Methods to play (modded) Minecraft with friends

[Raidobw2]

Methods to play with friends

This is a collaborative work in progress PR (by helpers of the FTB Discord) to add public information about the many methods people can play modded Minecraft together. An emphasis is done on FTB-specific methods.

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Scope

• Summarize, or explain in detail methods that two players can use to play with each other
• When possible explain the concept first (e.g. online host) then name specific branding (e.g. BisectHosting)
• Currently existing server docs can be linked (docs/support/Guides/Server)
• Networking requires vigilance: assume each reader is 13 yo, that they don't know about phishing, unsafe downloads, firewalls or viruses

ETA: At most, sometime in December 2025

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Basic instructions

If you wanna test your documentation, run docusaurus: pnpm start, then follow instructions on console (localhost:3000)

• branch support/play-with-friends
• docs/support/Guides/Friends/index.md is the popularized summary or detailed explanation
• docs/support/Guides/Friends/*.md => For a method in particular you want to explain in-depth, you can add a file here, or a subfolder docs/support/Guides/Friends/mysubject if it's a more complex subject
• Put pictures, gifs, etc in docs/support/_assets/images/play-with-friends with relevant folder structure if applicable

If you wanna contribute:

• Knowledge dump here if you just wanna share thoughts, no need to develop files, etc. We'll integrate your ideas.
• Fork this main repo, make a branch, PR to "Raidobw2/ftb-docs-copy" to the corresponding branch
• If I know you, contact me on the FTB Discord for repo access to "Raidobw2/ftb-docs-copy"

[Appulcake]

I'd like to add in that as of version 5.4.0 of e4mc (seems to be available for 1.18 to 1.21.6), it now added administrative commands like /ban and /whitelist, which could be useful to mention (considering normally with open to LAN you don't have access to that, as you also mention). This is especially useful as there's some groups out there who scan for all open e4mc addresses (even though e4mc has been increasingly patching exploits allowing them to easily scan these), and technically once the address is found anyone can join such a session. Knowing that you can whitelist and ban with e4mc can be quite useful in that case.

Also found a small issue on line 50:
you should use a dedicated server of using Open to LAN => probably meant something like you should use a dedicated server instead of using Open to LAN

I'm also thinking possibly of bumping the VPN section above port forwarding, because I think setting up something like Zerotier is more likely to universally work with less hassle (and then nothing to do on MC's end as you can just Open to LAN, and it also works for self hosted dedicated servers in which case that also wouldn't need port forwarding), compared to port forwarding where I feel like once someone is knowledgeable enough to make that work they're also more likely to have more advanced knowledge in setting the rest up, and are more likely to read further into this in general
So this is trying to account for perspective of potentially very inexperienced, less knowledgeable people coming across it so the easier more universally applicable solution is further up