Roll20 Weighs in on Esports

You might recall that Roll20 (owned by the Orr Group), a popular online platform for role-playing games, also happens to own an esport team. I asked Nolan T. Jones, co-owner of the Orr Group, what he thought about esports and D&D being back in the spotlight.

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Let's get one thing straight: Hasbro CEO Brian Goldner didn't literally mean Dungeons & Dragons should have an esport.

Or rather, he meant he would like to replicate the success of an esport with an online D&D platform, in the same way Wizards of the Coast hopes to bolster their currently-beta Magic: The Gathering Arena game with Twitch streams and competitions. But while Goldner might have confused the terms, Jones certainly knows what he's talking about -- Roll20 invested in esports, announcing their sponsorship in May 2017:

Team 8 will now compete as Roll20 esports. It’s a mildly unorthodox thing for a company like Roll20 to up and jump into esports, but there’s a lot about it that just made sense. We don’t do much advertising (‘cause you all do such a fantastic job of telling your friends about us!) and we feel like the friendly Heroes community might occasionally enjoy taking a break from winning and losing to make more friends on Roll20 in the same way we’ve enjoyed exorcising our competitive Diablo’s in “HotS.”
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Roll20 is currently between teams, but that hasn't put them off of esports all together. "We parted ways with our original roster because we couldn't come to an agreement on a long term future," said Jones, "but are currently at the tail end of negotiations with a new roster."

But why esports? "People like watching competition," said Jones. "We like watching basketball, quiz game shows, and now video games be played. We like seeing people experience wins and losses in a clearly defined format, and esports is no different from those other pursuits."

The official clarification after Goldner's statement was that "the game has not yet been classified by the company as an esport because of its limited competitive scope." Jones still sees it as a possibility though. "The things about D&D and esports that make sense to me are the amount of statistical min-maxing that can be involved and the emphasis on teamwork. There are so many ways a D&D esport could happen, it's dizzying, so the first thing I'd hope to see is a solid, small scope to get started."

Part of the appeal of esports is closely tied with viewership, and WOTC's frequent references to Twitch are certainly part of the appeal. Jones thinks that's part of what makes an esport possible. "In this new streaming enivornment, it's fair to say that any game can become popular viewing even without direct corporate sponsorship. It was not so long ago that D&D had no real official streaming presence to speak of, and yet Twitch was full of D&D streamers!"

Roll20's platform is large enough that it could easily be a platform for this sort of competition. Jones thinks it depends on how WOTC defined the scope of a D&D esport. "It's fair to say we would WANT to be involved, be it as a platform or a team sponsor or something completely different."

It seems, for now, that a D&D esport is in the distant future. But competitive D&D is not unheard of, and given the game's popularity on digital and streaming channels, the ingredients are there if and when WOTC is ready to jump in.

Mike "Talien" Tresca is a freelance game columnist, author, communicator, and a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to http://amazon.com. You can follow him at Patreon.

 

[pogre]

Would it appeal to you if you were a paid competitor competing in a ToH style dungeon crawl? Just curious.

Maybe.

I cannot completely rule out this might appeal to me at some level.

The "get off my lawn" comment was to give a heads up that I completely understand I am out of touch with today's generation on this aspect of the hobby. My boys watched videos of people playing video games and loved it. I just never got it.

I have tried a number of times to watch Critical Role and other streams, but it just does not appeal to me. That's on me. It's clear a heck of a lot of other folks are enjoying it.

So, I cannot rule out that I might enjoy being part of the show - just don't want to be a member of the audience.

 

[dave2008]

..., they are thinking "Money, Money, Money, Money, Money and possibly even MORE Money!".

Of course that is what they are thinking, but that can still be good for TTRPG and D&D as a whole.

A business is there to make money, yes, but a business needs to have their product make sense and be desirable by the people likely to buy it. The people who are getting into D&D (or still playing it) are looking to get AWAY FROM their computers,TV's and all the "vicarious excitement" of watching others do something...and sit down at a kitchen table with friends, relax, roll some dice and play make-believe. Personal, face to face, human interaction and contact. That's a HUGE part of the attraction of TTRPG'ing. People watching esports/streaming are doing pretty much the exact opposite (watching others enjoy something and through that watching, get the "excitement" they would like to have first-hand)...no interaction and no contact.

I think you are missing the point that D&D esports would not try to replicate the TTRPG experience, just as D&D Movies don't and D&D board games don't. It would be a different stream of D&D for different tastes. Again, it is not my cup of tea, but it is a real thing and if D&D, as a brand, can grab a portion of that market I think it will be good for all streams of D&D.

In addition it could still be a cooperative and social gaming experience. As I mentioned my firm has designed some esports facilities. While these are not "kitchen tables" they are not so dissimilar from hi-tech TTRPG convention gaming halls.

D&D isn't about competition. At ALL.

That is how I feel about as well, but it is simply not true. D&D competitions have been a part of the game since the early days of conventions. Additionally, I have seen competition spring up in many ways between players and in campaigns. Min. / Maxers sometimes have a competitive flair to them. D&D is a game, and a game will bread competition. Again, it is not how I like to play, but you can't escape human nature.

 

[dave2008]

This reminds me of when mixed martial arts fighting sports first came out. People wanted to see what would happen if you put a karate guy against a boxer. Ultimately most martial arts proved to be disappointing, and it turned out that wrestling is the most effective fighting style.

Not exactly true. It was the martial art of jiu jitus that "revolutionized" MMA, of course it is similar to wrestling (which is also a martial art). Ultimately, just being good at grappling proved to be insufficient as well. All top flight MMA fighters are good grapplers and strikers.

