Frequently Asked Questions

Foundry Virtual Tabletop is a modern, feature-rich "virtual tabletop" (a "VTT"). Foundry VTT serves as a digital "tabletop" so that you can gather your friends and party members and have an excellent role-playing game experience together digitally.

Foundry VTT provides the full set of digital tools necessary to emulate and (and often surpass!) the experience of playing a game in-person, such as battle maps, integrated character sheets, digital dice, audio, voice / video, and more.

While other VTTs can provide some of these basic elements, the Foundry team prides ourselves on continually pushing the boundaries of the possible, providing rich dynamic lighting/fog of war, immersive audio, interactive map regions, powerful modding capabilities, and much more. Foundry VTT gives you everything you need (and then some) to forge thrilling and memorable moments with your gaming group!

A Foundry VTT license is a one-time purchase and only one person (the host) needs to purchase a Foundry license for their group. Typically, this host is the Game Master who runs the game server as an application right on their own computer. Because Foundry is built using modern web technology and standards, other players connect to the Foundry server using a standard web browser and a URL invitation link.

If you prefer cloud-based hosting, several excellent official hosting partners are available as well.

No, at its heart, Foundry VTT is a virtual tabletop, not an image editor or map-maker. While Foundry VTT offers many powerful tools to enhance and supplement battlemaps or landscapes, its primary purpose is not to create battlemap images from scratch. There are several great options available for creating maps for use in Foundry:

• Pre-made Maps

  There are many excellent maps and entire pre-made adventures available from talented creators, including many which come free with Foundry.

• Integration with dedicated map-making software

  You can also use excellent dedicated third party map-making software such as DungeonDraft and Dungeon Alchemist. The output of these programs can then be imported directly into Foundry.

• Image editing software

  Using powerful image editing software such as Clip Studio Paint or Adobe Photoshop is a great option, particularly in combination with excellent (and often free!) libraries of map-making assets such as those created by Forgotten Adventures. An excellent guide on how to use Clip Studio Paint with these assets is available here.

Foundry VTT began as the passion project of a single person, Andrew Clayton (Atropos). As he ventured more into the world of virtual tabletop roleplaying, he became frustrated with the limitations of the existing virtual tabletop options and became increasingly certain that virtual roleplaying could be better in every way. Driven by his belief in the power of digital tools and a that the virtual tabletop experience could be so much more than it was, he set to work building a new virtual tabletop from the ground up using modern web techhnology.

Atropos began Foundry development as early as August 2018. Early support and momentum quickly gathered around the project through a wonderful and vibrant Patreon community that grew and rallied behind it, culminating in Foundry Virtual Tabletop marking its official release on Friday May 22, 2020.

Since then, Foundry VTT has continued to grow, growing from the side project of a single individual into a small company. Over the following years, Foundry has regularly released improved versions of the software and forged official partnerships with industry giants including Paizo in April 2022 and Wizards of the Coast in January of 2024.

Foundry VTT continues to push the boundaries of what is possible in the virtual tabletop roleplaying space with every new major version.

Foundry VTT categorizes releases according to different phases of development. Some versions are marked as Stable and are recommended for public use. Other versions more experimental and are intended to introduce and test new features or gather user feedback. These releases are marked as Prototype, Development, or Testing releases. For more information, please see our Versioning and Releases article.

A full listing of all of our historical and available releases can be found in the Releases page.

Individual licenses for Foundry Virtual Tabletop are sold for $50 USD. Each license allows for hosting a single Foundry Virtual Tabletop game server for an unlimited number of players (who do not need to purchase the software). There is only one type of license, which includes all of the Foundry Virtual Tabletop core features - there are no premium tiers, special editions, or season passes. Future updates to the core software will be made available (for free) to all license owners.

In addition to the sale of licenses, Foundry has a Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/foundryvtt) for community members who wish to show additional support. Patreon is not required to access any software features, it merely offers some minor additional perks like access to private Discord channels, bonus content that can be imported into Foundry VTT, and even voting on an option to include in each new version of the Foundry VTT software!

Foundry Gaming LLC is a limited liability corporation registered in the State of Washington and is required to collect sales tax on software sold to customers in the State of Washington or in other US states where the number of Foundry Virtual Tabletop license sales exceed a minimum threshold to require sales tax collection. We also collect sales tax (VAT) in the European Union, the United Kingdom, Norway, and Australia. If you believe you are being charged an incorrect amount of sales tax please reach out to support@foundryvtt.com with your concerns.

