A very fond hello to everyone. I’m Nath (Anathema), the project coordinator for Foundry Virtual Tabletop (Foundry VTT). I’m joined by Viviane (Cora), who leads content development on our Pathfinder products. Some of you might remember our discussion of that development process in the Bestiary Token Pack blog post. We were also honored to attend last year’s PaizoCon and are excited to return this year.
It’s incredible to think that it has only been a year since we announced our partnership with Paizo and released the Beginner Box as the first of several pieces of Pathfinder content for Foundry VTT. With each release, we set ourselves a very high bar on quality and it’s thanks to our partnership with Paizo and the hard work of everyone involved that we have been so successful. Words cannot express how grateful we are for the outpouring of appreciation and support from the community with each release, and we hope to continue meeting or exceeding your expectations with Kingmaker’s forthcoming release.
What sometimes goes unnoticed is the other group contributing to this partnership, one equally deserving of praise and thanks. While the Pathfinder content for Foundry VTT is developed in-house by us, or by Sigil Services on behalf of Paizo, the world-class implementation of the underlying game system which we all rely on is entirely produced and maintained—free of charge—by a passionate group of fans. The Pathfinder Second Edition Volunteer Development Team have been hard at work supporting Pathfinder for Foundry VTT’s entire existence, and we want to take
this opportunity to spotlight their great work.
As a quick note: last year, the team led the community in raising more than $10,000 for the Extra Life charity. If you’d like to contribute to their ongoing charity efforts, please check out their team page and donate!
So, who are the volunteer developers? According to the game system’s open-source repository, 184 people have directly contributed to the project since its inception. We’ve invited some of the core members of the team to introduce themselves, talk about their work on the system, and give the community a peek behind the curtain at all that goes into creating and maintaining a tool that powers so many peoples’ games every single week.
Tim (TMun)
Hi everyone, I’m Tim. I’m presently the volunteer project coordinator for the Pathfinder Second Edition system on Foundry VTT. As the public face of the volunteers, my role is to be the point of contact for Foundry, Paizo, and other commercial interests with the volunteer base. I also set the overall guidance for the system. My most important job is being the arbiter of how rules are to be implemented if there is disagreement within the development team. I will also likely become a five-glyph Pathfinder Society GM during FoundryCon. All 150 of my table credits will have been earned using Foundry VTT!
I originally started working on the system when Foundry VTT went into open beta at the start of the pandemic. I had randomly picked up a Pathfinder Second Edition Core Rule Book at a local charity thrift shop for $5 and it seemed like it was meant to be. I pretty much immediately fell in love with the game. My first contribution to the Pathfinder Second Edition VTT system was data entry—starting with the Iconics, as I wanted to introduce some friends to the system. Over time, I took on bigger and bigger tasks, most notably a marathon session over two and a half days to get all the Advanced Player’s Guide in, and a three-month project to input all the missing Pathfinder Society scenario NPCs. When the team grew to the point where some organization was required, I was ‘elected’ by the other developers to take over coordinating the project. As for why I do it? Giving back to a community is very important to me—especially because, in a lot of cases, the work I shared was work I was going to do anyway. Why not let everyone benefit from the effort?
The thing I’m most proud of is the community that we’ve built. It took a lot of effort to coordinate with Paizo, but I think everyone is glad that we have. The commercial products that have come out so far show the power that Foundry brings to the virtual tabletop realm and the exceptional nature of the Pathfinder Second Edition system. I think the best illustration of our community’s strength has been the charity fundraising. Very early in the project, people began asking us to set up a Patreon or to accept donations. We deliberated and made a conscious decision that that was a bad idea—money makes things hard, especially with an open-source project. Instead, we decided to ask people to donate that money to charity on behalf of the project. Initially, it was toward food banks—at the start of the pandemic that was the greatest need. Then we moved on to animal shelters toward the end of the pandemic as people could no longer handle their “pandemic pets.” Most recently, we supported Extra Life, as Paizo had a super team that we could join as part of the larger community. I am privileged to be able to say that, last year, the community raised over $10,000 for Extra Life and the Children’s Miracle Network of hospitals!
Viviane (Cora)
Hello again! That’s right, I’m here too! Even before I worked for Foundry, I was busy supporting the system's development efforts as their community manager.
