ONE D&D's New VTT is Bad for D&D. Here's Why.

Wait, are you telling me the giant megacorporation using its money and power to manipulate the cultural space around its product to create a virtual monopoly is bad actually?? 😲

The first time I ran for some friends who are avid gamers, they had assumed it would run like a video game, believing that what was on their sheet was all they could do. It was a pretty great moment when the spellcaster realized he could use his spells in more creative manner, outside of the constraints on what’s on the sheet, which encouraged the other players to use their abilities outside of their intended purpose, provided it was a reasonable action.

When the One D&D trailer came out and they showed the virtual table top, my immediate reaction was "I have a bad feeling about this." It seemed like it will overcomplicate and slow down the game, while at the same time make the experience shallower and lock the players into the grip of the digital services. Yet, all over the place, I see almost everybody cheering and applauding the vtt announcement.

As a content creator, it worries me. I've worked in IT before creating Michael Ghelfi Studios and I know how restrictive a platform can be on creativity and general freedom. I fear the moment when we'll have to produce content exactly like they want, with tons of restrictions and a 45% cut on our earnings to get the right to offer our 1500 audio tracks to the DMs. Even worse: what if they decide to select just a few creators and exclude the rest?

One of the unintended consequences I've noticed with VTTs is in ones where the VTT is set up to do all of your calculations for you, you don't learn the system. New players who aren't familiar with the system don't learn where all the plusses and minuses come from, or how exactly different parts work together. Character proficient in a system can work out combinations to enhance their chances of success or fully assess how dire a situation is and make choices based on that insight. I've played several systems now where the GM went through all the effort of setting our character up on whichever VTT is was. We played and had fun, but at the end of the day I couldn't tell you anything how the system worked. All new players of every game go through that initial learning curve. That's normal. But after a couple sessions they learn the ropes, seeing how Stats and Skills work together or the subtle intricacies of Combat mechanics. Dependency on VTTs to do all the calculations for you extends that newbie time. Having D&D promote their VTT as the way to play D&D means a very reasonable chance of a lot of players who love to play, but have no idea how the game works. This can lead to more dependency on pre-written adventures and less creative, "I'm gonna drop the chandelier on them" thinking, because no one around the table even knows how to calculate that on the fly.

For me one of the things that always made RPGs superior to video games is they weren't limited to what was programed into them.

Admittedly, I started this video kind of expecting to disagree - I'm glad I did, though - because you make a lot of good points and bring up some valid concerns that I hadn't even considered as a newer player. My friends and I use Talespire for our game, we all started D&D mid-pandemic for the first time - and so far it's been a lot of fun. We have some veteran players kind of demonstrating what's "possible" with cool outside the box thinking and all the new players have slowly come around and learned that anything really is an option - however without them, I think it would have been really easy to get stuck in the mindset of only considering things that'd be possible within the confines of the VTT itself. Great video, thanks man.

As an artist, I find battle maps better for me in two major ways that theater of the mind lacks: expression of artistry in a medium I can understand/appreciate and the ability to fully understand what's going on spatially in order to employ tactics. No matter how much you try to describe a room, I'm not going to be able to keep track of where an enemy is, where I am, where all of my companions are, the distance relationships between all combatants, how far I am from a wall or feature, etc. I at least need some kind of map for that. With all of that uncertainty and unknowns, my engagement significantly drops. Because of that, the VTT argument rings a bit hollow to me, since I already like Foundry VTT for presenting battle maps. That being said, though the D&D VTT looks pretty, I doubt I'll ever use it, since I don't have enough 3D skill to satisfy my expectations of what I create. The other arguments, however, are far more significant in my book. How they handle the "microtransactions" and player driven content is going to be key to how well this plays out for them. I make a lot of homebrew stuff as a DM, so the DM's Guild should remain an important and viable piece of the puzzle and not require any coding expertise.

These are the same concerns I had watching the announcement. WOTC not only wants to do all our imagining for us, they want us to pay them to do it for us, removing arguably the very thing that makes RPG's great.

When the VTT was announced, I thought to myself, "That looks cool, but I'll never use it". The more complexity, the further I get to the tabletop feel.

Enjoyed hearing your perspective on the matter. As a new player at age 44, I would never have the opportunity to play D&D in a table setting. My wife and I have a homestead in rural Arkansas and, lets just say, D&D is not well known in my vicinity. Vtt's have made it possible for me to experience this amazing game and I have shared it with dozens of other friends, all of whom are scattered around the world. I can understand the desire to keep things as they are but doing so would exclude a large percentage of the new players. I would also add that vtt's add a lot of value for people that have limited recourses a few of which are: saves travel time and expenses, allows for participation of players from a wide array of regions, gives a larger player pool to allow players to miss a secession and have minimal impact on the overall group experience. Look forward to watching your content going forward. Keep on keepin on!

The whole "D&Done" business model seems to be focused on encourage even more sunk cost loyalty in their customers. You bought all the 5e books. You bought official 5e miniatures. You have buckets of dice.... now buy new books and a subscription and invest dozens of hours into learning how to properly use it and then teaching your friends how to play all over again, while also teaching them all the new little fiddly changes they made to the rules. Then have everyone remake their characters with these new rules. And then port those characters into the VTT and maybe buy a mini that looks kinda like their character, so they can use it on the VTT... etc etc etc... And now you've got a playerbase that won't abandon this dumpster fire for a few years while WotC tries to churn out more content to keep those people trapped as yet another group of RPG players who only play D&D and refuse to pay for any system that isn't D&D, because they're now sitting on years of abuse from WotC that makes them think that every RPG system will be the same exact experience and it will be miserable and expensive to start over from scratch.

