D&D General Do you want a 3D vtt?

[TheSword]

I definitely don’t want a Sony Walkman either. As if people would ever want to listen to music outside of the house or the concert hall, let alone walking down the street! We don’t need portable music.

 

[EthanSental]

I’m sure 3D vtt has it uses, just like the dwarven forge terrain people bought and use once every 3 sessions, or the chessex battle map. If I can use it and it adds to the players fun, I’ll use it. I like to break up my gaming presentation style to keep things entertaining so I’ve went for a set piece of yawning portal to a 3D map from older tabletop connect (Carl works for FG now) version of Undermountain.

 

[jmartkdr2]

A lot of whether or not WOTC's VTT works comes down to design goals and implementation. Which, I know, duh. But a lot of the biggest hassle of drawing maps was adding in the "extras" like lighting, line of site, integrating with DDB, creating icons for monsters and so on.

But imagine if a lot of the work is done for you? They have a catalogue of scenes you can choose from, blocking line of sight is as simple as dropping in a wall, integration with DDB and all the animation you want is right there. When you drop a light source, it just works, you don't have to futz around with finding the right icon and then adding light parameters. Want a city street? Would that be the city Waterdeep or the village of Barovia? Maybe there's an add-on-pack for an Eberron train and of course there' plenty of ancient tombs and abandoned structures as well.

Some of the features will be dreaded "micro transactions" aka buying pre-built scenes, which honestly I would have been okay with. But they have an advantage of sorts. They don't have to support every genre or game under the sun, they just have to support D&D. Start with scenes that they're building for modules and let me buy just specific buildings would be awesome.

One last comment on the "THE VTT IS DOOMED!" video. I didn't bother watching the whole thing but one of the things that they pushed was that you will absolutely need a high end PC with a graphics card because they're required for AAA video games. I think that's bunk. They don't need to support anything near the graphical responsiveness you need with a video game. You aren't going to have anything near the amount of simultaneous calculations and the constant responses to movement that you need for a video game. Beyond the occasional fire or spell effect, this is going to be a pretty static isometric view (likely with the option to change view), which will require a fraction of what any modern video game has. You could also have downgrades in textures and models for lower end machines.

All of this is speculation of course. I just think the conjecture that it's automatically guaranteed to fail is premature.

Even with all of that being true, I think there will end up being a huge difference in the experience of playing pre-made modules and homebrew adventures. A much, much bigger difference than what you get now.

I have no idea what the business ramifications of that may be.

 

[Reynard]

Even with all of that being true, I think there will end up being a huge difference in the experience of playing pre-made modules and homebrew adventures. A much, much bigger difference than what you get now.

I have no idea what the business ramifications of that may be.

I think procedurally/AI generated stuff will be key here. If you can say "it's a big cavern full of tree sized mushrooms with different elevations" and get a reasonable result immediately, people will embrace that pretty easily.if you have to craft everything, it will lead to stagnation.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I could not agree less. The idea that VTTs take away imagination is absurd to me.

In my experience, it works like this: whatever’s on the map is what’s there. No more, no less.

In totm, until the dm says so, it’s in a state of fictional quantum superposition: it may or may not exist.

Is there a tree we can cut down to make a makeshift bridge over the chasm? If it’s not on the map, no. This theoretically limits options unintentionally.In totm, the dm can decide in the moment.

Of course, if there is a tree on the map, most dms will let you cut it down. So IME it not maps in general that limit creativity, just dull, empty maps.

 

[Oofta]

Even with all of that being true, I think there will end up being a huge difference in the experience of playing pre-made modules and homebrew adventures. A much, much bigger difference than what you get now.

I have no idea what the business ramifications of that may be.

If they have decent variety of maps I don't see why homebrew adventures would be all that hard. I don't need to design a brand new temple if I can just load up a temple that was already made for me. There might be some very specific locales you would have to craft if that's what you're into, but when I was doing VTT stuff I was able to reuse a fair amount of maps after a while.

It all depends on how you can put thing together of course. Time will tell.

 

[Hussar]

Except I can take any decent top-down battlemap that I find on the internet, plop some simple tokens to it and call it a day with a 2D VTT. I don't always do complicated spell animations or dynamic lighting.

But you can't have the equivalent of "just plop a .jpg from /r/battlemaps" with a 3D VTT. You either get a premade map that perfectly includes everything (which would be pretty good for APs, admittedly), or you need to design the whole 3D space from scratch, essentially becoming a level designer.

One would assume that a new vtt would automatically track line of sight. And that creating a 3d environment does not have to be a major challenge. After all Dungeon Alchemist does this automatically now.

 

[Hussar]

Random musing: 5e doesn't really have enough forced movement to either really need a battlemap or to take full advantage of a 3d VTT. It's just bling. But if people really can make use of it easily good for them and another tool for DMs is good even if I'll probably never use it.

Depends.

I have a flying pc in my game. 3d is a big deal.

 

[Oofta]

Depends.

I have a flying pc in my game. 3d is a big deal.

Not to mention cliffs, rooftops, balconies, etc.

 

[Incenjucar]

I have a bunch of foam blocks covered in squares that I've used for elevated terrain for in-person games. 3D is essential. Otherwise the VTT creates limitations.