Getting Started on The Forge

[Kevin]

Introduction

Hello! Let me be the first to welcome you into our Forge community, and may your creativity thrive alongside us!

Getting started with The Forge is a piece of cake ! We will explain how to do so below.

Subscribing and Your Free Trial

We have a guide to subscribe to The Forge here. Once you have subscribed for the first time, your free trial will begin immediately- no need to check any boxes, or enter any coupon codes!

Creating a World

If you already have Foundry VTT content you’d like to import to The Forge, we suggest you have a look at our Import Wizard Tutorial which explains the entire process.

Once you have subscribed to The Forge or enabled Explorer Mode, you will be able to create games from the My Foundry page. You can navigate to this page by selecting the My Foundry page in the top bar of the website.

You will be directed to your Forge setup page. Here you can see your Foundry VTT server configuration if Game Manager is disabled, or an option to create new games if Game Manager is enabled. To create a new game, press the “Create Game” button.

From here, you have the option to create a blank new game, or install an existing world directly from the Bazaar.

Selecting “Blank new Game” creates a game/world from scratch in the game system of your choice, while “Select from the Bazaar” allows you to browse pre-built worlds from the community or marketplace.

Blank New Game

Choosing a “Blank New Game” will let you choose a Game System- this is the system the world will be based on. Choosing a system that isn’t installed in your Foundry instance will automatically install it for you.

Once you have selected a game system, you can choose a game title. Your players will see this title as they join. The name field is automatically filled with a ‘url-friendly’ version of the above title. You don’t need to modify it, unless another world exists with the same name. This is just a name to make your game an individual one- that way you can have 2 games with the same title, but not share the same folder path (sharing the same folder path would create serious bugs and likely, data loss).

You are now done preparing your world for creation! Click “Create Game”. From here, you can launch your game, and get into the action!

Select From The Bazaar

Selecting from the Bazaar will open up a menu of pre-made, Foundry ready games.

You can select any game you find interesting. It will prompt you for a game title and folder name, in case you wish to (optionally) modify these. If you do not have an existing world with the same folder name, you can leave them unchanged.

Just select “Install World” and the world will be created. You can now select “Launch Game” and have fun in your new game!

Inviting Players

After setting up your game, you’ll need to invite your friends over so you can play together.
Inviting people to your game is easy! In your My Foundry page, you’ll find the invitation link to your game which you can copy and share with your friends.
They’ll need a Forge account to join your game. Following the link will add your game to their dashboard, letting them access it whenever they want.

With the Forge’s User Manager enabled, once a user has joined via the invitation URL, they will have a user automatically created within the Foundry world. You can control their user role and nicknames directly from the “Configure Players” sidebar of the Game configuration.

If the User Manager is not enabled, then you will need to manually create users within the world for your players to use. You can follow the Foundry VTT instructions on Users in order to do this.

Installing Modules

Modules are what makes Foundry unique and great. A multitude of enthusiastic developers in the Foundry Community are making great mods/modules that enhance and add on to the features within Foundry Virtual Tabletop, allowing you a high level of customization for your own Foundry VTT experience.

To install modules, just head over to The Bazaar where you can browse and search for available modules, and install the ones you like.

After installing the modules, you have to reload your game by clicking the “Stop Server” in your Game Configuration page, or if the Game Manager is not enabled, simply by returning to Foundry’s setup page and launching the world again.

Once in your world, navigate to the Foundry settings sidebar and click the “Manage modules” button. Here, you can enable the modules you want in a specific world. Make sure to save your selection, and have fun with your newly installed modules!

When you make a new world, you’ll have to enable them there as well, but you do not have to select the modules from the Bazaar again.