Getting Started - EvaTheDM/mildly-magical-inspiration GitHub Wiki

Using Mildly Magical Inspiration is fairly simple. To help you with getting used to it though, I've written up this little getting started guide.

Warning: This Getting Started guide has been written with v.2.0.0 in mind. As such this guide may not accurately represent older or newer versions.

Install & First Setup

The module is installed like any other Foundry module, either through the UI within the administration view of Foundry itself or directly by downloading the module.zip file and extracting it into your modules folder in the data directory of foundry.

Once you have the module installed make sure to activate it. Upon activating the module Foundry will reload and you should be greated by something looking like this:

If you're interested you can read the change log directly there. You can also find it here on github connected to the respective release tag.

Once you click Begin using Mildly Magical Inspiration you will immediately be brought to the new source window, though in comparison to the first version nothing much has changed here.

Do note that upon installing or upgrading to v.2.0.0 you are required to set up your players permissions. If you are just beginning to use this module simply click Save Configuration and don't worry about it too much.

Creating a Source

At the highest level MMI uses what the module calls sources. These are nothing more than collections of data. Each source has a title, an author (though this field may be empty) and cards. The cards again are nothing more than a collection of more specific data. Each card consists of a title, a subtitle, wether or not it is meant to be included in the current awarding of cards, an activation cost, an effect duration, as well as a description.

To create a source you can either upload a *.json file or create a source from scratch. Either way, begin by clicking the +-icon in the Source Configuration window. A dialog will open, asking you to choose a file from your harddrive or to simply skip the uploader. Doing so will let you create a new source from scratch.

Setting up a Source

Once you've uploaded or skipped the upload, a new window will open. This is the Deck Configuration-window. In it you can change a source's title, author and add, edit and remove cards from or to it. Like with the sources before adding a card can be done by simply clicking the plus icon. Doing so will add a new interface to the current window that allows you to edit the new card.

The current owner, activation cost and duration are special comboboxes. Their usage is fairly simple but if you have any questions about that, you can find more information here.

The description field accepts very simple markdown. For more details, check here.

Changes are being saved as you make them so there is no need to click an extra button for it. If you click on the magnifying glass a preview of the card will open up, letting you see exactly what it will look like.

If the wrapping of the title or subtitle isn't to your liking you can always change it manually. To do so simply create a manual line break in the respective input fields at the point where you'd want your line break to show.

By the way: if you've added a description to your card, you can find it hidden under a little i-icon. Hover over it or click on it to view your description.

Once you've finished setting up your cards and have decided that you would like to use this source - using a source means making it the one from which players can receive cards - simply click the Make Active-button. Once you do so, the window will change a little, removing the source title and author fields to save some space, as well as changing the label of the Make Active-button to Switch Active.

Basic Usage

The usage / functionality of the deck differs slightly between player and gamemaster side. As such this section is split up, beginning with the slightly more complex gamemaster side.

True for both sides though is, that when activating the module a little button appeared in the bottom left corner, between the list of players and the foundry hotbar. Let's call this the control button.

Gamemaster

When left clicking onto the control button you will receive an overview over all your players current hands. This view only shows you players who are allowed to have cards (see Permissions for more info) but it will also show you all players that currently don't have any cards. To switch between players, simply click their name in the top bar.

In this view you as the gamemaster are also shown the buttons show card, pass card and take card. Show Card opens a new window that lets you decide which players should be shown the currently selected card. This will only open a preview, so players who are selected won't be able to use the card. It is simply for sharing knowledge about the contents of a card. Pass Card will let you move a card from one player to another. And Take Card will take the card away from the player and return it to the deck.

Most of the module's functionality is hidden behind right clicking the control button. Upon doing so you will see (if you've followed the above steps so far) the options Deck Config, Source Config, View Deck, Award Card, Recall Cards. Deck and Source Config are shortcuts to configure your sources and the currently active deck. You can reach these two functions also through the settings > module settings > Source Configuration (and then choosing to edit the currently active source, if you want to get to the Deck Config-view).

The View Deck functionality opens a preview of the full deck, including all cards that you could also edit through the Deck Config-view. If you have more than 10 cards in your deck you can navigate between cards by simply typing in a card number into the text input in the bottom of the card. This is simply for viewing your cards and there is no editing functionality.

Recall Cards simply removes all cards from your players' hands and returns them to the deck.

Award Cards is the heart of the module. Depending on your settings it will pick a random card and award it to a player, create a random selection of cards and offer the players these cards though making it unknown to the players which cards are hiding behind which choice or the same as before but instead letting the players view the cards before choosing.

You can award cards both to players who are currently online or offline. If they are online (or go online if they were offline) and due to your current settings the players get a choice and a gamemaster is online, a window will open, letting them openly pick or simply offering them three buttons with the card-backing image as a label. Upon choosing the gamemaster will receive a notification about which card had been picked while for the player their hand will open and show them their new card.

Player Side

Apart from the above described receiving of cards players have only a few more functions that they can use. When they left click the control button a view of their own cards appears. They also get three options of what to do with the card, these being Show Card, Pass Card and Use Card. Show Card and Pass Card work identically to the gamemaster version, described above.

Upon clicking Use Card all users currently in game (gamemaster and players alike) will receive a notification about the card having been used. Additionally a chat message will be created, displaying all the same info you can find in the card view. The card will at that point also be removed from their hand.

Additionally if players right click the control button and the gamemaster has set up their permissions accordingly, a context menu will open. At a maximum they can see two choices: View Deck and Player Hands. View Deck is identical to the gamemaster version described above. Player Hands is similar to the gamemaster viewing all players' hands though without the added functionality of showing, passing or using/taking a card.

End Note

That concludes the current functionality of the Mildly Magical Inspiration Module. If you have any more questions check out the FAQ. If you find a bug, please help improve the module by reporting it here. If there is a feature you'd like to see in the future and you haven't seen it being planned here or having been suggested here then feel free to suggest it yourself here!