What is The Bazaar?

Help FAQ & Tutorials
#1

The Bazaar is The Forge’s repository of Systems, Modules, Worlds, Assets, and more.

The primary purpose of the Bazaar is to allow you to easily browse for existing packages to install directly into your games, while showing a more rich interface, with screenshots, install statistics, reviews, detailed search and more.

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The Bazaar replaces Foundry’s /Setup page, and lets you install everything from Forge itself.
The Bazaar will also allow content creators to sell assets or pre-made adventures to you. We’re at phase two on this factor, we’ve added patreon subscription options, and we’re looking forward to adding purchase options.

The second purpose of The Bazaar is to provide some performance improvements and to reduce unnecessary duplication of files. These additional features and advantages of the Bazaar are available now :

  • Any systems or modules installed through the Bazaar will not be using your Data Quota allocation
  • All systems and modules are optimized to make use of the Assets Library features and our worldwide network of servers to increase performance and make your games load much faster, wherever you are located
  • Installing a system or module through the Bazaar is instantaneous and skips the Download and Install phase that Foundry usually needs.
  • Downgrading Foundry will cause the Bazaar to detect which packages are now incompatible with your Foundry version and ‘updating’ them will actually downgrade the packages to the last known version to work with your chosen Foundry version.

To update all your systems and modules to use the Bazaar, simply click on the “Update All” button in the Bazaar at Forge’s main site :
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and it will open a menu of modules that will update, with what version it is going from, to which version it will update to.

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To use the Bazaar and install new packages from it, simply use the “Install” button, it will install the modules/systems/worlds automatically.

The packages available are automatically retrieved from the Bazaar and when you install a package, the Bazaar version will be used.

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Do note however, that if a system or a module has compendium packs, those packs will need to be copied to your data folder and will count towards your Data Quota. As an example, the D&D 5e system will use 6MB instead of 70MB and WFRP system will use 3MB instead of 197MB. The PF1 and PF2e systems include a very large set of compendiums so they will use respectively 16MB and 39MB of Data.

Note also that if you wish to install a specific package without using the optimized Bazaar version, you can do so by using its Manifest URL and adding ?bazaar=disabled to the URL.

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#2

Once again, I have no words… This is absolutely fantastic. Thanks for all your hard work.

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#3

Does the Bazaar work when using the module installer in Forge itself? Or just on the Foundry page. I support some artists on Patreon who are beginning to offer Foundry ready maps. But they come as a zip file for download. Not quite sure how to take advantage of the Bazaar for those. Any tips appreciated!

#4

Hi!
The Bazaar will work when using the import wizard on the Forge, however, it will only work for content that is available in the Bazaar, which, at the moment, is all the publicly available modules. Content creators that release their content privately are not included, so if you import the zip, it will use your data quota.
I plan on having an option so modules that are compendium only can have their assets moved to the asset library so it’s at least easier on the data when there is no code in the module that may reference local files.

#5

How long does it take for the Bazaar to update a module after a new release for that module is published?

#6

It checks and refreshes all modules and systems every 5 minutes. So usually, by the time you notice an update was released, it’s already available in the Bazaar.

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#7

I’ve noticed a few modules/systems in The Foundry #release-announcements say uninstall and reinstall. Does the Bazaar handle that automagically, or does the Update All button do that, or do we have to do that manually for each module/system?

#8

The Bazaar will figure it out in theory. Would need to test and confirm, but in theory, the reason to say uninstall+reinstall is because the manifest url is wrong so checking for updates will always fail.
The Bazaar handles the ‘check for updates’ differently, and bases it on the package’s name instead of its manifest url, so that it will always give you the latest version (supported by your foundry install) and will update it accordingly.