Quote from: Armchair Gamer on August 22, 2022, 05:31:14 PM

Quote from: amacris on August 22, 2022, 05:10:32 PM
Honestly it's something I think would be interesting to discuss. Two of my more popular KSs had lots of on-table play aids (Dwimmermount and Domains at War) but the cost of goods and production time was very high. I'd be curious what would help make ACKS standout.

A campaign setting box with a big sexy world map and handouts with a tangible feel?
A set of miniatures for the Auran Empire setting?
A new version of D@W that uses minis instead of flat counters?
An online character creator?
An online domain manager?
An online spell builder for the magic research rules?

Just not sure. I have a ton of backend tools but it's all manual.

   Despite referring to the tabletop, I suspect one of the best ways to leverage ACKS's strengths might be to lean into open digital content--full hyperlinked SRDs and tools for campaign wikis with character/domain/spell/class/monster/location builders that can both interlink and output nice documents for at-table use. But I have no idea how feasible that is.

That is good advice. Since it's very campaign focused lean in on that. Thank you!

Quote from: Jam The MF on August 22, 2022, 02:21:24 PM
There will be an outcry, when the move to digital only happens; but I'm sure it will be touted as being green, and environmentally friendly.   We have to stop killing trees to print books, etc.  We old Grognards are just a bunch of tree haters.

But remember to ignore the land-raping that goes on to mine the rare-earth metals needed for electronics. Each server WOTC uses to host their games would probably have the carbon footprint of 10,000 books. But I'm sure they'll pat themselves on the back for being 'green' as they plug their Tesla into a 30,000 watt charging station. This is why I moved into the woods. To get away from this stupidity. And, yes, I cut down my own trees for firewood and charcoal, because what these new age hippies don't fukken understand is that new trees need room to grow. God, I hate people...

Sorry. Rant over.

I some of you guys have lost the plot. Companies are in business to make money. They make that money by selling customers something they want. There's no plot to eliminate theater of the mind because WotC can't monetize it (they've been monetizing theater of the mind for 20+ years), virtual tabletop is already popular and WotC wants a slice of the pie.

That video that was posted about VTT inhibiting player imagination is interesting and makes some good points, but there's a glaring flaw in the argument that's going overlooked. Not all players have equal capabilities. VTT is filling in a gap for players who's imagination is insufficient to construct the world. There are a lot of players who will not play theater of the mind at all because they find it too difficult to enjoy the game. This made the rounds on the internet recently. What is in your mind when you imagine an apple?:



When I tripped across this, I was surprised by the number of people who answered with option 5. I didn't even think such a person existed. I thought 3 was the weakest possible human imagination.

If you don't have a battle map and miniatures and that sort of thing, a 3 is probably the weakest imagination you could have and still play, but you would be very bad at it and wouldn't enjoy it very much. You can extrapolate that spectrum to something else like a person's ability to keep track of conditions, modifiers, and other game rules. VTT isn't taking someone who is a 1 and turning them into a 5. What VTT does is allow someone who answers 5 to play the game in the first place. More importantly, it also allows someone who answers with 3 or 4 to enjoy the game rather than feeling like it's too much for them.

Quote from: Corolinth on August 22, 2022, 09:17:31 PM
I some of you guys have lost the plot. Companies are in business to make money. They make that money by selling customers something they want. There's no plot to eliminate theater of the mind because WotC can't monetize it (they've been monetizing theater of the mind for 20+ years), virtual tabletop is already popular and WotC wants a slice of the pie.

That video that was posted about VTT inhibiting player imagination is interesting and makes some good points, but there's a glaring flaw in the argument that's going overlooked. Not all players have equal capabilities. VTT is filling in a gap for players who's imagination is insufficient to construct the world. There are a lot of players who will not play theater of the mind at all because they find it too difficult to enjoy the game. This made the rounds on the internet recently. What is in your mind when you imagine an apple?:



When I tripped across this, I was surprised by the number of people who answered with option 5. I didn't even think such a person existed. I thought 3 was the weakest possible human imagination.

If you don't have a battle map and miniatures and that sort of thing, a 3 is probably the weakest imagination you could have and still play, but you would be very bad at it and wouldn't enjoy it very much. You can extrapolate that spectrum to something else like a person's ability to keep track of conditions, modifiers, and other game rules. VTT isn't taking someone who is a 1 and turning them into a 5. What VTT does is allow someone who answers 5 to play the game in the first place. More importantly, it also allows someone who answers with 3 or 4 to enjoy the game rather than feeling like it's too much for them.

Here's the thing - everyone can do theater of the mind, even if the individual mental picture varies by person.  If someone is so unimaginative that they can't do TotM at all, then they're probably too much of a gormless buffoon to bother trying to game with in the first place.

