Project Sigil All the Deets on Project Sigil the D&D 3D Virtual Tabletop

• Danger in Dunbarrow is the adventure designed to introduced the 3D tabletop.
• Bring in any character from D&D Beyond.
• 'Mini Maker' lets you design digital miniatures.
• Assets designed to feel like buying a high-end mini or figure somewhere between painted and realistic.
• Plug in locations like graveyard, mine, town each with a premade story you can use or ignore.
• "Modding games more than making them whole cloth."
• The Level Builder is like 'the best miniatures set that you could have'. Snap together different kit pieces.
• Secret doors, traps, lifts that go up and down.
• Also use 2D tokens with artwork you have.
• Also use 2D maps.
• You can play other games with it, not just D&D.
• Have Drizzt fight Optimus Prime.
• Share content with others.
• Starting on PC, other platforms later including mobile and console.
• Will be available to try out for free.
• Closed beta coming this fall for those with a DDB account.
• Pre-order 2024 physical and digital core rulebook bundle to get a free digital gold dragon mini to 'kickstarter your Project Sigil collection'.

 

[CommodoreKong]

Just look at Steam. I see no reason to believe that Steam is not Wizards (well Hasbros) greatest desire.

"Let us be the Steam platform for Online RPGs, everyone comes to us, everyone pays us a cut, and we dont even have to invest in an RPG anymore."

While I'm sure WotC wants to be the Steam of the RPG Valve has put out some bangers in the past few years. Half Life Alyx was a masterpiece of a game and one of the best games Ive played in the past decade. I'm not a fan of Mobas but Deadlock seems to be pretty well received. We also know they have a new Half Life in development from Source 2 game update leaks. Plus they really pushed the handheld PC forward in a way only they could with Steam Deck, something that was an incredibly niche market. The work they're doing with Linux and proton is also amazing.

Let’s just say I trust current Valve to do well by PC gamers a lot more than I trust WotC to do well by RPG fans.

 

[Hussar]

maaaaaybe something like the current semi-random physical minis boxes? That’s all I can figure.

But, again, those physical minis boxes are for miniature games aren't they? They aren't for D&D. Granted, I don't follow physical minis, like, at all, so, I have no idea what I'm talking about.

Random minis are done to keep the price point of minis lower. That's why they do the random packs. And, because you need a bunch of the same (or similar) mini to make up an army, it's fine - it works. But, anything for the VTT is largely just a cosmetic. Sure, people buy skins and all that for their games. Groovy. Again, I can spend any amount of money I want to spend on virtual minis for Fantasy Grounds. There are bajillions of them out there.

And I can certainly see WotC selling terrain packs. Here's the Spooky House Set. Here's the Halfling Village Set. Here's the Weird Caves Set. Absolutely can see that. The basic VTT will have basic terrain and if you want to go beyond that, you have to pay. That's how every VTT works right now.

Random packs though? .... I just can't even imagine what that would look like. I know that people keep shouting "LOOT BOXES" like it's some sort of explanation. But, I've yet to see anyone actually sit down and explain how they think WotC is going to do it.

 

[teitan]

Looks like Neverwinter Nights tweaked... not sure I like it.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I doubt seriously about spending real money to sell random lootboxes in videogames with underage players. In some countries there are laws about that.

Other point is players wanted to use the VTTs but with their own homemade rules. For example you can find freely (and legally) a PDF by Roll for Combat about sentient-dungeon as PC race. What if a player wants to test to her own variant subrace?

The lootboxes can't work in the same way because we are talking about a VTT, not an arcade.

Today the videogame industry isn't like any years ago. The current gamers don't want to spend a lot of money for a online title that could be closed several years later in the future. They would rather to spend into titles could be played in offline mode.

 

[SummonToast]

I really hope they support importing 3d models - it would open up so many options for exporting models from local game files to use in your campaigns. Creatures and props aren't so hard to extract and for personal use at your own table I don't see a legal issue. Environments from games to use as maps would be great too, Skyrim and The Witcher 3 have some incredible locations I could see using for a battle or play the Alien RPG using maps from Alien: Isolation. Extracting those isn't as easy but I've seen it done for things like Garry's mod so it is possible with the right tooling.

