Blair’s Guide

Creating a Foundry VTT module can be quite daunting, time-consuming, and fiddly. I created a module generator to make it easier to get a module up and running quickly. Depending on your requirements, you may not even have to open a text editor.

Visit the generator, fill in the form and download your module zip with all of the values filled in.

The generator supports two modes:

• Scene Packer integrated
  • This mode (listed as “new module” in the generator) creates a new module for you, with Scene Packer module functionality already integrated. This mode is particularly useful for content creators who have an adventure and want to make use of Scene Packer’s functionality, but don’t know any JavaScript or aren’t wanting to fiddle around in a text editor.
• Standalone Module
  • This mode creates a module without any dependencies. You could use this to quickly create a Shared Compendium Module to share your actors/items/journals between worlds. Alternatively, this mode can be used as a starting point for any custom module you wanted to build.

Module generator: https://sneat.github.io/scene-packer-module-generator/

Are you a content creator? Might you become one now that creating adventures is a much easier process? Drop us a line in the comments and let us know your thoughts!

This article is paired with an AMA (Ask Me Anything) at the Foundry Reddit. Questions for Cody? Find the AMA link *HERE*

Just another skeleton?

I think not.

You can check out Ben’s creations at his Battlemaps Patreon and his Tokens Patreon, or hop into his Discord and see what’s coming (Castle Ravenloft anyone?)

This article is paired with an AMA (Ask Me Anything) at the Foundry Reddit. Questions for Dorgendubal? Find the AMA link *HERE*

Moulinette is a series of modules created by Sven Werlen, aka Dorgendubal, a talented programmer from Switzerland who now lives in Montréal, Canada. The modules consist of a core and 5 sub-modules which have different functions. You only need to install the core and then you are free to install whichever modules suit your needs.

There’s a lot here so let’s dive in! First up we hear from Sven and learn how this fantastic suite of modules came about.

For more on Moulinette and Moulinette Cloud, head over to Dorgendubal’s Patreon or stop by his Discord and check it out for yourself!

Questions for Baileywiki? This article is paired with the Foundry Reddit, which is hosting an AMA (Ask Me Anything) with Baileywiki *HERE*

Let’s talk with Baileywiki and see what we can learn!

I’m an inventor before I’m an artist.

— Baileywiki

For more information from Baileywiki on his work, you can visit his Discord. For access to his advanced maps for Foundry (and much more), you can support him via his Patreon. Big shout out to Baileywiki for making the time to talk with us!

Questions for KaKaRoTo? This article is paired with the Foundry Reddit, which is hosting an AMA (Ask Me Anything) with KaKaRoTo *HERE*

ALSO: This Saturday, May 1st at 1PM Pacific the Foundry Discord will be launching the very first episode of an official Foundry VTT Twitch series called “Hammering It Out”, which will feature KaKaRoTo! Tune in to the Foundry VTT Twitch channel to catch it.

I’ve recently had to adapt from being a software developer to being an entrepeneur, a business owner, a boss and about a dozen other titles.

— KaKaRoTo

I first learned how to actually create something using code when I was in high school. I was maybe 16 years old and I had a programmable calculator (the TI-83). I was addicted to the “Snake” game on a Nokia phone belonging to one of my friends. I didn’t have a phone, but I had my calculator, so I decided to program that game into it. I figured that I should be able to do it…how hard can it be? That was also the time I learned about reverse engineering, because without realizing it, that’s what I was doing since my calculator didn’t have a user manual and there was no internet back then. I had to try and figure it out on my own.

I think Foundry’s features are very complete and most of the new features at this point are just adding on an already amazing product.

— KaKaRoTo

For more information from KaKaRoTo on programming and software development, you can visit his blog. For access to his R20 Converter (and much more), you can support him via his Patreon. Huge thanks to KaKaRoTo for making the time to speak with us!

The key to making this landing page truly interactive, is the use of a few modules.

• Trigger Happy for clicking on things to activate other things
• Forien’s Quest Log for the quest log system
• Inline Web Viewer for accessing an interactive website through journals
• LootSheetNPC5e for the loot chest if you’re in 5e. It’s available for other systems like Pathfinder2E and 3.5e as well.

