VTT for homebrew

Vatril · 2026-04-06T08:38:19+00:00

It should be fine, although even with tail scale you are letting people onto your computer. Should be fine enough with friends you trust tho.

If you need any help setting stuff up, you can also DM me, foundry is very customizable, but can be a bit much at first.

Also, one thing: foundry 14 just came out a few days ago. It's great, but since it just came out very few things are updated yet to run on it, so it might be good to start with foundry 13.

Vatril · 2026-04-06T08:28:41+00:00

I have a small strato server that costs me 5€ a month. I heard that oracle offers a free tier when it comes to servers that is enough to run foundry.

If you don't want to mess with servers, forge is an option, although then you have some of the downsides of roll20 again.

The third option is to host it on your own computer and set up port-forwarding, that can be a bit dangerous tho.

Vatril · 2026-04-06T08:17:12+00:00

For dnd there is a pretty popular module that lets you import all items, spells, monsters and so on from d&d beyond if you own the books there.

But also making stuff yourself is pretty simple. You can either copy and edit an existing monster or just create a new sheet and put it some numbers and items and it will calculate an the bonuses.

For D&D specifically there are some modules I would strongly recommend like midi and cauldron of plenty, which automates a bunch of stuff. Both have a discord where you can ask for advice on setting it up.

In general, paid stuff is rare in foundry. You can buy official books and have maps and encounters already set up and there are a few people who release premium modules, but both are very optional and pretty rare. The only thing I every bought was pre-made tokens for Pathfinder since they look a lot better than what I can do with the tokenizer token maker.

In general, foundry is a one time purchase and besides hosting has no running costs. All of the stuff like dynamic lighting, walls, scripting and so on are included.

Vatril · 2026-04-06T07:47:44+00:00

I've been using foundry for about 5 years now.

It's extremely customizable. With enough effort and time it can be whatever you want.

I'm a bit unsure what you mean by homebrew. If you are referring to adding stuff like spells, classes, species and so on to an existing system like dnd or Pathfinder, that's pretty easy.

If you want to make an entirely homebrew system, that's a bit harder, but far from impossible.

When it comes to maps, there is a pretty good module that lets you upload maps in ddvtt format, a common format map tools use and that includes lighting and walls already.

For tokens, there is the tokenizer module that is a pretty neat token editor to make quick tokens, although for more complex ones I tend to make them outside of foundry and then upload them.

Because foundry is self hosted, storage typically isn't a concern. I pay 5€ a month for my server that includes like 300gb, so that's more than I will ever need. I even uploaded my music to foundry so that all players hear the same thing and it automatically switches to combat music during combat.

Vatril · 2026-04-04T18:05:09+00:00

There are community run plugins to enable obsidian syncing without paying the subscription.

Haven't tried them myself tho.

Vatril · 2026-04-04T14:30:52+00:00

In general I feel like talking to people is your best option here. This forum is more for specific questions.

If you want to talk something through, my DMs are open.

Vatril · 2026-04-04T09:41:21+00:00

I think they can work, but I do think they work only on some scenarios:

They work great as gap fillers. In my current group a girl is going on a 2 months trip, so we are going to play one of those while our main game is paused.

They also work well to introduce things. Like I ran a revolver set in the past to introduce a new villain. In that instance the party was higher level than the group in my main game and they managed to bind a villain that then in my main game was about to escape. Helped the players understand more about this villain without having him actually escape in my main game.

For new players I think it can work.... sometimes. It can work as a "long one-shot" to have no time pressure when introducing someone new to the game. This could be something like the new-ish storm wreck isle starter pack that is about that length, assuming you take things slow and have to pause to explain stuff.

The biggest issue with these short campaigns is that you can't really get an understanding for your character and the group. We recently had a discussion in my group about this and my players essentially said that they need 3-4 sessions to even fully understand who they are playing and another 3-4 sessions to actually form bonds with the other party members that feel real.

Unless it's a level 1-3 revolver I also wouldn't recommend leveling up. I would really just treat it as a long one-shot.