Quote from: Corolinth on August 22, 2022, 09:17:31 PM
That video that was posted about VTT inhibiting player imagination is interesting and makes some good points, but there's a glaring flaw in the argument that's going overlooked. Not all players have equal capabilities. VTT is filling in a gap for players who's imagination is insufficient to construct the world. There are a lot of players who will not play theater of the mind at all because they find it too difficult to enjoy the game. This made the rounds on the internet recently. What is in your mind when you imagine an apple?:

The game world is far bigger than the combat map. All a VTT combat map does for those that lack imagination is let them play a boardgame on the combat map without appreciating the world they cannot imagine. But once those superfluous bells and whistles are there it would be shame not to use them, or it would be excluding those that cannot play without them. Never mind that creativity benefits from training and exercise, roleplaying des not require props, and curating the game group is part of making of a good game.

Quote from: RPGPundit on August 21, 2022, 08:21:53 AM

Quote from: jhkim on August 20, 2022, 12:06:04 PM

Quote from: hedgehobbit on August 20, 2022, 11:35:14 AM
Digital D&D is a dead end. Inevitably, a multi-player computer game will be released that has 90% of what a digital D&D session has and everyone will switch over. Hasbro hopes that such a game is D&D branded but that isn't a certainty.

People have been saying this for decades -- citing MMORPGs like World of Warcraft -- but currently, it seems to me that D&D is bigger than it has ever been. I was just on a road trip through the Southwest, and the park ranger as we entered the Grand Canyon told us that she had an all-ranger play group she was in - though she was the only one who played a ranger. (heh!)

I don't think the future is going to be either all-digital or no-electronics. Some DMs like me will like having their laptop and other computerized play aids, even when playing in person.

I agree that this is an unlikely development. But it's also especially unlikely on account that WoTC has an absolutely terrible track record when it comes to online/virtual stuff.

Lets see. If at least three D&D MMOs from the WOTC era...
One looked promising but died within a year. Sword Coast Legends which I never even heard of till recently. WOTC promotion at its best!
One is still kicking but hardly anyone talks about it. D&D Online. Also WOTC promotion at its best!
And the last started off well and allowed players to create their own adventures others could play. But they removed that and changed this and removed those and changed these and changed everything else over and over and over. Neverwinter Online gets the most promotion of the three but that is still hardly any I've ever seen. A mention in Dragon+ every 6 months maybe. The game is a complete mess now and odds are it will get worse because every few months it does get worse somehow.

The PC games tend to fare a little better. But they are usually there and gone within a year.

Quote from: Rhymer88 on August 22, 2022, 05:38:03 AM

Quote from: S'mon on August 22, 2022, 04:44:37 AM

Quote from: Rhymer88 on August 22, 2022, 04:20:27 AM
How is that? I've played TTRPGs online with Roll20 and Foundry and didn't find any serious limitations at all. Our group used Discord to communicate. The players were free to do anything they wanted with their characters, limited only by the constraints of the game world, just like in a face-to-face game. The GMs frequently improvised.

This matches my experience, BUT it is easy to get caught up in the VTT tools and graphics and say "You can't go there" for unprepped material, just like a railroading GM in real life.

The trick is to prep for sandbox play and if you use tokens use very minimalistic battlemap graphics, (a) generic sites and (b) simple battlemaps that can be updated in real time if the PCs go somewhere unexpected. WoTC's plan to use Unreal Engine looks exactly the wrong approach to me. I just added all the Arden Vul maps to my Wilderlands campaign on Roll20. No way am I building everything in a game engine! For one thing the sample video they showed is hideously Uncanny Valley, with a game realistic environment & in it silly looking 'minis' with bases!

I guess WotC doesn't like theater of the mind because they can't monetize it.

Naw, WOTC are the last ones to that bandwagon and they resisted about as long as they could. Their designers prefer Theater of the Mind and moved away from minis in 5e relative to 4e. But third parties made minis and terrain cheaper and people bought it and used it. Then they didn't make a VTT and STILL don't have one, but third parties made those and people used them and bought them. Then the pandemic hit and people REALLY used VTTs so now WOTC is finally after over a decade giving in to the fad.

One thing that should be mentioned here is that not everyone who plays TTRPGs wants to roleplay. A lot of people really just want to explore a dungeon, kill a dragon, and find some treasure. Roleplaying comes later, if at all.

Quote from: 3catcircus on August 22, 2022, 09:27:06 PM
Here's the thing - everyone can do theater of the mind, even if the individual mental picture varies by person.  If someone is so unimaginative that they can't do TotM at all, then they're probably too much of a gormless buffoon to bother trying to game with in the first place.

