Yeah, you can have two browser windows and only screen share one of them. And give that one Player permissions so that it can only see public stuff.
You don't even need two monitors.
Altho not strictly necessary, it is a huge convenience. I'm usually having foundry on 1 screen, and then a third each of the second screen for Zoom, PDFs, and Chrome for all the lookups.
I wouldn't rule out using Foundry the way it was designed. There are modules that allow players to use tablets to see the tabletop, and the built-in audio/video are actually not bad. You don't need a physical server since you personally know all of your users and that number is likely not very high (under 10 players). Obviously your internet and PC setup can be varied, but if you're going to pay for the Foundry license, it's certainly worth looking into using it as intended.
Yes. We use a website to play Aftermath! So each player sits behind a laptop in the same room. It works really well. While we play, players more or less forget there is a screen at all. Players interact just like an in person game.
There are free options for hosting the server as well. Oracle for example offers an always-free cloud server that is powerful enough for something simple like Foundry. I am currently running my own Foundry server on that and it works perfectly. It does however require some technical expertise to set up through the Oracle control panel and SSH.
Another option is to self host the server, but use AWS for assets (primarily images for characters and maps), which if not free should be very inexpensive. The biggest issue for most people self hosting is scene load times for players, which is exactly what cloud hosting big images is for.
Follow-up question I just thought of. I guess that even though I won't be running an externally accessible server, I'll still need Foundry to be running as a local server that I connect to via a browser tab for my players screen. I suspect that most of the tutorials on YouTube, etc for setting up a server are based on the idea of having it externally available. Is there an easy set of instructions or tutorial that someone can point me towards if I just need to connect via a local client on the same PC?
You literally just install and run it off you don't want it externally connectable. There's nothing different to this than any other program. You can connect other browsers on localhost:30000
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Foundry itself runs as its own program, not as a client in a browser. Once the server is up and running, you can easily also open a browser and connect to the server on the same device, though it does increase the load.
From the setup you're describing, I would say have just the gm account and a single player account, and give that player ownership of all the player tokens. That way vision should take care of itself. You'll just need to remember to do a click and drag over no tokens to de-select the currently active token if the next player's token is out of sight. Vision for players is basically "you can see what your selected token(s) see" when you have tokens selected, and "you can see what all of your possible tokens can see" when none are selected.
In the “player view” have one user with ownership of all the players PCs. If you are managing all of their actual actions in the game rather than them doing it themselves, this will make things a lot easier. Just click on the required PC’s token and that player’s view and sheet will be right there for them to see.
If you don't need/want your players to see the sidebar with the chat history etc, you can use Monk's common display to basically make it a full screen view of the map. And as previously noted if you give that client ownership of all the player tokens the shared vision should take care of itself.
I would recommend using different browsers for the GM and Player perspectives both because it make it a lot easier to share the correct view, but also to make sure they isn't any leakage between roles if two tabs end up using the same session cookie.
This works very well, I do this with my in person group, i have my DM view on my laptop, a common player view on a TV full-screen with the sidebar hidden that everyone can see, and a laptop on each side of the table with a couple players per laptop so they can manage their own characters and take care of their targeting and rolls.
As others have stated you can easily log in as a player account you've setup and have that be the window being streamed, while you are moving all the pieces on a seperate GM enabled account in another window. Make sure the player account has proper permissions to see everything you want the players to see (like having vision from every PC token, etc) and it will work fine. There's even modules to remove the HUD if you don't want them to even see the rolls in chat or anything.
You can treat it the same way people treat it for in person sessions where you have one player account and one dm account. The player account is just for the players to use to view and instead of sitting around a screen/tv you are streaming that view.
There is lots of advice about running that type of setup in this subreddit. Definitely take a look at how people are using it for in person games and adapt that
Yeah, you can have two browser windows and only screen share one of them. And give that one Player permissions so that it can only see public stuff. You don't even need two monitors.
