Getting Started

Requirements

Minstrel requires Foundry VTT v14 and the 3DS:ATLAS library module.

Install

Minstrel is a premium module. Obtain access to it first, then install it through Foundry’s module installer and enable it in your world under Module Management.

Open the console

The console is Minstrel’s main window. There are four ways to open it.

• Press Alt+M. The binding is listed in Foundry’s keybinding configuration as Toggle Minstrel Console and can be rebound there.
• Click the guitar button in the Ambient Sound Controls scene control group. That group is only visible to a Game Master.
• Click Open Console in Minstrel’s module settings.
• Click the guitar button on the mini player. The mini player appears once something starts playing.

The keybinding, the scene control button, and the mini player button all toggle: pressing again closes the console.

What you see first

The console opens on the Music tab, and it reopens on whichever tab you used last.

Music and Ambience are two views of the same thing: the playlists already in your world, drawn as album tiles. Each playlist tile carries the playlist name, its playback mode, and its track count. Which tab a playlist lands on is decided by the audio channel set on the playlist itself. A playlist on the Music channel appears under Music. A playlist on the Environment or Interface channel appears under Ambience, chipped as “Ambience” or “SFX”. Favorited playlists sort to the front of the grid, and the rest sort by name.

A playlist whose mode is set to Disabled does not appear on either tab.

The console keeps no library of its own. It reads the same playlist documents the Playlists sidebar shows, so a playlist you create, rename, or delete in the sidebar changes in the console too. There is no second library to keep in sync.

Only a Game Master can drive the library. A player who opens the console is told the library is Game Master only.

Migrating from Video Game Music

Minstrel is the successor to Video Game Music. Both modules can stay installed and enabled together.

The one-time migration

The first time a world loads with Minstrel enabled, Minstrel copies Video Game Music’s playlist assignments into its own cues. The pass runs on the active GM’s client only.

It walks every scene’s scene section and combat section, every token placed on every scene, every actor, and every actor’s prototype token. Token, actor, and prototype token assignments are combat only.

Each assignment it finds becomes a Minstrel cue holding the playlist, the starting track when the old assignment named one, and the priority. An assignment that carried no priority takes the default priority of the Minstrel section it lands in. An assignment whose playlist no longer exists in the world is skipped.

A context that already carries a Minstrel cue is left untouched. The migration only fills empty slots.

The pass also reads Minstrel’s own older scene mood flags. A scene carrying a mood on its scene or combat slot becomes a mood cue, used when that scene has no usable Video Game Music assignment for that context.

If anything moved, a notification reports how many assignments came over. A world setting records that the pass ran, and later world loads skip it.

Assignments Minstrel never wrote a cue for are still read from the old Video Game Music flags when Minstrel decides what to play, including assignments made after the migration ran.

Coexistence

While Minstrel is enabled, Video Game Music stops driving playback. Its Music Configuration application, its scene control toggles, and its settings still open and still save, and none of it reaches the audio. Minstrel is the single source of truth for scene and combat music.

Where each feature went

Video Game Music	Minstrel
Music Configuration application	The Scenes, Combat, and Actors tabs of the console
Configure Default Music menu	The Global row on the Combat tab
Sections registered by other modules	The Other tab, which appears only when a module has registered one
Priority field	The priority field on each cue row
Silent Combat Music Mode setting	The Combat music resolution setting
Suppress Area Music and Suppress Combat Music scene controls	Silence scene music on the Scenes tab and Silence combat music on the Combat tab, plus a keybinding for each

Cues for placed tokens sit on the Actors tab under Tokens on this scene, and list the tokens of the scene you are viewing.

Use Token Music is not ported

The Use Token Music checkbox has no counterpart, and Minstrel ignores the flag it set. A cue on a placed token counts whenever that token is in the combat, and by default it outranks the actor’s own cue. Nothing has to be ticked to make a token’s battle theme win.

The old reference

Video Game Music’s own documentation stays available: Music Configuration, Combat Automation, and Settings.

Next

See Settings for what you can configure.