I bought Foundry in August 2022, and from time to time I calculate how much I would have paid for some subpar subscription alternative by now. It always warms my heart.
11:52 While you can't do folders, you actually *can* rearrange the scenes in the navigation bar. I have done so, and even created an unmodded world just to make sure that was on the base Foundry and not a mod I was running. You just drag the scene you want to move onto the box to the left of where you want to move it to (using your screen for example, dragging Phandalin Region Map onto Ruins of Thundertree will move Phandalin Region Map onto the 2nd spot on your bar, pushing Scene 1, 2 etc to the right). It works most of the time, but sometimes it's fiddly, but not frustratingly so. Just make sure to actually have it on the box location, not the spaces in between the boxes.
Self hosting foundry does feel like a networking challenge for wanna-be-admins 😅 I’m also hosting without port forwarding and ended up with tunnel from Cloudflare for about 5$ a year for my own domain. It felt like a good compromise on price and effort 🙂
I think the limitless options and steep learning curve are not a problem. The problem for me has been that there are no examples of how to use Foundry at Level 1. And level 1 is relative of course. For me level 1 is not just slapping a scene down and saying go. All tutorial online are from people who have sunk 100s of hours in and are giving very advanced examples. Or you have the foundry guides which are just explanations of the possible features. For us trying to DM our first game we just need to fumble around for 10-20 hours till we come up with our own suitable Level 1 or begginer game. I might release a tutorial for begginers from a beginner. I’m at that 15 hour mark and finally have a grasp of the minimum effort required to start a game that I can be proud of.
It's a great idea for a video! I also plan to make a "Foundry For Beginners" video sometime in the near future because I agree, a lot of the tutorials cover a lot of stuff that just doesn't interest or overwhelms complete beginners.
Picked this up early this year in some sale or something. Haven't really used it until today and I was just blown away. I have been using DnD Beyond for my gaming sessions with their new Maps feature and such. But this thing, this is just outstanding. I set it up on a nice AWS Server, launch it whenever I want to do work on it. Stop the AWS Instance when not using it and boom I have a dedicated INCREDIBLY cheap VTT with so much freaking functionality lol. I am still learning everything about it and there is just so so so much. And the modules omg, and the importers its insane. For sure something I am going to start slowly migrating my entire campaign over to.
I know there’s a ton of “How to Foundry “ vids, but they all seem to tell you a million features that you believe new GMs don’t need. If you did a FoundryFor Dummies series, maybe walking people step-by-step on how to run a classic starter adventure like LMOP, I’d watch the hell out of that
For me, an important feature is that I can do whatever I want. For my private gaming, I don't care if I have any rights to broadcast a music track that I want to play in the background. With all the other VTTs, you are always somehow restricted when it comes to music. I have as much storage space as my hard drive can hold and don't have to start juggling files to make room at some point. The built-in video function, which I have running thanks to a mod via Lifekit, just works. With all the other VTTs, the webcam image is either in an extra window (e.g. Discord) or doesn't work reliably. Plus, great system support thanks to the good community. I run Pathfinder 2, Foundry takes so much work off my hands that it's incredibly easy.
After discovering foundry, I never looked back. One thing to maybe note is that now GPT can write AMAZING scripts/macros for you for nearly every complex thing you might want it to do. I feel like the Foundry folks are not focused on improving foundry though. There's so many annoying things like you mentioned of having to open compendiums to do searches for something. Basically the MOD community is adding things foundry should do inherently--but they're simply not choosing to do that. I think once the D&D Beyond system comes out, it'll eventually crush foundry--maybe in 3 years. Still, Foundry is the best system out there.
I bought Foundry in August 2022, and from time to time I calculate how much I would have paid for some subpar subscription alternative by now. It always warms my heart.
It do be nice to only have to pay once for a product like FVTT. 🤌
11:52 While you can't do folders, you actually *can* rearrange the scenes in the navigation bar. I have done so, and even created an unmodded world just to make sure that was on the base Foundry and not a mod I was running. You just drag the scene you want to move onto the box to the left of where you want to move it to (using your screen for example, dragging Phandalin Region Map onto Ruins of Thundertree will move Phandalin Region Map onto the 2nd spot on your bar, pushing Scene 1, 2 etc to the right). It works most of the time, but sometimes it's fiddly, but not frustratingly so. Just make sure to actually have it on the box location, not the spaces in between the boxes.
The biggest problem with Foundry is figuring out Port Forwarding whenever I visit my parents or otherwise am not using Foundry on my router.
Oh good point! Self-hosting when you're not using your normal router adds another curve ball into the mix.
Self hosting foundry does feel like a networking challenge for wanna-be-admins 😅
I’m also hosting without port forwarding and ended up with tunnel from Cloudflare for about 5$ a year for my own domain. It felt like a good compromise on price and effort 🙂
I think the limitless options and steep learning curve are not a problem. The problem for me has been that there are no examples of how to use Foundry at Level 1.
And level 1 is relative of course. For me level 1 is not just slapping a scene down and saying go.
All tutorial online are from people who have sunk 100s of hours in and are giving very advanced examples. Or you have the foundry guides which are just explanations of the possible features.
For us trying to DM our first game we just need to fumble around for 10-20 hours till we come up with our own suitable Level 1 or begginer game.
I might release a tutorial for begginers from a beginner. I’m at that 15 hour mark and finally have a grasp of the minimum effort required to start a game that I can be proud of.
It's a great idea for a video! I also plan to make a "Foundry For Beginners" video sometime in the near future because I agree, a lot of the tutorials cover a lot of stuff that just doesn't interest or overwhelms complete beginners.
@@nattertot I would love if you made that. I know that’s a lot of work so I look forward to it when it comes!
Great content so far!
Picked this up early this year in some sale or something. Haven't really used it until today and I was just blown away. I have been using DnD Beyond for my gaming sessions with their new Maps feature and such. But this thing, this is just outstanding. I set it up on a nice AWS Server, launch it whenever I want to do work on it. Stop the AWS Instance when not using it and boom I have a dedicated INCREDIBLY cheap VTT with so much freaking functionality lol. I am still learning everything about it and there is just so so so much. And the modules omg, and the importers its insane. For sure something I am going to start slowly migrating my entire campaign over to.
I know there’s a ton of “How to Foundry “ vids, but they all seem to tell you a million features that you believe new GMs don’t need.
If you did a FoundryFor Dummies series, maybe walking people step-by-step on how to run a classic starter adventure like LMOP, I’d watch the hell out of that
For me, an important feature is that I can do whatever I want. For my private gaming, I don't care if I have any rights to broadcast a music track that I want to play in the background. With all the other VTTs, you are always somehow restricted when it comes to music.
I have as much storage space as my hard drive can hold and don't have to start juggling files to make room at some point.
The built-in video function, which I have running thanks to a mod via Lifekit, just works. With all the other VTTs, the webcam image is either in an extra window (e.g. Discord) or doesn't work reliably.
Plus, great system support thanks to the good community. I run Pathfinder 2, Foundry takes so much work off my hands that it's incredibly easy.
After discovering foundry, I never looked back. One thing to maybe note is that now GPT can write AMAZING scripts/macros for you for nearly every complex thing you might want it to do. I feel like the Foundry folks are not focused on improving foundry though. There's so many annoying things like you mentioned of having to open compendiums to do searches for something. Basically the MOD community is adding things foundry should do inherently--but they're simply not choosing to do that. I think once the D&D Beyond system comes out, it'll eventually crush foundry--maybe in 3 years. Still, Foundry is the best system out there.