Introduction
To share content between worlds (actors, journal entries, scenes, and more), you will need to create a compendium, and copy that content into a compendium.
Unfortunately, when you create a compendium in Foundry VTT, the software by default creates a world-level compendium. This means that the compendium is only accessible within the world it was created in.
This is where we come in. The Forge provides an easy solution to creating your own compendium modules. Our Shared Compendium creation tool allows you to create as many compendium modules as you can fit on our service, via a very simple user interface.
Creating a Shared Compendium
To access our Shared Compendium tool, navigate to your My Foundry page. From there, select the teal button under the Table Tools category labelled “Create Shared Compendium”.
You will be shown the following popup menu:
Here, you can customize the name of your compendium module, and add a description. Please keep in mind that although you are free to choose whatever name you want for your compendium module, you will be unable to create one with the same name as a pre-existing compendium module.
You can also select the blue text at the bottom, “Customize Compendium Content” to display more options for customizing your compendium module.
You will be shown a menu, displaying the default compendiums that will be created. You can add more compendiums by selecting “Create a new entry”, and filling in the compendium’s title, and selecting what kind of compendium you wish to create. You are also free to edit a compendium’s title, change their content type, or delete them. Please keep in mind that you will need a minimum of one compendium to complete the module creation process.
For this example, I have deleted half of the default compendiums, and edited the remaining ones to use names that are more useful to me.
Once you are done choosing and editing the compendiums you wish to create, select the green “Create Compendium” button. This will finalize your edits, and create the compendium. Please keep in mind that once this is done, you will no longer be able to edit the compendium through The Forge’s interface.
If the module is successfully created, you will see the following message on the top of your Forge screen:
Enabling a Shared Compendium Module
Once a shared compendium module is made, it can be enabled in-world!
To enable a shared compendium module in a world, take the following steps:
- Stop and restart the server/game world in question.
- Login/enter the game world.
- Navigate to the “Game Settings” tab on the right sidebar.
- Select the “Manage Modules” button.
- Navigate to the shared compendium module, in the module listing here.
- Select the shared compendium module.
- Select the “Save Module Settings” button.
- The Foundry VTT game should refresh, and you should now have access to the Shared Compendium module in-game.
To access the compendiums from the module, navigate to the “Compendium Packs” tab on the right sidebar, and select any compendium pack that you wish to access.
If you wish to edit/add new entities to a compendium, right-click on the compendium and select “Toggle Edit Lock”. You will be shown a warning about editing a compendium that does not belong to the world. It is ok to proceed and select “Yes”- the module in question is controlled by you, and will not be overwritten by any updates.
Here’s a video showing how you can fill your compendiums with data and import it in your other worlds:
Exporting a Shared Compendium Module
As with most data on The Forge, you are able to export/move a shared compendium module off of our service. You can export a shared compendium module by taking the following steps:
- Navigate to your My Foundry page.
- Under the left “Table Tools” column, select the grey “Export Compendium Modules” button.
- Navigate to your shared compendium module on this list, and select the module.
- Download the module. Whether you are exporting the module to backup your content, or using it in an external Foundry VTT instance, we recommend keeping it somewhere safe.
Please note that any assets (images, video, and audio) referenced will still reference URLs on The Forge. If you are exporting the shared compendium module for use outside of The Forge, we recommend using our Asset Sync feature to have the shared compendium module reference local images.
Deleting a Shared Compendium Module
As with any module you upload/install on The Forge, you are able to delete a shared compendium module. Please keep in mind that once a shared compendium module is deleted, it will be permanently gone/deleted.
We recommend exporting and backing up a shared compendium module, before deleting it from The Forge.
You can delete a shared compendium module by taking the following steps:
- Navigate to your My Foundry page.
- Under the left “Table Tools” column, select the dark yellow “Select Data Files to Delete” button. You should see a popup menu.
- Navigate to the “Modules” tab in the popup menu.
- Navigate to and select the shared compendium module you wish to delete.
- You will be shown a delete prompt, asking you to confirm the deletion of the module. Make sure to verify you have selected the right module, and that you are ready to delete it for good.
- Enter the deletion code that the prompt asks you for. Select the red delete button. Once you have selected this button, you cannot go back and un-delete the module, unless you have made a backup.
- Upon deletion, you should see the following confirmation message at the top of your Forge window:
Your shared compendium module has been successfully deleted.
I couldn’t figure this out.