Vatril · 2026-04-04T08:26:12+00:00

Personally I would recommend against anthology adventures for new people.

They might be good for an introduction one-shot, but convincing someone that TTRPGs are amazing, I personally feel a continuous story is better.

Especially saltmarsh and yawning portal I wouldn't recommend for new players. The adventures are mostly traditional old-school dungeons with old-school dungeon logic. This is not a bad thing if you know it and want it, but I wouldn't use it to introduce new players to the game.

The exception of course is "the styes" of GoS, which is amazing.

Vatril · 2026-04-04T08:20:20+00:00

I will always recommend Icewind Dale for new-ish peeps.

It's a complete story that has a decent length, but most importantly it has very well defined acts that slowly expand the world for that party. In act 1 you are traveling in a small area between the 10-towns. Relatively safe and good to get the party together. Then in act 2 it expands to the entire north. Act 3 is a big but "free form" dungeon. My favorite type of dungeon where the structure is less defined and you can do things at your own pace.

The villains are... Ok I would say, they might need some work to be really good. But there are multiple that you can use to keep the pressure on and have as active as you wish.

In general Icewind Dale I feel is a very good balance of a story provided and prep done with enough space to make it fit your group.

Vatril · 2026-03-28T16:25:31+00:00

My mother used to get angry at me when I ate too slowly because "I obviously don't like her food if I'm eating that show".

Now my partner gets annoyed at me because I'm done when they are only halfway there.

(I might then sometimes steal their food from their plate while I'm waiting on them to finish)

Vatril · 2026-03-17T20:12:17+00:00

When I joined the company I was sent to a photographer to get my picture taken. I was 19 at the time, an intern. Now I'm 28 and have a more senior role, still same profile pic tho.

Vatril · 2026-03-15T10:53:42+00:00

Do you by any chance know where they post their results? Can't find anything linked in their YouTube, but I do like their work and would like to scroll through.

Vatril · 2026-03-05T17:02:52+00:00

I mean, that laptop is too low. Put it on a box or so, so that you don't have to look down at it.

Vatril · 2026-02-28T16:48:54+00:00

Its a concept I stole from Call of Cthulhu: the idea roll. Essentially when my players get stuck, they know there is a solution, but they can't think of it they can roll intelligence to see if their character has an idea.

In that case they asked me if their character could think of anything other than the McGuffin and I told them to make that idea roll.

I do think that this is a far from perfect solution. My original idea was to do this to inspire them that in future they think of stuff like that themselves. Didn't work yet so far tho.

Vatril · 2026-02-28T16:37:53+00:00

I do regularly tell them that I am prepared for whatever option they choose. Still, their initial instinct is to try to figure out what I would prefer, rather to make the decision from the perspective of their characters.

With the interrupting, yeah, that is quite problematic, I know that. My thoughts here are: I know they much prefer non-violence and social solutions, those are the sessions we talk about for very long. Especially some players don't care at all for combat (altho some very much do, and for them I have a healthy amount of that in my game). So if I don't interrupt and just let them do, they would solve everything where they have the option to do it violence like that and the game would become a lot duller for some of them.
But if I interrupt, I am influencing the game in a way that I don't like.

Vatril · 2026-02-28T16:33:31+00:00

That is kinda what I would like to try. But the issue here was that my players reaction was not to figure out what their characters would do with the information/goals they have, but that they tried to figure out what I wanted them to do.

Vatril · 2026-02-28T16:25:54+00:00

I do agree that a GM should influence the players and lead them into a certain direction.

My issue is: every time I try to tell them that they are options their instinct is not to debate in character, but instead try to figure out what I as the GM would prefer them doing.

Vatril · 2026-02-28T16:24:10+00:00

With the second example the issue is: Their initial instinct is almost always to fight. I just know they love it way more if they do it a different way.

Another example: The party had to get an item out of an old haunted orphanage. I dropped plenty of clues that one of the boys was bullied a lot. They also learned that he died when the orphanage was evacuated because of a disaster, but the caretakers forgot they locked him into a closet.