 

[Charles Floray]

PvP D&D won't work because of the requirement of distance to be able to hit. If player 1 uses both of their actions to close the distance on player2. Then player one gives up the advantage of initiative as player 2 does a move then combat action. The only way player 1 can maintain the initiative advantage is with spells or ranged weapons. I'd hate to watch D&D where spells make the entire difference in the game.

 

[Reynard]

5E isn't tightly designed enough for it to work as an esport. You can't have "rulings not rules" with competitive play.

However, I think you could design a system that does tabletop MOBA style team v team play. If it played fast and dramatic enough, it might even be worth spectating. I would start with a slimmed down version of Pathdfinder 2E.

 

[kronovan]

5E isn't tightly designed enough for it to work as an esport. You can't have "rulings not rules" with competitive play.

This. IMO it would have to be a highly modified version of 5e to work for competitive play, or at least hold my interest for a minute as a spectator.

I've run the 3rd party Conflict rules for Pathfinder 1e and those were half decent for competitive PvP skirmishes with miniatures . But not as good as dedicated, Fantasy-themed tabletop miniatures rules I've played with. I haven't seen something equivalent to Conflict for 5e though. The only TTRPG rulesets that come to mind that would be suitable for something akin to eSports, are those from publishers that have more history and focus in the tabletop miniatures market. Privateer Presses' Iron Kingdoms TTRPG (2013 edition) comes to mind as one such ruleset.

I wonder if this idea might be less appealing to GMs and players with some history with TTRPGs - like most folks who post here. D&D 5e is the 800 lb gorilla driving the TTRPG biz juggernaut. So who knows; maybe eSports PvP would appeal to a good sized chunk of the 5e player-base, for which it's their 1st TTRPG experience? Personally, I think streamed sessions of PvE that are hosted by a skilled DM and played by engaged players, offers more entertainment value.

 

[Reynard]

I wonder if this idea might be less appealing to GMs and players with some history with TTRPGs - like most folks who post here. D&D 5e is the 800 lb gorilla driving the TTRPG biz juggernaut. So who knows; maybe eSports PvP would appeal to a good sized chunk of the 5e player-base, for which it's their 1st TTRPG experience? Personally, I think streamed sessions of PvE that are hosted by a skilled DM and played by engaged players, offers more entertainment value.

Years ago as a lark I wrote a script for a competition sports movie parody -- think Rocky, Karate Kid or Over the Top -- except it was the #1 ranked Killer GM versus the #1 4-player D&D team. Basically all the reversals and skilled maneuvering and emotional weight, but for saving throws and to hit rolls and surprise mimics and whatever. I never got the chance to do anything with it (it didn't really work in prose, and I can't draw so no comic book, and I am nowhere near the film industry). Anyway, I thought it was funny but it also got me thinking seriously about how you could actually do that. Later 4E's short dungeon delves came out and I was like -- oh, that's how.

More recently I think a 4-on-4 MOBA style with GM as actual referee is a better fit.

 

[johndesmarais]

Ok, I'll admit it - I'm really having difficulty wrapping my head around the idea of D&D as an e-sport. I watch a lot RPG-related video content, but typically reviews and walkthroughs - but D&D as an e-sport sounds like "actual play" territory, which bores me nearly as much as watching paint dry.

 

[Mannahnin]

Glad this thread got necro'd. Have any of you folks checked out Wandering DMs' The Big Bad competitive D&D show they did a couple of years ago?

They modeled this partially off the old AD&D tournament scenarios. Basically every team plays through the same scenario, using their choice of the available pregen characters, and tries to achieve the objective. The DMs (one playing the bad guys, one acting as impartial referee) have a scoring sheet, and each team scores points based on how well they did. They did six episodes, each played over four hours, then tightly edited down to a two hour video skipping as much downtime and rules lookup and so forth as possible.

I found them quite entertaining.

 

[aramis erak]

Hiya.

I'm still not seeing it. They are trying, to my eyes, to take something that is pretty much anathema to what D&D actually is, video/stream it, and make money.

Hardly anathema, especially since competitive modules have been part of D&D since 1976, and it's still a tactical boardgame for many.

It's now a minority approach... but not a dead one, and part of what made D&D what it was... and what it is grows out of that.

For general edification from about 1976 to 1987 or later, there were D&D tournaments at many conventions, some as team efforts, some as individual efforts. In the 90's, there was a competitive rubric within the Retail Play system - cooperation was one of the graded elements in individual competition scores. (It was used for non-competitive player grading as well as competitive.)

I've run D&D as a press-your-luck boardgame of dungeon penetration. I enjoy it as player and GM in that mode. I've run other modes as well, but that mode is enjoyable to me. And, given the player-filled tables when I've run it that way, I'm not the only one.

Would I watch it? Hell, No! I don't generally enjoy watching other groups play. I particularly don't enjoy Critical Role, but I don't think that my dislike for it is indicative of it being a bad thing.
I did enjoy watching the episode of Dial the Gate podcast where they demoed the Wyvern's SG-1, with David Blue (Eli, SGU), David Hewlett (McKay, all 3), Alexis Cruz (Skarra, SG-1), Julie McNiven (Ginn, SGU), Rainbow Sun Franks (Ford, SG:A), and Dial the Gate host David Read. The GM was one of the Wyvern staff. It was the first time doing an RPG for Rainbow and Julie. (Hewlett, Cruz, and Blue are all avid D&D players; Alexis and Blue both have DMd as well; Hewlett wasn't forthcoming on that score.) Watching McNiven was a delight. And any of them would be welcomed at any table I'm running.
It was VERY genuine.
Likewise, some of the demos of Firefly were watchable.

Mostly, tho', I'd much rather participate than watch.