What devices do you use for running games?
What devices do you use for running games?
Typically I use pen and paper, but I've been interested in a tablet or similar device for a while and am interested in what other people are using.
The reMarkable 2 seems like a really cool option to play with, but also pretty pricey for trying it out to see if it would even work well.
While it's not directly related, when playing in games, I usually use a paper character sheet for reference, a notepad for consumables, story notes, and HP, and Pathbuilder on my phone for spells.
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I host and play online, so almost entirely digital tools. As a sysadmin I'm quite taken to self-hosting so right now my setup currently consists of:
- FoundryVTT instance, with quite a few QoL and eye-candy modules (without going overboard). Hosted within a Docker container.
- Szurubooru, an imageboard instance, used to archive, aggregate and categorize all my NPC/Item/Battlemap/Landscape art. Image hotlinks used to load the image within Foundry. Hosted within a docker container.
- Self-made wiki for the setting (and campaign sections) aggregating all that info, similar to Kanka or WorldAnvil I guess. Can embed ingame using html in journals.
- Trilium instance for notes, though with Foundry's improved journals and my wiki nearing fully functional completion, I've found myself using it less and less. Still use it for taking notes as a player, however, unless the GM gives me a Foundry journal to write in. Hosted within a docker container.
- Used to use OneNote. Wholeheartedly recommend Trilium for anyone looking for a note taking app. The suite of community-made plugins is rich, and there's a few nice TTRPG ones that automate session date/number tracking, you can setup world calendar-based timelines, and there's a nice node graph feature that's amazing for being able to see npc/item/session/location relationships at a glance and the way in which they interconnnect. Great for TTRPG uses, and I still extremely regularly use it for taking notes regarding work.
- Discord for game audio, though I'm looking into setting up a selfhosted Matrix instance and hosting there instead.
Apart from that, I use Pathbuilder to scaffold my character builds, but for the final thing I build the sheet in Foundry itself as well.
Are you developing the wiki or using a base for it? I use mediawiki for my homelab documentation, but am now thinking that it might be a really good reference tool for players and myself in longer campaigns.
I am working on setting up an online campaign (when I actually get time to work on it between other projects and work), and planning on using Foundry for it, so it's nice to see some additional tools that can make life easier. Any suggestions on the Foundry modules?
I'm developing the wiki from scratch. I'm personally handling the frontend. Styling with CSS, Vue framework management, layouting, and also managing the server for it. My partner is handling the backend, writing the database in Rust. Really snappy and extremely lightweight! (Though it kinda needs to be. All of the stuff I mentioned in my previous post is running on a Raspberry Pi!).
For Foundry modules, this is a pastebin of my current active list, although I'm still adding some here and trimming the fat there occasionally, but this is more or less 90% definitive. I've added little explanations of each one which should hopefully make the list more useful, as well as which ones I plan on cutting (mostly due to V11 changes.)
Perhaps one additional thing I should add that I forgot to mention with my last post - I have also a very lightweight and tiny repository on GitHub that I back up my worlds/ folder to every week on a schedule (using cronjobs) while excluding any media data and module data (for size constraint reasons) - just actor/scene etc db and the files they point to in case the world gets corrupted or I wanna rollback something. GitHub doesn't like binary files much, but it has worked for me thus far. I have a world dedicated to a oneshot I wrote and I've ran it several times and then just rolled that folder back using my back up on github and it's worked great.
EDIT: Bah, I forgot one in the pastebin.
- Combat Carousel: Adds a CRPG style initiative tracker, generally compact and pleasant. (deprecated in favor of Carousel Combat Tracker, which works in V11 and has been back-ported to V10)
That's awesome; I'm running foundry in Nomad on a Raspberry Pi cluster, do you run into any speed/responsiveness issues with it when you get all the players in and the game started?
I just got Foundry running in my homelab last night, so I'm going through your list of modules this evening.
I'm running all those services on the same Pi, and honestly, I gotta say.. not at all! Even when everyone's loading in at the same time at session start, it's snappy and responsive. It struggled a bit with 5e (5e's base system has little to no automation which means all modules need to redefine the codebase themselves. The result is a very broken, very laggy mess) but PF2e is insanely fast.
Even while doing automated rolls with complicated calculations and automated resistance values on damage taken, Node.js peaks out at maybe 30% CPU on a very complex roll, and idles at such a negligible amount it may as well be 0.
As for the modules, while I do think they're awesome, my suggestion is to play with things around in vanilla PF2e system, and add them one by one as you feel "hmm, maybe quality of life could be better on this" or "this could be spicier in terms of effects". Mostly because, while it's not too bad to follow the errors by using the web console, if you need to debug, it's easier to go "oh this thing that broke is regulated by module x" and knowing what each module does helps a lot, but also because the base Pathfinder 2e system actually already has a lot of quality of life and automation baked in and you probably shouldn't install things that the system might already automate and might end up conflicting and breaking things.
Anything prefixed by "Pathfinder 2e" and "PF2e" should be safe, but only really install them if you want the features they offer. If you come across anything while playing around with it, feel free to ask, or check stuff out in the Foundry Discord if you haven't, they've got some great resources in there for newcomers.
I wasn’t aware one would be able to run a docker instance of fvtt… Today I am less stupid!
On a sidenote, would I be able to use fvtt just for pf2e charactersheets? My group plays offline, and I am really struggling getting a decent character sheet and manager thereof…
Pathbuilder tends to be better for that purpose, but yeah, that should be entirely possible.