G
Guest 6801328
Guest
You have clearly never done anything like this.
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The VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
You have clearly never done anything like this.
I think the best thing new VTTs can do to improve the landscape is to focus on the "table" part. Make it easy to get people into the game. Make it easy to make custom die rolls or card pulls or whatever. Make it easy to share handouts. Make it easy to sketch for the players. Make it easy to incorporate materials we bought, including PDFs.
I think VTTs that focus on graphics and automation have their place, but they are trying to be both a place to play RPGs and a place to play video games. I don't think you can do both.
I think VTTs that focus on graphics and automation have their place, but they are trying to be both a place to play RPGs and a place to play video games. I don't think you can do both.
DarrenShard
Villager
I have to agree. Much of what makes D&D interesting is creativity and personal interaction, which is very different than playing a video game. Both D&D and video games are fun to play but I am skeptical that D&D as a video game will ever be anything but a bad video game.
G
Guest 6801328
Guest
I agree with this sentiment, as well as with the post you were quoting.
AND I think that video graphics does not have to mean video game.
I think most of us appreciate:
- Beautifully painted minis
- Full color maps instead of dry-erase marker on a tan battlemat
- Minis for furniture and chests and what-not
- Maps that start covered up and are revealed room-by-room as we explore them
I don't think that an online platform that delivers these things digitally instead of physically necessarily turns it into a video game.
Likewise, tools that help both player and DM handle mechanics faster don't have to detract from the game. As a DM I wouldn't mind if monsters were smart enough to suggest moves. For example, when I get to the orc's turn in the initiative order, I would love to see a "suggested" move (including both movement and action) and I can either accept or reject it.
AND I would love to be able to fight some AIs in between actual gaming sessions. Another thing many of us love is creating characters. For my part, I probably only play about 1/6 characters I create. It would be a blast to be able to drop them into a scenario and fight it out a few times.
Would I rather play a session with other people? Yes.
LuisCarlos17f
Legend
And virtual tabletops being showed in some streaming gamelive show as Critical Role?
6
Have you tried integrating D&D Beyond into Roll20 with Beyond 20 (it's a chrome extension)?
My players all have their characters in D&D Beyond and use that character sheet right along with Roll20. Beyond 20 allows them to roll right from their character sheet onto Roll20. It's worked well.
I haven't tried using the initiative tracker in D&D beyond (I prefer to just use a notepad next to the computer - after I got frustrated with the Roll20 initiative tracker)
Have you tried integrating D&D Beyond into Roll20 with Beyond 20 (it's a chrome extension)?
My players all have their characters in D&D Beyond and use that character sheet right along with Roll20. Beyond 20 allows them to roll right from their character sheet onto Roll20. It's worked well.
I haven't tried using the initiative tracker in D&D beyond (I prefer to just use a notepad next to the computer - after I got frustrated with the Roll20 initiative tracker)
As for what I'd like?
Obviously pie in the sky would be the Oasis like in Ready Player One (with the even more pie in the sky concept that it would be mostly free to use).
In reality - I'll take a VTT that's functional with as little prep time as possible setting up and navigating all the tech stuff. I've found Roll20 integrated with D&D beyond to be quite functional - but I would LOVE for the prep to be even easier. Setting up thr maps etc, is still quite a chore, much more time consuming than doing it live.
Obviously pie in the sky would be the Oasis like in Ready Player One (with the even more pie in the sky concept that it would be mostly free to use).
In reality - I'll take a VTT that's functional with as little prep time as possible setting up and navigating all the tech stuff. I've found Roll20 integrated with D&D beyond to be quite functional - but I would LOVE for the prep to be even easier. Setting up thr maps etc, is still quite a chore, much more time consuming than doing it live.
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My problems with using any VTT for enhanced environments are the same issues I have with highly detailed physical pieces like Dwarven Forge.
That leads me to sticking with something consistently cheap, fast, and flexible (i.e. battlemat with markers for offline games) or as I've ultimately come back around to favor, Theater of the Mind.
That being said, despite my told "too old/too busy" grumblings, I love seeing new tech and applications constantly improving and evolving the digital and online gaming space, particularly when they can also be easily transitioned to use in an offline game.
- The prep work is often very tedious.
- A limited library of basic assets causes most environments to have a cookie cutter look which leads to...
- The need to constantly acquire additional assets that still don't often fit my target aesthetic, but I'll always have to compromise because...
- Creating custom assets is expensive, extremely time consuming, or simply beyond beyond my capability (or all of the above).
That leads me to sticking with something consistently cheap, fast, and flexible (i.e. battlemat with markers for offline games) or as I've ultimately come back around to favor, Theater of the Mind.
That being said, despite my told "too old/too busy" grumblings, I love seeing new tech and applications constantly improving and evolving the digital and online gaming space, particularly when they can also be easily transitioned to use in an offline game.
Ruin Explorer
Legend
I feel like VTTs are being pulled in two directions, as well-illustrated by the first and second posts in the thread.
On the one hand, you have the desire to just have something extremely polished and attractive and easy to use, but quite narrow in application. That's pretty much exactly what 4E was intending to do, but didn't succeed at (to the point where it's relatively little-known that it even tried, at this point). To use these well, you'd also require polished content - probably official adventures and so on all being adapted.
On the other hand, you have the desire for easily-extensible, easily-moddable, community-friendly VTTs, where content created by DMs or which wasn't designed for a VTT, can very easily be incorporated and made functional without much in-depth technical knowledge or the like.
