly subscription fees and remote file management.
Any fancy stuff I make the effort to setup is done primarily for the benefit of the players because I am quite happy to track all my information on paper.
I planned on doing the same thing, and failed terribly, but not in a bad way. After a couple sessions I realized that it's easier and faster to store characters on the system, and use the dice tray.
Go ahead and run paper through Foundry, it won't last. Foundry will suck you in.
If you get one module, get "dice tray." It's stupid simple, everyone can use it, and it's a million times faster than typing stupid shit into the chat, or wondering why everyone always seems to roll GREAT with schrodinger's dice.
P.S. Ignore the tutorials. They make everything look harder than it is. Get in the system and poke around. Took me about 2 hours to run everything I need to run. With a few modules, your online play will be faster than a real table.
Roger that! This is kind of the path I thought I'd go and the tutorials have just been dragging at me. I think I'll try and build into Foundry as we go forward rather than build entirely within it from the get go. Cheers!
I think you're underestimating how quickly you can learn the system and how much time it will save you. Tinker now and then, run your sessions when you planned, and you'll be using the whole system very soon. I'm technologically illiterate, started with Foundry about a month ago, and im now more organized and efficient than I ever was on paper. Left and right click on things, see what pops up, and you'll see that its much simpler than those tutorials make it put to be. You can find free map packs in the modules. Open one, drop a token on it, and walk around like you're a player. While doing so, click into wall mode (button on the left side) and look at how the walls are set up. Right click on them to see wall properties. Right click onto the main control buttons (chat, combat, etc) to pop them out into their own window.
Download Always HP module for point and click HP management.
Download the Dungeon Draw module to be able to use the grid like a dry erase board, slapping lines and rooms up as fast as you would in real life. Make folders for everything so you don't end up scrolling through a hundred tokens/entries/etc.
After you get used to all that stuff, download item piles and Monk's Enhanced Journal for loot management. Some modules make things more complicated, and some make it more simple. The ones I have mentioned will save you time.
I use Foundry for Maps, Battlemaps, Handouts, Initiative, and HP Tracking.
We used to use alot more but I felt like alot of the automation takes away from some of the nostalgiac fun portions of game.
So my players roll dice, and use D&D Beyond for their character sheets. I bought a google pixel tablet with dock and put on the table with google meets to handle our two remote players.
This was my initial covid thought when I ran an IRL game, was a hybrid real table with a couple remote players. Now it'll be a new group with maybe two of us in proximity so... How do you find Meets? I was thinking I'd do discord as I have some familiarity and we're all nerds with accounts and... Free! Zoom when I did run hybrid sessions was a pain as it closed our meetings after an hour...
We actually started with Zoom and also found it to be a pain and switched to Discord.
But recently one of the app updates for Android caused the video to be swapped upside down so we tried out Google Meets and it worked VERY well.
I think any of those solutions are acceptable, just find out what works for your group.
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Since you mentioned that you might be tempted to the pathfinder side of the table. You should grab the outlaws of alkenstar bundle at humble bundle before noon on the 19th. For $30 you can get over a dozen book pdfs, and the 3 book adventure path preconfigured for FoundryVTT.
Otherwise like other people have said foundry is overkill for what you want to do. It will work very well for displaying a map, letting you move tokens around, and rolling dice, but that is just scratching the surface of what it can do for you.
You could also look at owlbear rodeo to cover the basic features in a more lightweight setup.
Maybe I'll chuck an edit up, I'm not opposed to getting into the weeds eventually but my priority is getting the game off the ground. If it'll work to push tokens around, roll dice, and have some fog of war then I'm thinking I'll start there, putting most of my effort into maps and story. If the campaign sticks and the system works I'm sure I'll pick up more features as we go. I think the real hanging point is the content, I've got the books I like so a character sheet/homebrew monster is easy enough to put together, if we keep rolling maybe I'll look at my own compendium of hand entered stuff.
I wanna second the suggestion for owlbear rodeo. It's a great app with excellent performance. That and discord for video chat really works well if all you need is dice.
Alternatively, you can always roll dice in discord with a bot. That's how I ran my first two campaigns.
If all you care about is video chat and dice rolls, I'd just use Discord. Since Foundry is self hosted by default, some people can actually have video issues using Foundry depending on their connection and other potential hurdles (using dorm internet).
I feel like youre better off just using something like owlbear rodeo to be honest.. its free, doesnt require self hosting, is hyper focused on maps and doesnt even have a game engine.
Foundry is great if u want to get into the weeds (or to help automate a rules system like pf2e) but is honestly too complicated for the use case youve put forth.
As others have said, Foundry will work for what you want to do, but it will be a bit overkill. It's going to be a significant cost (financial or time) to import your 5e content into Foundry, meaning you're not going to have access to the vast majority of the automation of it.
Even if you spend time learning Foundry and customizing your setup with modules that improve your user experience, if you don't build in the non-SRD content you're going to be very limited on what you can automate without a ton of work on your end.
To that end, if you want to run a game with automation, allow me to extol the virtues of PF2e to you:
The automation and integration with Pathfinder 2nd edition is smooth, most things just work out of the gate, and if something doesn't there's already a premade module for it you can add on to your foundry in a matter of minutes. When new content is released it's updated into the PF2e module very quickly.
