Nick Midwest's Updated Guide to the Mods He's Currently Using (2022 Edition)

Roleplaying & GM-ing discussions
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— UPDATED June 19, 2022—
See old thread
Hi, It’s me again. New year, new modules. Here’s the list and I’ll keep the same organization I did in my old thread.
Please note that there is such as thing as TOO much of a good thing. If you’ve got 80 modules running at the same time, you’re going to have a bad time.
Some modules have dependencies. The Forge and Foundry should automatically download/enable them for you, so I haven’t listed them. Just know that if you get a popup about dependencies, always click YES, OK, JUST DO IT ALREADY.

DESERT ISLAND MODULES

These are my must haves.

  • 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.
  • Conga This lets you create a marching order by simply selecting a token, mousing over another, and tapping F or L on your keyboard to make them follow or lead. Never again will a character be left behind to waste 3 turns catching up when the party gets ambushed by a Nothic.
  • D&D Beyond Importer Under new management. Does all the stuff the old one did and more. Some of the best features like Monster import are locked behind a Patreon, but everyone can import characters for free.
  • Tidy UI - Game Settings Makes game and module menus easier to navigate.
  • Token Mold Easy consistent setup of tokens when I drag them onto the map; it also gives hilarious nicknames like Social Justice Bugbear.
  • Literally all of the Mods by IronMonk You can’t go wrong here. All his stuff is great and really helps to make things better. I’ll break them down under core modules.

CORE MODULES

  • Beyond20 module with extension Integrates beyond20 rolls into the foundry for the one person who refuses to install it.
  • DFreds Chat Pins Let’s you pin a chat message in Foundry’s chat so that you can have a short list. I use it for pinning active conditions, room descriptions, and session summaries so players don’t have to pester me about them.
  • Dice Tray For random rolls and my players who can’t parse the /roll commands.
  • 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. Gives me nostalgia feels for Baldur’s Gate.
  • Legendary Training Wheels Constantly reminds me to actually use my Legendary actions for the lich. Seriously, without this, I forget to do it. Simple module that completely changed how I ran combat.
  • PnP - Pointers and Pings! Adds in customizable ping and pointer functionality. Honestly, this should be core Foundry.
  • PopOut! Adds a popout button to most of the windows in foundry. I pop out the combat tracker and put it on my second monitor.
  • Split Journal Formerly part of the Furnace module, allows you to split journals based on header type. Useful for breaking giant journal entries imported for D&D Beyond into useful chunks.
  • The Forge: Compendium Library Makes your compendiums actually readable and useable. Useful with Forge’s D&D Beyond Import, but can also be used by other compendiums from the Bazaar.
  • Universal Battlemap Importer Actually works with the Forge now, but you have to be patient! It takes a minute or two to upload giant DungeonDraft files!

MONK’S MODULES ARE ALL REALLY JUST GREAT

  • Active Tile Triggers Allows you to set up tiles that set off traps, open doors, teleport, etc.
  • Enhanced Journals Allows you to create custom types of journal entries like people, places, stores, quests.
  • Little Details Lots of little things like turn notifications, combat highlight, and some CSS changes to prettify the screen. Rolls up like seven modules into one.
  • Scene Navigation Adds folders on the scene hotbar.
  • Token Bar A little widget that tracks PC tokens and allows you to limit movement in and out of combat without pausing.
  • Wall Enhancement Drag points together, freehand draw walls, and other wall tools.

MODULES FOR ADVANCED SMARTY PANTS

FOUNDRY THEMES

There are lots of themes you can use to tweak the look of foundry. Here are a few I like. Use with caution because they mess with colors and CSS and some other modules might not play nice.

OPTIONAL BUT RESOURCE INTENSIVE! USE WITH CAUTION!

  • Dice So Nice! So my players can feel like they’re actually rolling dice. There are loads of custom skins/textures you can add as well. All are good, but they can be resource intensive on slower systems.
  • 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.
  • Perfect Vision Adds some special effects for darkvision like black and white. Sometimes misbehaves with other modules.
  • 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 and to put on fancy auras for my magic characters.

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.

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Huge! Thank you. Idk if any of the modules you mention has this but I also find the “whisper” modules to be very useful. You just “/w” and a dropdown of PCs pops up so you don’t have to type anything