I think this is the inflection point for D&D. This is the point where the pendulum swings from "making our imaginations as real as possible", to "wow we can make our imagination real through virtual space now." As nerds and creatives worldwide can attest, this is arguably still a really fun thing to be on the horizon, despite its drawbacks. The reality is that its also interwoven with business, that must be profitable. On the flip side, that pendulum is swinging from "hey i'd love to make a product we can all enjoy" to "wow, we can make a lot of money doing this really fun thing"... and that is the unfortunate frightening angle.

I was excited for what came next, but when I saw 1D&D being all about digital game space, I, as a minatures painter an XPS foam terrain builder was like "This isn't for me at all"

Great analysis. If this becomes the trend, it's increasingly sad because playing around a table is easily 10x more fun than playing online. The social aspect of the game is what makes it so great. Playing online just doesn't capture that the same way as around the table.

I always saw VTT's as a way to play with your friends who you can't sit around a table with because they are too far away. It's nice and it's good if you don't want to lose the experience of playing with them, but I feel like it should always be the last resort option. My fondest memories of gaming are from the weekends I would spend with my group in high school, getting there and getting everything set up, playing some three dragon ante, looking over and working on our character sheets, then going to sleep before beginning a whole day and night of the game. The tabletop is one of the most important parts of ttrpg imo and I'll never give it up.

Your comments about how the online experience having been established as so normal will take away incentives to play at the table is something that's already been developing as a result of VTT proliferation. I tend to run multiple campaigns simultaneously, and all had to be moved to Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds during the Plague Times, but getting them back to a "live from the table" experience was very difficult. The conveniences of digital assets from the comfort of your home without having to drive or commit too much time per week took its toll on my own groups. Going into a future where there's more microtransactions for customized assets that you can't take with you will only foster that online reliance. Hard enough to motivate people to a live table when it was free, now they will want to get maximum use of the online format to justify how much they paid on digital avatars.

Good points all around. One key factor will be how Open Gaming License is effected. If Wizards tries to repeat their 4th edition mistake by restricting what print products can be sold, we could easily see a repeat of the humbling experience that was Pathfinder 1.0. After all, the last time Wizards sold D&D dropped to number 2 in popularity was when Wizards tried this same forced move to digital, and triggered a backlash that lasted until 5th edition made peace. As long as print versions are sellable, and as long as the deep lore is found in print but not in the rules-only, no context or depth style of DNDBeyond, this pattern could repeat. And if they do go full digital, there will be a market for in person roleplaying for another gaming system to take up. After all, Stranger Things, Critical Role, and everything else that has made roleplaying popular today depicts in person interaction. Not the online gaming of, say, The Guild. The cat is out of the bag on in person roleplaying being fun, and I do not see any video game that can compete for roleplayer's attention. It's not about the rules, it's about the people you meet and the stories you make together. And that is what will save in person rpgs.

I'm a very early native to the DnD virtual space. Started playing persistent RP worlds, PvP servers and the like in Neverwinter Nights when I was 7. The decade of play in NWN and ancient maptools whose names I can't remember stick out as a remarkable time where I was playing DnD pretty much every single day with countless folks from across the world. These days, me and my friends have started getting into 5E and we use Talespire. Despite it's clunkiness and limitations, it's been excellent for getting my buddies who don't play tabletop in any form into DnD; the shiny coating of a video game lures them into the chaotic collaboration that is truly DnD to me. The same way Neverwinter Nights did back in the day. Needless to say, I came into this video annoyed and expecting to disagree, and I did. But you got me at the end. In the halcyon days before Bethesda's horse armor, this VTT would have been a gift from the heavens. Not anymore, of course. MTX will reign, and I believe your assessment is correct that other TTRPGs will be hurt by this. I suppose now I can only hope that WotC's VTT bombs hard.

Great video. Especially the Apple Ecosystem comparison is spot on. And yeah, I think you are onto something with your predictions. Especially the part about 10yrs olds just getting into the whole hobby just via fully digital stuff will be a problem in the future. The appeal of TRPGs (or Pen & Paper RPGs) was always the whole "theater of mind" aspect of it. I remember when I first got suckered into it, more than 20 years ago. A classmate of mine asked me to come over to "play a game", so I went to his house. From there we ventured (was only 2 minutes walking) to one of his neighbours' houses where a slightly older friend of him lived (think me+friend being 13/14yrs and the friend 15/16yrs), which I didn't know. Turns out that friend was an avid P&P RPG player and DM. There were also 2 (or 3? it's 20+ yrs ago, my memory is failing me) more guys my age, who I didn't know yet at that point. So they all talk about "let's play 'The Game'" and I was like "WTH does that even mean?" when we all sat around a round table in the basement of the DM friend. Everybody but me pulled out a character sheet and dice and the DM then asked me if I'd like to join "The Game". Nobody in the group had explained to me yet what "The Game" was about or how to play it. So I shyly replied "I'll just observe for now if that's ok.", but the DM was insisting "You know, it is more fun if you'd join. Here, I'll explain the basics to you...." and boom 30 minutes and a newly rolled char later we are all having a blast for hours and actual years to come. It was one of the most wonderful and remarkable experiences in my life. So many good memories, especially about all the shenanigans we did that were not exactly covered by the rules so we had be creative. And it is that creative aspect that most likely will get, maybe not fully lost, but at the very minimum severely handicapped by whatever digital version WotC will come up with, since software has to adhere to rules, and creating dynamic enough rules to allow players (and DMs) to be as creative as the theater of mind is a herculean task that no one company can implement in my opinion. If it is doable at all.