Trigger Happy is a powerful module, and if you are not familiar with how to use it, we recommend you start here. Here is a sample of Toldori’s landing page triggers for the Trigger Happy module:

// Click to change the scene
@Token[AndoranMap] @Trigger[click] @Scene[Andoran]

// Click to open character sheet
@Token[YorikCard] @Trigger[click] @Actor[Yorik]
@Token[PartyLoot] @Trigger[click] @Actor[Party's Loot Chest]

// Click to call macro that opens up Forien's Quest Log
@Token[LandingBook] @Trigger[click] @Macro[QuestLog]

// Click to open up journal
@Token[InnerSea] @Trigger[click] @JournalEntry[httpspathfinderwikicom]

// The macro used to open up Forien's Quest Log

QuestLog.render(true);

The key to the creation of triggers is to use the module’s ‘transparent token’ to cover the area of an image you wish to trigger with, then make sure that you toggle the token to be “Invisible” to the players. Combining this with using the “@Trigger[click]” inside the journal entry will create an illusion for your players that they are interacting with things placed on the scene. The transparent token, macros and a helpful README will appear in your compendium after activating the module. Follow the provided instructions (and check youtube for additional helpful videos) and you will be activating things in no time!

Huge thanks to Todori for sharing this fantastic landing page!

This landing page makes use of two modules.

• Parallaxia for the scrolling player images. Additional information on how to use this module can be found here.
• Multilevel Tokens for the teleportation effect. This module also has a great deal of possible uses. Start here.

Cystere.Orling says: I got the scrolling image idea from this post by u/DragonbeardNick and when I asked him how he had the images cycling through what appeared to be an image wider than the screen, he said that it was one long image. For the scrolling I created a tile that was the height of the image I used (using photopea to simply put five separate player images onto one wide image) and the width of the poster. I used the very long image of five as the “fill” image for the tile so when I placed it, it appeared stretched to fit. Then when I selected the tile and activated parallaxia, the image became its actual size and only showed what is currently in view (or in frame), so it appears that it is cycling through.

Check out the modules, pull together some fantastic art, and start creating! See what you can build and post your results in the forum for everyone to see!

Editor’s Note

Isometric maps and tokens take a traditional ‘top-down’ viewpoint and change it to a ‘three-dimensional’ offset view, creating a fantastic and nuanced perspective, as seen here:

Let’s talk with Grape_Juice and see what we can learn!

FHub: What’s your history with RPG’s and VTTs?

GJ: Oh wow, that takes me back to many old school games we all used to play, their distinctive feature was the unique and memorable art in the UI, and of course, isometric view. Games like Fallout, BG and Diablo to name a few. Most of these I played when I was much younger, and I think that’s what set that concept of RPG’s and fantasy for me.

My story with VTT’s started like everybody’s I assume. I used to play with a group of random people I met on the internet on Roll20 and used to DM and play on a table as well. When Covid hit, we tried using Roll20 exclusively, but I really had issues running games and felt there had to be a better way. Long story short I saw Foundry and fell in love.

FHub: What got you into programming with Foundry?

GJ: That’s a funny story. I had a ‘potato’ computer and was running Dungeon of the Mad Mage (DotMM) in its full HUGE map’s glory. I loved the dynamic lighting of Foundry but the performance took a huge hit when running 5,000+ walls and lights. I didn’t want to go back to Roll20 and suddenly developed a burning interest in trying to understand why it worked so slowly (moving a token took around 7 seconds and so did opening doors). I dove into the code for running performance monitoring, which led me into the wall and ray-tracing calculations. I thought of an idea to solve the issue and it worked! It took a couple of sleepless nights of tinkering with Foundry and getting to know Javascript, but that increased the application’s performance and I was ecstatic.

When I saw a lot of people had the same issue, I decided to turn my patches into a module and so the notorious “Haste” module was born¹. From there helping people out and creating things that brought joy, mixed with a love for RPG’s really set a fire under me. I created my second module, the MiniMap, which also felt like something I needed to run DotMM, and of course, what old school RPG doesn’t have a cool minimap?

¹Editor’s Note: Haste has been deprecated in Foundry Core .7x and newer

Once that was out there, I wanted to bring more people to Foundry, and after seeing how many were on the fence due to their sunken cost in Fantasy Grounds, I decided to pick up the mantle and create the FG_Converter. It took a bit of time to get a working version, but I saw I could really make an impact and help a lot of people move to Foundry. This was a turning point for me since I got enjoyment from making something for other people and not just something for myself.

The Foundry community is something I fell in love with. So many helpful and supportive people, the joys of hacking away at Foundry, and the feeling of making an impact are the things that charmed me.

