• Categories:
• Technical
• Game Master
• FoundryVTT

In the previous post we installed FoundryVTT using Docker (if you used another method then you will need to locate the data directory for your installation). In this article we will take a quick tour of the filesystem created and some of the Foundry VTT user interface (UI).

If you left your Foundry instance running then skip this step, but if not we should restart it. Assuming you used Docker simply

cd ~/foundryvtt
docker compose up -d

To restart the Foundry server. (To stop the server docker compose stop in that same directory. Stopping the server like this will not lose any data.)

Move in to the data directory and look at the files Foundry has created.

cd data
tree
.
├── Config
│   ├── admin.txt
│   ├── license.json
│   ├── options.json
│   └── options.json.lock
├── Data
│   ├── modules
│   │   └── README.txt
│   ├── systems
│   │   └── README.txt
│   └── worlds
│       └── README.txt
├── Logs
│   ├── debug.log
│   ├── diagnostics.json
│   ├── error.log
│   └── news.json
└── container_cache
    └── foundryvtt-11.315.zip

9 directories, 11 files

As mentioned in the last post the container_cache is used by the Docker image and is not part of Foundry itself. The other directories are though.

In Config/admin.txt you will find a long string of characters, this is an encrypted form of the foundry_admin_key we set in docker-compose.yaml. On a normal installation you can reset your administrator password by deletind this file. On a Docker installation like ours you can look in vttsecrets.json to see the password, or simply change the password in vttsecrets.json, then delete Config/admin.txt, and restart Foundry using docker compose restart.

In Config/license.json is, unsuprisingly, your license.

In Config/options.json are Foundry server options. We will take a look at these one day, for now just note they are here. The Config/options.json.lock is an empty directory used internally by Foundry, ignore it for now.

Various log files live under Logs. These can be useful if we have issues and we may need to supply these to developers, so it is as well to know they are here. The Logs/news.json is actually displayed on the right side of the Foundry setup screen.

The directory we are most interested in is Data.

Data

Under Data we have three top-level directories.

1. modules—Contains all of the extension/add-on modules we insstall.
2. systems—Contains all the game systems we install.
3. worlds—Contains the worlds we create and install.

Currently each of these contains only a README.txt file that explains what the directory is for.

We will be revisiting the Data directory often.

Foundry VTT Setup

Switching our attention now to Foundry VTT. Fire up your browser and visit http://localhost. Depending on where you left off previously you may need to accept the license etc. but assuming you are continuing on from the previous post you should be looking at the Foundry Setup Screen.

Installing the D&D 5e game system

Before anything else let’s tell Foundry we want the D&D5e system installed. If it is not already selected click on Game Systems. Then click Install System to open the Install System dialog.

Into the search bar at the top, enter dnd5e. This will filter the list of available game systems (when I did this I ended up with just one, the one we want). Find Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition and click the Install button on the right.

Close the Install System dialog (click Close in the top right of the dialog).

Foundry will move you on to installing a Game World, but click back to Game System and you should see the D&D Fifth Edition game system.

Jump back to look at the file system. Under Data/systems, in addition to the README.txt we now have a dnd5e directory. Under this dnd5e directory are many files and directories that contain details of the D&D5e game system along with helpful assets and content from the D&D Standard Reference Document made easily accessible within Foundry.

In order to check out this game system we need a “world”, so let’s set one up now.

Creating a world

Click on the Game Worlds header of the Foundry Setup screen and then click Create World

This will open the Create World dialog.

We will do the minimum setup for now. Just enter a World Title “TEST” and select Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition from the Game System dropdown. (Note that the Data Path is set to a default name—lowercase version of the World Title—under the /Data/worlds directory. We could change this, but don’t.)

Click the large CREATE WORLD button.

You will now see your new TEST world listed on the Game Worlds tab of the Foundry Setup screen.

Skip back and look at the file system. Under /Data/worlds you now see test. This directory holds all the data specific to the TEST world. We will revisit this later.

What about modules? We will circle back to modules later but for now this is all we need to finally investigate Foundry VTT itself. We begin this in our next session.

For help with this post please use the Discord channel and be sure to refer to this post’s link (https://mondarth.com/post/investigating-a-foundryvtt-install/ )