D&D General Next Generation VTT

[Guest 6801328]

As much as I like roll20, and think the dynamic lighting and macros are other features are great, it's still....primitive. I keep thinking about what a VTT could look like if a real video game put their minds to it. And maybe...just maybe...an outcome of C19 is that VTTs are getting enough traffic and revenue to warrant significant investment. Not GTA levels of investment, but indie video game levels.

What features would YOU like to see in a VTT?

Here are some of mine:

• 3D (instead of 2D), with a graphics quality ca. 2005
• Maneuverable/zoomable camera, including POV, so you can look out of your character's eyes and see the cool architecture.
• Animated monsters and PCs. Doesn't have to be highly sophisticated, but subtle movement and posture change when standing still, walking animation, and a simple animation for each attack. Also spell effects.
• Environmental animation and sound effects. Doors creaking as they swing open. Water gurgling. A fog rolling in.
• Huge library of models for monsters and PCs.
  • Toolkit, similar to the HeroForge designer, for making your own.
• A toolkit for creating/editing dungeons. (This is probably the hardest part of the whole thing.)
• Editable (and shareable) AI for monsters, and scriptable environment.
• Integration with RPG rulesets. (This one is tricky. The answer is probably just to build D&D into it, but expose the API so anybody can write a plug-in, and character sheet, for specific systems.)

What's your wish list for next-gen VTT?

 

[theapoapostolov]

I am sorry to burst some of your dreams but the next-gen VTT is not the one that spends years on a graphical engine and interface. It is the one that has an active community of developers who expand an open platform that can implement new features, new systems, and new quality of life for DM or players over a matter of days, not months or years.

As such, Foundry VTT is more of a next-gen VTT than Tailspire, although your description seems to be more akin to what the fine people at Tailspire are doing with an almost photorealistic presentation of a 3D built board place.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I am sorry to burst some of your dreams but the next-gen VTT is not the one that spends years on a graphical engine and interface. It is the one that has an active community of developers who expand an open platform that can implement new features, new systems, and new quality of life for DM or players over a matter of days, not months or years.

As such, Foundry VTT is more of a next-gen VTT than Tailspire, although your description seems to be more akin to what the fine people at Tailspire are doing with an almost photorealistic presentation of a 3D built board place.

Uh...the graphical engines are built and readily available, and have been for years. Nobody would write a new one for something like this.

I agree that you want to be able whip up the next session's content in a few days hours, but that's just a function of the tools, and what I'm envisioning could be even faster. Right now I spend a ton of time importing maps, trying to get the grids to line up, tracing the edges for dynamic lighting, then going through the multi-step process of placing and defining light sources, monsters, etc.

What I'm envisioning would be more like using dungeon tiles. You drag and drop, and rotate and arrange, pieces from a library of parts. Boom, it's all to scale, and lighting is taken care of.

The development time of the platform would be an order (or two) magnitude larger than what today's VTT require(d), but done well the development time of an adventure would be much less than it is today.

And, that said, you may have noticed that official WotC adventure paths...and a lot of 3rd party content...is available for sale on roll20, all beautifully converted. Even if such a platform served only commercial content, it might still be viable.

I'm grognard age...older than you, if that's your photo....but I do suspect my age cohort, and probably the one after it, would not be the market. It would be the huge surge of young players that vastly outnumber us now who would flock to a higher quality digital experience.

AND...with better tools it may result in more people willing to DM.

So...don't worry!...no dreams burst.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I just looked at Tailspire. Headed in the right direction, but $350k ain't gonna cut it. Try 5 to 10 million.

 

[opacitizen]

Do you mean something like the DM mode of Divinity: Original Sin 2? (Demoed by Mercer and his team here.)

 

[Jester David]

It's hard enough finding good maps for flat VTTs. I can't imagine going 3D and having to model your own.

Even if it was a tileset like NWN2 where you could place items and build maps, positioning items and scultpting 3D terrain is massive pain and some advanced design. Not something particularly user friendly...

 

[Prakriti]

Imagination is the backbone of literature and TTRPGs. Turning your TTRPG into a computer game is akin to adapting a book to a movie. You haven't improved it; you have merely turned it into something else -- something it's not. So while high-tech VTTs with AAA-quality graphics might garner a sizable user-base, there will always be those of us who will actively avoid such things, because we'd rather use our imaginations.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Do you mean something like the DM mode of Divinity: Original Sin 2? (Demoed by Mercer and his team here.)

Yes! That's awesome.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Imagination is the backbone of literature and TTRPGs. Turning your TTRPG into a computer game is akin to adapting a book to a movie. You haven't improved it; you have merely turned it into something else -- something it's not. So while high-tech VTTs with AAA-quality graphics might garner a sizable user-base, there will always be those of us who will actively avoid such things, because we'd rather use our imaginations.

That's how I feel about, say, reading The Lord of the Rings vs. watching the movie.

And yet the movie generates way more revenue.

 

[Oofta]

So let's see. We want a AAA quality game graphics where a team of designers and artists spend hundreds of hours hand crafting 3D environments and models. But we also (presumably) want to be able to make our own maps in less than 100 hours.

As long as you're at it we might as well wish for VR or even a holodeck version.

Don't get me wrong, I've wanted realistic VR D&D since I started playing the game. I just don't expect it to happen any time soon. Give it another decade or more so an AI can help you build the environment and maybe then.

So if it's just a wish list then to be honest, my ideal would be nearly total immersion. I mean if you're going to dream, dream big. Something like Niven's Dream Park where you put on a feedback suit and step into a totally artificial world would be cool.

Short of that? It already takes to much time to make maps for Roll20, unless you just use pre-generated ones. Same with monsters, NPCs and so on. Seems like it would take away a lot of what makes D&D the game that it is.