FoundryVTT 2023 Overview - Or: Why You Should Consider FoundryVTT

[Music] hey everyone this is Zephyr and welcome to the Bailey Wiki Channel where we teach everyday DMS how to create truly amazing experiences for their players by combining art and Technology you're DM who likes to wow your players and you're interested in or using platforms like dungeon draft and Foundry virtual tabletop then in the right place today we're going to be doing a special episode where we're kind of doing an overview or a bird's eye view of Foundry VT towards the tail end of 2023 if you're brand new to the platform or if you're someone who's looking at different virtual tabletops to see which one is the right fit for you then stay tuned because this video is perfect for you we're going to go over some of the key features of Foundry some things that differentiate from other virtual tabletops and key features to consider the most basic level there's two features that really differentiate Foundry in our eyes the first is that it is a one-time purchase you with the GM need to go to The Foundry VT website and purchase a license one time and that's it from there you can use your license to stand up your own server or use a hosting service in order to set up the server and two there is a lot of open Community Development Community modules are not only encouraged but greatly supported in Foundry allowing a lot of extra capabilities from technical to content so when you hop into Foundry we're going to take a quick look at the setup screen there is a variety of news on the side and then you have options for updates warnings configurations up at the top and then we have three main menus in the center we're going to first start with game systems and game systems are just the different RPG systems and one of the great things about Foundry as you can see is that there are over 250 different ttrpg systems for you to choose from so no matter what you're playing at your table you can probably find support for it on Foundry next let's take a look at add-on modules as we mentioned there is a massive development community and a lot of support for it I've been busy here so there's a lot in place but you can browse all of these modules from the install modules area and there's over 2,000 of them at the time of this recording the vast majority of these are completely free but there are also premium content modules available for your use if you want extra Adventures or premium features finally we have game worlds which other vtts might refer to Simply as games these worlds you can think of as independent campaigns or game settings you may run multiple games out of the same world but typically you'll have separate worlds and each of these worlds has its own system defined for it you can also edit things such as a background image the description adding in players and setting up your next session details all from within your setup screen it's a very nice and intuitive interface for setting up your game worlds once you hop into Foundry we'll do a quick tour of the UI up in the top right corner are what we refer to as your directories these are going to house different things from the chat to your settings combat encounters that are going on scenes that you have and you can see there is a robust folder system actors items journal entries and more so whenever someone refers to directories this is usually what they're referring to it's basically your active storage location for all the things you'll use to put onto the scenes and the scenes themselves up at the top you have your navigation bar and if you go into scenes you can rightclick on a scene and toggle its navigation to add or remove it from that navigation bar up at the top then you can click on the scenes up at the top in order to jump between them different permissions will affect whether only you can do this or your players can as well and you can see this is a quick and easy way to get around and have different scenes at your fingertips for a session on the left side we have our tools and this is generally things for manipulating objects on the scene from lights to walls and sounds and you can have more or less of these buttons based upon different add-on modules that you install so I've got a few extra here and down at the bottom you have a macro bar and one of the nice features about Foundry is you actually get five macro bars and hot bar pages that you can cycle through you could drag items here to use without having to open your sheet or you can have special macros to run as a GM the UI tour out of the way let's take a look at one of foundry's coolest features and that is lighting as you can see this scene has a lot going on there are a ton of different lights adding a really great atmosphere here when it comes to creating a light in Foundry it's as simple as click to set the origin and drag to set the radius you can then double click to adjust individual settings and we can set up different aspects of it you can adjust colors and their intensity as much as you want and there are a ton of different light animations and advanced settings as you can see there's a lot going on in this scene there are some red pulses some ethereal lights all kinds of lighting effects going on that really lend itself to the atmosphere foundry's lighting engine is incredibly intuitive and simple to use and it gives an amazing effect while being very performant and as you can see this carries over beautifully to actual token vision and token movement another key feature of foundaries scene creation is walls you can obstruct light sound movement and vision all independently you can even set proximity walls like this to give the feeling of looking over an edge or not being able to look out something until you get close enough while there are a lot of wall options there are great tool tips in the wall section to kind of explain what each of them does and it also has all of your different controls it's as simple as click and drag to set the beginning and end points of walls and you can open them to have more granular controls including that proximity setting to determine how close people are to have that effect Foundry also has a really nice and robust tile system you can use this to add extra artwork on top of scen backgrounds Etc and there is a great overhead system that allows you to create roofs or Treetops and the stove Tails nicely with those proximity walls to give the effects of Windows when it comes to creating tiles it's really simple to just open up your tile browser and then you go through your file structure until you find the artwork that you would like to add in and there are multiple ways of viewing it from thumbnails to descriptions Etc and you can adjust this asset grid size to set the DPI so that no matter what DPI you created your asset with or you created your scene withth they can match up in terms of scale so it's really easy to use there's