If you’re an avid Dungeons & Dragons player, you’ve probably heard of Foundry Virtual Tabletop. It’s a great piece of software that makes managing your campaign a dream, particularly for those who may run online campaigns rather than in person. Even in-person campaigns can benefit though, thanks to how easy it makes visualizing character movements. The only downside is that Foundry VTT will set you back $50 as a one-time payment, though DMs will all tell you that it’s well worth it.
If you want to set up Foundry VTT and self-host it, you can very easily for free. Once you’ve purchased it, you can simply run it, set up your campaign, and give each of your players a login with their character sheets already loaded. Foundry is also officially supported by Wizards of the Coast and contains everything from Dungeons & Dragons 5E.
Using Foundry as a player
It’s really easy
As a player, all you need to know when using Foundry is the address that you need to go to in your web browser. You can control it on any device, including a smartphone if you install the Simple Mobile module, though most players will probably use it through a laptop or computer. It’s not designed out of the box to work on smartphones.
With that, you’ll be greeted with a login page. Use the details that your DM has given you, and you’ll be greeted with whatever the default map that they’ve configured is. You can see your items, your character stats, and a whole lot more from here. You can also roll multiple dice, including combining dice rolls for attacks and other checks, and everyone connected to the Foundry instance will see the dice rolls hit the table.
Finally, there are a ton of settings you can modify too. You can modify a lot of visual aspects of the Foundry experience as a player that will only change it for you. Foundry is a must-have software package that makes D&D a lot easier to play with others, particularly when you’re playing online.
Using Foundry as the Dungeon Master
Modules are your friend
The best part about Foundry is its module support, and as the group DM, you’ll absolutely love this. There are thousands that are open source on GitHub, and you can customize every aspect of the game experience for players. Right down to the navigation bar at the top to the dice options are customizable with modules, and as a DM, you would be severely hampering yourself to not even look into what modules you can use to improve the experience for everyone.
As for setting up Foundry, you can run it on your own PC, a free Amazon EC2 instance, a free Oracle Cloud instance, or something a bit beefier that you actually pay for. It’s a ridiculously easy piece of software to set up on Linux, as you just need a few commands to download and install it, and a few commands to keep it running at all times. After that, you’ll be able to use it whenever you want for your D&D campaign.
Foundry is a great addition to any D&D group, and I know many people who all use it to manage their campaigns. It’s quick and easy to use, and it’s worth every second you spend setting it up. It’s a bit of a learning curve if you’re not technically inclined, but definitely give it a go and see what you think!
Foundry Virtual Tabletop
Foundry is a virtual tabletop software that you can install on any major platform, and it makes managing your D&D campaign a breeze.