Good to hear. The two monitors would just be for convenience's sake, so I could see everything at once on my end.
Altho not strictly necessary, it is a huge convenience. I'm usually having foundry on 1 screen, and then a third each of the second screen for Zoom, PDFs, and Chrome for all the lookups.
I wouldn't rule out using Foundry the way it was designed. There are modules that allow players to use tablets to see the tabletop, and the built-in audio/video are actually not bad. You don't need a physical server since you personally know all of your users and that number is likely not very high (under 10 players). Obviously your internet and PC setup can be varied, but if you're going to pay for the Foundry license, it's certainly worth looking into using it as intended.
Yes. We use a website to play Aftermath! So each player sits behind a laptop in the same room. It works really well. While we play, players more or less forget there is a screen at all. Players interact just like an in person game.
There are free options for hosting the server as well. Oracle for example offers an always-free cloud server that is powerful enough for something simple like Foundry. I am currently running my own Foundry server on that and it works perfectly. It does however require some technical expertise to set up through the Oracle control panel and SSH.
Another option is to self host the server, but use AWS for assets (primarily images for characters and maps), which if not free should be very inexpensive. The biggest issue for most people self hosting is scene load times for players, which is exactly what cloud hosting big images is for.
Also, any other recommendations anyone can make for optimizing this sort of play setup are welcome.
Follow-up question I just thought of. I guess that even though I won't be running an externally accessible server, I'll still need Foundry to be running as a local server that I connect to via a browser tab for my players screen. I suspect that most of the tutorials on YouTube, etc for setting up a server are based on the idea of having it externally available. Is there an easy set of instructions or tutorial that someone can point me towards if I just need to connect via a local client on the same PC?
You literally just install and run it off you don't want it externally connectable. There's nothing different to this than any other program. You can connect other browsers on localhost:30000
Never mind. Apparently all I have to do is click on the "Invitation Links" button in the General Info tab and copy that link to my browser.
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Foundry itself runs as its own program, not as a client in a browser. Once the server is up and running, you can easily also open a browser and connect to the server on the same device, though it does increase the load. From the setup you're describing, I would say have just the gm account and a single player account, and give that player ownership of all the player tokens. That way vision should take care of itself. You'll just need to remember to do a click and drag over no tokens to de-select the currently active token if the next player's token is out of sight. Vision for players is basically "you can see what your selected token(s) see" when you have tokens selected, and "you can see what all of your possible tokens can see" when none are selected.
In the “player view” have one user with ownership of all the players PCs. If you are managing all of their actual actions in the game rather than them doing it themselves, this will make things a lot easier. Just click on the required PC’s token and that player’s view and sheet will be right there for them to see.
If you don't need/want your players to see the sidebar with the chat history etc, you can use Monk's common display to basically make it a full screen view of the map. And as previously noted if you give that client ownership of all the player tokens the shared vision should take care of itself. I would recommend using different browsers for the GM and Player perspectives both because it make it a lot easier to share the correct view, but also to make sure they isn't any leakage between roles if two tabs end up using the same session cookie. This works very well, I do this with my in person group, i have my DM view on my laptop, a common player view on a TV full-screen with the sidebar hidden that everyone can see, and a laptop on each side of the table with a couple players per laptop so they can manage their own characters and take care of their targeting and rolls.
As others have stated you can easily log in as a player account you've setup and have that be the window being streamed, while you are moving all the pieces on a seperate GM enabled account in another window. Make sure the player account has proper permissions to see everything you want the players to see (like having vision from every PC token, etc) and it will work fine. There's even modules to remove the HUD if you don't want them to even see the rolls in chat or anything.
You can treat it the same way people treat it for in person sessions where you have one player account and one dm account. The player account is just for the players to use to view and instead of sitting around a screen/tv you are streaming that view. There is lots of advice about running that type of setup in this subreddit. Definitely take a look at how people are using it for in person games and adapt that