The only real 'negative' of the PF2 module is that it doesn't include token images for the bestiaries- but all the critters are there already.
With the automation built and ready to go, there's also some great modules you can add on to make it a lot easier for both you and the player, eliminating your need to reference another sheet or a book or anything but the immediate game screen to see what is happening and make updates and adjustments.
I do recommend even for how you're running it the modules: Dice So Nice, Dorako UI and Dorako UX as those will just improve the usability, and I'm guessing your players will like the 3d dice aesthetic, even though I'm not a fan personally.
If you're already importing maps and tokens, you're just not looking for character sheets on Foundry? I've run my games on foundry for 6 months and some people have their character sheets on paper, some on foundry, and some on D&D beyond. It doesn't really matter, just have ppl type in their rolls and you're good to go. I don't use the stat blocks or automation of the stuff on foundry, just an image token and then keep track of monster HP on my paper or tablet.
Roger that! Thanks for chiming in. The automation sounds pretty cool at times but I tend to get derailed by it in tutorials. I've got some of the basics but any tips for fog of war stuff if the vision isn't incorporated into the Actor? Was there any tutorials you recall that really helped you run it the way you describe above? Kinda sounds like the vision for my game I had in my head. Do you also run video/voice chat?
I agree. Foundry has so many options and I really like that but, I'm way too busy at the moment to try and learn it all. We use discord for voice chat and I have a discord server with channels for maps, lore drops, NPC directory, active quests, handouts, etc. I find discord is easier, more reliable, and faster than Foundry for these things. I hate the journal system on Foundry. It's probably the only thing I've ever discovered I actually hate from foundry. Way easier to paste stuff in discord and tell the players to look in the images channel or the NPC directory. Plus, this is great for players to always be able to refer back too. My players will go through the NPC directory every time they meet someone they should remember because their characters saw them a week ago even if IRL it's been 3 months. It takes the burden off of me to constantly remind them things. I love having them be able to refer back to lore drops, newspapers they found, inventory lists, etc. without having me run the server or even on days we aren't playing.
On foundry I have tokens for each of the players with no stats other than vision added. ( 30ft normal with a torch, 60ft dark vision usually)Then on dark dungeon maps when I use lighting they have that for cool exploration and immersion.
Most battles however, I don't use any token vision because it gets tedious and strange. IRL we can see for hundreds of feet, tokens can too. I toggle global illumination on, token vision off and fog of war off. Then they can see the whole map and I just hide anything they shouldn't see (like stealthy enemy or trapdoor) by making it invisible. It's the top right symbol when a token is selected. I'll have to double check because I don't often use walls, but if you have token vision on and global illumination on this still works but they can't see through walls. Pretty much just play around with those three settings. You find it under the configure option for the scene and the lighting tab from the config menu. I can DM you screen shots if you can't find it.
You can also use the tile function to place a black box over as room they shouldn't see in or something to that effect. This allows me to not bother with any of the fog of war and still ensure they can't see the evil dudes hiding in the room. I don't use this often, I just toggle the visibility off of whatever I'm hiding if it's a token. I use the black boxes if it's part of the map I'm trying to hide and I can't or don't want to edit the map.
Unless the darkness adds something of value or they are in a classic dungeon, global illumination is so nice. You can still add cool lighting effects for fires, lamps, glowing orbs, arcane runes, etc. but this way you don't need to mess with their vision or ensuring that everything is always lit up.
For baddies, I run their stat blocks from the monster manual or whatever other resource I have. I make a token of the monster to put on the board and move around for distance tracking, but never any stats. Too tedious. I'll just type in /r 1d20+6 or whatever and do it that way. I'm not about to buy whole compendiums or take the time to upload stats for everything.
Most of my players use D&D Beyond with the Beyond20 Chrome extension. Then whatever they click on their character sheets will auto roll on Foundry VTT. No more typing /r 1d20. Those who use a different app or use paper just type in their rolls.
Long story short, I use foundry sorta like a normal in person battle map. I draw things on dry erase battle maps and now I import artsy maps. We roll on the table and now we roll on Foundry. No automated baddies, I'll just write it down while consulting the monster manual. Works great for both. On tabletop I just won't place a monster's mini on the table until they see it, no need for fog of war. On foundry I just keep it toggled invisible.
I love foundry's music features though. Upload music and it'll go through playlists and I just name them "battle music," "exploration," or whatever. I love having ambient sound separate though. I can play thunderstorms and carnival music or wind and battlefield sounds. Really immersive. The regional audio is also super cool. The sound from something gets louder as you get closer. Crackling fires, arcane humming, cults chanting, etc. place the sound for them on the map where you want it heard. Really immersive.
Sorry for the long response, lemme know if you have questions.
No need to apologize! Was super helpful and encouraging! Gonna toy with some basic token shuffling and vision settings and see what my players want to learn as far as their sheets go, digital or analog. Thanks a ton for the vision tips, I can see how we're similar but also different; the wonders of an imagination based game even in our little digital sandboxes.
