Hello everyone!
It’s been a busy few months here at The Forge, and we’re excited to share everything we’ve been working on. Between seasonal events, major system improvements, UI/UX progress, and new features rolling out across the platform, there’s a lot to catch up on.
If you missed our most recent livestream, don’t worry — below is a full recap of all the important updates and behind-the-scenes changes happening on The Forge. Let’s dive in!
🎁 Holiday Gifts from The Forge
First of all, happy holidays!
Even though we skipped a Developer Update livestream in December, we couldn’t let the holiday season pass without sharing something special with our community. To close out the year, we released two holiday gifts for Forge users — each very different, but both made with the same goal in mind: celebrating play, creativity, and community.
Naughty & Nice — A Festive Multiplayer Game
This holiday season marked the release of Naughty & Nice, our very first multiplayer game on The Forge. Designed to be quick, chaotic, and festive, Naughty & Nice brings a playful competitive twist to the holidays — perfect for a short break between sessions.
The Redoubt of the Mountain Maiden — A Free Holiday Adventure
Alongside the minigame, we released The Redoubt of the Mountain Maiden, a free OSE and D&D 5e holiday adventure from The Forge. This adventure was created as a gift to the community — something GMs could drop directly into their games and enjoy without any extra setup.
Whether you used it for a cozy winter one-shot or as part of an ongoing campaign, it’s our way of saying thank you for adventuring with us throughout the year.
🎃 Halloween on The Forge
Our favorite spooky season brought plenty of fun, creativity, and new surprises.
To help GMs get into the spirit, we published a special blog post, Rolling for Fear, offering tips on building tension, unsettling your players, and crafting the perfect spooky session.
We also celebrated Halloween with not one but two new minigames added to The Forge:
- Spider Solitaire, accessible through the controller icon in the top-right of the site.
- Pumpkin Carving, a fun seasonal activity to get users into the Halloween mood.
Spider Solitaire even got its own article exploring its design, purpose, and the challenge we launched for the community. It was a fun way for players to compete, unwind, and stay connected during the season.
🎲 Foundry VTT v13: Updates, Fixes & Improvements
Foundry VTT v13 has been recommended on The Forge for a while, but we’ve continued working hard behind the scenes to polish the integration and resolve issues!
A fix for a major data usage issue
Recently, we discovered a bug that caused premium packages to consume significantly more data than intended when installed or updated. After investigating, we found that the module optimization step was being skipped, causing unoptimized images, audio, and other assets to remain in Data storage. For many users, this pushed their accounts over their quota and prevented games from launching — understandably frustrating.
We sincerely apologize for the trouble this caused.
Our team has since implemented additional safeguards in our QA and deployment processes to ensure this type of issue doesn’t happen again. For a deeper technical breakdown, we published a blog post explaining what caused the bug and how we resolved it.
Better installation checks
We also added a new compatibility check to the manifest installation process. If a user attempts to install a package that’s not compatible with their current version of Foundry VTT, the Forge will now display a warning and ask for confirmation. This prevents accidental installs that could break workflows or lead to version conflicts.
General v13 integration improvements
Users running multiple Foundry instances at once, especially power users running three or more, should now see more stable behavior thanks to connection fixes.
We also improved the file picker integration by ensuring that default favorite paths point to Forge Assets when appropriate, and we added a disabled “Upload” button with a custom tooltip to clarify how uploads work on The Forge.
🎨 UI/UX Rework: A Better Forge Experience
We mentioned during the last update that The Forge now has a dedicated UX team, and the improvements are well underway.
Right now, the team is working on a complete reexamination of the site’s interface and user flows. This includes creating a new visual language, updating branding elements, and making sure our tools feel clean and intuitive for both long-time users and people encountering The Forge for the first time.
On top of this, we’re making improvements in accessibility and responsiveness across different devices so that The Forge feels smooth to use, whether you’re on a large monitor, a laptop, or a tablet.
We’re also exploring redesigned iconography for the site, giving everything a more consistent and modern look — more on that soon!
🛒 Bazaar Improvements & Redesign
The Bazaar continues to evolve, and one of the biggest steps this season was the redesign of our package cards.
The new card layout focuses on presenting the most useful information up front so users can quickly evaluate a package without visual clutter. It’s cleaner, more readable, and highlights what makes each item worth checking out.
Alongside the redesign, we fixed several long-standing issues:
- Some users encountered missing data on single-package views — this has been resolved.
- Search results occasionally returned unrelated items; the search logic has now been refined.
- Older packages sometimes displayed the current date as “Last Updated”; that date calculation bug is now fixed.
Together, these improvements make browsing the Bazaar faster and more reliable.
🎬 New Tutorial Videos
We know how much users appreciate clear, visual guidance — and we’re continuing to expand our library of tutorials.
Our latest video covers the Game Manager, walking through how to manage, switch, and organize multiple Foundry VTT games on The Forge.
More videos are already in production and will be released soon. Whether you're a new GM or a seasoned Forge user, these tutorials are a great way to discover features you may not have explored before.
🔔 Notification System: Stay Informed, Effortlessly
We’ve started rolling out a new notification system to keep users informed about important activity on their accounts, on the Bazaar, and across The Forge overall.
You may have already seen some of the new notifications, but that’s just the beginning.
We’ve also added new notification channels, including a News & Blog one, so you can now sign-up to follow things like sales, developer updates, and other community posts.
And that's not all! Soon, you will even be able to follow creators and get alerts when those creators release new packages.
In addition to these, we also introduced automated account notifications. These cover important events such as:
- When a new player joins your game
- A subscription renewal approaching
- A subscription that has ended or failed to auto-renew
This should make it much easier to stay on top of your account activity without relying solely on email reminders.
🚀 The Forge Continues to Grow
Over the past months, The Forge has continued expanding behind the scenes. As our platform grows in size, scope, and features, we’ve welcomed a lot of applications from talented individuals eager to join our team — and we’re excited about the energy and expertise they bring.
Right now, we are still hiring and accepting applications for a Backend Software Developer, and a Senior Sysadmin/Devops Engineer.
To stay in the loop about new announcements, features, and opportunities, be sure to follow us on our social media channels and announcement feeds — you never know what’s coming next!
The Forge is heading to GAMA Expo 2026
The Forge team will be attending GAMA Expo in Louisville, Kentucky, from March 1–5. If you’re planning to attend, we’d love to meet in person.
We’ll also be bringing something special to the show: an exclusive first look at a secret project currently in development at The Forge. More details here.
📽️ Bazaar Showcase
We showcased the following package during our Developer Update:
👀 Looking Back and Ahead
Before we wrap up this Developer Update, we’d like to zoom out for a moment.
During today’s stream, we briefly touched on some bigger-picture topics. If you’d like a full recap of everything that shaped The Forge throughout 2025, along with a sneak peek at what’s ahead in 2026, we’ve published a dedicated blog post that covers all of this in much more detail.
This Developer Update focuses on recent changes, while that recap offers a broader view of where we’ve been — and where we’re going. If you want the full picture, we recommend giving it a read.
And that's it!
That wraps up this month’s update. We hope this overview gives you a clear picture of what’s been improved, what’s new, and what’s on the horizon. We’re committed to continually enhancing your experience on The Forge, and your feedback helps guide that journey.
For ongoing updates and future announcements, connect with us here:
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