Last summer, Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast unveiled something truly ambitious: a virtual tabletop (VTT) tailored for playing D&D online. This will not be a simple top-down experience with flat cards and tokens. Instead, Wizards builds its VTT in Unreal Engine 5, the latest and greatest multiplatform suite designed for video game, TV, and movie development. I went to Seattle for a hands-on demonstration of a very early pre-alpha version of that software, and while the project is still in its early stages, what I found was promising.
Even in its current form, the D&D VTT works surprisingly well for a personally played session. Sitting behind a large gaming laptop, I could still communicate easily with the other players and the Dungeon Master at the table. With a mouse, I could reach into the scene and move my thumbnail freely – just like I can in a physical game. With all its rich textures, refined lighting and simulated physics, the VTT absolutely shines when compared to even the finest, most high-end tabletop terrain available on the market today. The interface around it is light and relatively fast. It looks attractive and it has just the right amount of automation for Dungeon Masters and players alike.
In motion, the digital aspect of it almost melts away. Even though I used a computer, it still felt like traditional D&D. But it’s still a hinky work in progress, with just a single map and a collection of digital renderings of WizKids’ licensed miniatures. In fact, they are not all colored yet.
There is clearly still a lot of work to be done, also in the field of online. That’s why developers are careful not to get too ahead of themselves.
“We shouldn’t be going public with this at all if the basic functions we have are rolling dice, taking initiative and having some pieces [move] around,” said Chris Cao, vice president of D&D Digital. “Because it doesn’t say, Here’s the big picture. And we’re actually trading that on purpose — and this isn’t by nobility, this is actually by what’s best — is that we don’t know what ideal way people want to use this.
To hear Cao and his development partner, lead game designer Kale Stutzman, tell the story, the entire design process so far has been something of an exploration. During a 45-minute presentation, the pair sounded more like professors than software programmers. The problem they want to solve: How do they translate a 50-year-old physical experience into a format that clicks for digital natives, without losing the brand’s ephemeral core?
“There are tens of millions of people playing RPGs and who knows about D&D,” said Cao. “The actual number of people playing D&D at any given time is nowhere near as large as the number of people playing RPG video games. [We believe that’s because] there is only a missing piece of a translation there. How do we give them a digital thing that lets them go, Oh. OK. It has my familiar video game stuff?”
VTTs like Fantasy terrains have been around for a long time, but only in the last decade have they formally partnered with Wizards of the Coast for officially licensed content. That partnership was an incredible boon to players at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, when long-running groups were looking for a digital lifeboat to keep their home campaigns running while maintaining social distancing. At the same time, people completely unfamiliar with the hobby flocked to D&D, no doubt spurred on by programs like Critical Role and Stranger things – and the boredom of being cooped up at home. As a result, market leader Roll20 said it doubled its user base to 10 million registered users by the start of 2022.
But Cao and Stutzman are surprisingly level-headed about not going to compete alone against these other popular VTTs.
“If I build a mapping tool, what is my competition? Google Images,” Stutzman said. “If I can type ‘tavern’ into Google Images and get a better map than my map tool can make in the same amount of time, then my map tool has failed.”
And so the Wizards team doesn’t work on creation tools first. That hard work comes later. Instead, development has been laser-focused on refining the experience of playing together at the table. Without it, a blazing fast build tool won’t make any difference. That means the team made minor tweaks to a working prototype and went through a ton of playtesting.
“The way to think about it is you have to prioritize the things you’re going to do together versus the things you’re going to do alone,” Cao said. “Because the things you do together are the common thread. And that doesn’t mean that building [3D maps] is not important. There are a lot of good things and a lot of good programs that focus on building. That is amazing. But the reason why you play D&D together and spend time together is because you create moments together.”
So how will the VTT ultimately be monetized? That appears to be still on the drawing board.
“We’re sure we want a free part of this because people need to be able to try it out,” said Cao. “That for free [part] can’t be a free game [though]. It can’t be, Hey, go play for a few hours and earn some pointsbecause that’s not how D&D works.”
Cao admits that things are still a bit slack at the moment as he, Stutzman, and the rest of their team at Wizards sort out the details.
“I know these seem like soft answers,” Cao continued, “but if we can look at how people can play, then I can tailor the company to what they value rather than create a value structure that you have to play in. Because if we do that, on D&D — that’s actually toxic to what D&D is. Because D&D is about that shared game and that permission to pretend. That doesn’t mean it’s free. That doesn’t mean we don’t make money from it. But if we don’t see how people use it and tune in to it — if we try to predict it or develop it — we’re going against our own brand. We go against the thing that people create and make their own business out of, and make their own dreams out of. I think there have been mistakes in the recent past where we thought, ‘We’re not going to do it That.’ And we are very sensitive to that.”
Expect more about the VTT as soon as Wizards plans to share a pre-alpha version of the platform with the public.