WotC D&D Historian Ben Riggs says the OGL fiasco was Chris Cocks idea.

[mamba]

This strikes me as a faith-based statement

and your argument about the VTT isn’t?

 

[Alzrius]

and your argument about the VTT isn’t?

Precisely so, since I'm speculating about what I think might happen, instead of declaratively asserting that it won't happen (because customers always choose and the best product after comparing quality and nothing else).

 

[Oofta]

...

No, not "as poorly as possible." As tailored to the VTT's capabilities as possible, which are necessarily more limited than what imaginative play is capable of.

...

Nobody's misunderstanding you. There's just no logic presented supporting your supposition.

What we know about the VTT:

1. They've stated that they want to support house rules. That means that while you can automate spell effects if you wish, you will also be able to manually apply any effects. Animations and automating results of spells will be optional.
2. They've also stated that the goal (perhaps longer term) is to support different games, not just D&D.
3. Creating custom monsters and items in DDB is simple, I do it all the time. The VTT not having exactly the correct avatar for a monster is no different from me putting down an orc mini and letting people know it's really a mind flayer.
4. I've used a VTT to run games. In no way did it limit my creativity or house rules. Multiple people have agreed. See also point #1.

Those are the facts and the goals of the VTT team at WotC. None of them supports your concern. They want to replicate the tabletop experience as much as possible. That includes, again, house rules and by extension the use of imagination and creativity.

It is also insulting to people that currently use VTTs to imply that they're somehow lesser gamers, tied to what is shown on the screen.

WotC would have to be lying, incompetent or have some nefarious goals for your fears to come true. Or you could just be painting them in the most negative light possible.

What, exactly do you get out of it?

- Skippy

 

[Hussar]

I guess the question becomes, what changes could you make to the game to make it more vtt friendly.

4e style square area affects I suppose. Just because on a vtt you’re most likely using a map so it would make it a lot easier if effects were square.

Proliferate status effects. I notice that now with my current fantasy grounds game. The party barbarian has about six status effects on all the time. Then you add in temp effects and it can get a bit much. I could see that if the effects proliferated significantly then it would push players towards using a vtt to track stuff.

Kind of like how high level 3e play saw players using spreadsheets to track things.

I’m still rather at a loss though to see how vtt play loses out in creativity though.

 

[Alzrius]

Nobody's misunderstanding you.

Even a casual review of the thread shows that this isn't true.

There's just no logic presented supporting your supposition.

I've pointed out quite a few times that speculation about the future isn't an evidentiary-based exercise. The best that can be done is to look at what seems likely to happen, and in this regard everything I've outlined is well within the realm of plausibility.

What we know about the VTT:
They've stated that they want to support house rules.

There's a ubiquitous "citation needed" notation here, along with the fact that "wanting to" suggests an aspirational tone, as opposed to a declarative "(absolutely) will."

That means that while you can automate spell effects if you wish, you will also be able to manually apply any effects. Animations and automating results of spells will be optional.

As an aside, I'll note that I've removed the numerical formatting here because it kept defaulting to "1" in the quotes. That said, I've noted multiple times that it's expected that you'll be able to do things manually; it's a question of the VTT's capabilities incentivizing the option to not bother to do so. Most people, I suspect, will turn the spell animations on because why not? They look fun and make things more visually impressive, by which token things which aren't animated are less impressive, including things which can only be manually input, like custom content. Hence the disincentivation.

They've also stated that the goal (perhaps longer term) is to support different games, not just D&D.

Again, even assuming that we take this at face value, there's no assumption that this is going to allow users to play whatever they want. It's entirely possible that this is in reference to forming licenses with other game companies to allow for content specific to their RPGs. So we might be talking about a Call of Cthulhu specific application of WotC's VTT. That's entirely speculative, but the point is that it's not outside of the realm of possibility in accordance with WotC's actions over the last two years or so.

Creating custom monsters and items in DDB is simple, I do it all the time.

Which, again, is still more work than using what's there. Now, unto itself that's no different from the tabletop, except now you still have an added technical aspect (and I'll note that the simplicity is relative; don't assume that "easy for me" means "easy for everyone") in addition to game balance, all for a creature that can't be animated as its own thing.

The VTT not having exactly the correct avatar for a monster is no different from me putting down an orc mini and letting people know it's really a mind flayer.

Which is an imperfect solution to the issue at hand, which is entirely the point of what I've been saying. When certain options become an issue of workarounds and substitutions, they become less preferable, which in turn shapes both expectations and modes of engagement.

