The GM Interface

Welcome to Your Digital Throne Room

Imagine stepping into the control room of a spaceship, the director's booth of a theater, and a wizard's study all at once. That's the GM interface in Foundry VTT. Every button, menu and tool is there to help you run the story.

Players see only what you reveal; you can peek behind every curtain, control every light and stage every dramatic moment. This page tours the interface as it looks in Version 14. If you remember an older layout (a sidebar that sat permanently open with its tabs along the top), that changed in Version 13, when Foundry rebuilt its whole interface.

The Lay of the Land

The map (the canvas) fills the whole browser window, and everything else floats around its edges. The diagram below is a simplified sketch of where each part lives; game systems and modules can add more.

The Sidebar: Your Filing Cabinet

The sidebar runs the full height of the window on the right. A strip of tab icons sits along its edge; click a tab to open that drawer, and click the active tab again (or the collapse control) to fold the contents away and give the map more room. When the sidebar is collapsed, new chat messages still pop up briefly so you don't miss a roll.

• Chat is the running log of messages and dice rolls.
• Combat holds the combat tracker for the current scene.
• Scenes, Actors, Items, Journal, Roll Tables, Cards, Macros, Playlists are directories of your world's documents, each sortable into folders.
• Compendium Packs store content from your game system, modules and your own collections.
• Placeables (Version 14) lists and filters the objects on the canvas layer you're working on, so you can find that one hidden light or tile without hunting across the map.
• Settings is where you configure the world, manage modules, rebind controls and manage users.

Scene Controls: Your Director's Toolkit

The scene controls run down the left edge of the screen. The first column picks a layer (what kind of object you're working with); the second column shows the tools for that layer. Version 14 has eight layers:

The Placeables Palette

New in Version 14, every layer except Tokens has a Placeables Palette button. It opens a window for working on many objects at once (for example, adjusting a batch of lights), instead of opening each one's configuration window in turn. Pair it with the Placeables sidebar tab, which lists everything on the active layer.

Layers: The Hidden Dimensions

Foundry stacks a scene like transparent sheets. Each scene control works on its own sheet, so you can rearrange the furniture without moving the walls, or adjust the lights without nudging a token. Here's what happens when you switch layers:

Objects on other layers stay visible; they just ignore your clicks until you switch back. Version 14 also lets lights, sounds and notes be selected, copied and pasted like any other object.

The Sidebar Directories: Your World Library

Each directory in the sidebar is a treasure chest of content. Here's what lives in a few of them:

Scenes Directory

Your collection of maps and locations. Each scene is a different destination in your world. You might have:

• The Crowded Tavern (where every adventure begins!)
• The Goblin Cave (complete with traps)
• The King's Throne Room (for dramatic confrontations)
• The World Map (for travel montages)

Version 14 also lets one scene hold several levels (floors of a tower, a cave under a ruin), so you no longer need a separate scene for every storey. The Creating Scenes part covers that.

Actors Directory

Every character, monster and NPC lives here. The exact actor types come from your game system, but you'll typically find:

• Player Characters: The heroes of your story
• NPCs: From humble merchants to mighty wizards
• Monsters: Dragons, goblins, and things that go bump
• Vehicles: Ships, wagons and flying carpets, if your system supports them

Items Directory

Your warehouse of objects, from a simple torch to the legendary Sword of Destiny:

• Weapons and armor
• Magic items and artifacts
• Consumables like potions and scrolls
• Mundane gear and treasure

The Hotbar and Pop-Out Windows

The macro hotbar sits at the bottom of the screen: 10 slots per page and 5 pages, for 50 slots in all. Press the number keys 1–9 and 0 to fire the slots on the current page. Drag a macro onto a slot, or drag other things there (a journal entry, for example) and Foundry makes a macro that opens it. Each user has their own hotbar, so your players can set up theirs too.

Pop-out windows are built into Version 14: many windows, such as a character sheet or a journal entry, can be popped out into their own browser window. Drag that window to a second monitor and keep the map full-screen on the first.

Chat and Roll Commands

The Chat tab is more than a message log. Type a slash command to roll dice or change how a message appears:

You can also put rolls inside any message or journal text: [[2d6]] rolls immediately, while [[/roll 1d20]] becomes a button anyone can click. The roll mode selector under the chat box sets the default privacy for plain /roll commands. Try formulas safely in the Dice Formula Tester.

Real-Time Control: The GM's Superpowers

User Roles and Ownership

Every person who joins your game logs in as a user, and each user has a role:

• Player: the usual role for someone running a character.
• Trusted Player: a player with a few extra permissions, such as creating drawings and (if you allow it) uploading files.
• Assistant GM: has most in-game GM controls, but can't perform administrative actions. Good for a co-GM.
• Game Master: full control of the world.

Separately, every document (an actor, a journal entry, a scene and so on) has ownership levels you set per user, or as a default for all players:

• None: the player can't see it at all.
• Limited: the player sees a reduced view (often just the name and image).
• Observer: the player can see everything but change nothing.
• Owner: the player can edit and control it. Give each player Owner of their own character.

Right-click a document in its directory to configure its ownership. Folders can set ownership for everything inside them.

The Right-Click Menu: Your Context Magic

In Foundry, right-clicking is like having a magic wand. Different things happen depending on what you click:

On the empty map, right-click and drag to pan the view. To point something out, hold the left mouse button on a spot to ping it.

Measuring and Moving Tokens

Since Version 13, dragging a token draws a ruler along its path showing how far it is moving (and the movement cost, where your system or Regions change it). While dragging, Ctrl+click (Cmd+click on a Mac) adds a waypoint so you can route around a corner, right-click removes the last waypoint, and Esc cancels the move. The Tokens layer also has a ruler tool for measuring without moving anything.

Try It in Foundry: Interface Exploration

Common Interface Patterns

Foundry follows consistent patterns that, once learned, make everything easier:

The Three-Click Rule

• Single Click: Select or activate
• Double Click: Open or edit
• Right Click: Context menu or HUD with options

The Drag-and-Drop Dance

Almost everything in Foundry can be dragged:

• Drag actors to the canvas to create tokens
• Drag items to character sheets to give them equipment
• Drag journal entries to the macro bar for quick access
• Drag a sound from a playlist onto the canvas to create an ambient sound

Real GM Stories

The Theatrical GM

Rachel loves dramatic reveals. She prepares multiple scenes in advance: the peaceful village, the same village on fire, and the village rebuilt. During the session she activates the next scene with a click. "The players gasped when their beloved tavern suddenly appeared in flames!"

The Organized Librarian

David color-codes his directory folders: red for combat encounters, blue for social scenes, green for exploration. His players joke that his Foundry looks like a rainbow, but he can find any NPC or item in seconds during play.

The Ambience Master

Kim discovered the power of the Sounds layer. She places ambient sounds throughout her maps: crackling fires, dripping water, howling wind. "My players actually shivered when they entered the frozen wasteland. They could HEAR the blizzard!"

Interface Tips from Veteran GMs

• Learn the hotkeys: Spacebar pauses the game, Delete removes selected objects, and Tab cycles through the tokens you own
• Make them yours: Settings → Configure Controls lists every keybinding, and you can change them
• Collapse the sidebar: Give the map the whole screen when you don't need the directories
• Pop out what you need: Keep an NPC sheet or the combat tracker on a second monitor
• Use the Compendiums: Pre-made content saves hours of prep time

What's Next?

That's the tour of your command center. It might seem like a lot at first, but you don't need every feature immediately. Start with the basics and add tools as you get comfortable.

Next up, Creating Scenes turns a blank canvas into a living, breathing location where adventures unfold.