I'm still not sure I want this level of visuals for my tabletop gaming but I don't think I'll know until I've tried it.

 

[Oofta]

I doubt seriously about spending real money to sell random lootboxes in videogames with underage players. In some countries there are laws about that.

Other point is players wanted to use the VTTs but with their own homemade rules. For example you can find freely (and legally) a PDF by Roll for Combat about sentient-dungeon as PC race. What if a player wants to test to her own variant subrace?

The lootboxes can't work in the same way because we are talking about a VTT, not an arcade.

Today the videogame industry isn't like any years ago. The current gamers don't want to spend a lot of money for a online title that could be closed several years later in the future. They would rather to spend into titles could be played in offline mode.

You can use the integration with DDB to do a lot of things but you don't have to. You can use Sigil to play other games, house rules will still be handled just like they are now.

Sigil is not and never will be a video game. People use them for completely different reasons and while some use VTT as a virtual game table, the whole point is to use them with a remote group. Being online is, with rare exceptions, the whole point. Other VTTs I've seen are online only. Sigil will be an application you download and can probably be used offline.

 

[doctorhook]

I think people really fail to understand that a VTT is not actually a game. Things like Loot Boxes or blind boxes don't really work because there's no actual game here. You're not building an army. You're not building a deck. You don't need fifteen "orc" models. You only need one. And you can create that in the builder if you want.

Anything you're going to buy for the VTT that could come in some sort of randomized loot box makes no sense in the context of a VTT.

This remains to be seen. It would trivially easy within the software to limit each instance of a mini to any arbitrary number at a time. Maybe the “common orc barbarian” mini lets you deploy three copies on the same map a simultaneously, but the “rare orc wizard” mini can only be used one at a time. If you want more, you would have to buy extra copies. This is easily possible.

But why would WotC decide to impose arbitrary restrictions on digital assets? Greed. The only reasons to say “this makes no sense” is lack of imagination about how greedy a monopoly could be.

 

[TiQuinn]

My thing with the whole monetization of D&D is that it comes from a statement their president made at the time. The biggest problem they have is that 1/5 of any party is making the lion’s share of the purchases - the DM. Players buy the PHB and maybe stuff like Xanathar’s and Tasha’s guides and that’s it. I think part of the angst that fans have is they’re simply waiting to see what form that’s going to take so we start thinking of the worst case scenarios like lootboxes or micro transactions. My personal two cents: it’ll come through reduction of the number of things one gets to share with a subscription, requiring more people at the table to buy or subscribe individually. I actually think that’d be a lot more painful but it also seems a lot more likely than loot boxes.

 

[EthanSental]

My thing with the whole monetization of D&D is that it comes from a statement their president made at the time. The biggest problem they have is that 1/5 of any party is making the lion’s share of the purchases - the DM. Players buy the PHB and maybe stuff like Xanathar’s and Tasha’s guides and that’s it. I think part of the angst that fans have is they’re simply waiting to see what form that’s going to take so we start thinking of the worst case scenarios like lootboxes or micro transactions. My personal two cents: it’ll come through reduction of the number of things one gets to share with a subscription, requiring more people at the table to buy or subscribe individually. I actually think that’d be a lot more painful but it also seems a lot more likely than loot boxes.

I could see that with the subscription levels to dndbeyond…changing it for sharing like all have to have the master tier to share with each other. $55 a year for master from 5 people around the table is a good deal with sharing so I wouldn’t be surprised if this did happen.

 

[Theory of Games]

It might be interesting to see D&D become a hybrid of Baldur's Gate (fantasy gameplay) + Fortnite (pay-to-win microtransactions). If Hasbro's determined to monetize the IP, that's a strong solution. A lot starts to link-up: the attempted new OGL, the facetime with Larian, bringing in Hight from WoW (which is a pay-to-win game). We just can't help but see what's coming here.