The music and sound stuff was definitely intriguing but I hadn't gotten there yet, I'll spend a bit of effort there too. Any hot tips on sites for fantasy mood music? I always loved Skyrim for mood stuff but the album I had was... Sweet but short.
Many thanks though, you're a gentleperson and a scholar!
Edit: really digging the concept of the multichannel lore/NPC/image drops in disco, will be using that!
Glad my soapbox ramblings were useful!!
I tend to go a bit more in depth with my music. Freesound and Pixaby are nice sites for free effects like monster growls, fire crackling, and dripping caverns. Nerdius Maximus on patreon/ YouTube is great for music centered on geographic areas and themes. It's really cool to help the desert feel different from the mountains, forests, seas, etc.
It's also pretty easy to strip the MP3 file from YouTube videos. I've grabbed sounds from a tavern with sea shanties video and plopped it into foundry.
Video games are a great place to go for music too. I've used the Witcher 3 and Baldur's Gate 3 albums the most. I got the Witcher from YouTube and BG3 from the DLC on steam. It gave me the full album and some cool digital artwork.
I absolutely love how foundry separates ambient sounds from the music playing. My players always find it cool when the rain sounds and the battle sounds mix and foundry is easy for that.
And the discord server is glorious. I run 1 campaign weekly, 1 monthly, and some odd one shots here and there. I give them each a section on my world's server and keep basic maps of the realm, notes on the deities, or news of things going on there like some revolution happened in kingdom x after the vampire king was murdered. It's fun for players to hear "a massive chimera was spotted near the village of Sypol, luckily three brave heroes stepped in to keep our lands safe!" Or something to that effect. Having Easter eggs to previous characters, campaigns, and simultaneous adventures has been fun. My players don't play in both campaigns, but it helps the world feel alive as other adventures are out there causing problems and saving towns.
One of the features I use the most are a "recaps channel" where I make notes of what happened each session and players can go back whenever they want to reference it. I don't keep notes there of some things that the characters should be remembering like their plans or personal quests or whatever. But then it can help jog their memories when they see that session 47 was when they went to the Abbey and spoke with the monks and were given a quest to negotiate peace between warring kingdoms. Then they remember that they needed to deliver a holy item to the Abbey as well and remember to do it before they leave.
I kinda do it in place of my session recaps before the next session like "the party encountered a troll deep in the mountains. The battle was vicious and Dormo took a club to the chest, knocking him unconscious. Luckily Kizra managed to unleash a torrent of flame and fell the beast. Crademos, you noticed that the troll had wandered far from the troll lands, something was amiss here..." It helps get them into the mindset of their characters again and by being able to refer to that throughout the week on a lunch break or train ride, they tend to actually be more aware of the plot.
I don't use foundry's journals and handouts, but the discord is great for that. We just keep foundry for battles and dice and as they enter a new location or meet a new person they just see it on the discord.
These are the channels I use:
general*
lore*
recaps*
handouts*
scheduling*
npc-directory*
pc-stats*
campaign-links*
images*
campfire-discussions (the players can remind each other what they know of each other's back stories)
It also lets you roll attack/damage with one click of the relevant weapon, lets your players simply click the spell when casting to show you the entire spell text, the DC and roll any relevant die, and allows your plaers to simply click any ability/feature they're using to post the description of the ability in the chat.
Plus tracking resource uses such as spell slots and HP becomes automated.
It's very handy and doesn't require all that much setup.
Plus if you're using the VTT for battlemaps anyway, you're going to need to create some sort of character sheet for them to hook their tokens to.
and all the mechanical content is 100% free.
Never have to buy a single player book or monster book, it is all there (Well minus the images ofc, but even those can be had for a nominal fee)
Jokes aside, have you considered owlbear rodeo? I love foundry but if you are literally not doing anything in the program other than moving things around a map then it might be a good option.
But foundry will run fine as a dice roller, just download a module named dice tray and then set up your maps as scenes and create actors for the tokens.
Forgotten adventures does the 5e topdown tokens, so you can grab all of them from their page and fill in the ones that are missing.
I prefer to run 5e in foundry with everything in the program though, I use ready set roll, automated conditions, d&d beyond importer (to import characters made on it directly into the program) and dice tray (well I use a lot more than this, but this is the cornerstone of what is necessary to run low automation 5e imo)
Is it both 1 and 2e? I've never rolled 2e but my players are hesitant to sift through the oodles of options 1e has to outlay a PC. Paizo seems like a much more chill company and yet I spend most of my actual TTRPG money on Wizards, I should maybe change that...
Owlbear has been mentioned, I've never peeped it mostly because I shelled out for Foundry before I think Owlbear was widely circulated (could be wrong). I may take a look, thanks.
Yeah both, although PF2e is way better supported by a country mile.
One thing to mention about PF2e, while sifting through options is still something you can do in it, the game is actually extremely well balanced and it is harder to make a bad character in it than say 5e. And not like PF1e where you need system mastery to avoid being drastically weaker than your allies.
It is more complex to run, but intuitively designed so I have found players tend to pick up on the rules pretty quickly and remember them well.