I've used a VTT to run games. In no way did it limit my creativity or house rules. Multiple people have agreed. See also point #1.

Again, holding yourself up as the exception isn't saying anything about the rule. The major point I'm concerned with is new players who are funneled into the VTT as the primary method of play, since WotC keeps telling us how their player base is growing younger even as it gets larger. People with decades of experience aren't who I'm talking about.

Those are the facts and the goals of the VTT team at WotC. None of them supports your concern.

See above. You've also omitted several other salient facts, such as WotC's having confirmed that they're going to treat individual applications (such as virtual minis) as points of transaction, hence the gold dragon promo.

They want to replicate the tabletop experience as much as possible.

No, they don't. They want to do what makes them as much money as possible, and see the customers as barriers between them and their money, according to what was leaked during the OGL scandal.

That includes, again, house rules and by extension the use of imagination and creativity.

See above. WotC wants to make the VTT something captivating, I'm sure, but we shouldn't assume that they think that a "commitment to quality" is how they plan to go about it. Quite the contrary, based on recent happenings. The result of that carries a not-inconsiderable possibility of hurting imaginative play for people who come into D&D the way WotC wants them to, via the VTT.

It is also insulting to people that currently use VTTs to imply that they're somehow lesser gamers, tied to what is shown on the screen.

No, it's not. Pointing out that the medium becomes the message for the majority of people is a simple truism; if you're reading more into it than that, then that's entirely on you.

WotC would have to be lying, incompetent or have some nefarious goals for your fears to come true.

Again, I'll point you to their actions in the last thirty-odd months. We've seen them lie, we've seen them act incompetently, and we've seen them be nefarious. Any sort of appeal to their goodwill is, at this point, completely empty.

Or you could just be painting them in the most negative light possible.

Or I could just be painting them in a light that's entirely commensurate with how they've been acting.

What, exactly do you get out of it?

I'm just enjoying having a fun conversation. Or are you, who decries what you see as the assumption of nefarious motives, assigning nefarious motives to me?

 

[Oofta]

Even a casual review of the thread shows that this isn't true.

Even a casual review of this thread shows that you are dismissive of facts and peoples explanations of why your fears are unfounded while simultaneously insulting people who use VTTs as having limited creativity and being slaves to visuals because they aren't gaming in person. While I generally take a "never say never" approach, your fears aren't remotely plausible, at least not for anything that's going to happen in the foreseeable future.

About the only thing that has any basis in fact or speculation short of conspiracy theory is that they are going to allow people to purchase cosmetic upgrades. Since the dreaded "microtransactions" will be cosmetic, there' no difference between that and people buying custom minis or fancy dice. It's a non-issue.

[muffled sounds as Skippy is put back in his box]

 

[Alzrius]

Even a casual review of this thread shows that you are dismissive of facts

On the contrary, a casual review of this thread shows exactly the opposite.

and peoples explanations of why your fears are unfounded

Which is entirely a matter of opinion, even though people keep talking about how their ability to predict the future is "evidence-based," and "factual," as though what will happened can be derived through analysis of what has happened (which is even less convincing given how selective said facts are and how creatively the "evidence" is interpreted).

while simultaneously insulting people who use VTTs as having limited creativity and being slaves to visuals because they aren't gaming in person.

I'll point out that it's already been established that no such insult has been maintained. In fact, this serves as an excellent example of the willful misinterpretation of what I've said which has characterized much of the discussion so far.

While I generally take a "never say never" approach, your fears aren't remotely plausible,

In this you're self-evidently wrong, as I've pointed out before; nothing I've said is beyond the realm of plausibility, and efforts to say that they are essentially come down to "trust WotC."

at least not for anything that's going to happen in the foreseeable future.

And that people think they can accurately foresee the future in this regard is telling. There's a reason why I've continually said that this is something I'm concerned might happen.

About the only thing that has any basis in fact or speculation short of conspiracy theory is that they are going to allow people to purchase cosmetic upgrades.

I'll point out that it's all theory, though I don't know where you get the "conspiracy" part from, as there's only a single actor being discussed (in terms of deliberate action being taken), and that's WotC. The rest of it is the unintentional effect that this can have on new players.

Since the dreaded "microtransactions" will be cosmetic, there' no difference between that and people buying custom minis or fancy dice. It's a non-issue.

In this regard, you're demonstrably wrong, unless you think that there's no technical difference between an analogue die you can use in any game, anywhere, and a virtual mini that's locked into a particular online platform.

[muffled sounds as Skippy is put back in his box]

Am I missing a pop culture reference here?

