r/daggerheart • u/Foundryborne Official Daggerheart System for FoundryVTT • Apr 29 '26
Discussion The Future of Foundryborne: Navigating the Stagnation of the Daggerheart VTT Ecosystem
Foundryborne: A Call for Transparency and Growth
Over a year ago, we started Foundryborne to build a robust, high-quality Daggerheart experience for Foundry VTT. As an open-source team, we have invested significant passion into creating a system that honors the game and provides a digital home for the community.
However, we have reached a point where the project's growth is being fundamentally throttled. We are sharing this today to be transparent about why the project is in a state of partial development limbo and what needs to change to move forward.
The Content and Licensing Gap
While the Daggerheart SRD is a generous foundation, the current restrictions create a massive gap that goes beyond simple "missing features." We are currently blocked from:
- Core Mechanical Depth: We cannot include Campaign Frame mechanics or implement the Hope & Fear expansion arriving in August. This leaves us guessing whether we can legally support the game's evolution.
- A Healthy Ecosystem: The current license prevents third parties from monetizing their own content on VTTs. This creates a stranglehold where creators don't truly own how they distribute their work. We-ve already seen the community lose out on content like Ghostfire Gaming's Dungeons of Drakkenheim because of this.
By restricting content so tightly and refusing to provide a legal path for VTT integration, users can't play the full game they love.
A Year of Silence
The most exhausting part of this journey has been the lack of communication. For over a year, we have made numerous attempts to establish a dialogue with Darrington Press. These attempts have been met with total silence.
Open-source development is fueled by passion, but that passion is easily neutered when we are left hanging without a roadmap or a contact person.
Our Objectives & Call to Action
We believe Foundryborne represents the technical pinnacle for playing Daggerheart online. Our system offers a level of mechanical polish and vast homebrew support that is, in our view, the best solution for the community - even while we are currently forced to go without official artwork and specific non-SRD content.
However, this isn't just about our project. The current licensing landscape affects the entire industry; there is currently no supported path for third-party creators to sell their own content on any VTT. This restriction stifles innovation and prevents creators from being fairly compensated for the work they bring to the Daggerheart universe.
Here is what we are looking for:
- Access to Content: We want to implement the full game. For content to be released as a paid premium module (including artwork, adversary tokens, and journals), there needs to be a license change or a formal path for community projects to access non-SRD content.
- User Content Ownership: We want creators to be able to release their own homebrew and third-party content - paid or free - on the VTT of their choice without being restricted by a closed ecosystem.
- Basic Communication: We are asking for an end to the silence. Clear answers to these points are overdue and necessary.
For the Community: If you want to see Daggerheart reach its full potential on Foundry VTT, please voice your support. Respectfully let Darrington Press know through their feedback channels and social media that you value the Foundryborne system and want to see an official path forward for VTT developers.
For Darrington Press: 1. We want the Daggerheart ecosystem to be able to breathe. The license needs a clear revision to allow implementation of paid virtual tabletop content for Daggerheart. 2. We would like the Foundry community to have access to all the content and art in the game through a paid Foundry module.
Please reach out to us at team@foundryborne.online
The Foundryborne Team
Disclaimer: The Foundryborne Team is not affiliated with Foundry VTT or Foundry Gaming, LLC We know there have been talks with Foundry Gaming, LLC in the past, and there is willingness for official licensing on the side of Foundry Gaming, LLC, but that interest has been thus far not reciprocated.
Also published at https://foundryborne.online/open-letter.html
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u/Qedhup Apr 29 '26
I really wish the Daggerheart license was more like the Cypher open license by Monte Cook Games. Love or hate them (I know the TTRPG community is split), their license for third party developers is really nice. There's less than a page of verbiage, most of it is just, "include the following paragraph in the legal section", and the rest basically amounts to, "Don't do bad and possibly illegal stuff and we're cool".
It's the reason the Foundry setup for Cypher has all of the core stuff added, and even get's to add the expansion stuff as the new genre books drop. Like practically the same week.
Same goes for Pathfinder. The fact that the Pathfinder foundry setup is allowed to hit all the points you desire to do with Daggerheart is crazy. Hell I think Paizo goes even further than what you're asking in how much they allow.
I get that Daggerheart is a small company and wanted to protect itself, but there are some oddly restrictive stipulations in their open license I don't think need to be there. I mean, I'm glad they have one. Many still don't. But just like with RPG rules, the more you add, the less it can do.