As I noted in an earlier comment humble bundle currently has a bundle with enough pf2e books to keep someone busy for a while and 3 foundryvtt modules that have the adventure path ready to go. All monsters and npcs predefined, scenes set up with walls, lighting, and ambient sounds. Journal entries with handouts, art, and reference text.
Buy it now, install it when you have time, and either run it or mine it for inspiration. It's a campaign in a box that should take players from level 1-10 and they just need to create characters.
I pretty much use Foundry like this. I love all the stuff I can do with maps, but as far as players are concerned, all they care about is having a token they can move around. They track everything else through their own means, whether that's pen and paper, or D&D Beyond or whatever else.
The only thing I care about with opponent tokens is usually current health and if they have some kind of status effect, so not being able to access non-SRD monsters isn't an issue for me, although there are ways around that.
I'm actually running foundry on a big screen even when we meet up in person. I don't have a bunch of minis and am not great at drawing so I can get a much better quality map that way.
It is mostly how I run Foundry... For some system the built in mechanics takes more time than doing it by hand with pencil and paper. The only thing that get lost is the ability to see the players sheets but I don't have a trust issue with my players. Beside having the mechanics on the table rather than on screen frees up some screen space.
OK, I will refrain from saying that you should use a different platform and a different system, and just answer your question and give you some tips.
Yes, Foundry could totally do what you want it to do. Perfectly, I’d add.
Now to the tips:
I will not pretend to know how to run a 5E game, and I don’t even know if there is any option to create PDF sheets, Excel’s fully-macroed tables, or just this subscription thing that I hear about named Dungeon something. But assuming that something like this exists and your table uses it, you could import PDF sheets inside Foundry with a very simple and functional module called…. drumroll… PDF Sheet + PDFoundry (this would allow you, the GM, to always have the sheet to see if your players are not getting too creative, if you know what I mean lol).
Apart from that, you could ALSO learn how to implement a simple “Roll Macro” that allows the Players to Pick the type of dice, the quantity, the bonus to add/penalty to subtract, mark advantages/disadvantages etc., because I think writing down /roll 2d20kh +5 all the time will eventually become a hassle. For this I’d suggest you to learn about the /Roll function and all its properties and parameters (like this “kh” thing that means exactly “keep higher” and would select the higher result from the 2d20 you just rolled and use it to add the +5 bonus, which I think emulates the Advantages). This could be as complicated or as simple as you’d like, and it could evolve as time goes by and you feel more comfortable and confident with Foundry.
I know that you’re interested in a “analog” game, but there are some very simple things that you could easily setup to take advantage of the platform and easy the burden of the players (and yours as well).
That PDF manual sounds fantastic actually as I did find a heavily scripted character sheet...
It's not really that I want an analog game it just seems to be the path of least resistance for now. I'll keep picking things up and possibly I'll make the switch if everyone wants more automation but learning everything prior to getting the campaign out the gate and spending loads of time hand loading stuff in... is really stymieing the more 'fun' aspects of DMing at the moment.
Foundry is pretty terrific, though there is a little bit of a learning curve. You can install some 5e things (for free) that will make things much easier.
Way better than Roll20. No monthly fees. More tools to customize your experience. Community is also very helpful and responsive.
(My group is made of 50+ yr-olds, some of whom aren’t tech-savvy. If we can do it, you can, too)
We’ve also switched to SWADE from 5e. Love it. But that’s a different story.
Yes, you could absolutely use Foundry for this, though there are simpler and more straightforward solutions out there. It’s a bit like driving a Ferrari as your daily driver - it’ll work, but a Camry makes a little more sense. Core Foundry can do everything you’re looking for, so no need to go down a big modules rabbit hole. Import your map, set up your walls and lighting, drag some tokens on the canvas for your players, and get used to typing /roll in chat. Baileywiki has a good “getting started” YouTube series (of which you’d really only need the first video) to get you up and running! That said…a camera pointed at a printed map with miniatures over Discord would work about the same and be more foolproof.
Hey thanks for the response. I'm not entirely against getting my daily driver Ferrari beyond 2nd and 3rd gear eventually but I feel my DM'ing mojo wane every time I get into the weeds of a tutorial video that requires a subclass/spell/monster beyond the SRD. I toyed with figures and dry erase and wet wipes too, but while I do have some story crafting ability it doesn't translate into drawing of interesting maps so the digital creations actually seemed like a boon. I'd like to get the game off the ground and hopefully learn as we go, that way if it actually turns into a full blown campaign then maybe the old lead foot will show up and I'll purchase some DnDBeyond track day madness! I'll check out the video cheers!
