Foundry VTT for beginners: set up your first game night as a GM

So you volunteered to run the next campaign online, bought your Foundry VTT license, opened it for the first time... and quietly closed it again. Honestly, fair. Foundry looks like a cockpit on first boot. But here's the thing: for your first game night you need maybe ten percent of what's on that screen, and that ten percent is genuinely easy.

This guide walks you through exactly that: install a game system, build a world, get a battlemap aligned, put tokens on it, and run your first combat. Keep it open on your second screen while you set up, and stick around for the one thing most tutorials only touch at the very end: where your Foundry actually runs.

1. Install a game system first (it locks in)

Foundry arrives empty on purpose: the rules come from a game system you install, and there are hundreds to pick from, from D&D 5e to Pathfinder 2e to tiny indie systems. Go to Game Systems, hit Install System, grab yours. Do this before anything else, because a world is tied to its game system when you create it and you can't swap the system afterwards. New system means new world.

2. Create your world

Game Worlds → Create World. Name it, pick your system, done; the background image and "next session" date are nice-to-haves you can set later. Join your world and take the built-in tour when it pops up: it points at every button you're about to wonder about. One thing to know: by default there's no password on your GM account. Fine for tonight, but set one in User Management before you invite players.

3. Scenes: getting a battlemap on the table

A scene is what your players look at: artwork, a village map, a dungeon. Create one in the Scene Directory, give it a background image, and check the grid. If the map's own grid doesn't line up with Foundry's, open the scene's grid configuration: you can adjust the grid size and nudge the image scale from there until it snaps into place. Take the two minutes; combat on a misaligned grid is misery. Right-clicking a scene gives you the two options that matter: View (only you go there) and Activate (everyone goes there).

4. Light and vision, the two-minute version

Running a sunny outdoor map? Turn on global illumination in the scene settings and move on with your life. Running a dungeon? Leave it off, crank the darkness up, and give the players light: a token can carry its own light source, so a classic torch is bright light with a bit of dim glow around it. If a player yells "everything is black!", it's one of three things: global illumination is off, their token has no vision enabled, or nobody brought a light. All three are checkboxes.

5. Tokens, character sheets and ownership

Everything that walks around on a map is an actor. The Compendium has ready-made monsters and starter heroes you can drag straight onto a scene; for player characters, create an actor and fill the sheet in with your group's rules. Then the step every new GM forgets: right-click each character, configure ownership, and make the right player the owner. That's what lets them log in, see their sheet and move their own token. Clicking things on the sheet rolls them, and a click on any roll in chat shows the full breakdown with modifiers.

6. The keybinds that save your game night

Six keys cover most of a session: hover a token and press T to target it (shift-click to add more targets). Space pauses the game for everyone. Hold Ctrl and drag to measure distance. Hold Alt to highlight everything on the map. Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V copy and paste, and Ctrl+Z undoes the token you just deleted by accident. That last one earns its keep fast.

7. A few mods worth installing on day one

Foundry's mod scene is huge, but this starter set is hard to beat on day one: Dice So Nice (3D dice in chat, instant table joy), Dice Tray (roll dice without typing commands), Chat Commander (autocompletes chat commands), plus Monk's Scene Navigation, Combat Marker and Wall Enhancement for quality-of-life. Install them under Add-on Modules, then enable them per world under Manage Modules. Fair warning: mods are a gateway drug. You'll be browsing "just one more" by Thursday.

8. Your first combat

Select the tokens that are fighting, right-click one, and send them to the combat tracker. Roll initiative for everyone with one click, then work down the order. The trick that makes Foundry feel magical: target an enemy before you attack (that T key again) and Foundry checks the hit and offers the damage buttons for you. And if your players don't need to see every roll you make, switch your roll mode in chat: public, private, blind or self. Your secrets stay secret.

9. The part nobody warns you about: where Foundry actually runs

Here's the bit most tutorials save for the last thirty seconds. Foundry runs on one computer, and every player connects to it. If that computer is your gaming PC, that means: your PC on for the whole session, your home connection carrying six people's maps, and a bit of network fiddling to let friends in from outside. It works, but it's homework, and it's due every game night.

The alternative is a Foundry server that's already online: we run it for you in an EU data centre, your players join in their browser with just a link, and your worlds, scenes and mods live there permanently with backups you control. You bring your own Foundry license (one checkout field, we'll show you where to find it), pick a plan from €3,49 per month, and your table is up in about 30 seconds. Spend your prep time on the adventure; the button below does the rest.