FHub: Programming modules seems daunting to many of us, but lots of people try their hand at it. Programming for isometric play seems downright unimaginable. How difficult are the problems posed by this type of programming?

GJ: The major issue I had is no other VTT I know of tried to tackle the problem. It felt like uncharted territory. Sure there are many isometric games, and even 3D games, but a VTT? Isometric play must make it easy for a GM to build scenes and for players to play in them. At the same time, it must still work with all the other features the VTT has to offer, such as dynamic lighting and measurement tools, and even use the same tokens and assets.

On one side you have the isometric requirements, on another the player’s experience, a third is the GM’s view, and finally, you have the complexity of trying to adapt a VTT that was not designed with isometric in mind.

The difficulties were mostly related to figuring out matrix transformations, patching parts of Foundry to work in different ways, figuring out how to make rooms work when viewed from inside or outside, some shader work, a sprinkle of geometric algebra, and performance.

The latest feature I added provides an example of what kinds of things need to be done in order to work in isometric view:  When playing top-down, most tiles are never going to be placed on top of one another. In the isometric view, tiles are going to be placed and stacked together, whether it’s a room, a hallway with walls, or a door in a door frame. Building scenes is a difficult task because each tile has a ‘bounding box’ around it, which works great for a top-down view, but increases the difficulty of selecting the tile in isometric view. After reviewing feedback from the community, I added a “pixel perfect” hit-area for each tile, which means that the selection of tiles will happen based on which tile appears under the cursor, taking into account transparent areas.

FHub: Why Isometric? What intrigued you about this style of play?

GJ: After I made a few modules and saw that a lot of people liked what I did, I started making things that I thought people wanted and that would be fun and challenging to create, rather than make what I needed for my own games. I wanted to create a random dungeon generator which had both top-down and isometric modes. I built the code for the top-down and suddenly realized making it work in isometric was going to be hard, and there wasn’t an easy way to play in isometric in the first place. Then it hit me, I had to figure out a way to make isometric work in Foundry. Suddenly all those old school games came to mind and I saw some beautiful art in isometric style that captivated me. It made so much more sense than top-down perspective and the problem was difficult and interesting.

I find isometric style to be the perfect middle ground between 3D VTT’s such as Tabletop Simulator (which is hard to create scenes for and you can’t use 2D art) and top-down perspective, which lacks some visual information you want to give to players. It looks beautiful and unique, stands out, and brings back a lot of nostalgia.

FHub: What’s the future of isometric and Foundry? Where do you see it going?

Finally, once everything is working well and Foundry has stabilized a bit more, I can let the module out of early access for everyone to use and enjoy for free!

FHub: How would you recommend Foundry users find resources for isometric play?

GJ: First, check out Azathought‘s website and YouTube Channel.

Amazing Artists in no particular order:

FHub: You have several other modules and a few projects in the works, what can you tell us about those?

GJ: I am extremely excited about “Material Dice”, my next project. It’s a bit ambitious, but I want people to use their real dice when using a VTT! The twist is that it’s going to work automatically.

The idea is this:  you can place your phone above your dice tray/table, click a roll in Foundry for an attack or a save and a window will pop out telling you which dice you need to throw onto the dice tray. Once you roll, some AI magic happens and in less than a second, those dice results are used as if Foundry rolled them for you.

I have been training some AI models on around 15,000 images of dice, and a lot of them are from people on my discord. Now you have a use for all the cool dice you bought before COVID!!

A huge THANK YOU to Grape_Juice for taking the time to answer our questions! Consider supporting his efforts to make Isometric play possible, and his other fantastic modules via his Patreon. Come by and chat with him on Discord, suggest ideas and see ongoing updates to his modules.

What are your thoughts on isometric play? Have you ever thought about coding? Have a killer idea for a module? Let’s hear what you have to say!

Editor’s note

Posted on February 2, 2021

Goin’ Virtual

I was hesitant for a long time to try the virtual tabletop experience – it just felt like it couldn’t compete with having a group gather around a table in person. I wanted to actually participate in some games as a player, though, not just as a GM to the limited audience of just my immediate family- but COVID made that difficult without going online.

I ended up playing in a D&D campaign and a series of short Mighty Protectors ones on Roll20, both of which are still ongoing. While I was correct in my assessment that it’s just not the same as in-person play, it did turn out to be decidedly non-horrible! There’s something to be said for being able to join up with players from all over the world without having to leave the house. Another, unexpected advantage I discovered, is that it’s a lot easier to get even the local folks to show up regularly if there’s no travel and they can just roll into bed after the session ends.