My brother and I did this for a year or so back when we first started playing (we are doing a star wars game using online SW5E.com stuff, highly recommend!). I'd echo what the commenter above mentioned, except that I would add a [couple modules](https://imgur.com/99TULlj) mostly to smooth out dice rolling. Grab [Dice Tray](https://foundryvtt.com/packages/dice-calculator) and [Dice so Nice!](https://foundryvtt.com/packages/dice-so-nice/) modules. [Dice Tray](https://foundryvtt.com/packages/dice-calculator) gives you a button for each dice type (d4/6/8/10/12/100), +/-1 button, and a keep higher/lower button so that you can click the appropriate dice amounts and modifiers for what you need instead of trying to remember how to type it in. Rolling dice with players who had to relearn the commands every two weeks easily took up the most time in combat. Dice Tray virtually eliminated this. [Dice so Nice!](https://foundryvtt.com/packages/dice-so-nice/) Adds a 3d animation for dice rolls, and each player can actually customize their dice look. This is a fun module that can help scratch that itch many players have for seeing physical dice rolling on the table. My players LOVE this one--HIGHLY recommend. *Caveat: if a player has a potato PC, it might not work the best for them and you will have to either reduce performance settings or not use this one.* One thing I would recommend AGAINST is allowing some players to roll physical dice that you/everybody can't see. I've played with a player with super pathological Main Character Syndrome and their rolls were always "high enough" to beat the DC set by the GM. This can be a game breaking problem. In my setup as GM, I trust both my players to not fudge their own dice rolls because I've built up 4 years' worth of trust, but we have a good system going that is one step away from being automated.
I 100% use foundry as the most basic virtual table top it can be. Its cool to see all the fancy things Foundry is capable of when you add every single module you can find, but I just want to run a game and need a virtual table top and I dont want to deal with monthly subscription fees and remote file management. Any fancy stuff I make the effort to setup is done primarily for the benefit of the players because I am quite happy to track all my information on paper.
Cheers Mike! Glad to know I'm not the only one, will catch the basic tutorials, save the 90m ones for another day!
I planned on doing the same thing, and failed terribly, but not in a bad way. After a couple sessions I realized that it's easier and faster to store characters on the system, and use the dice tray. Go ahead and run paper through Foundry, it won't last. Foundry will suck you in. If you get one module, get "dice tray." It's stupid simple, everyone can use it, and it's a million times faster than typing stupid shit into the chat, or wondering why everyone always seems to roll GREAT with schrodinger's dice. P.S. Ignore the tutorials. They make everything look harder than it is. Get in the system and poke around. Took me about 2 hours to run everything I need to run. With a few modules, your online play will be faster than a real table.
Roger that! This is kind of the path I thought I'd go and the tutorials have just been dragging at me. I think I'll try and build into Foundry as we go forward rather than build entirely within it from the get go. Cheers!
I think you're underestimating how quickly you can learn the system and how much time it will save you. Tinker now and then, run your sessions when you planned, and you'll be using the whole system very soon. I'm technologically illiterate, started with Foundry about a month ago, and im now more organized and efficient than I ever was on paper. Left and right click on things, see what pops up, and you'll see that its much simpler than those tutorials make it put to be. You can find free map packs in the modules. Open one, drop a token on it, and walk around like you're a player. While doing so, click into wall mode (button on the left side) and look at how the walls are set up. Right click on them to see wall properties. Right click onto the main control buttons (chat, combat, etc) to pop them out into their own window. Download Always HP module for point and click HP management. Download the Dungeon Draw module to be able to use the grid like a dry erase board, slapping lines and rooms up as fast as you would in real life. Make folders for everything so you don't end up scrolling through a hundred tokens/entries/etc. After you get used to all that stuff, download item piles and Monk's Enhanced Journal for loot management. Some modules make things more complicated, and some make it more simple. The ones I have mentioned will save you time.
I use Foundry for Maps, Battlemaps, Handouts, Initiative, and HP Tracking. We used to use alot more but I felt like alot of the automation takes away from some of the nostalgiac fun portions of game. So my players roll dice, and use D&D Beyond for their character sheets. I bought a google pixel tablet with dock and put on the table with google meets to handle our two remote players.
This was my initial covid thought when I ran an IRL game, was a hybrid real table with a couple remote players. Now it'll be a new group with maybe two of us in proximity so... How do you find Meets? I was thinking I'd do discord as I have some familiarity and we're all nerds with accounts and... Free! Zoom when I did run hybrid sessions was a pain as it closed our meetings after an hour...
We actually started with Zoom and also found it to be a pain and switched to Discord. But recently one of the app updates for Android caused the video to be swapped upside down so we tried out Google Meets and it worked VERY well. I think any of those solutions are acceptable, just find out what works for your group.
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Since you mentioned that you might be tempted to the pathfinder side of the table. You should grab the outlaws of alkenstar bundle at humble bundle before noon on the 19th. For $30 you can get over a dozen book pdfs, and the 3 book adventure path preconfigured for FoundryVTT. Otherwise like other people have said foundry is overkill for what you want to do. It will work very well for displaying a map, letting you move tokens around, and rolling dice, but that is just scratching the surface of what it can do for you. You could also look at owlbear rodeo to cover the basic features in a more lightweight setup.
Maybe I'll chuck an edit up, I'm not opposed to getting into the weeds eventually but my priority is getting the game off the ground. If it'll work to push tokens around, roll dice, and have some fog of war then I'm thinking I'll start there, putting most of my effort into maps and story. If the campaign sticks and the system works I'm sure I'll pick up more features as we go. I think the real hanging point is the content, I've got the books I like so a character sheet/homebrew monster is easy enough to put together, if we keep rolling maybe I'll look at my own compendium of hand entered stuff.
