D&D General Do you want a 3D vtt?

[LordEntrails]

Imagine a menu of drag and drop terrain objects. Lighting effects, line of sight, etc. are already backed into the objects. You build but dropping objects onto the canvas.

And how is this different than 2D assets?

That would be easier and much quicker than loading a battlemap image, sizing it, matching it to a grid, and drawing in the walls, etc.

Of course there are drag and drop 2D tile sets that allow similar building in 2D vtts, but I don't think 3D would be any more difficult.

Exactly. if you compare 2D apples to 3D apples, there is no difference.

Where 3D gets more complicated is building objects from scratch. At least with my experience with 3D Canvas for Foundry. There are just more settings to fiddle about with to build a 3D tile than there is for a 2D tile. But if working from precreated tile packs, 3D needn't be any more complicated than 2D.

Agreed, the same, not easier as the claim that I was questioning.

 

[Hussar]

Not to mention cliffs, rooftops, balconies, etc.

Oh, for sure. I'll admit that I'm a huge dungeon crawl fan. I do. I loves me the hack. And, adding verticality to a dungeon crawl is one of the best ways to really add tactical depth (ahem) to the scenario. Start putting room exits fifteen feet off the floor, pools, stair ways, all sorts of goodies. At the moment we have a plugin for Fantasy Grounds that will track altitude and calculate range automatically, which is nice, but, it doesn't handle LOS, so, you can't see "over" an obstacle. It's not bad, and it gets the job done, but, I'd LOVE to have an actual 3d battlemap for a lot of my encounters.

One feature I do hope they include is a way to set your camera in the head of the token so you can see the scene from the token's perspective. Not necessarily play that way all the time, fair enough, but, just an option to be used. Plus, one would hope that in a VTT built from the ground up with LOS, walls would actually block sight. As it is now, you have to draw the LOS lines overtop of the map, but, if you draw the LOS lines exactly over the edge of the wall, you can't actually see the wall anymore. But, if you set the LOS lines inside the wall so you can see the wall, then you wind up seeing around corners which the character probably shouldn't be able to do.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

And how is this different than 2D assets?

Cause the 2d tabletops don't currently have it built it. For things like roll20 and Foundry if you put in a map, you have to apply vision blocking walls and doors to it after the fact.

If the new thing has it built in, upon just putting the map parts down vision will be taken care of.

 

[tetrasodium]

Cause the 2d tabletops don't currently have it built it. For things like roll20 and Foundry if you put in a map, you have to apply vision blocking walls and doors to it after the fact.

If the new thing has it built in, upon just putting the map parts down vision will be taken care of.

I'm reminded of a story about an elephants being described by your posts

Spoiler: this took seconds at 4am

Suppose I could have fiddled with the FoW settings too but not redoing the video to do that.

 

[Azzy]

Oh, for sure. I'll admit that I'm a huge dungeon crawl fan. I do. I loves me the hack. And, adding verticality to a dungeon crawl is one of the best ways to really add tactical depth (ahem) to the scenario. Start putting room exits fifteen feet off the floor, pools, stair ways, all sorts of goodies. At the moment we have a plugin for Fantasy Grounds that will track altitude and calculate range automatically, which is nice, but, it doesn't handle LOS, so, you can't see "over" an obstacle. It's not bad, and it gets the job done, but, I'd LOVE to have an actual 3d battlemap for a lot of my encounters.

One feature I do hope they include is a way to set your camera in the head of the token so you can see the scene from the token's perspective. Not necessarily play that way all the time, fair enough, but, just an option to be used. Plus, one would hope that in a VTT built from the ground up with LOS, walls would actually block sight. As it is now, you have to draw the LOS lines overtop of the map, but, if you draw the LOS lines exactly over the edge of the wall, you can't actually see the wall anymore. But, if you set the LOS lines inside the wall so you can see the wall, then you wind up seeing around corners which the character probably shouldn't be able to do.

Have you looked at Foundry VTT with 3D Canvas?

 

[Jadeite]

Have you looked at Foundry VTT with 3D Canvas?

That's obviously a video game, not a VTT. It even includes an animated fireball which you can't have at your gaming table.

 

[Jer]

I don’t like the distraction a 3D vtt would have for the totm play and I can’t imagine a quick way to plop a map down for an impromptu combat that needs one.

This. The amount of work I have to put in to use a 2d battle map online is exhausting enough. It's not like using a whiteboard at home where I can just draw on it quickly - it's time consuming and distracting to use software to do anything and for me it kills spontaneity. Fortunately my players are happy with my primitive scrawls on a blank whiteboard on Roll20, but if it were a 3d battle map I couldn't do that.

A 3d VTT lends itself well to published scenarios, so I can see Wizards liking that. You buy your published scenario, you get all of the battlemaps for all of the locations in it, the DM doesn't need to actually build anything. But I don't play the game that way, so I'd either end up spending hours of time setting things up or we'd play a lot of battles on a 3e blank plane where I'm telling people to imagine that whatever thing I could easily drop into place between them and my minis is something else.

 

[Incenjucar]

A competent 3D VTT just needs to be able to let you select squares or planes to raise a specific number of squares, then apply a texture like normal. This sort of thing was easy at least a decade before Minecraft.

 

[cranberry]

If the 3d VTT could run on an older computer without issues, and if the prices were reasonable, and there weren't any restrictions on how people could use the VTT (such as homebrew rules), I would definitely consider it.

 

[Clint_L]

This. The amount of work I have to put in to use a 2d battle map online is exhausting enough. It's not like using a whiteboard at home where I can just draw on it quickly - it's time consuming and distracting to use software to do anything and for me it kills spontaneity. Fortunately my players are happy with my primitive scrawls on a blank whiteboard on Roll20, but if it were a 3d battle map I couldn't do that.

A 3d VTT lends itself well to published scenarios, so I can see Wizards liking that. You buy your published scenario, you get all of the battlemaps for all of the locations in it, the DM doesn't need to actually build anything. But I don't play the game that way, so I'd either end up spending hours of time setting things up or we'd play a lot of battles on a 3e blank plane where I'm telling people to imagine that whatever thing I could easily drop into place between them and my minis is something else.

I think we should be very cautious about assuming what the VTT will or will not do, and how quick and easy it will be to use.

As I posted earlier, Chat GPT, right now, can generate a text environment for 5e, including a level-appropriate encounter and treasure, given just a short prompt. And can do it in seconds.

So imagine that kind of AI optimized for D&D and given VTT tools to work with. I see no reason why it couldn't, in principle, generate the same encounter and add the visuals just as effectively.

Or why they couldn't include a "pen" tooltip that would let you draw on the whitespace but fills it in with 3d cavern terrain, or whatever you selected.

Those don't seem like great technological leaps. I think think the challenge will be creating an intuitive interface.