In the realm of animations, what counts? There is a fuzzy line here:
* Folks have been drawing spell areas of effect for decades.
* Certain progressive effects have been drawn for decades. A spell effect that creeps along might be drawn progressively. That's a very crude animation, but it's arguably an animation.
* A ship deck might be drawn on a grid and cut out, then overlaid over the playing, and moved relative to the mat to represent the motion of the ship.
* A wall of crates might be created as a wall of d6's, and toppled literally by pushing over the wall of cubes.
* Foggers are now available, for example, for use with Dwarven Forge terrain.
Drawing stuff with erasable markers on erasable mats has been a thing for decades. Use of physical props for far, far, longer.
Edit: Thinking about this further, there are tabletops which include a display or a projector. Many of these are very simple, displaying a map and some tokens. Does this count as a tabletop, or as a VTT? Does it matter if there is just a projection of a map, while physical tokens remain in use? Does putting tokens in software qualify this as a "Virtual" table top? (Putting the "V" in "VTT".) There is still an actual tabletop, so maybe not. Does there need to be remote use, hence, the table top is really virtual?
Reading here:
Digital tabletop game - Wikipedia
Virtual tabletops (VTT) or tabletop simulators are video game programs that are designed to allow users to recreate existing games or create their own games to play with others online, such as Tabletop Simulator and Tabletopia.
That the game be online seems required.
The issue is that if a projector or display is allowed in a table top, that enables the presentation of animations, as (conceivably) a part of a "tabletop" experience instead of a "virtual table top" experience. This would then shoe-horn animations into VTTs, since animations are possible in the tabletop experience.
I suppose the VTT guidelines would be amended to "what is possible without using computers" at the table top.
TomB