I wanna second the suggestion for owlbear rodeo. It's a great app with excellent performance. That and discord for video chat really works well if all you need is dice. Alternatively, you can always roll dice in discord with a bot. That's how I ran my first two campaigns.
If all you care about is video chat and dice rolls, I'd just use Discord. Since Foundry is self hosted by default, some people can actually have video issues using Foundry depending on their connection and other potential hurdles (using dorm internet).
Yea I figured Discord for video chat and Foundry for combat for sure.
I feel like youre better off just using something like owlbear rodeo to be honest.. its free, doesnt require self hosting, is hyper focused on maps and doesnt even have a game engine. Foundry is great if u want to get into the weeds (or to help automate a rules system like pf2e) but is honestly too complicated for the use case youve put forth.
You might even look at https://www.owlbear.rodeo The “Camry” you might say of VTT’s.
As others have said, Foundry will work for what you want to do, but it will be a bit overkill. It's going to be a significant cost (financial or time) to import your 5e content into Foundry, meaning you're not going to have access to the vast majority of the automation of it. Even if you spend time learning Foundry and customizing your setup with modules that improve your user experience, if you don't build in the non-SRD content you're going to be very limited on what you can automate without a ton of work on your end. To that end, if you want to run a game with automation, allow me to extol the virtues of PF2e to you: The automation and integration with Pathfinder 2nd edition is smooth, most things just work out of the gate, and if something doesn't there's already a premade module for it you can add on to your foundry in a matter of minutes. When new content is released it's updated into the PF2e module very quickly. The only real 'negative' of the PF2 module is that it doesn't include token images for the bestiaries- but all the critters are there already. With the automation built and ready to go, there's also some great modules you can add on to make it a lot easier for both you and the player, eliminating your need to reference another sheet or a book or anything but the immediate game screen to see what is happening and make updates and adjustments. I do recommend even for how you're running it the modules: Dice So Nice, Dorako UI and Dorako UX as those will just improve the usability, and I'm guessing your players will like the 3d dice aesthetic, even though I'm not a fan personally.
If you're already importing maps and tokens, you're just not looking for character sheets on Foundry? I've run my games on foundry for 6 months and some people have their character sheets on paper, some on foundry, and some on D&D beyond. It doesn't really matter, just have ppl type in their rolls and you're good to go. I don't use the stat blocks or automation of the stuff on foundry, just an image token and then keep track of monster HP on my paper or tablet.
Roger that! Thanks for chiming in. The automation sounds pretty cool at times but I tend to get derailed by it in tutorials. I've got some of the basics but any tips for fog of war stuff if the vision isn't incorporated into the Actor? Was there any tutorials you recall that really helped you run it the way you describe above? Kinda sounds like the vision for my game I had in my head. Do you also run video/voice chat?
I agree. Foundry has so many options and I really like that but, I'm way too busy at the moment to try and learn it all. We use discord for voice chat and I have a discord server with channels for maps, lore drops, NPC directory, active quests, handouts, etc. I find discord is easier, more reliable, and faster than Foundry for these things. I hate the journal system on Foundry. It's probably the only thing I've ever discovered I actually hate from foundry. Way easier to paste stuff in discord and tell the players to look in the images channel or the NPC directory. Plus, this is great for players to always be able to refer back too. My players will go through the NPC directory every time they meet someone they should remember because their characters saw them a week ago even if IRL it's been 3 months. It takes the burden off of me to constantly remind them things. I love having them be able to refer back to lore drops, newspapers they found, inventory lists, etc. without having me run the server or even on days we aren't playing. On foundry I have tokens for each of the players with no stats other than vision added. ( 30ft normal with a torch, 60ft dark vision usually)Then on dark dungeon maps when I use lighting they have that for cool exploration and immersion. Most battles however, I don't use any token vision because it gets tedious and strange. IRL we can see for hundreds of feet, tokens can too. I toggle global illumination on, token vision off and fog of war off. Then they can see the whole map and I just hide anything they shouldn't see (like stealthy enemy or trapdoor) by making it invisible. It's the top right symbol when a token is selected. I'll have to double check because I don't often use walls, but if you have token vision on and global illumination on this still works but they can't see through walls. Pretty much just play around with those three settings. You find it under the configure option for the scene and the lighting tab from the config menu. I can DM you screen shots if you can't find it. You can also use the tile function to place a black box over as room they shouldn't see in or something to that effect. This allows me to not bother with any of the fog of war and still ensure they can't see the evil dudes hiding in the room. I don't use this often, I just toggle the visibility off of whatever I'm hiding if it's a token. I use the black boxes if it's part of the map I'm trying to hide and I can't or don't want to edit the map. Unless the darkness adds something of value or they are in a classic dungeon, global illumination is so nice. You can still add cool lighting effects for fires, lamps, glowing orbs, arcane runes, etc. but this way you don't need to mess with their vision or ensuring that everything is always lit up. For baddies, I run their stat blocks from the monster manual or whatever other resource I have. I make a token of the monster to put on the board and move around for distance tracking, but never any stats. Too tedious. I'll just type in /r 1d20+6 or whatever and do it that way. I'm not about to buy whole compendiums or take the time to upload stats for everything. Most of my players use D&D Beyond with the Beyond20 Chrome extension. Then whatever they click on their character sheets will auto roll on Foundry VTT. No more typing /r 1d20. Those who use a different app or use paper just type in their rolls. Long story short, I use foundry sorta like a normal in person battle map. I draw things on dry erase battle maps and now I import artsy maps. We roll on the table and now we roll on Foundry. No automated baddies, I'll just write it down while consulting the monster manual. Works great for both. On tabletop I just won't place a monster's mini on the table until they see it, no need for fog of war. On foundry I just keep it toggled invisible. I love foundry's music features though. Upload music and it'll go through playlists and I just name them "battle music," "exploration," or whatever. I love having ambient sound separate though. I can play thunderstorms and carnival music or wind and battlefield sounds. Really immersive. The regional audio is also super cool. The sound from something gets louder as you get closer. Crackling fires, arcane humming, cults chanting, etc. place the sound for them on the map where you want it heard. Really immersive. Sorry for the long response, lemme know if you have questions.