That's cool, and if you want to run your own table that way, by all means. It's not a great business strategy for a multi-million dollar gaming company, though. They have another word for those gormless buffoons. It's "customer".

Quote from: Wisithir on August 22, 2022, 09:29:43 PM
The game world is far bigger than the combat map. All a VTT combat map does for those that lack imagination is let them play a boardgame on the combat map without appreciating the world they cannot imagine. But once those superfluous bells and whistles are there it would be shame not to use them, or it would be excluding those that cannot play without them. Never mind that creativity benefits from training and exercise, roleplaying des not require props, and curating the game group is part of making of a good game.

Your first sentence is absolutely true, which invalidates large portions of the remainder of your post. The VTT is doing way more for them than letting them play a boardgame. It's also relieving the pressure of having to remember rules and modifiers. Often times the problems that players run into isn't that they can't do any one thing. They do have the math skills to process their actions. They do have the ability to roughly imagine the world to some degree. They do have mental acumen to remember all of their modifiers. However, the game is not happening in a vacuum. The player can do any one of these tasks, but they can't do all three simultaneously. Not very well, at least. If you help the player do any one of those things, you also improve their ability to do the remaining two by freeing up the mental resources, and you greatly boost their enjoyment of the game.

What I'm trying to say here is your comparison is flawed. There's this misconception that electronic tools have "dumbed down" the player base, but there is an assumption being made that these are the same players as previous generations. That assumption simply isn't true. The state of tabletop roleplaying pre-2000 was very different from today and certain people were being filtered out back then. Those individuals are no longer being filtered from the hobby, and that's where the perceived "dumbing down" comes from. You still have those clever players who can roleplay well, but they are spread out among a much larger population.

Quote from: Corolinth on August 23, 2022, 12:18:59 AM
One thing that should be mentioned here is that not everyone who plays TTRPGs wants to roleplay. A lot of people really just want to explore a dungeon, kill a dragon, and find some treasure. Roleplaying comes later, if at all.

TTRPG: Table Top Role-Playing Game. Without the roleplaying it becomes a table top game, a board game and an electronic board game is the realm of video games.

If I only want to shoot a rifle without skiing, I ought to partake in a shooting sport instead of the biathlon.

There are situations and circumstances where playing on a VTT is the best option available for people.

I can't fault people for finding their fun where they can.

But as someone who had to switch to online play for awhile, then back to a live table for the same campaign due to players drinking the koof kool-Aid; Live play is just better.

You can have fun playing online, but playing live is more fun.  Period.

I feel sorry for those that think online is better. I cannot even imagine the substandard live game experiences that they lived through to make them think that way.

Everything Amacris has said about full Player Freedom is the gospel truth.

If you disagree; Verily, thou hast been doing it wrong...

Quote from: Corolinth on August 23, 2022, 12:18:59 AM
...Often times the problems that players run into isn't that they can't do any one thing. They do have the math skills to process their actions. They do have the ability to roughly imagine the world to some degree. They do have mental acumen to remember all of their modifiers. However, the game is not happening in a vacuum. The player can do any one of these tasks, but they can't do all three simultaneously. ...

It is not in the best long-term interests of the hobby to cultivate such "players".

They are exactly the type that left RPG's for videogames in the 90's and MMO's in the mid 2000's.

If they can't meet the minimum standard required to play something like B/X live; then good riddance to bad rubbish.

Let them find their fun elsewhere.

Catering to functional retards does nothing good for the actual hobby.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on August 20, 2022, 02:27:32 PM
...
Over the last 30 days, more than 62 million people have played Genshin Impact. That's more than WotC's optimistic estimates for the total number of people who have ever played D&D during it's entire existence. The RPG hobby is still pretty small.
...

Truth. For all the hype that D&D's growth has gotten the past few years; Magic the Gathering is still the #1 money maker dumping coin in the WotC coffers. By more than half of their total profits.

D&D's level of profitability has always been an outlier in the hobby. But they are the market leader and that is just the way the cookie crumbles.

Yet it still don't make Magic levels of money...

Quote from: hedgehobbit on August 20, 2022, 02:27:32 PM
...RPGs should focus on optimizing the face to face experience. This is what I saw happening during the boardgame explosion of the early 2000s. Games like Settlers of Cataan and Puerto Rico came out that focused on optimizing the boardgame experience. Emphasizing player to player interaction while reducing the tabletop's limitations by having reasonable setup times and a good (not to long, not to short) game length.

RPG should, as well, focus on what makes face to face gaming different from online gaming. This isn't to say that online RPG sessions aren't allowed, but they should be viewed as sub-optimal. Something to do when you can't actually meet IRL. Designing a game specifically to make it work better online is the wrong way to go...

This should be an all new thread.

