Advanced GM Techniques

Beyond the Basics

By now you can build a scene, run combat and keep your players' sheets in order. Advanced GM work in Foundry isn't about using every feature; it's about reaching for the right tool at the right moment, so the technology stays out of the way and the story stays in front.

Version 14 moved a lot of what used to need add-on modules into the core software. Scene Regions and their behaviors handle traps, teleporters and difficult terrain. Scene Levels give you multi-floor maps. Adventures and compendiums carry your prep from world to world. This page shows how to combine them, and when a macro or a module is still worth it.

The Advanced GM's Toolkit

Think of advanced play as four layers, each building on the one before:

Dynamic Scenes with Regions

A Scene Region is an invisible area you draw on a scene with the Regions tool in the scene controls. On its own it does nothing; its power comes from the behaviors you attach in the region's configuration window. Regions arrived in V12, and V14 added cone, ray and grid-cell shapes (alongside rectangles, ellipses and polygons), shapes that stop at walls, and regions attached to a token so they move with it.

Behaviors Worth Knowing

• Teleport Token: moves a token that enters the region to a destination region, which can be on another scene. Perfect for portals, trapdoors and "you wake up in the cells".
• Execute Macro / Execute Script: run code when the region's chosen events fire, such as a token entering or leaving it, or a combat turn starting inside it.
• Adjust Darkness Level and Suppress Weather: change the mood of one area without touching the rest of the scene.
• Modify Movement Cost: difficult terrain that token drag measurement respects.
• Display Scrolling Text and Pause Game: a floating warning over the token, or a hard stop when someone walks somewhere important.
• Toggle Behavior: switches other behaviors on or off, so a lever region can disarm a trap region.
• Change Level and Define Surface: new in V14 for working with Scene Levels (next section).

Multi-Floor Maps with Scene Levels

Scene Levels are V14's headline feature. Instead of one scene per floor, a single scene stacks several images at different elevations. Vision, movement and combat work across the levels, so an archer on a balcony can see the courtyard below. You set them up in the scene's configuration window, which in V14 has new Basics and Levels tabs. If you used the old community Levels module, you no longer need it for basic multi-floor maps.

Token Tricks That Need No Module

• Wildcard images: in an actor's prototype token you can point at an image path with a * wildcard and turn on randomized wildcard images. Every goblin you drag out then gets a different picture.
• Regions attached to tokens (V14): an aura or a lantern's area that travels with the token.
• Active Effects that change the token (V14): a transformation effect can swap the token image while it lasts and switch it back when it expires.
• Waypoints: while dragging a token, Ctrl+click (Cmd+click on a Mac) drops a waypoint, so you can show a route around a hazard; the ruler shows the movement cost.

Automation: Core First, Then Macros, Then Modules

Every module you add is one more thing that can break when Foundry updates. Before installing one, climb this ladder:

A Macro for Improvised Complications

Create a roll table named Complications ("The bridge creaks", "A patrol is coming", "The torch gutters"…), then make a Script macro with this code and drag it onto your hotbar:

// Draw from the "Complications" roll table and post the result to chat
const table = game.tables.getName("Complications");
if (!table) {
  ui.notifications.warn('No roll table named "Complications" was found.');
} else {
  await table.draw();
}

Put the same macro in an Execute Macro behavior on a region, and the complication fires the moment a token steps into that corridor.

Active Effects V2

V14 reworked Active Effects. Durations can now end on combat events, such as the start or end of a turn, a round or the whole combat, so "until the end of your next turn" finally takes care of itself. Effects can change the token itself, and you can keep ready-made effects in a compendium and drag them straight onto tokens. How much an effect does to the numbers on a sheet still depends on your game system.

When a Module Earns Its Place

Some jobs still go beyond core. Modules confirmed for V14 include Monk's Active Tile Triggers (tile-based triggers with dozens of actions), Sequencer and Token Magic FX (animations and visual effects), Monk's Enhanced Journal (richer journal tools) and Dice So Nice! (3D dice). Many of the old "teleport" and "trap" uses of tile-trigger modules now fit core regions, so check there first.

Pacing and the Spotlight

The best tools in the world won't save a session that drags. Match Foundry's features to the rhythm of the evening:

Sharing the Spotlight

• Watch the chat log and the combat tracker for who has acted and who hasn't spoken in a while.
• Give every character a hook in the scene: a journal page only one player can see (set its ownership for that player alone), a card dealt to their hand, a door only their character can open.
• Keep combat moving: add the monsters to the combat tracker, let the system's initiative formula roll for the monsters, and narrate while players think.

Session Flow

A three-act shape works for most evenings. The times below assume a session of about three hours; scale them to yours.

Advanced Prep Techniques

Prep the things you will use, in the place you will find them. This checklist borrows the spirit of "lazy" prep popularized by many GMs: a strong start, a few ready scenes, secrets to reveal, and flexible pieces you can drop in anywhere.

Package Your Prep as an Adventure

An Adventure is a single document that bundles scenes, actors, items, journal entries, roll tables, cards and playlists, folders included, and lives inside a compendium pack. Build a dungeon once, put it in an Adventure, and you can import it into any world with the Import Adventure button, which is exactly how official content such as the D&D Player's Handbook (2024) or Paizo's Abomination Vaults arrives. Compendium packs are also the right home for reusable monsters, items and effects: they keep your world's sidebar lean and travel between campaigns.

• Preload big scenes: right-click a scene in the Scenes sidebar and choose Preload Scene, so players download the map before you switch to it.
• Folders: one folder per session or location in every sidebar tab saves the frantic search mid-game.

Improvisation Tools

When players go off-script (and they will), have a decision habit and a few one-click tools ready.

Your Improv Toolkit in Foundry

• Roll tables for names, traits and motives: draw from the table and an NPC exists in seconds.
• A generic scene or two: a forest road and a tavern you can reuse, with a few tiles to rearrange.
• The Complications macro from the section above.
• A Cards deck as an oracle: build a deck of prompts or encounters, draw to your hand, and pass or play cards to piles as the story uses them.
• Pop-out windows (V14): pop a journal or the combat tracker into its own browser window and keep it on a second monitor.

Try It in Foundry

Principles

• Technology serves story: never let the tool overshadow the tale.
• Player agency first: their choices drive everything.
• Fail forward: a broken trigger can become a plot twist.
• Core before modules: fewer moving parts means fewer surprises after an update.
• Less can be more: one well-timed music change beats ten effects nobody notices.

Ideas in Practice

The Living City

Guards patrol on a schedule written in a GM-only journal page; shop doors are walls that you lock at night; a Display Scrolling Text region over the market says "Closed" after dark. Players who pay attention start planning heists around the patrols, without you ever explaining the system.

The Branching Finale

Prepare two or three ending scenes and preload them. As choices land, switch to the matching scene, start its playlist and let V14's scene transition carry the moment. Callbacks to early sessions live as journal pages you show at the right time.

The Villain Who Joined the Party

If the players befriend the big bad instead of fighting, nothing in Foundry stops you: change the actor's ownership so a player can control it, swap its token image with an Active Effect, and hand over a journal page with the villain's secrets.

What's Next?

These techniques are where Foundry stops feeling like software and starts feeling like a stage. The more moving parts you add, though, the more you need a calm plan for when something goes wrong.

The next part, Troubleshooting & Best Practices, covers Safe Configuration, the browser console, built-in backups and how to update without losing a campaign.