 

[Chaosmancer]

A VTT whose capabilities fall in line with their recent actions to try and consolidate the industry around themselves and their product as much as possible, to the extent that they feel is practical. To say that the fanbase (i.e. the consumer market) will judge things purely on quality of what's offered alone strikes me as naive.

I think that you're treating what I said much too much as an absolute. WotC wants to funnel as much of their player-base as they can onto the VTT, so that they can monetize things via a recurrent spending environment. Anything that gets in the way of that goal is something they'll want to either disallow, disincentivize, or at least put under their own oversight.

To that end, if they do allow custom content, I expect they'd necessitate a level of control/oversight on their part regarding what that content is. Remember the bogus "we need to have a unilateral kill switch, so that we can kill bigoted content" clause from the OGL v1.1 and v1.2? Expect something along those lines if custom content is allowed, where they'll appeal to wanting to protect people from offense and, I'd guess, will claim that they need to disallow unauthorized recreations of copyrighted material (of themselves and others) to curate what custom content users are allowed to create. Of course, this almost certainly will be wielded in a manner that will bear only passing resemblance to these goals, allowing them to cripple custom content to the extent that they feel necessary to abet the sale of content on their platform.

But they can't put in any sort of kill switch, whether to stop bigoted content or not. The Gloomstalker has an ability to deal d8 psychic damage on a hit X times per day. Am I pirating content if I allow a ranger to deal a d8 fire damage on a hit X times per day? What if it is psychic damage, but it is on a fighter? What if it is psychic damage, on a ranger, but is tied to a blessing from a god?

You literally cannot police this. Because the line between "exactly what the ability in the book they didn't buy on our VTT" is and what the players just come up with is razor thin. And then you need to contend with the bad press of attempting to do so.

It really boggles me how on one hand you constantly think WoTC is going to have this immense capability to oversee everything and control everything... but also be completely incompetent beyond what any random person on the street could see is obvious.

Again, it's not a question of players "never thinking outside of the box," but a question of players being encourages not to, because what's inside the box is flashier, quicker, and easier to use. Being presented with the option of working harder to achieve lesser results will see most people not going that route, until it becomes reflexive, and imaginative play becomes constrained as a result.

Won't happen.

Misstatements and hyperbole do not constitute a form of criticism, you realize? WotC will want to funnel people to their VTT, as it's their money-maker; they themselves would be disincentivized to release new rules that are beyond what their VTT can itself handle (very well).

You just assuming the VTT will be their money maker doesn't make it true. The thing isn't even out of development yet. As for rules it can't handle... you realize that that is the entire skill system if I take you seriously, correct? Because they can't animate conversations or intimidation. So, they are already going to have rules that the VTT can't handle, because in your mind "handling it" is animating it. And the VTT cannot do that. It cannot animate my fighter giving a carrot to a horse, because the sheer amount of space and design that would need to go into any possible PC or NPC giving any possible animal any possible item is absurd.

By your logic, that means that they are going to remove animal handling from the game, or they are going to state that animal handling only works with carrots and no other item. By my logic.... they just don't animate it and let people say whatever they want. No one is actually going to be upset that they can animate swinging a weapon but can't animate giving a horse a carrot. It is wasted effort for little gain.

Again, stating this in a snarky fashion doesn't make it any less compelling. We know that WotC is trying to consolidate their influence over the industry. We've seen them cancel their partnership with Random House in order to try and be their own distributor. We've seen them buy D&D Beyond outright instead of renewing their licensing deal. And we've seen them try to replace the OGL with something which gave them a kill switch on products they didn't like as well as residuals on the highest-earning products. Call it "vertical integration" if you're fond of buzzwords, but these are not the actions of a company dedicated to openness; even the release of the 5.1 SRD into the CC strikes me as a conciliatory move which cost them little, since they'd already backed off of the OGL (even if they ended up releasing more into the CC than they meant to).

The takeaway here is that WotC is going to do what's good for WotC, which while not unexpected does strike me as meaning that they're more committed to control than to quality, and that the VTT will reflect this ethos.

Company doesn't want to be beholden to 3rd parties. Shocked pikachu face. But see, there is a problem. They ALSO agreed to release 5e24 to Creative Commons. That means that the entire set of rulebooks being printed right now is ALSO CC content. So if they were just "buying time" then they are going to release another new edition to get their control. But... well, there are some problems with that isn't there? They have had the single most successful version of DnD by having an open playtest, they have declared this edition evergreen and that they don't want to replace it, they have made making this edition for free trivial and legal for anyone who wants to riff off this product. And that is the environment their VTT is being released into. Even if it does gangbusters, five years down the line WoTC execs are going to either continue doing what they have done to be successful.... or completely ruin everything they have built and anger the community. And it is only AFTER ruining everything that the rules would be catered to the VTT.

