The Forge allows users to grab their content from D&D Beyond, and import it into Foundry VTT. This allows users to purchase their official 5e content legally, and use it within Foundry VTT.
Wanting to make a smoother experience out of exploring imported Beyond content, we decided to invent a way to automatically organize this content. And so, the Compendium Browser feature was developed!
What is The Forge’s Compendium Browser?
The Forge’s Compendium Browser is a module that allows you to explore your imported D&D Beyond content within Foundry VTT, in an organized fashion. It displays this content much like a traditional table of contents, with options to import maps, actors, journals, and scenes into your games. In summary, it’s a clean and useful interface for browsing the Beyond content you’ve imported.
To get started, you’ll want to import content that you legally own or can access on D&D Beyond. While the import feature is in beta, books from D&D Beyond will not be free to import. However, users can currently import the Basic Rules, Frozen Sick, and Lost Mine of Phandelver for free. For more information on doing so, we recommend reading our article on the Forge’s D&D Beyond Integration.
To ensure compatibility with The Forge’s Compendium Browser, Beyond content will need to be imported as a module. If users have already imported this content before, re-importing the content will make the compendium module compatible with the browser.
Once the content has been imported, take the following steps:
Install The Forge’s Compendium Browser on The Bazaar.
Start/restart a world where you wish to enable the Compendium Browser.
Navigate to your Game Settings tab on the right-hand side.
Select the “Manage Modules” button.
Enable The Forge Compendium Browser module, and select “Save Module Settings”.
Navigate to your Compendiums tab, and select the “Open Compendium Browser” button at the bottom. This will launch The Forge Compendium Browser, and you can begin exploring your imported D&D Beyond content!
But…(sorry)
Now that I have downloaded the material from D&D Beyond, both Source and Adventure Content are visible to PCs. OK for Source, not as much for Adventures.
Is there a way to restrict access to Adventure Books from the “Open Compendium Library” button on the Compendium Packs tab?
Or even hiding the “Open Compendium Library” button entirely should be OK
The content in the compendiums referenced by the compendium library can be updated in the normal Foundry way, but a better flow may be to import the content and make the edits on the imported actor/item etc
There’s no option for me to update it. When I go to a normal compendium I can unlock it and after that I can update the items. This one doesn’t appear in the normal compendium and I cannot find an option to unlock it. Even if I bring the items up through the 5e Compendium Browser the items are still locked there.
As for importing the content, while that is an option it means each time I run the adventure I would need to make the same changes over again.
I did see your comment on importing, changing, and saving to my own compendium. I did think of that but that that wouldn’t use the nice Forge Compendium layout.
Ah, I see, my apologies, it does look like the packs are indeed hidden from the list of Foundry compendium packs.
It looks like some monsters can be edited through the new built-in dnd5e v4 Compendium Browser, but the same isn’t true for all of the content like classes and such.
I’ll make a feature request to turn hiding or showing the compendium packs into an option to allow optional editing of the compendium packs contents directly for users who would like to do so.
If that gets in, it should enable that workflow. If not, then the import and move to shared compendium module should still be accessible from the built-in dnd5e v4 compendium browser and benefit from its formatting/searches which may help a bit
tab on the right-hand side.
tab, and select the “Open Compendium Browser” button at the bottom. This will launch The Forge Compendium Browser, and you can begin exploring your imported D&D Beyond content!