And these two visions aren't really compatible. Elements could be, but as a whole? No, the objectives and values are too different.
As for which will succeed? I think its going to be the polished and narrow version, over any less-polished but more broadly-useful design. Why? Because the polished and narrow version can potentially attract a lot of investment, and potentially deliver good monetization, and the broadly-useful, customization-friendly one, cannot.
With a polished and narrow design, you can sell everything:
Rulebooks/adventures - As VTTs already do
Dice for rolling on screen - Beyond is starting on this, and has plans for some really fancy stuff*
Minis - Potentially both for PCs and the enemies
Dungeon tiles/maps for building your own stuff
Avatars/frames/titles/backgrounds for videos/emotes and so on for players (and possibly animated minis)
You can also get subscriptions out of people, as is already done, of course.
The level of accessibility is also likely to be very high, in that neither the DM nor the players will need to know much to get going. A polished UI could also boot out the need to know /commands to cause a lot of stuff to happen (which you do for the VTTs I've used). The only major potential issue I see is that the sort of flashy 3D apps some people are envisioning are not going to work on a lot of the devices people use for gaming right now (some of which can barely cope with Roll20).
The downside of polished and narrow is that to reach this level of polish, you're probably going to need to support only one game. But because 5E is so huge, well, there's your game. This is literally the rationale D&D Beyond is using for creating a VTT (which they started work on before COVID). Initially when they made Beyond, they said "no VTT" because the audience simply wasn't large enough for a single-system VTT. But that changed, as 5E's audience expanded, and the number of users on Beyond skyrocketed.
So now they're working on a VTT, and it is certainly going to be the narrow/polished kind. Whether it will have a 3E map initially is unclear. I suspect not, but I suspect it will acquire one before too long.
@Ristamar I agree with all your points very strongly. I find most VTTs lower immersion and cause players to treat things a bit more like a video game than TtoM, even very experienced players. And the more detailed, colourful, and flashy the map and map components, the more they do this. It's weird but a plain white room with a grid and so on causes them to actually work on imagining the setting, where some lovely detailed map totally does not. I thus very much hope any future VTTs have good options for very "plain" maps built in. There's some hope I think, simply because of nostalgia for 1E/2E-style maps, which were generally that.
* = Like heavily animated dice, for example, a flaming die that "explodes" if you roll a nat 20. Apparently it uses a physics simulation for the dice, too, rather than a conventional random number generator.
On the one hand, you have the desire to just have something extremely polished and attractive and easy to use, but quite narrow in application. That's pretty much exactly what 4E was intending to do, but didn't succeed at (to the point where it's relatively little-known that it even tried, at this point). To use these well, you'd also require polished content - probably official adventures and so on all being adapted.
On the other hand, you have the desire for easily-extensible, easily-moddable, community-friendly VTTs, where content created by DMs or which wasn't designed for a VTT, can very easily be incorporated and made functional without much in-depth technical knowledge or the like.
And these two visions aren't really compatible. Elements could be, but as a whole? No, the objectives and values are too different.
As for which will succeed? I think its going to be the polished and narrow version, over any less-polished but more broadly-useful design. Why? Because the polished and narrow version can potentially attract a lot of investment, and potentially deliver good monetization, and the broadly-useful, customization-friendly one, cannot.
With a polished and narrow design, you can sell everything:
Rulebooks/adventures - As VTTs already do
Dice for rolling on screen - Beyond is starting on this, and has plans for some really fancy stuff*
Minis - Potentially both for PCs and the enemies
Dungeon tiles/maps for building your own stuff
Avatars/frames/titles/backgrounds for videos/emotes and so on for players (and possibly animated minis)
You can also get subscriptions out of people, as is already done, of course.
The level of accessibility is also likely to be very high, in that neither the DM nor the players will need to know much to get going. A polished UI could also boot out the need to know /commands to cause a lot of stuff to happen (which you do for the VTTs I've used). The only major potential issue I see is that the sort of flashy 3D apps some people are envisioning are not going to work on a lot of the devices people use for gaming right now (some of which can barely cope with Roll20).
The downside of polished and narrow is that to reach this level of polish, you're probably going to need to support only one game. But because 5E is so huge, well, there's your game. This is literally the rationale D&D Beyond is using for creating a VTT (which they started work on before COVID). Initially when they made Beyond, they said "no VTT" because the audience simply wasn't large enough for a single-system VTT. But that changed, as 5E's audience expanded, and the number of users on Beyond skyrocketed.
So now they're working on a VTT, and it is certainly going to be the narrow/polished kind. Whether it will have a 3E map initially is unclear. I suspect not, but I suspect it will acquire one before too long.
@Ristamar I agree with all your points very strongly. I find most VTTs lower immersion and cause players to treat things a bit more like a video game than TtoM, even very experienced players. And the more detailed, colourful, and flashy the map and map components, the more they do this. It's weird but a plain white room with a grid and so on causes them to actually work on imagining the setting, where some lovely detailed map totally does not. I thus very much hope any future VTTs have good options for very "plain" maps built in. There's some hope I think, simply because of nostalgia for 1E/2E-style maps, which were generally that.
* = Like heavily animated dice, for example, a flaming die that "explodes" if you roll a nat 20. Apparently it uses a physics simulation for the dice, too, rather than a conventional random number generator.
I agree with most of what you said but just wanted to add that I am always very surprised this part isn't happening yet, at least on Fantasy Grounds (the VTT I use the most). Chessex or whoever could make a killing with digital dice skins.
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