Meanwhile, if the VTT does gangbusters in this environment, with all the creative unlimited play we have... then if they DON'T make stupid decisions with the rules that make no sense, they KEEP everything.

Songs and videos? Are you suggesting that people are going to want to upload thir TikTok media onto the VTT?

No. I'm pointing out that 20 years ago, when I searched "Dungeons and Dragons" on Ask Jeeves, the 3rd result was a comic by Jack Chic called "Darkest Dungeon", I'm sure you heard about it. Now? Now if I search "DnD Comic" not only are there 6 official DnD comics (and I know there should be a seventh and an eighth because I own them) but there are comics like Table Titans, Dungeons & Doodles, 1Hp, Critical Role and dozens of others based on people's own games.

You are so scared that people will become less creative because it will be hard work, but when I look out into the TTRPG space, I am seeing people composing original songs based on their campaigns, multiple people have built entire brands based on Actual Plays or just recounting their games, Dingo Doodles, Dimension 20, High Rollers, Drakkenheim, Legends of Avantris. I literally cannot possibly list all of them. Not all of the comics, not all of the actual plays, not all of the brands, it is so much. There was Kraken Week at the start of the month, and they had over 100 TTRPG youtubers, most of whom either started or only do DnD content.

And to your mind this means nothing. None of this creativity and personal expression means a thing to you. Because WoTC has declared they are going to make a subscription service VTT. And people just are no longer going to put the effort into being creative.

No, they'll be able to buy those fancy colors from WotC for $0.99 each. Obviously that's an example, but it looks like an accurate representation of what WotC wants to do.

Okay, and? WoTC sells an aesthetic thing to people, that doesn't mean they are going to start changing the rules.

I'm not sure why you think this is entirely based around the idea of new Core Rulebooks, as opposed to an issue with every subsequent book they'll release.

Simple, because they cannot remove core game mechanics like "creative and unlimited play" by releasing a splatbook. And the rules that already exist in the core rules cover such a broad range of things, that the idea they will suddenly not do something with a subclass because of the VTT seems silly.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I guess the question becomes, what changes could you make to the game to make it more vtt friendly.

4e style square area affects I suppose. Just because on a vtt you’re most likely using a map so it would make it a lot easier if effects were square.

And actually, I would point out that you don't NEED a square based map if you are using a VTT. They likely will go that route, but grid maps evolved as a way to speed up gameplay without the need for rulers, that is why each 5ft square is 1 in IRL. A VTT could easily allow things to move based on simulated feet with in-built rulers. For an example... Baldur's Gate 3 took this exact approach, using rulers and colored circles to demonstrate range and area of effect.

Proliferate status effects. I notice that now with my current fantasy grounds game. The party barbarian has about six status effects on all the time. Then you add in temp effects and it can get a bit much. I could see that if the effects proliferated significantly then it would push players towards using a vtt to track stuff.

Kind of like how high level 3e play saw players using spreadsheets to track things.

Yeah, I could see a Virtual system handling that better than doing it manually at the table.

 

[Oofta]

On the contrary, a casual review of this thread shows exactly the opposite.

Which is entirely a matter of opinion, even though people keep talking about how their ability to predict the future is "evidence-based," and "factual," as though what will happened can be derived through analysis of what has happened (which is even less convincing given how selective said facts are and how creatively the "evidence" is interpreted).

I'll point out that it's already been established that no such insult has been maintained. In fact, this serves as an excellent example of the willful misinterpretation of what I've said which has characterized much of the discussion so far.

In this you're self-evidently wrong, as I've pointed out before; nothing I've said is beyond the realm of plausibility, and efforts to say that they are essentially come down to "trust WotC."

And that people think they can accurately foresee the future in this regard is telling. There's a reason why I've continually said that this is something I'm concerned might happen.

I'll point out that it's all theory, though I don't know where you get the "conspiracy" part from, as there's only a single actor being discussed (in terms of deliberate action being taken), and that's WotC. The rest of it is the unintentional effect that this can have on new players.

In this regard, you're demonstrably wrong, unless you think that there's no technical difference between an analogue die you can use in any game, anywhere, and a virtual mini that's locked into a particular online platform.

Am I missing a pop culture reference here?

Nah, Skippy is my evil twin who bothers to try to counter things that are what I consider at best borderline conspiracy theories when there hasn't been anything new for hundreds of posts.