Nick Midwest's Guide to the Mods He's Currently Using

ALL THESE MODS ARE OLD AND DUMB. See my new post here:

— UPDATED AUG 9, 2020 —

  • Added in some new modules and denoted them with a :new: tag
  • Separated out modules into the must-have, core, and resource-intensive categories
  • Alphabetized

I’ve gotten some questions about what Mods I use on the discord, so I thought I’d make a quick post summarizing what I use and why here on the forums. It’s a lot. I feel like my Foundry is more Mod than Core at this point.

DESERT ISLAND MODULES

If I had to pick 5 modules to bring with me to a desert island, these are the ones I'd install. And also, I'd take 6.
  • :new: Tidy UI Game Settings Does some QOL in the settings and modules menus; alphabetizes modules and settings, optionally hides descriptions, and adds in a search bar
  • Combat Utility Belt Various combat utilities; I use it mostly for conditions and concentration checks; I’ve added in some custom conditions like Enraged, (Bardically) Inspired, and Advantage/Disadvantage using icons from beyond20 or game-icons.net
  • Deselection Allows me to deselect tokens without drag+clicking
  • Permission Viewer Must have; I can tell at a glance who has access to a journal or actor with colored dots; I rainbow order my players; DM is red, then the rest are OYGBIV in alphabetical order
  • Token Mold Easy consistent setup of tokens when I drag them onto the map; it also gives hilarious nicknames; see the fertile rat
  • VTTA D&D Beyond Integration Easily port over NPCs, PCs, and Journal entries (and sometimes scenes)

CORE MODULES

  • :new: Better Roll Tables Adds in some QOL for rollable tables like drag and drop and creating loot and store actors.
  • :new: Forien’s Custom Fonts Adds in some font variety to the drawing tools
  • :new: Forien’s Quest Log Quest tracking in-game
  • :new: Group Initiative I like my monsters to go on the same turn as a group by monster type; this module enables this optional rule
  • :new: Multilevel Tokens Used for easy teleporting as well as some cool balcony or cliff features
  • :new: Parallaxia Used to set up some cool tile effects like moving water or a moving background for a ship or train background
  • :new: Pings Other users prefer this module over Pointer; I like the ping feature better but I also miss the giant finger
  • :new: Token Action HUD Adds in a moveable set of buttons that can access a character’s weapons spells and features without opening the character sheet
  • :new: Token HUD Wildcard Used with the token wildcard feature to make multi-sided token; what makes this module awesome is that I can set a default side to use, so for my changeling, the default side is his natural form and then I can easily switch to any of his predefined tokens/forms without opening the edit token dialog
  • :new: Turn Alert Used to track how long conditions and spell effects last in combat
  • Actually Private Rolls Obsfucates private DM rolls from players
  • Beyond20 module with extension Integrates beyond20 rolls into the foundry for the one person who refuses to install it
  • Chat Portrait Adds coloring and portraits to chat message
  • Combat Ready Puts a timer on my players so they don’t take 8 minutes on their turn
  • Cursor Hider I don’t want players seeing where I’m moving my tokens, so I hide my pointer; I put it on GM only
  • Dice Tray For random rolls and my players who can’t parse the /roll commands
  • Dynamic Effects Needed for Minor QOL and Trigger Happy
  • Fantasy UI Gives Foundry a fancy coat of paint
  • Follow Me So the players can designate one person to be on point and then follow nicely behind in marching order without getting lost
  • Foundry Token Patroller Allows me to set up some cool random encounters; this map had some patrolling scrying eyes that creeped out my players
  • Group Roll For rolling saves for large groups when the mage drops a fireball
  • Health Estimate Players can tell at a glance which guy they’ve already done damage to so I don’t have to waste time telling them
  • Jinker’s Animated Art Pack Installed, but not enabled; these are the textures I use with M.E.S.S.
  • Let Me Roll That For You I can prompt players for perception checks with this
  • M.E.S.S. (Moerill’s Enhancing Super Suite) I like the spell template auto-texture feature
  • Minor QOL Damage Buttons and some automation with Trigger Happy’s traps
  • Mount Up Allows things to carry other things
  • Pointer Allows me to ping the map and easily reveal my point only when I want to
  • Polyglot Useful when creatures are talking about the players
  • The Furnace is a module. Just kidding, I use the token vision all the time and the journal split has saved me a lot of time on my r20 imports
  • Torch gives a clickable to turn lights on and off; I could use the macro, but I don’t
  • Trigger Happy Used for teleporting and traps
  • Turn Marker Gives players a visual indicator of who is going on the map and also marks starting position in case they change their minds about movement
  • VTTA Iconizer When importing characters, it replaces the mystery man icon with cool icons from a database; I use the WoW ones
  • VTTA Tokenizer with some custom token frames in my asset library; used to make all my NPC tokens

OPTIONAL BUT RESOURCE INTENSIVE! USE WITH CAUTION!

