D&D (2024) I am highly skeptical of the Unreal VTT

[Ruin Explorer]

That I did not know. If I were them I would release a player side client for the console market. The images shows do not look easily manipulated on a tablet (except large ones at the high end) or a phone but it would look gorgeous on a large TV.

Yeah, let me clear that I don't know how easy that is. I haven't read anything saying it's drastically easier than UE4 to do multi-platform development, so I'd guess it was probably at least slightly easier (one would hope!), but still pretty difficult if you go outside like, "current gen consoles + PC".

But yes I absolutely expect that if WotC have any sense they're hoping to bring this to PS5 and Xbox either at the same time as PC or soon thereafter (certainly once out of beta - there are certain advantage to focusing on PC for that).

 

[ReshiIRE]

I expect they will try to bring it to consoles, but it sounds nightmarish in terms of controls for some actions. Not impossible, but not straightforward either.

Ironically the Switch could handle controls very easily via the IR sensor IF it had the horsepower to power the actual game.

 

[Reynard]

I expect they will try to bring it to consoles, but it sounds nightmarish in terms of controls for some actions. Not impossible, but not straightforward either.

Why? Just use radial menus. If a console can handle BG3, it can handle D&D.

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

Just saw an article a couple weeks ago that BMW is rolling out subscription-based plans for heated seats (and other features) in certain countries.

Yeah, I've seen it. I try to view it as laughable and absurd, even though my brain at sleep time grind it as another major step toward a dystopian nightmare where we lease the right to breath air.

But no politics, so let's go back to our grognardian skepticism about One D&D and the VTT

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I expect they will try to bring it to consoles, but it sounds nightmarish in terms of controls for some actions. Not impossible, but not straightforward either.

Ironically the Switch could handle controls very easily via the IR sensor IF it had the horsepower to power the actual game.

the xbox can accept a keyboard and mouse.

 

[ReshiIRE]

Why? Just use radial menus. If a console can handle BG3, it can handle D&D.

I had forgotten BG3 had controller support.

I guess that could work. It just seems unnatural, and potentially slower? Especially for DMs.

But it would probably be alright for players.

 

[Reynard]

I had forgotten BG3 had controller support.

I guess that could work. It just seems unnatural, and potentially slower? Especially for DMs.

But it would probably be alright for players.

Granted I don't think.i would want to run a D&D game for a bunch of XBlive random, given my experiences with other games, but it still seems like console support could be big.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Granted I don't think.i would want to run a D&D game for a bunch of XBlive random, given my experiences with other games, but it still seems like console support could be big.

I would not want to run for xbox live randoms either but I do know people with consoles that do not have decent PCs that I could run a game for.

 

[drl2]

I don't know the relative market share of VTT but those heavyweights are still dwarfed by the general 5e market (foundry vtt is often mentionned as well but I didn't find any numbers from them with a quick search).

Foundry is self-hosted (or hosted through a 3rd party like The Forge) and doesn't collect info on how it's being used, so there's no repository of usage information for it. I suppose the folks at The Forge could extract some usage data and make it public but I don't think they've done so, and it would only represent a subset of the community.

 

[Thunder Brother]

I think that the long term play is the same but I also suspect that they are thinking in terms of iterating this until they get it right and that there will be a market for AR/VR in the medium term.

If it was up to me I would also have gone for a 2d mapping solution but port it to everything. Tablets, pcs, consoles the lot.

Will there be a VR market for this? Maybe I've been living under a rock, but to me VR remains a very niche product, both because of a lack of killer apps and the sheer expense of good set ups. VR would probably be a very small percent of the overall user base.

Also, is a D&D vtt a good use for VR in the first place? I don't see the advantage.