I have been enjoying playing Burning Wheel on Foundry Virtual Tabletop tremendously. Not only because the game is going well and I enjoy hanging out with my friends but also because of the really useful features of Foundry VTT. A major component of running Burning Wheel on there has been StasTserk’ssystem plugin for Foundry, that automates quite a bit about running the game. However, a major feature that’s missing by design from his plugin is Foundry Compendiums that contain the Skills, Traits, Lifepaths, and so on needed to run Burning Wheel. He’s made the explicit choice not to include these, as his project is free and has unofficial status.
Some anonymous person at one point coded a whole set of these Compendiums into Foundry, and a zip file of this has been shared on the Burning Wheel Discord that had all the Common Skills and Common Traits and two of the Settings but lacked a set of other things. To me, getting the Skills and Traits in there would have been the bulk of the work and that was a main thing preventing me from doing it myself. However, with that wonderful start (thank you, unknown person!), I decided to take up the work from here and add the other Settings and missing features bit-by-bit. Given that it was also a little tricky to install initially, thanks to the help of a kind fellow who goes by Agolp on Github, we now have a module that can be installed via its Manifest URL!
You can find the files and installation instructions on the GitHub page, as well as a way to file issues in case you discover something that needs adding or changing. The project is only halfway through so far, but I’d say it’s in a workable state for average play. The things that are still missing now are more niche things, like Monstrous Lifepaths, Traits, and Skills, and so on. I hope this helps you get started with Burning Wheel on FoundryVTT!
The Foundry BW Compendium is available on FoundryVTT and can be updated from there as well! How cool is that?
The current list of compendiums available in FoundryVTT
The other day I went and purchased Foundry VTT, the virtual tabletop software I wrote about in my last post. I can tell you that already it’s as cool as I figured it would be. For one, its most frequently promoted advantage over Roll20.net is no exaggeration: I’m finding its interface much more accessible to use. That may just be an availability bias—after all, I haven’t GMed in Roll20.net much and I’m approaching Foundry VTT with the assumption that I need to learn how to use it—yet the entire interface is also just more modern, which makes it more comparable to other contemporary tools.
I’m finding quite a few features which are, understandably, focused on minis and battlemats, such as grids, tokens, stat trackers, and so on. But already for Burning Wheel the automation features in the Foundry VTT module are well worth it to me. The automatic tracking of rolls for advancement, the automatic filling of weaponry in character sheets after the item has been added, and features like that are wonderful. The big downside I’ve found is that the person who made the module has made the explicit choice not to include any of the skills, traits, and so on. They argue this is problematic because it’s an unofficial module, as well as being free. Well, fair enough—they made the effort to make the module, and I’m already grateful enough for that. So, I’ve spent quite some time this weekend entering in all the common skills, and I’m on to adding the other elements of Burning Wheel to the compendium (as those Foundry VTT databases are called).
The more I’ve been playing around with the features of Foundry VTT, the more I’m thinking about how to use even the more battlemat-focused ones for Burning Wheel experiences to help set the mood. I’m looking forward to experimenting with it!
Over the past weeks, with the repeated delays in starting up my Burning Wheel campaign due to personal situations of various people, I’ve been looking around more and more to prepping tools for tabletop RPG sessions. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by just how much has been developed in recent years, and the sheer quality of what’s been put out there. There are three products in particular that I’m looking forward to getting, once we have some spare disposable cash earmarked for hobby expenses.
Wonderdraft
The first is Wonderdraft, which is a mapmaking software package that is less complex and expensive than something like Campaign Cartographer 3+ but more full-featured than something like Inkarnate. I enjoy an evocative worldmap that helps focus players’ imaginations at the table. Or, alternatively, validates it retroactively by starting with an empty map that gets filled in as the players’ progress in a game. While I’ve been enjoying slowly learning to draw, for one my skills are nowhere near the point where I can confidently create handmade maps nor would it be possible at a pace that is practical even if I did have the ability to do so. This software looks like a great solution to more quickly create regional maps. I’ve seen some interesting examples of people using it to make maps of entire regions, such as this video:
The creator of this video recreates a 20-hour Photoshop map in Wonderdraft in the span of about two hours.
And I’ve also seen somebody use the software to create a detailed village:
This video is a little odd, as it’s an unedited, no-commentary example of using Wonderdraft to make a village map, but I’m impressed at how much the artist achieves in just one hour with the software.
Dungeondraft
Relatively recently, the creator of Wonderdraft, Megasploot, has released a companion piece of software to Wonderdraft called Dungeondraft. Apparently, the software itself is reminiscent of Wonderdraft in operation but is focused on creation battlemaps or more localized, zoomed-in maps. For me, there were always two major blocks to running a Pathfinder style game, which were balancing encounters and providing the detailed maps needed for miniature battling. This software seems to make basic map creation almost trivial, and with practice could even allow for the creation of beautifully intricate maps. The creator’s trailer provides a lovely overview of some maps:
This is the trailer made by the creator of Dungeondraft
Foundry VTT
Lastly, as far as a Virtual Tabletop System goes, I discovered Foundry VTT recently. Roll20 has long-since been the staple of my online tabletop RPG experience, but it’s always felt very dated and clunky in its controls. Foundry is a much-needed update to this type of experience. However, what I appreciate more than anything is that it’s a self-hosted, one-time payment solution to tabletop hosting. On top of that, it’s modular, so it’s easily expandable; apparently, people have created many modules for the system, so there’s a lovely open market of expansions out there. To be honest, I’m just astounded by how many options there are:
The anniversary overview of Foundry VTT
Conclusion
I’m quite excited to get some of these pieces of software, but I’ll have to do this in steps for sure. Foundry VTT runs at $50; Wonderdraft at $30; and Dungeondraft at $20. So, all in all, it’s a $100 pricetag (or €87 for us). While that seems like a pretty reasonable price for everything included in each piece of software, I’m not willing to spend €87 on a hobby right now. So, I’ll have to see if we can pick up some extra money through our company that justifies such a luxury expenditure, so that I can start playing around with it. I figure it may make the most sense to purchase Foundry first, followed by Wonderdraft, and finally Dungeondraft. The latter two are great additions to a VTT experience, but you’d want to have a good VTT experience to begin with. While I could import Wonderdraft and Dungeondraft images into Roll20, of course, it does seem like putting the cart in front of the horse.