There’s been a campaign setting idea bouncing around in my head for a year or so, and a couple of old friends have pestered me to start up a regular game ever since they heard I’d gotten back into the hobby. In December, I decided to give in to both urges.

What follows is a very-much-not-exhaustive overview of the systems I considered in trying to make this happen and which one I ultimately decided on.

To Roll20 or not to Roll20?

The obvious choice was to just jump into Roll20 since I was familiar with it as a player and had spent some time watching videos about setting up games there. It’s a highly viable option with a lot of support and a lot of users, with at least rudimentary options for playing nearly any RPG I might choose to run.

But I’d experienced enough performance issues on days when their servers were busy that I wanted to investigate other options. Add to that the fact that a lot of features I would want to use would require a paid subscription – including taking advantage of any of the wide array of plug-ins developed by the community.

(I already had a paid subscription because I was working on overhauling the existing Mighty Protectors character sheet there, and they charge would-be developers for the privilege of enhancing their site for them. This, and the cumbersome nature of the development process under their system, was a further turn-off.)

So I started looking into other options. There are a number of simple map-sharing packages, but I wanted something more complete than that – the ability to host character sheets, set up click-to-roll actions, etc., at the very least.

Fantasy, Grounded

The second VTT I looked into was Fantasy Grounds, which has been around for quite some time but received a major overhaul in 2020 with its “Unity” release.

I fully admit I didn’t really spend as much time researching this one as it might deserve and I didn’t actively try it out beyond maybe a dozen or so clicks in the online demo. My understanding is that the big strengths of FG are its ability to automate almost any in-game process and its large collection of user-created scripts to do so.

The thing is, though, that there’s only so much I would want to automate. I’m not sure at what point the virtualization of a pen-and-paper RPG turns it into a video game, but it’s not a line I want to cross. On top of that, if I’m running a game I want players to actually learn and understand the underlying system, not memorize what buttons to click to fire off some process. To me, firing attack and save rolls off from a character sheet is fine, for instance, but having the system manage the PCs’ hit points for them goes too far. Not that FG would force this, by any means, but I wouldn’t really be playing to its strengths.

Its user interface, even in the new version, has a reputation for being confusing and difficult to work with. Instructional videos on setting up games confirmed this in my mind. It’s not horrible, but seems like it could have been better thought out.

The list of supported (official and user-created) games is smaller than Roll20’s, and there’s no free option at all beyond the demo. You either spend $149 a year for the “Ultimate” subscription so you can host games and invite non-paid players, or choose the $30 option where your players also all have to pay the same.

Editor’s Note: The editorial team would like to issue a correction in that the price point of $149 is a one off purchase, and not an annual subscription.

So… kind of a non-starter for me. Lots of folks who use it love it, but I just didn’t see it offering significant benefit to me even leaving the price point aside.

I Foundry what I was looking for

Foundry VTT is a new entry in this market, released in 2020. It’s competing against two reigning juggernauts, but it seems to have an enthusiastic and growing community. Foundry takes a different approach to the virtual tabletop paradigm in a number of important ways:

• There are no subscriptions. You buy a software license for a one-time $50 fee (I actually got it on a Black Friday sale for less) and you have access to all its features forever. All the lighting and sound features, all the community-created plug-ins, all the game systems, the ability to create custom compendiums, everything – up to and including the ability to build plug-ins and game systems yourself, should you be so inclined. (There’s a 30 day window for a refund, should you make the purchase but decide not to use the software. Also note that there are for-sale third party add-ons that are not free.)
• The base software is self-hosted – meaning it runs on your own PC. I’m lucky enough to have a relatively fast and stable internet connection, and Foundry’s performance for my players has thus far been significantly smoother than my normal Roll20 experience. There are a number of options for external hosting as well, ranging from “free or very cheap but complicated to set up” – Amazon Web Services – to “pretty much point and click and still comes out cheaper than the paid options on those other services unless you splurge for the mega packages”. (I’m probably going to blow any savings I might have made in switching from R20 on the purchase of a recent-model Raspberry Pi to host my games in the future, but that’s not at all necessary and entirely because I have trouble resisting the lure of a shiny new gadget.)

I frankly don’t have enough experience with the nuances of all three systems from a GM perspective to be able to do a fair direct comparison. Their feature lists have more in common than not, though the details vary.