  • :new: Token Magic FX Adds in some awesome token specific FX like shields, blur, electricity, etc.; I use it to add some pizazz to my spell effects
  • Dice So Nice! So my players can feel like they’re actually rolling dice
  • FX Master Used the stars weather pattern to simulate “dungeon dust”; I’ve also used colored versions of the rain, fog, clouds, and embers to great effect in my Avernus campaign
  • Mini map Provides an overview of the entire scene and the ability to move around quickly

Other Resources

I run pre-made adventures from D&D Beyond and require my players to create their characters there. I’ve got the legendary bundle and a Master Tier subscription, so I share all my resources with them.
I do some light graphic design for some portraits, tokens, tiles, and other random stuff using Google Slides. Set the background to transparent and download the slide as a PNG.
The map is made in Dungeondraft using an overlay of the original Dungeon of the Mad Mage maps. I’m working on level 2 currently and actually plan to split up the map so it doesn’t look quite so pixelated when I blow it up.

6 Likes

Do you also use MESS’s more streamlined rolling/targetting for D&D 5E (the one that creates custom cards in chat for each target? It’s nifty, but I can’t get it to roll Dice So Nice’s 3D dice.

I just end up disabling the streamlined rolls…

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Yeah, I don’t use a lot of the enhanced roll functionality within Foundry. All of my rolls come from beyond20. Very occasionally, I’ll do like a straight d20 or d100 using the dice tray mod. I do treasure rolls off of there for loot.

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How do you get MESS’s

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All the addon modules I discussed are linked above.
The master list of ALL modules can be found on Foundry’s site. You can also find them in the module browser from within Foundry VTT.
https://foundryvtt.com/packages/modules
The M.E.S.S. module is on this page.
https://foundryvtt.com/packages/mess/
Click through the links on that page to find more info on the module, how to install, and how to use it.

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I’m sorry. Please ignore that last post. I started typing on my mobile and then finished on my pc. It’s supposed to ne my earlier question about the 3d dice and MESS.

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No worries! Happy modding!

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Who is it ??? :angry: (also, conditions tracking does require the installation of the module)

Nice list, feels good to catch up on all the useful modules out there, and there’s a lot I never heard of! I’m so out of touch now since I entered my code cave.

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Great list! I see you are using VTTA Iconizer with the WoW icons. Where did you put those icons in the Forge and how did you tell VTTA Iconizer to look for them there? The Iconizer documentation says to put the icon in User Data but I can’t figure out how to add a folder to User Data on the Forge.

Realized I need to update this list… :grimacing:
I don’t use custom icons. I use WoW ones. I’ll have to do some research. It’s been a hot minute since I’ve run any D&D on Forge as I’ve got some work craziness I’ve been dealing with.
I’ll do some updates and look into it and get back. Or someone else can jump in and give your tips on effectively using iconizer.

A little follow-up on VTTA: due to recent changes made to VTTA by its creator (Sebastian), I was experiencing more and more bugs and having increasing difficulty using D&D Beyond with FVTT.
(As proof of this, the VTTA D&D Beyond Integration given in this post is broken…)

Then I discovered D&D Beyond Importer by MrPrimate (thanks to Matt @encounterlibrary) and it now works like a charm! :dancer:
NB: all useful links (including an excellent module overview by @encounterlibrary) can be found on the module page.

Edit : just read this post from @kakaroto announcing that The Forge will soon provide a D&DB integration service of its own, which will be available to his patrons…War is raging between FVTT developers! :laughing:

Oh yeah, this post was last updated in August 2020… when the list of modules was in the low hundreds and VTTA was still usable!
I don’t know the status of the VTTA modules, just that Sebastian has disappeared again and maybe his modules still work or maybe they don’t. Most people I believe have moved on to MrPrimate’s now which is doing a very good job.

There isn’t war raging between FVTT developers though! MrPrimate and I are in contact with each other and we want to collaborate on the D&D Beyond integration so that everybody wins. We work on different solutions that work differently and would fit the needs of different people, but we both want the same thing and if we can avoid duplication of efforts, we’ll do it, so it’s a collaboration, not a war! :slight_smile:

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I just moved my hosting to the forge so don’t need some of these, but I would love to see a current list of modules you use and their settings. I really like FX master and the related plubins.

I’m also trying to automate everything I can, from rolling saving throws to rolling damage dice at the same time as attack rolls.

And spell effects and conditions.

I’ve set some conditions triggers with combat utility belt, but it seems to me that someone would have already created a library of common things that trigger conditions like spells etc. And would cause the conditions to actually do something, like make blind characters site disappear.