If I have worlds A, B, C and D, I’d like to be able to create a calendar in Forge and set what times each world is running.
Eg, World A is on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, 8am - 8pm,
World B runs same time on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, and also 8-11pm on Monday.
World C is the default world and runs all day Sunday and also when no other world is scheduled.
World D is a test world that doesn’t run on a schedule, but if I run it then it overrides the calendar until I a) stop it or b) (optionally) another world is scheduled to start.
That way I can run multiple tables and tell my players about the times they can reliably access them.
Hi tehmanticore,
That sounds like a pretty complicated system to write and have a good interface for it that users can actually use, and it’s not really a solution because of possible conflicts, or if a player wants access to a world outside for that interval, etc…
I think for a situation like that, it makes more sense to upgrade to the Story Teller tier which is meant to solve this specific use case with its own set of features. See Planned: Story Teller tier features for details.
But basically, you would have a different URL for each of your worlds and they would be launched automatically based on which URL is accessed. Would also allow you to separate your groups so they can’t access a world they are not part of, etc…
You can follow the feature roadmap to see when it gets worked on : Forge Feature Roadmap
If the story teller tier allows 2 or more worlds to run simultaneously, and on demand, from the same license, then that’s great. That solves the issue I was trying to solve.
If it doesn’t though, then the scheduling system will ensure GMs can let players know when their world is accessible, rather than leaving them to guess when the license isn’t being used by a player in another world. If it’s left to chance, then players may come across high demand times when they can’t log in to their world because a player is working on their character in another launched world. They’d have to wait for those other players to voluntarily log out, never knowing when it’ll happen or if the player/s are actively using it or gone afk and left it logged in.
Simultaneously on demand yes, but not on the same license.
What you’re talking about here would be a good case for adding multiple licenses, but it would obviously have a cost to it.
As a sidenote, having this schedule be enforced in a way that is different from the current plan of “kick out only when owner accesses other world” to “kick out when schedule changes” probably wouldn’t be something KaKaRoTo wants.
Additionally, the generally accepted way of utilizing a forge subscription would be to have your friends sometimes take over as a DM, if this use case is for multiple DMs to share a single subscription, then that’s not really something that The Forge endorses.
Because if you were a player under this other DM, when you access the world (as the owner of the forge subscription), the other world would automatically be switched off and the players kicked if you did not have multiple licenses of Foundry.
So it would seem to me that such a strict scheduling system would mostly appease those that wish to account share, even if that was not your end goal.
I hadn’t thought of account sharing. That’s an economic decision that we can’t enter into, but remember, we’ve bought the license, are paying the subscription, and there’ll still only be one world loaded at a time per license. If license holders do share their license and subscription for other GMs to use while also providing an automatic scheduling (for games and out-of-game access), then that is excellent exposure of the product to potential new customers. At some point, such scheduling would become too clustered for even shared GMing, and users would branch out into their own licenses and subscriptions.
I know that I’m having difficulty convincing other GMs to break away from shared account usage of roll20 due to the costs. More exposure to this program through shared access and ease of world scheduling will likely encourage more wallets to open up.
It sounds win/win.
The one-world active at a time per license is a restriction of Foundry VTT itself. See the software license agreement you accepted : https://foundryvtt.com/article/license/
The very first line says :
You may install the software on multiple computers but the software may only be actively in use on one installed location at a time unless you purchase additional licenses.
That won’t change, and it makes sense. Allowing anything different is to open the gates to all sorts of abuses, such as me having a single license and giving all of The Forge users a way to play Foundry games without buying their own license.
That’s exactly what you’re describing so I don’t understand why you’re saying you hadn’t thought of it ? I think I’m confused here.
It’s win/win/lose/lose actually. Account sharing as you’ve described is simply not an acceptable practice. As license owner, you’re paying to use the license and paying for the thousands of hours of development time that went into it. Even at 50$ per license, it’s still an incredibly cheap bargain when compared with anything else on the market. If you share your license, then someone else is getting to use the software without paying for it and therefore not giving their fair share for the development time that went into the product.
Similarly when it comes to the hosting, you’re not paying hosting just because I want you to pay, but you’re paying because it costs money to run and manage the servers. If you share your account with someone, then someone else is getting a free hosting, and you’re putting more strain on the server because you have double the number of games running, more server load due to two people doing their own prep separately, etc… Yes, some people will have a weekly game and other users will do 3 games per week, and that’s ok, it averages itself out, but when you share your account, you’re breaking that average, so it will cost me more to run the service, and if everybody starts doing it, then the prices will go up for everybody and I don’t want that.
So yes, it’s win/win for you and your friend (especially if one decides to “donate” something to the other, which is also against the license agreement, read it carefully, now it’s costing me double and costing you half), but it’s lose/lose for Foundry VTT and The Forge.
As for having a difficult time to convince people to break from Roll20, that would work even better if Foundry and The Forge were all free for everybody, then that would make it easier to convert people, but the reality of the situation and economic life doesn’t make it possible, just like account sharing isn’t an acceptable solution simply to get people out of the dark ages. If people want quality and want to enjoy using a good software, then they should pay for the software and the service. If they don’t want to, trying to cheat the system and breaking the license agreement is not the way to go.
When you want to share your account, just remember that if it’s not fair for me to use my own personal license and share it with every user of The Forge, it’s not fair for you to use your license and share it with all your friends. And remember that Roll20 hasn’t seen an update to their VTT in years (other than adding a ‘+’ and ‘-’ button for zooming after 5 years, right?) because it’s all free, so you get what you pay for.
I think I know how to write convenient to use software. They wouldn’t have to guess, they access the world, if the license is being used for another game, it would let them know that it’s unavailable. They can retry later, which is still better than not being able to access it at all. I plan on making the game owner have the ability to force launching a world, thus shutting it down for others who may be looking at their sheet in a different world. Either way, if you have enough players for that to be a problem, or you think that players are spending hours every day looking at character sheets or enough for there to actual be a time conflict between them, then you’re running an industrial grade game with hundreds of players and you should really just have multiple licenses at that point.
I hope that helps.