I’ve been looking around at what I can use to to self-host a future game(s) for other people instead of my friends.
The following list are the different programs I have found either through the FoundryVTT website, Discord, or here on the reddit thread (links provided):
I have heard of the first two being fairly good, but the last two a I have next to no information. I would like a little incite from people who have used these programs (if any) and how what would be best.
The reason for me wanting to self host is mostly due in all fairness I can’t afford anything extra, 2023 has not been kind to me.
Using something like ngrok is generally better than setting up a VPN. You are giving less access to your personal network to your players. On the other hand, it does mean that Foundry is fully exposed to the web. (Make sure to have passwords and SSL. I believe ngrok can provide SSL for you). You can also use it for free, which is a bonus.
I’ve used ngrok a fair amount for software development related stuff and it’s well known for it’s ability to expose a local server to the internet.
Personally, I’ve been using Cloudflare tunnels for Foundry. It ends up being similar to ngrok. It’s also free, though I think ngrok would be simpler to setup.
To help the community answer your question, please read this post.
When posting, add a system tag to the title - [D&D5e] or [PF2e], for example. If you have already made a post, edit it, and mention the system at the top.
Include the word Answered in any comment to automatically flair this thread as resolved (or change the flair to Answered yourself).
Automod will not make this comment on your posts if you have a user flair.
I’ve only used ngrok for software development and I’ve never paid for it. There may be limitations with using it for Foundry that I’m not aware of, but I haven’t really had any issues with performance with ngrok for what I do use it for.
I use Cloudflare Tunnels for Foundry along with some production stuff. It’s extremely performant and is generally my preferred way to expose a service to the internet these days. I would be surprised if it wasn’t faster than ngrok. Ngrok is a lot more approachable though. I say give ngrok a try and if it doesn’t work out you can always try something else.
As for how many players, the most I’ve had is 5. I don’t think it would be an issue for me to go above that… I just lack more players than that :D.
Edit: Side note on limits and ngrok. Looks like they put a lot of limits on their free plan. Outgoing bandwidth is capped at 1GB per month, for example.
Honestly, that pushes me to recommend Cloudflare Tunnels over ngrok. The alternative is to just forward a port from your router to PC.
but is there a way to use cloudflare without having to buy a domain name. I’m too broke to have an active credit card right now so even if the domain name is $1 I can’t buy it.
I am not sure there is a way to use CloudFlare without actually owning a domain name. I think that’s the primary way they use to funnel people into their ecosystem.
You could talk with your players and see if they would chip in for one.
In the page you linked, the easiest to follow would be the “Set up a tunnel through the dashboard” and then “Connect an application”. Don’t follow “Connect a network”
On the dashboard, it prompts you to download the cloudflared client. So you run the command they give you for that.
Then they have you run a command as administrator to connect your computer to the dashboard. You can look up in google “run terminal as administrator” for this step.
From there, you use the dashboard to add the application.
For the service, you specify: “http://127.0.0.1:30000” which tells it how to connect to foundry. You then give it a hostname one one of your domains. Like “foundry.example.com”.
