Project Sigil Project Sigil Updates: D&D's 3d Virtual Tabletop

Project Sigil is the upcoming 3D VTT from WotC. From various Gen Con reports --

• Creative Mode lets you prep on the fly or modify pre-made content
• Assets from Baldur's Gate 3 are included, such as the characters as digital miniatures
• Minis have multiple poses but are not animated
• Spells are animated though
• Uses Unreal Engine 5 (or 4, I've seen different reports)
• Launch on PC, mobiles and consoles later
• Closed Beta this fall--sign up here
• DDB subscribers will have greater access

This is the 'creative mode' toolbox, apparently!​

 

[tetrasodium]

Nah.

I want you to name how this is being marketed exclusively towards players. Cause as a GM it’s for sure seems more appealing to me.

Easily, your confidence is misplaced. We've seen two videos for the VTT

Spoiler: These ones

Every minute of video in both is player focused. In the first of those at about 5:20 there is what seems to be one of the vtt team folks talking vaguely about a "really robust tool" & rather than showing something about said tool it shows a player side swooping animation across a battlefield. Even a short powerpoint slide of bulletpoint dev goals for what the target aiming for with "really robust" involves for the few seconds of audio devoted to GM features would have been closer to being on point.

 

[Oofta]

Yes, I am, because what we've seen of their tools and what they've said about them is similar to games from 2006 (NWN2) and 2015 (Sword Coast Legends) and 2021 (Solasta, which has a map-maker). There are also various 3D dungeon builders designed to work well and fast available on PC. WotC also haven't claimed this map-making tool is revolutionary in its speed or efficiency, which you might expect them to if it was.

You can go full Fox Mulder and say "You don't know, you can't prove it! I want to believe!", and obviously that's fine, but like, I think I actually can make a reasonable prediction. Like I said, you're talking about 10-fold reduction in time, and you don't even have a speculative mechanism of action as to how that would be possible. I'm not trying to be mean here, but it's quite an extreme belief to hold on absolutely no basis whatsoever, including WotC not even claiming that's the case. I could believe it might be, say, twice as fast just from a much, much better UI as result of bigger investment, testing, etc., but ten times faster? I'm looking at the maps they've shown, and if that stuff is all manually placed, there's just no way.

The only mechanism I can see which could do ten times faster is a heavy procedural approach (i.e. you drop a general room "type", it fills it in etc.) like Dungeon Alchemist, but we haven't heard any suggestion that this tool does stuff like that yet AFAIK. Be cool if they have it, but I dunno why they wouldn't be shouting about it.


Where did you post the quote?

I don't think the definition of integration is different, I think you just missed direct vs. indirect. Most VTTs (maybe all) use indirect right now. Sounds like this will too - which is cool, honestly.

If all you want is a simple image file, you don't need or want this VTT. Use Maps or one of the many other VTT tools. But at this point it's still vaporware. We don't know what, exactly will be offered. If there will be a marketplace to purchase prebuilt scenes or the ability to share scenes with other users like the custom items in DDB. People use tools like Dwarven Forge to build scenes all the time, I don't see this being much different.

Making a good, dynamic map, and not just a static PDF takes time. If you just want a PDF, perhaps you'll be able to import it and put your virtual minis on it since they also support 2D backgrounds based on my understanding.

In any case I'm done discussing this. People will be participating in the beta testing and we'll get more feedback then.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Easily, your confidence is misplaced. We've seen two videos for the VTT

Spoiler: These ones

Every minute of video in both is player focused. In the first of those at about 5:20 there is what seems to be one of the vtt team folks talking vaguely about a "really robust tool" & rather than showing something about said tool it shows a player side swooping animation across a battlefield. Even a short powerpoint slide of bulletpoint dev goals for what the target aiming for with "really robust" involves for the few seconds of audio devoted to GM features would have been closer to being on point.

That you think these videos show anti GM bias is laughable. Once I have some free time I will go into more detail.

But a swooping shot is not player or dm focused.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

If all you want is a simple image file, you don't need or want this VTT. Use Maps or one of the many other VTT tools. But at this point it's still vaporware. We don't know what, exactly will be offered. If there will be a marketplace to purchase prebuilt scenes or the ability to share scenes with other users like the custom items in DDB. People use tools like Dwarven Forge to build scenes all the time, I don't see this being much different.

Making a good, dynamic map, and not just a static PDF takes time. If you just want a PDF, perhaps you'll be able to import it and put your virtual minis on it since they also support 2D backgrounds based on my understanding.

In any case I'm done discussing this. People will be participating in the beta testing and we'll get more feedback then.

There will be a place to share maps and such. That’s been mentioned a few times.

 

[Oofta]

There will be a place to share maps and such. That’s been mentioned a few times.

That's what I thought I had remembered as well but wasn't certain. It makes sense though, they want people to use it, they'll make such things easy.

 

[mamba]

Wotc focusing their VTT outreach exclusively at players

they are showing what it looks like to play, seems to be a relatively important feature. At the latest with the beta test you will be able to see the DM only side of things.

& others saying we should ignore all of the concerning things just silently giving wotc the benefit of the doubt until wotc decides to take the seal of what is currently little more than a vaporware techdemo.

You are not giving anyone the benefit of the doubt if you simply wait until you have any actual information. You on the other hand are sounding the alarm without knowing anything at all.

 

[JEB]

It wasn't a VTT was it? I can't remember, but my recollection is a character builder?

Mainly a character builder at first, but by the time of "Project Morningstar" it was including VTT elements like virtual dice, map sharing, etc. Apparently too ambitious, of course.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Mainly a character builder at first, but by the time of "Project Morningstar" it was including VTT elements like virtual dice, map sharing, etc. Apparently too ambitious, of course.

Yeah I think they just changed to Beyond.

 

[tetrasodium]

That you think these videos show anti GM bias is laughable. Once I have some free time I will go into more detail.

That's a chatgpt level misinterpretation? We were talking about the exclusive player focus on the marketing for wotc's vtt. Complete disregard for the needs of the gm does not imply a motivation that is "anti gm", it simply demonstrates that the meeting the needs of the primary user are a thing we can expect to be lacking due to a focus on investing resources on the perimary user's downstream consumers (the GM's players).

But a swooping shot is not player or dm focused.

If you've ever used modern VTTs much you will note the fact that the GM necessarily tends to have a lot more on screen menu clutter & sometimes information than what is being pumped out to the players while the players get a view closer to that swooping shot described elsewhere in the video.

they are showing what it looks like to play, seems to be a relatively important feature. At the latest with the beta test you will be able to see the DM only side of things.

We could add this recent preview too...

You are not giving anyone the benefit of the doubt if you simply wait until you have any actual information. You on the other hand are sounding the alarm without knowing anything at all.

If it's "information" that you want we could literally quote from the Hasbro Monetization Designer job posting "D&D DM & player experience to make sure player value comes first."I do not feel that is the best mindset to take with what is effectively a gm tool but the marketing for ithst tool appears to have been doing so from the start to the point that the expected primary user seems to be very much in contradiction with the norm.

 

[MNblockhead]

I would point out that D&DBeyond offers a lot of automation (not complete) via the character sheet and the encounter builder. their VTTs do not need to do much more than accept the outputs from that.

One of the biggest quality of life improvements a VTT can make, that DDB can't, it AOE effects. Also, I have not run a game in DDB using its encounter builder, but I don't believe that it has the ability to apply, track, and expire status effects. Cooler graphics and 3-D maps are nice, but I would rather VTTs catch up with making it easier for the DM to manage encounters. It will be the sole thing I base my decision on whether to move to WotC's VTT to run my games on.