Instead, I can point out some of the aspects of Foundry that I like, which contributed to my choosing it over the other options.

• Of the three choices, I prefer its user interface. There’s nothing magical about it, but for the most part it feels better organized to me.
• I don’t like the way it does everything by default (I’m looking at you, 5e dice rolling without the “Better Rolls” plugin!) and there are features I’d like to see added or expanded… but in almost every case I was able to find something among the community created mods that granted me the capability I wanted.
• Did I mention it performs well?
• I’ve played a bit with setting up (subscription-only) dynamic lighting in Roll20 and have found Foundry’s (no extra cost) implementation much better, allowing for open-able and close-able doors and windows as well as sight blocking features that don’t stop tokens from being moved through them – such as bushes and trees.
• One of my favorite features is the ability to add sounds to a map and have the volume scale up as characters approach the point it emanates from. For instance, a small underground waterfall might not be heard from the cave entrance, but as the party delves inward they start to hear the sound of running water. Scenes can have their own playlists attached, and the GM can set up libraries of sounds to play with a click. Gnolls are a problem in the low-level area of my new campaign, and the players have learned to expect something’s about to go down when I play the sounds of yipping hyenas…
• Casting area effect spells can automatically pop up a place-able template for the area they’re supposed to cover.
• Yesterday I discovered that for a druid character I could set up a list of potential Wild Shape forms that they have read-only access to; now the player can drag and drop an animal onto her character sheet and it will pop up a selection screen with “Wild Shape” as an option – clicking that will transform her character sheet to show the physical properties of the animal with her INT/WIS/CHA/etc, along with converting her token to show the new shape. An “undo transform” option on the character sheet then turns everything back to normal!

There’s a great set of tutorial videos at a YouTube channel called Encounter Library. In particular, their “Foundry VTT Basics” playlist was very useful not only when starting to get my campaign set up, but in selling me on the idea of trying the product out.

There are, of course, trade-offs.

• As a relatively new system, it doesn’t yet support a library of games as large as Roll20 does…but thanks to community efforts, the list is already long and growing quickly. It also doesn’t yet have a large library of ready-made content, although this is changing as well both through official support from game makers (Savage Worlds and Warhammer Fantasy as of this writing) and through user-created adventures, etc.
• For D&D players, there are compendiums included that cover everything that’s part of the public 5th Edition SRD – as is true of Roll20 and FG. Those systems allow you to purchase the other Wizards of the Coast material in digital form to add those compendiums as well. Foundry doesn’t have this capability in a direct way, but there’s a (user-created) solution that in many ways is better because it’s not directly tied to Foundry: if you use D&D Beyond and purchase any of the WOTC rule books, adventures, etc., for sale there, those can be imported and cleanly integrated into Foundry. If you’re like me and refuse to pay WOTC hundreds of dollars more for books you’ve already bought in hardcover, it’s relatively easy to add in non-SRD items on an as-needed basis.
• Pathfinder 2nd Edition is also well supported for the PF players out there. Sadly, Mighty Protectors is not yet one of the systems Foundry directly supports – but the development process looks much more straightforward than Roll20’s did, so I’m hoping to try my hand at it myself.
• It’s still being actively developed and enhancements and fixes are relatively frequent. Overall this is a good thing, but it raises the possibility that something your game (or your favorite plug-in) depends on might change. It doesn’t force you to update, though, so it’s easy enough to wait a week or so after each new version to make sure any plug-in incompatibilities get addressed.
• There may be technical challenges to setting it up because of the need to grant your players access it on your home network. For the base PC-hosted install the steps to do this are usually simple with easy-to-follow instructions, but might still be daunting to some.
• Similarly, if your internet connection is slow or unreliable, you’re going to have to use an external host or choose a different option.
• There’s just one guy who’s the owner and sole developer of the base product. He’s enthusiastic and does it full time, but if anything happens to him, the future of Foundry becomes questionable.
• It doesn’t yet have the vast library of commercial supporting material such as the token packs, custom adventures, map packs, etc. that can be purchased through and for the Big Two. Not a huge consideration for me but it might be for some… and it’s changing as more people adopt FVTT.

So, in summary… yeah, I kind of really like Foundry at this point.

A Guided Tour

A few screenshots from a recent encounter built using a ready-made-for-Foundry scene from The Mad Cartographer‘s Patreon. (A sampling of free TMC maps can be downloaded as a module inside Foundry as well.)

– Edited by SecretSquirrel