I first got involved in the project several years ago, when I decided to look into what it would take to submit some minor corrections to the creatures in the Age of Ashes adventure path. I didn't know the first thing about software development at the time, but with some help from the other volunteers, I was able to send in my first merge request. Since then, I've continued to sporadically submit minor updates to the system data, and I also maintain a module called PF2E Exploration Effects. Along the way, I learned a great deal about programming, and about modding Foundry VTT specifically. Unlike the other awesome people here, however, my direct contributions to the system have always been minor.
As the team's grown over the years, keeping it organized has become more and more of a monumental task. Some community members like Tikael and Shandyan have worked hard to maintain wikis, style-guides, and other documentation to help users and developers keep track of it all. Others spend a lot of time in community spaces, offering support and troubleshooting assistance to anyone who needs it. That's where I got my start! At the time, aside from a single channel on the [Foundry VTT Community Discord](https://discord.gg/foundryvtt) server, there was no "officially" designated location specifically for Pathfinder Second Edition community engagement and discussion. I decided to help remedy that by spinning up a Discord server to serve double purpose as a community hangout and a place for staging development efforts. By managing channels and roles, moderating discussions, writing blog posts, and otherwise engaging with the community, I hope to allow the programmers to get their work done as smoothly as possible.
Richard (stwlam)
Hi all, I am Richard and am known in the Foundry VTT community as the Shark That Walks Like a Man (“stwlam” for short). I help coordinate development of the code infrastructure of the system. My path to this role began during the height of COVID-19 through helping a friend who was GMing a different game for the platform, by implementing some features he desired for his campaign. When that was done, my attention turned to what I really wanted to play: Pathfinder!
My contributions to the project were initially small and targeted: adding and improving fundamental game mechanics I personally wanted to make use of as a player. This grew significantly over time; in the last two years I’ve had my hands in just about everything, but my primary focus has been on implementing rules for “things that happen on a map,” such as vision in areas of darkness and flanking during combat. My role as a volunteer development coordinator also has me reviewing and merging in new features, improvements, and bug fixes from our community contributors, who number close to 200 individuals since mid-2020.
Carlos (Supe)
Hello internet, my name is Carlos Fernandez—sometimes referred to as Supe—and I'm one of the developers and maintainers of the Pathfinder Second Edition implementation for Foundry VTT.
Around 2 years ago, I started playing Pathfinder and my group settled on Foundry VTT more or less from the start. Even at that time, it was one of the best implementations of Pathfinder on a VTT, but it did lack quite a number of features we take for granted today and I saw a chance to work on some of that thanks to the open nature of the platform.
I started with a module, a type of optional add-on in the Foundry VTT ecosystem, to add support for persistent damage. After that, I started adding features and fixing bugs in the main system itself. One thing led to another and now I'm one of the core contributors of the system.
As for my role, I add new features, fix bugs, and help prioritize what to add. Currently, I’m working on improving support for afflictions (such as poison and diseases). I’ve also been contracted by Foundry to work on some new features for the Kingmaker Adventure Path. Look forward to it!
Kevin (fryguy)
I’m Kevin and I’m most well-known as the creator of “PDF to Foundry,” a module which takes in a published Paizo adventure PDF, converts the assets (such as text and images), and loads those assets into a Foundry VTT world, populating it with journals, scenes and actors. With the creation of the amazing quality adventures that are now sold on the Paizo store, I have taken a break from adding recent adventures because they cannot compete with the quality of the ones that are being sold.
I was one of the earliest contributors to the Pathfinder Second Edition implementation for Foundry VTT, with one of the first pull requests merged back in October of 2019, only a few months after the creation of the repository. Over the years, I have implemented several big features, such as the held/worn/stowed tracking for items, and the ability score builder, but most of my time is spent on “PDF to Foundry.”
Ian (Tikael)
Hi everyone, I’m Ian. Most people in the community know me as Tikael. I’m one of the data entry coordinators for the Pathfinder Second Edition system on Foundry VTT, and I normally handle adding and reviewing new automation on our ever-growing compendiums.