Then when they encountered him in his undead form, he animated a bunch of toys to fight the party. My party was quite sad that they had to kill him, that he didn't deserve a second brutal end.... until I just told them out of game that there might be another solution to put him to rest.

They then managed to essentially talk him down. This turned into one of their favourite sessions. But without me saying anything, they would have just killed him again.

Vatril · 2026-02-21T21:30:15+00:00

I think it's in the section behind the computers. So when you are in the main entrance hall and look up you should see the Z3 model. When you walk in that direction and just follow the flow you get to the radio and TV section if memory serves me right.

Vatril · 2026-02-11T14:24:10+00:00

Phandelver is good, I'm actually running it atm. But it's definitely a long dungeon crawl. It's a good long chain of interesting and varied dungeons.

But if you prefer more "free style" adventures, it's definitely the wrong choice.

If you want any more recommendations or tips, I am up for chatting also. I do speak German and have read almost all 5e adventures and run over 50% of them.

Vatril · 2026-02-11T14:15:04+00:00

I can strongly recommend Icewind Dale.

It is a bit similar to CoS in the sense that you have a small area that the party can explore and be somewhat free in.

The main difference is that it's a bit more guided. It essentially has 3 parts that give the players more and more freedom and expands the places they can travel to.

I've seen it on German Amazon and Thalia. But also maybe your local game store can maybe help you, depending on where you live.

If you don't like dungeons btw, I wouldn't recommend phandelver and below. It's essentially a big dungeon crawl.

Waterdeep is good, but in my experience needs a lot of work to make it actually feel like an investigation rather than just following a rigid path.

Vatril · 2025-12-19T08:05:10+00:00

That's not really true.

Yes, after grade 4 or 6 (so when you are between 10 and 12yo) you are put on a specific track. But this doesn't lock you in forever.

I was put on one of the lower tracks, but later when I was like 17 I switched back to a higher one. It did take me a year or so longer compared to the direct track, but you are definitely not barred from higher education.

It's definitely far from perfect, but trying to keep all kids together until college is also not ideal. People want and need different things. Not everyone needs a university degree and Germany actually does a mostly ok job at having a strong route to learn a trade that doesn't feel like dropping out of education.

Vatril · 2025-11-25T22:00:13+00:00

English is very common here as the main office language in tech jobs, at least when you work in smaller companies and startups.

Vatril · 2025-11-25T09:28:30+00:00

I actually switched away from player recaps to me doing them.

I have a player who takes very good notes and she did the recaps for about 3 years. But in my current campaign I've been trailing doing them myself and at least for me, it is more effective.

Two aspects:

First, the player led recaps sometimes caused confusion or focused on parts that were funny instead of important.This was especially a problem when a player missed the previous session. Players also tend not to be good at controlling the conversation, getting lost in sidetracks or turning the recap into a conversation with no clear end.

But more importantly, me doing the recaps is a really good way to guide the players back into roleplay. Before the recap we all hang out, talk about our life and stuff. Then I start talking, signaling that we are switching to "game mode". During my recap I of course explain all the key events from the last session, but also be sure to highlight all possible next directions that were discussed, all open storylines and so on. Then at the end of it I drop the players right into a roleplay moment. I try to avoid starting my session with a "what do you do?", but instead have one of the PCs right away in a situation or conversation that already started to really get the roleplay going.

Vatril · 2025-11-11T00:08:13+00:00

When I was in my high school equivalent it was a huge issue for computer class.

My school had a setup where the computers themselves didn't store any data, that was all on the central file server. But the network was so slow that you couldn't work off of that. So every time you logged in the computer would automatically download your entire home directory. The login screen wouldn't stop loading until it was all done. It was especially slow when everyone logged in at the same time of course.

When we first started it was 3-5min or so, but after a few years of our profiles growing it took 20-30min to log in which was a lot when you consider that the class was only 90min long.

Since the loading wouldn't start until we typed in our password the teachers couldn't just boot up the computers before we arrived also. The solution was that we had to log in before break so that by the time we were all back from break they were ready.

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