Quote from: 3catcircus on August 22, 2022, 09:27:06 PM

Quote from: Corolinth on August 22, 2022, 09:17:31 PM
I some of you guys have lost the plot. Companies are in business to make money. They make that money by selling customers something they want. There's no plot to eliminate theater of the mind because WotC can't monetize it (they've been monetizing theater of the mind for 20+ years), virtual tabletop is already popular and WotC wants a slice of the pie.

That video that was posted about VTT inhibiting player imagination is interesting and makes some good points, but there's a glaring flaw in the argument that's going overlooked. Not all players have equal capabilities. VTT is filling in a gap for players who's imagination is insufficient to construct the world. There are a lot of players who will not play theater of the mind at all because they find it too difficult to enjoy the game. This made the rounds on the internet recently. What is in your mind when you imagine an apple?:



When I tripped across this, I was surprised by the number of people who answered with option 5. I didn't even think such a person existed. I thought 3 was the weakest possible human imagination.

If you don't have a battle map and miniatures and that sort of thing, a 3 is probably the weakest imagination you could have and still play, but you would be very bad at it and wouldn't enjoy it very much. You can extrapolate that spectrum to something else like a person's ability to keep track of conditions, modifiers, and other game rules. VTT isn't taking someone who is a 1 and turning them into a 5. What VTT does is allow someone who answers 5 to play the game in the first place. More importantly, it also allows someone who answers with 3 or 4 to enjoy the game rather than feeling like it's too much for them.

Here's the thing - everyone can do theater of the mind, even if the individual mental picture varies by person.  If someone is so unimaginative that they can't do TotM at all, then they're probably too much of a gormless buffoon to bother trying to game with in the first place.

Clinically this isn't true.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia#:~:text=Aphantasia%20is%20the%20inability%20to,has%20since%20remained%20relatively%20unstudied.

Note the list of notable people with the condition include a couple of fantasy aiithors and the founder of Pixar.

Quote from: Mistwell on August 22, 2022, 10:18:11 PM
Naw, WOTC are the last ones to that bandwagon and they resisted about as long as they could. Their designers prefer Theater of the Mind and moved away from minis in 5e relative to 4e. But third parties made minis and terrain cheaper and people bought it and used it. Then they didn't make a VTT and STILL don't have one, but third parties made those and people used them and bought them. Then the pandemic hit and people REALLY used VTTs so now WOTC is finally after over a decade giving in to the fad.

  That's true ... but it's only half the story. 4E was going to be all-in on virtual integration, remember? I think the reluctance may have been due to getting so seriously burned on that, and being reluctant to risk it again until they were in a position of strength.

  Also, upper management has changed considerably from 4E to early 5E to Irrelevant (my current name for "One D&D" ).

Quote from: amacris on August 22, 2022, 08:48:06 PM
The type of game I most like -- sandbox campaigns with detailed tactical combat -- are hard for VTT. You either give up most of the bells and whistles, or you give up all your free time prepping. 

This is not my experience, unless you are talking about VTT-specific bells & whistles such as Roll20's dynamic lighting. I certainly get almost everything on a VTT I get on a real tabletop, with the possible difference being it's easier to do 3D on a 3D tabletop than a 2D computer screen - isometric battlemaps do help though. I find that for sandbox dungeon crawling the VTT is arguably superior, since I'm not limited by the size of my real table top. I can have an incredibly large dungeon level map scaled to token size, no problem.

Generic City Ruins Terrain, post-battle

A prepped VTT dungeon. I've had no complaints over using B&W maps.

VTT battle map during ongoing battle.

An isometric style vampire tower map prepped for play:

These maps are great for when flying PCs are whizzing up and down the outside of the tower. 

IME the biggest risk to immersion is not from overly simple maps, but from the uncanny valley effects you can get from trying too hard to look 'real'. WoTC's 1D&D  seems to be plunging right into the uncanny valley.

Quote from: Wisithir on August 22, 2022, 09:29:43 PM
All a VTT combat map does for those that lack imagination is let them play a boardgame on the combat map without appreciating the world they cannot imagine.

The VTT allows everyone to see the world exactly the same (for whatever that is worth).
Also the VTT takes mystery away (Oh, it's just an Umber Hulk, I was scared for a minute by your description).

There's one possible good long-term effect of this strategy:  WotC might work themselves out of the table-top RPG market, and take the D&D brand with them in the process. 

Sure, then table-top shrinks back to the niche hobby it was in the early D&D days.  That means the people who like table-top for what it is go to other games.  Word of mouth on forums and PDFs are a heck of a lot easier than passing mimeographed rules around.  We might even get to the point where some people play online D&D, some play table-top RPGs, and some play both.  The same way that many people overlap playing table-top RPGs now and video games.  It might even get a little easier to recruit players for table-top when the distinctions are more stark.