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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 9410408" data-attributes="member: 8461">Before anything else, I want to congratulate you on actually asking me what my position is. That's been pretty rare in this thread, and I'm hoping it will lead to a point where we can accurately talk about the issue in question, without snark or belittling comments which invite responses along similar lines.My issue is that I think WotC will, in accordance with statements that they've made (less than two years ago now) about wanting to monetize the game more via a recurrent spending environment, attempt to present their VTT as being the optimal way to play D&D. To that end, I think they'll play up aspects of the game which the VTT is not only capable of supporting, but which it will (for lack of a better term) highlight with various bells and whistles. Spell animations are an obvious example here, since the OGL v1.2 tried to explicitly disallow them.Presuming that they're successful in bringing more of their customer base around to using the VTT in this way, my concern is that this will lead to a slow constriction among said base with regard to the boundless nature of imaginative play. Spell animations for existing spells will, for instance, focus attention on those spells, making things like custom spell research by PC spellcasters less frequent; I suspect that custom magic items will be the same, custom monsters, etc.Now, I don't think that WotC necessarily wants to narrow the range of the game. It's just what what they do want is more money, and digital bells and whistles that make the VTT "sexier" (again, for lack of a better term) do that, which can distract from more imaginative options being in play. If the VTT allows for an interactive dungeon environment, for instance, then it (unintentionally or not) discourages ways of play that aren't supported by that interactivity. Even if DMs can manually make up for that, doing so is still presented as the less impressive mode of engagement.Now, you might say that won't happen. That's your opinion and I respect that; but I don't think what I've outlined here is in any sense outrageous or beyond the pale, and I do think it leads down a path that moves away from what makes TTRPGs different from other kinds of games.</blockquote>

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