this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2023
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sh.itjust.works Main Community

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Home of the sh.itjust.works instance.

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Imma preface this by saying that I'm not an admin or mod here, these are just my thoughts & advice on the matter.

You've noticed that a community doesn't exist on Lemmy. I'm going to assume you've checked the community browser, and seen that that specific community doesn't exist. So, you've gone to communities, typed in the name, and are about to hit create.

Well, hold up a second. There's an INSANE amount of community spam going on in lemmy.ml, and it looks like it's starting here to a much lesser degree.

Some questions you should ask:

  1. Are you creating this community just to create it? By that I mean, are you willing to put in the work as the moderator if it does take off?

  2. Is it a niche community of a larger subset that has a thriving community or a completely new category?

  3. Are you willing to regularly post stuff to start seeding comments & advertise it in the relevant places?

If the answer to any of these is no, get your cursor off that create button and go join the bigger communities. It just makes it harder to find communities that aren't 100% dead when half of them are dead-ends created just because 'they exist on Reddit'. Once there are enough people are visiting !gaming@beehaw.org, they spill over into !rpg@lemmy.ml if they want more focused TTRPG stuff. Once there are enough people on !rpg@lemmy.ml, they'll spill over to my Shadowrun group. Lots of communities are fractal in nature, and people are skipping a few steps. The userbase needs time to grow and mature.

Please think before you make a community.

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[–] ZephyrsAir@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Good points. I created a battlemaps community for TTRPG maps because I like the one on reddit to find stuff, in case anyone is interested: https://sh.itjust.works/c/battlemaps

[–] Barbarian@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Hell yeah! As a GM and TTRPG enthusiast, I'm totally in. I'm especially looking for scifi-ish Foundry-compatible maps.

I'll contribute some stuff I've found when I have time

[–] ZephyrsAir@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Question for you - I make maps, but I dont currently use foundry. What is involved in making my maps foundry compatible?

[–] Barbarian@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

At a basic level, nothing. A simple PNG, JPEG or similar is enough to get a simple map going.

However, with foundry you can do a lot more than that. You can define walls and lighting sources for fog of war and limited visibility.

I've not seen a map that implements this yet, but you can get even crazier with sound sources and radiuses. So if your character token is close to the pond you hear the water. If not, then not.

Easiest way to do this is to get foundry running yourself, build out all the details you want, and then export the maps into a module.

I'm currently at a wedding, will look for the documentation when I can :)

[–] ZephyrsAir@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No worries, enjoy the wedding! I'd love to make all my maps foundry modules then, I just can't justify buying it for that when I don't actually use foundry myself. Maybe if my patreon ever takes off. My current group mostly plays in person but for the few online sessions we do I just use roll20, since they all have computers that I don't think would run foundry very well, and some just use tablets. Foundry is definitely my favorite VTT I've used as a player though

[–] Barbarian@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

Foundry is server-side technology, meaning only the GM (or a server) needs to use it, and then everyone else connects via browser just like roll20.

Try out the demo here if you wanna get a feel for how light/heavy it is