To purchase the software, follow these steps:

1. Register a user account on this website. You can (optionally) link your account with Patreon at the time of registration.
2. Go to the Purchase page. Foundry Virtual Tabletop individual licenses cost $50 (plus tax). If you have access to a Discount Code (typically for being a Patreon supporter of Foundry), you should apply it before purchasing. More details on that below.
3. Agree to the terms and conditions and provide your payment information. Payment is handled by Stripe which is a trusted platform for secure online payments. They accept all manner of credit and bank cards including most foreign cards. Depending on your region, some other payment methods such as Apple Pay or Ali Pay may be vailable. Unfortunately some payment methods (most notably Paypal) are supported at this time.
4. Once you purchase, after waiting a few seconds you will be redirected to your User Profile page where your newly issued software license will be available to use along with download links to the software.

We are always happy to transfer a purchased license to another user's account. All it takes to do so is a few quick steps:

1. The person who you are gifting Foundry VTT must register an account on our website.
2. Then, as the purchaser, follow the steps in the question above to purchase Foundry VTT as if you are buying it for yourself.
3. Once your purchase is successful, use the License Transfer form to submit a license transfer request and have it processed automatically.

Assuming the license is eligible for transfer and that the account information for the recipient is accurate, it will be transferred immediately after completing the license transfer form.

My hope is that Foundry Virtual Tabletop will work for everyone - however I acknowledge that there is some risk in purchasing a software that has specific hardware and networking requirements.

Should the software not work out for you and your players, you have the ability to request a refund up to 30 days from the date of purchase. Refunds are offered in cases where the technical limitations of the software result in an unsatisfactory experience for the purchaser. If your purchase is refunded, your license key will be revoked and you must immediately discontinue use and uninstall all copies of the software.

If you need to request a refund for your Foundry Virtual Tabletop purchase, you can find details of your purchased licenses and submit a refund request on the Purchased Licenses page of your user profile.

Please note that the refund policy is intended for cases where the customer is unable to use the software or dissatisfied with the features that it offers. Occasionally the software will be temporarily offered at a discounted sale price. Temporary changes in pricing do not constitute valid grounds for a refund request, otherwise it would be infeasible for me to offer such temporary discounts.

Foundry Virtual Tabletop now supports the following additional payment methods for the EU: Bancontact, EPS, giropay, iDeal, and Przelewy24. Depending on your particular region and device, some other options such as Apple Pay or Ali Pay may be available. These payment processing methods should provide a faster rate of transaction than SEPA Direct Debit, and the expected processing time is similar to that of credit card transactions. When using any of these methods you should receive your license within a few minutes.

Payments processed via SEPA Direct Debit can take extra time to process.

Foundry Virtual Tabletop now supports SEPA Direct Debit transactions as methods of payment. However, due to the time it takes banks to communicate this information to one another, payments can take up to 7 business days to process.

There are two steps to the SEPA Debit workflow, in the first step Stripe submits a mandate to your bank which enacts the debit request. In the second phase the bank reports back to Stripe once the debit request has cleared. As a result, the charge may appear on your bank account 1-3 days before the purchase is fully completed. Please remain patient and you will receive an email containing your issued license key information as soon as the successful charge is reported back to the Stripe platform.

Foundry VTT would not exist without the devoted support of the Patreon community giving Atropos encouragement, reinforcement, and constructive feedback during its early development, and your voluntary support helps to sustain Foundry's ongoing development. Foundry's Patreon supporters have contributed not only their money but their time towards making Foundry Virtual Tabletop possible, and we are happy to provide a one-time-use Patreon discount to current and past Patrons of Foundry Virtual Tabletop based on your lifetime amount of support.

If you are a current or former Patreon supporter, you are eligible for a Patreon Supporter Discount which may be applied towards a purchase of a single license. While this discount was originally created for Patreon users before the software was publicly released, it remains in effect and is particularly useful for Patreon members who purchased one-year subscriptions (thank you)!

The Patreon discount amount each supporter receives is equal to two-thirds of your lifetime total support, rounded down to the nearest $5 interval, in other words - if you have supported the project for $15 on Patreon, you would receive a discount of $10 on the purchase price. If your lifetime support on Patreon meets or exceeds $75, you will be able to redeem a copy of the Foundry Virtual Tabletop software for free by using the discount code.

To unlock your supporter discount you must take the following steps.

1. Create and activate an account on the Foundry Virtual Tabletop website.
2. Link your Foundry Virtual Tabletop website account with your Patreon account which has supported the Foundry VTT project, either during the registration process or by editing your user profile.
3. [Optional] If you had already registered on the Foundry VTT website and have contributed additional Patreon support since first linking your account, be sure to click "Refresh Account" on your user profile so that your updated lifetime support level is recorded.
4. Enter the promotion code PATREON in the Discount Code field below and click Apply.

Each Patreon account is eligible for a supporter discount (once only) if you have contributed $10 or more in lifetime support to the Foundry Virtual Tabletop project.

Premium digital content purchases can be refunded within 30 days of purchase if it has not been installed. Please review our Terms & Conditions for full details.