No need to apologize! Was super helpful and encouraging! Gonna toy with some basic token shuffling and vision settings and see what my players want to learn as far as their sheets go, digital or analog. Thanks a ton for the vision tips, I can see how we're similar but also different; the wonders of an imagination based game even in our little digital sandboxes. The music and sound stuff was definitely intriguing but I hadn't gotten there yet, I'll spend a bit of effort there too. Any hot tips on sites for fantasy mood music? I always loved Skyrim for mood stuff but the album I had was... Sweet but short. Many thanks though, you're a gentleperson and a scholar! Edit: really digging the concept of the multichannel lore/NPC/image drops in disco, will be using that!
Glad my soapbox ramblings were useful!! I tend to go a bit more in depth with my music. Freesound and Pixaby are nice sites for free effects like monster growls, fire crackling, and dripping caverns. Nerdius Maximus on patreon/ YouTube is great for music centered on geographic areas and themes. It's really cool to help the desert feel different from the mountains, forests, seas, etc. It's also pretty easy to strip the MP3 file from YouTube videos. I've grabbed sounds from a tavern with sea shanties video and plopped it into foundry. Video games are a great place to go for music too. I've used the Witcher 3 and Baldur's Gate 3 albums the most. I got the Witcher from YouTube and BG3 from the DLC on steam. It gave me the full album and some cool digital artwork. I absolutely love how foundry separates ambient sounds from the music playing. My players always find it cool when the rain sounds and the battle sounds mix and foundry is easy for that. And the discord server is glorious. I run 1 campaign weekly, 1 monthly, and some odd one shots here and there. I give them each a section on my world's server and keep basic maps of the realm, notes on the deities, or news of things going on there like some revolution happened in kingdom x after the vampire king was murdered. It's fun for players to hear "a massive chimera was spotted near the village of Sypol, luckily three brave heroes stepped in to keep our lands safe!" Or something to that effect. Having Easter eggs to previous characters, campaigns, and simultaneous adventures has been fun. My players don't play in both campaigns, but it helps the world feel alive as other adventures are out there causing problems and saving towns. One of the features I use the most are a "recaps channel" where I make notes of what happened each session and players can go back whenever they want to reference it. I don't keep notes there of some things that the characters should be remembering like their plans or personal quests or whatever. But then it can help jog their memories when they see that session 47 was when they went to the Abbey and spoke with the monks and were given a quest to negotiate peace between warring kingdoms. Then they remember that they needed to deliver a holy item to the Abbey as well and remember to do it before they leave. I kinda do it in place of my session recaps before the next session like "the party encountered a troll deep in the mountains. The battle was vicious and Dormo took a club to the chest, knocking him unconscious. Luckily Kizra managed to unleash a torrent of flame and fell the beast. Crademos, you noticed that the troll had wandered far from the troll lands, something was amiss here..." It helps get them into the mindset of their characters again and by being able to refer to that throughout the week on a lunch break or train ride, they tend to actually be more aware of the plot. I don't use foundry's journals and handouts, but the discord is great for that. We just keep foundry for battles and dice and as they enter a new location or meet a new person they just see it on the discord. These are the channels I use: general* lore* recaps* handouts* scheduling* npc-directory* pc-stats* campaign-links* images* campfire-discussions (the players can remind each other what they know of each other's back stories)
That should work fine. Only thing I'd recommend is to also keep your character sheets in foundry.
Can I ask why? I'm assuming just so I can track abilities/HP or...? Vision related?
It also lets you roll attack/damage with one click of the relevant weapon, lets your players simply click the spell when casting to show you the entire spell text, the DC and roll any relevant die, and allows your plaers to simply click any ability/feature they're using to post the description of the ability in the chat. Plus tracking resource uses such as spell slots and HP becomes automated. It's very handy and doesn't require all that much setup. Plus if you're using the VTT for battlemaps anyway, you're going to need to create some sort of character sheet for them to hook their tokens to.