also a fantastic sound system you can have Ambient sound beacons here that are playing different sounds as people move about and we can see more of those overhead tiles in action we can also use the lighting tool to toggle between night and day and you can even link up those Ambient sound beacons to certain Darkness activation ranges so that you can hear chirping birds in the morning and during the day but then at night you hear frogs croaking and bugs humming and again just like lights it's as simple as click to place the origin and drag to set the radius from there you browse your file structure to find the sound that you want and there are a lot of other controls in here for things like wall constraints volume easing and maximum volume sounds are incredibly easy to use in Foundry and add a great Ambiance or level of coziness to whatever map you're working on in addition to all of the tools for building scenes there are also tools such as journal entries for keeping your notes organized or sharing information with your players there are page systems to be able to add multiple pages to a single Journal and headings intelligently create a hierarchical outline for you to navigate throughout editing is a simple wizzywig editor where you can use the source code Editor to edit the HTML directly it's a really robust system where you can create a lot of different features and of course you can add different images and all of these have the option to show your players when it comes to token movement it's very simple in Foundry you can use either the WD keys or the arrow key these in order to advance one tile at a time and if you select on two of these buttons at the same time then you can move in your diagonals you can also click and drag to move the token around and also hold control and use clicks to set way points along a path before hitting space bar to execute the path this allows a lot of control over movement while being very intuitive and easy to use once you understand the controls and of course if you are a player and you're going to run into walls that obstruct movement it's going to stop you from doing so managing combat is also very easy in Foundry simply select the actors that you want to be in the combat and click on the swords and shield icon to add them to a combat encounter once in your combat directory you can see all of the combatants and you can roll their initiative individually or leave that up to the players or you can use these buttons to either roll all of your NPCs or roll all of the combatants when you're ready you can begin in the combat and Advance turns and rounds and also back them up in case anything happens also rightclick on the combat tracker to pop it out as a separate little hover window so you can look at other things such as the chat here where you can see roll information and if you want to use an item you can click on the die icon next to the item and it will generate a chat card where you can roll the attack and damage for the different item this is using the 5e system with absolutely no modules modifying combat there are a lot of different add-on modules that will add differing layers of automation to different systems and different systems have levels of automation built in such as requiring targets and respecting range and auto rolling damage attacks adding actors to the board is really easy you can go to your actor's directory and drag them out like this player character here or you can drag in additional enemies that you have in your sidebar as well if you want to grab a brand new one most systems have SRD content or some kind of pre-loaded compendium which you can think of as deep storage for all of your content and you can go in there to drag out additional enemies so we can go through and we can select an enemy that we'd like to add such as this assassin simply dragging him on the board and we have a fully functioning token and you'll notice that the Assassin was also brought in to our actor's directory with the Assassin assin dragged into our sidebar we can bring in additional copies directly from our actor's directory rather than the compendium as well and if we want to keep him hidden we can toggle his visibility state in the top right to give a clouded outlook for us and absolutely no appearance to our players in addition to the amazing core features The Foundry has modules can add a wealth of new possibilities including turning tiles into buttons that allow you to completely renovate scene changing its lights walls and sounds to also adding multiple levels going on adding intuitive verticality to your maps go up and down stairs through elevators Etc you can even attach entire buildings and objects to tokens to be able to control them all at once with a prefab system and then make those into Deployable structures or get them as Deployable structures to be able to build your scenes faster and easier than ever before especially if you need to improv something on the Fly you can even bring Foundry into 3D with 3D canvas and incorporate a ton of different great automation modules to make combat both stylish and easy to manage there are a ton of different technical capabilities and in addition to all of the technical modules they are also a wealth of content modules all of the different Maps you've seen in the background are a part of our premium modules that you can get on our patreon to be able to use in your own games on Foundry that's going to wrap up this really quick overview of Foundry in the tail end of 2023 if you found this video inspiring or compelling and you want to take the dive into Foundry VT now is a great time to do it from 9:00 a.m. us Pacific on Friday November 24th until 9:00 a.m. us Pacific on Friday December 8th foundaries having their end of November sale where you can pick up your copy of a Foundry VT license at a discount they also have some of their first party Adventures such as As A House Divided available at a discount as well and to get you started if you want to learn more about some of the different mechanics of Foundry and more in depth we've got a whole playlist on the channel dedicated to The Foundry Basics you can find that linked on screen now and down in the description once again this has been Zephyr with the baay wiki Channel hope that you found this video informative and interesting if you did subscribe to keep up with all of our latest content and consider becoming a patron not only do you support the channel we also gain access to all of the modular systems and scenes that you've seen here and a whole lot more for Foundry VT whether you're brand new to Foundry just considering it as you're shopping around for vtts or you're an old hand at the program thank you so much for watching happy gaming and have a good one

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Id: mxFPXgfzYN4

Length: 14min 7sec (847 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 24 2023