Premium Content will come with an accompanying content activation key. Using this key, go to your User Profile on the Foundry Virtual Tabletop website by logging in and clicking your name in the top-right corner. On your user profile, click the Premium Content button to go to the content management and activation page. On this page you can enter your purchased content key in the form at the top of the page. Content that you have successfully activated will be displayed below.

Once content is activated, you will be able to install it from within the Foundry Virtual Tabletop application using the System, Module, or World Installation tools in your Setup and Configuration menu.

Normally, when you start the Foundry Virtual Tabletop software for the first time, it will prompt you to enter your license key. Once you have entered your License key, you will be prompted to sign the End User License Agreement (EULA) which connects with the Foundry license server to verify your license key.

Performing this License verification requires you to be connected to the internet and on a network which allows connections to external sites. If you are having trouble with the EULA agreement, make sure you are not on a VPN or other special network which blocks Foundry from communicating with the license server.

This is one of the most frequent licensing questions we receive. The EULA requires that a license may be only actively used in one location (meaning one server), however, there is some nuance in what is meant by "actively in use".

It is acceptable to run two (or more) instances of Foundry Virtual Tabletop using a single license if only one of those is accessible for player use by clients who are not the software license owner. This allows you to, for example, host a dedicated server that you use for your weekly game session while also running a separate personal-only test server where you do world-building, testing, module development, or other activities. As long as other users cannot connect past the login screen of that second server this usage is acceptable.

• Example 1 (Permitted): You have a live campaign server which your players connect to and you use for your weekly game. You also have a private development server where you create new worlds or do module development. This usage is allowed with a single Foundry Virtual Tabletop license key.
• Example 2 (Permitted): Your gaming group plays two ongoing campaigns. You are the game-master for one campaign which meets on Wednesdays; for that campaign you host the Foundry Virtual Tabletop server which is accessible to everyone during the game session. On Saturdays your friend is the game-master and they host the Foundry Virtual Tabletop server using the same (shared) license key. Only one Foundry Virtual Tabletop game server is accessible at any given time. This usage is allowed with a single Foundry Virtual Tabletop license key.
• Example 3 (Permitted): You run multiple instances of Foundry Virtual Tabletop on the same computer. One of them is used by your game group; users access the server throughout the week to update their character sheets. Another instance on the same server is for your personal testing only, it is not accessible because the player accounts on that instance has access keys that only you know. This usage is allowed with a single Foundry Virtual Tabletop license key.
• Example 4 (Not Permitted): You self-host a game server that you and other users access for one of your ongoing campaigns. You use the same license key to also run a dedicated server through one of our partnered hosting service providers. Both servers are accessible at the same time. This usage is not allowed and would require two Foundry Virtual Tabletop license keys.
• Example 5 (Not Permitted): You run multiple instances of Foundry Virtual Tabletop on the same computer where different instances are accessible for different ongoing campaigns. Players in these campaigns can access the server for their respective campaigns at any time. This usage is not allowed and would instead require each instance to have a unique license key.

For information and general guidance about hardware requirements for Foundry Virtual Tabletop including both minimum requirements and recommendations, please see Minimum Requirements. Note that hardware requirements are approximately the same for both players and for the server host.

At this time Foundry VTT does not support mobile devices as part of the core software. Though we have plans to add support for it at a later time, the development focus is on providing the best possible experience for the majority of users. There are some add-on modules which add support for android devices.

With regard to iOS devices specifically, due to limitations in the Safari browser and the fact that Apple requires other browsers on iPad to use the Safari webkit, Foundry VTT will not work via iPad at this time.

Foundry VTT does not normally require an active internet connection or rely upon an external service. There are two situations in which an internet connection and a call to an external service are required.

• When your license key is entered and signed, the key is validated against the main Foundry server which signs the license and allows you to proceed.
• When you request software updates, a request is dispatched to the main web server to learn if a new version is available and to obtain the permission to download it.

Additionally, there are a few situations in which Foundry VTT will use an external service to provide some additional functionality

• When you search for Modules/Systems in the browser, those results are returned from the main web server. If it were unavailable the Module browser would be empty. You can still install modules/systems directly by providing their manifest link.
• An external IP address identification service to learn the public-facing IP address of the server hosting the game. This is needed in order to generate the invitation links. If this service is unavailable Foundry would still work, but the invitation links would not be generated properly.

Overall, the software is designed to not have a reliance on external servers. There are some features of the software, as described above, which use calls to external services. Aside from the initial license activation, nothing would block you from moving forward if the main Foundry web server was offline.

Yes, Foundry Virtual Tabletop works great for this use case. Running the application or the Node.js server allows you to host the game from the Gamemaster perspective, and you can simply use a web browser to connect to your own game to broadcast a player view for your table.

The on-boarding process for Modules and Systems requires a manual review and approval. If you are interested in having your work featured in our official package listings please submit the Package Submission Form.