Sigil, Wizards of the Coast's VTT, Officially Launches

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Sigil, the 3D VTT developed by Wizards of the Coast and formerly known as Project Sigil, has officially launched on Window devices. Today, Wizards of the Coast announced that anyone with a D&D Beyond account (free or paid) can now access Sigil, provided they have a computer with Windows OS. Interestingly, the system's full functionality is based off of D&D Beyond's subscription tiers, with access to create multiplayer rooms and the ability to share and load maps tied to the Master Tier account. Master Tier subscribers also have access to builder kits, custom mini outfits, and unpainted minis. The Sigil client can be downloaded from D&D Beyond.

Sigil has been in development since at least 2023 alongside the launch of the One D&D initiative. One major concern about the new system, which uses Unreal Engine 5 to create 3D battle maps for D&D, was its pricing. At least for now, pricing seems to be tied directly to D&D Beyond subscriptions instead of pushing an additional monetization scheme onto players.

EN World saw a preview build of Sigil earlier this year, with a robust and relatively quick-to-implement map building system. One question that I kept asking while previewing Sigil involved exactly what Wizards wanted Sigil to be, as it functionally appeared to be a level or map builder with some basic D&D automation built into the game. The system doesn't include a full D&D revised 5E engine, but it does contain a significant amount of integration for the app to mimic some of D&D Beyond's dice rolling and resource management system has. It doesn't look like a bad VTT, although it's more appropriate for big set piece battles rather than standard "goblins attack the caravan" type encounters.
 

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Christian Hoffer

Christian Hoffer


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Welp, three pages in now and has anyone actually, I dunno, tried it yet? I'm working this weekend and my potato of a computer likely won't do this justice, so, it would be nice if some kind, open minded individual gave it a whirl and posted a couple of screen shots.
Yes. It's clunky as heck still. Imo. I figured we were one more big release from open beta.
 

Considering how plugged into DDB 5e players can get, I'm sure there'll be a big push from them to use Sigil once they see all the neat graphics, making your own character like heroforge etc... the ultimate question is going to be how friendly and versatile it is for DMs to use.

At the time that COVID came in and ruined all my in-person gaming, I had already bounced off (old, pre-Unity) Fantasy Grounds due to the learning difficulty; trying to make Roll20 work like I wanted it to during COVID burnt me out- the result wasn't worth the prep time (it's probably nicer now). FoundryVTT was a godsend, because it starts you slow and you can ramp up on the intricate stuff if/when you like. There are a couple 3d options for Foundry, but they look like more work to learn than I'm willing to put in at the moment.

I also don't know how I feel about 3d in general... there's a point where your games start becoming constrained by the assets you have available; it can be a bit of a trap, because you want nicer and nicer things until you only use the nice stuff and that limits the scope of what you can do. I've had to walk this tightrope a few times!

ANYWAY I'm sure it'll be very popular, it has all the shiny stuff and folks like shiny stuff. In-person I loved my hordes of miniatures, but when it came to the map I loved the simplicity and imagination of a wet-erase chessex mat and colored markers. Online... even I like nice stuff! It makes the prep-time worthwhile when you can do cool stuff with it.
 
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Greed is going to slow the adoption for this like crazy.
Yours or theirs?

Creating VTTs costs money, creating VTTs in a big enterprise environment (like at WotC/Hasbro) costs LOTS of money. You also paid for Foundry VTT, everyone needs to eat and businesses only assign money to projects that eventually turn profitable. Free can't be profitable, unless you sell something else.

This was always going to be WotC + D&D + Digital Tools, so you know what to expect. For me this was never going to replace FVTT. If I wanted 3D in my VTT I would have gone with either Talespire (very nice graphics) or TheRipper93's patreon subscription for the 3D plugin for FVTT. Never really saw the need for it. Even more preptime and making it feel more like a CRPG. I do want to play around with 3D stuff eventually, but never as the main thing for our bi-weekly RPG sessions.

You pay for Forge because you want to do so, I self host for free, and still have all the privacy I want of a paid service.
Selfhosting also isn't free. It takes time, knowledge, and power. If you host it on separate hardware, there is also the cost to buy/maintain it. While I've probably gotten a good return on my RP4 and the power it uses, the time I spent on getting it online and maintaining the thing I will probably never earn back. No, self hosting isn't 'free'.

I don't really get the hate towards Sigil from people that either primarily play in person OR are already squared away with their own VTT (be that Foundry or something else). You were never the intended audience! It's the folks that already use and pay for DnDBeyond and haven't really settled yet for their VTT.
 
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Downloaded and creating, easy and fun stuff. You can build your own character minis like a heroforce and Eldritch foundry feel to them. You could use the graveyard large base tiles for an outdoor ground setting, but would be winter fall since it’s not green with grass but the other outdoor trees and such would make it look foresty.

Edit add - The combat works well, dropped a magic user from the mins tab and used arcane blast ranged on an artic wolf, select action then arcane blast, select target prompt and selected the wolf and it gave a range to see if it was in it, then rolled a d20 and if hit, had a small animation and the wolf’s hp came off like you’d expect.
So playing with Sigil more, you can click the Environmental Details on the right and select Glade and it gives you a very large green landscape to build things on top of….missed that before I posted this earlier.
 



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