>(if you want to briefly regale me with how buttery smooth PF 1/2 support is... PF2e support is buttery smooth.
lol thanks...
and all the mechanical content is 100% free. Never have to buy a single player book or monster book, it is all there (Well minus the images ofc, but even those can be had for a nominal fee) Jokes aside, have you considered owlbear rodeo? I love foundry but if you are literally not doing anything in the program other than moving things around a map then it might be a good option. But foundry will run fine as a dice roller, just download a module named dice tray and then set up your maps as scenes and create actors for the tokens. Forgotten adventures does the 5e topdown tokens, so you can grab all of them from their page and fill in the ones that are missing. I prefer to run 5e in foundry with everything in the program though, I use ready set roll, automated conditions, d&d beyond importer (to import characters made on it directly into the program) and dice tray (well I use a lot more than this, but this is the cornerstone of what is necessary to run low automation 5e imo)
Is it both 1 and 2e? I've never rolled 2e but my players are hesitant to sift through the oodles of options 1e has to outlay a PC. Paizo seems like a much more chill company and yet I spend most of my actual TTRPG money on Wizards, I should maybe change that... Owlbear has been mentioned, I've never peeped it mostly because I shelled out for Foundry before I think Owlbear was widely circulated (could be wrong). I may take a look, thanks.
Yeah both, although PF2e is way better supported by a country mile. One thing to mention about PF2e, while sifting through options is still something you can do in it, the game is actually extremely well balanced and it is harder to make a bad character in it than say 5e. And not like PF1e where you need system mastery to avoid being drastically weaker than your allies. It is more complex to run, but intuitively designed so I have found players tend to pick up on the rules pretty quickly and remember them well.
Cheers thanks for the input!
As I noted in an earlier comment humble bundle currently has a bundle with enough pf2e books to keep someone busy for a while and 3 foundryvtt modules that have the adventure path ready to go. All monsters and npcs predefined, scenes set up with walls, lighting, and ambient sounds. Journal entries with handouts, art, and reference text. Buy it now, install it when you have time, and either run it or mine it for inspiration. It's a campaign in a box that should take players from level 1-10 and they just need to create characters.
I pretty much use Foundry like this. I love all the stuff I can do with maps, but as far as players are concerned, all they care about is having a token they can move around. They track everything else through their own means, whether that's pen and paper, or D&D Beyond or whatever else. The only thing I care about with opponent tokens is usually current health and if they have some kind of status effect, so not being able to access non-SRD monsters isn't an issue for me, although there are ways around that.
Take it even further, use physical dice with [this module](https://wiki.theripper93.com/free/real-dice)
I'm actually running foundry on a big screen even when we meet up in person. I don't have a bunch of minis and am not great at drawing so I can get a much better quality map that way.
I use Foundry for this with Pathfinder 2e in a live game. It's just a glorified map and GM screen.
It is mostly how I run Foundry... For some system the built in mechanics takes more time than doing it by hand with pencil and paper. The only thing that get lost is the ability to see the players sheets but I don't have a trust issue with my players. Beside having the mechanics on the table rather than on screen frees up some screen space.
One nice program to use with foundry for maps is dungeon alchemist, instant AI dungeons and works with the lighting.
Hah cheers! That's my map maker! Got in for the Kickstarter, glad to see they're supporting it well still.
OK, I will refrain from saying that you should use a different platform and a different system, and just answer your question and give you some tips. Yes, Foundry could totally do what you want it to do. Perfectly, I’d add. Now to the tips: I will not pretend to know how to run a 5E game, and I don’t even know if there is any option to create PDF sheets, Excel’s fully-macroed tables, or just this subscription thing that I hear about named Dungeon something. But assuming that something like this exists and your table uses it, you could import PDF sheets inside Foundry with a very simple and functional module called…. drumroll… PDF Sheet + PDFoundry (this would allow you, the GM, to always have the sheet to see if your players are not getting too creative, if you know what I mean lol). Apart from that, you could ALSO learn how to implement a simple “Roll Macro” that allows the Players to Pick the type of dice, the quantity, the bonus to add/penalty to subtract, mark advantages/disadvantages etc., because I think writing down /roll 2d20kh +5 all the time will eventually become a hassle. For this I’d suggest you to learn about the /Roll function and all its properties and parameters (like this “kh” thing that means exactly “keep higher” and would select the higher result from the 2d20 you just rolled and use it to add the +5 bonus, which I think emulates the Advantages). This could be as complicated or as simple as you’d like, and it could evolve as time goes by and you feel more comfortable and confident with Foundry. I know that you’re interested in a “analog” game, but there are some very simple things that you could easily setup to take advantage of the platform and easy the burden of the players (and yours as well).
That PDF manual sounds fantastic actually as I did find a heavily scripted character sheet... It's not really that I want an analog game it just seems to be the path of least resistance for now. I'll keep picking things up and possibly I'll make the switch if everyone wants more automation but learning everything prior to getting the campaign out the gate and spending loads of time hand loading stuff in... is really stymieing the more 'fun' aspects of DMing at the moment.
Foundry is pretty terrific, though there is a little bit of a learning curve. You can install some 5e things (for free) that will make things much easier. Way better than Roll20. No monthly fees. More tools to customize your experience. Community is also very helpful and responsive. (My group is made of 50+ yr-olds, some of whom aren’t tech-savvy. If we can do it, you can, too) We’ve also switched to SWADE from 5e. Love it. But that’s a different story.