When we took our tabletop game online in early 2020 I had plenty of downtime and nothing to fill it with. I decided to spend some of that time learning how the Foundry VTT system worked and helping to fill in gaps in the data entry, most notably the Paizo blog content, including the April fools monsters. As I became more proficient with the system and its data entry, I began to make small scripts to make my life easier, which have morphed into our current set of tools to speed up our data entry for the system. I’ve also made or collaborated on more than a dozen modules for Foundry, including automation helpers like the PF2E Companion Compendia and implementations of third-party content like Hopefinder or the Pnoll ancestry. I’ve also enjoyed helping third-party creators get their own content into Foundry and have tried to make the process of learning how to do it as painless as possible.
Playing Pathfinder is my hobby, and the Pathfinder community has been one I’ve been a part of since 2009. Helping coordinate data entry for the system has given me a way to give back to that community but it’s also had some great fringe benefits. I’ve been able to work on premium content for Foundry like the premium adventure path modules and the Battlezoo modules by Roll for Combat. It’s also given me a chance to work alongside this great team and learn from them. I can confidently say that I am a better programmer now than I was 3 years ago, and that the growth in my skills as a dev comes almost entirely from my experience working on this team.
Ian (Spartan)
Hi everyone, I’m (also) Ian! I go by SpartanCPA in the Pathfinder Second Edition Foundry community, and I’m also one of the data entry coordinators. These days though, I might be more known for the Bestiary Token Pack, available on the Paizo website. I also create the tokens for the Sigil APs, so if you plan to or have been enjoying the quality premium content released for Pathfinder Second Edition on Foundry VTT, you’ve likely seen my token work.
I started working on the system implementation in February of 2021 and I immediately got started on making the NPC actors nicer to use. Like Tikael said above, that eventually opened up into work for Battlezoo, Foundry, and Sigil on premium products. I hope everyone continues to enjoy the system. I can personally attest that a lot of people work very hard to make it as good as it is.
Common Questions
Are there any big plans the PF2e dev team are working on?
Development is always ongoing, and anyone is free to work on any functionality they’d like to see. There are no deadlines or due dates, but some of the bigger goals being chipped away at are expanded support for afflictions, and general improvements to the UI
How will the Pathfinder Second Edition Remaster affect the Foundry VTT system?
We look forward to the changes that are coming and are very interested to see what they actually are. From a development perspective, we do not expect the remaster to be a substantial challenge to support.
In cases where rules have been updated, we will treat the remaster the same way we treat any official errata. This means that changes will be made to keep the system in line with the most up-to-date version of Pathfinder Second Edition. Anyone who would like to is welcome to stay on an older version of the system, but we do not otherwise plan to include both old and new versions of the same content side by side—it would add an unnecessary maintenance burden. We recognize that this may not make everyone happy, but in some cases, it would double the work of the developers during each and every future update.
In places where content simply is not reprinted, the decision is a little different. We don't want to remove officially published creatures or spells if they are still compatible with the system's rules. For example, we do not plan to remove creatures from the Bestiary just because they were not included in the Monster Core book. However, it's possible that mechanical changes in the remaster- such as the removal of alignment- will still affect those creatures.
At this time, it is really hard to try and commit to anything, as we don't have the exact contents of the remastered books available. However, our contacts at Foundry and Paizo have promised to get us early copies of the rules as soon as they're available, and we are very excited to see what the remaster means for Pathfinder.
How can I contribute to the system?
As a volunteer project, we're reliant on people like you to get new releases out! We’re in especially dire need of Typescript programmers. If you’re even remotely interested, please do consider paying us a visit. All of our organization and planning happens on our community Discord server, which is also the best place to come and chat with us.
We recognize that participating in development can be daunting, and so we do what we can to make it easier. Our Discord server has dedicated channels for answering development questions, and there are also some useful resources on our Wiki.
What’s next for Foundry VTT in terms of premium content?
The Stolen Fate adventure path is releasing every month, which we definitely recommend. I hear there’s a cool official Harrow Deck module you can use it with, too?
On Foundry’s side, work continues on Kingmaker, as well as one or two other unannounced projects. We’re hoping to have more to discuss at PaizoCon, so please be sure to join us there on Friday, May 26th at 4:00 PM PDT.
Pathfinder Second Edition on Foundry VTT: Meet the Team
Tuesday, May 16, 2023
