D&D 5E WotC Dungeons & Dragons 2020 Product Survey

[jmartkdr2]

I think in an ideal world, yes.

This is part of why I think it might be worth them buying Beyond, unless it's unreasonably priced by its current owners. If they bought it, they could simply keep it going, and just keep the userbase. It's not like anyone is using it because it's not WotC. Quite the contrary.

I don't think you could "grandfather" FG/Roll 20 people across, realistically, because they're competitors. I mean, technically you could give people codes to transfer over but to do that properly you'd need FG/Roll 20 to collaborate with you taking their customers, which I think is unlikely. What is also possible of course if that you could buy Beyond, and make it the "direct pipeline" to your material whilst letting FG/Roll 20 exist as sort of "lesser" versions, but given the way WotC operate I'd be slightly surprised if they went with that.

The most they'd do with this is allow roll20/FG to build tools to move data directly from Beyond to their platform - at a price.

Unless they plan on building their own VTT, in which case of course they'd work against sharing data with other VTTs. But I for one haven't seen any direct indication of that for WotC.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Unless they plan on building their own VTT, in which case of course they'd work against sharing data with other VTTs. But I for one haven't seen any direct indication of that for WotC.

They're asking about a lot of stuff you'd want to know if planning a VTT, specifically a VTT for people who don't currently use VTTs, which is a much larger and more attainable market than people who already do.

On top of that, in 4E, they always did intend to have a 3D VTT, indeed they built it and tested it a bit - people have used it - but it was outdated and limited by the time they got it done due to the setbacks the project experienced and the tiny, inexperienced team they were using.

I have no doubt that if they get into this space at all, it'll involve a 3D VTT. I think the big question is more whether they partner with one of the big videoconference businesses, or use their own system, or go with something non-integrated. I believe there's a pretty good open-source library for low-bandwidth videoconferencing which a lot of smaller providers use, so they could potentially use that.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

The only reason why 3PP material is limited on FG (and I assume Roll20) is the lack of people converting it. FG actually has a pretty decent sized 3PP store. Most of what is there is done by community developers that get a slice of the sales and there really are not that many doing it.