WotC, VTTs, and fhe future of online multiplayer RPGs

[Frunobulax]

Here (link at the bottom) is a very interesting discussion of WoTC, their plans, their influence on the gaming market, the future of VTTs and other digital gaming content. Just like everyone else, I like cool graphics and automated systems to run games, but are they a slippery slope to unimaginative, boring gaming? Will they eventually make RPGs "just another video game"? Will they make kids less creative, or less interested in actual tabletop gaming?

This guy's example of damming a river to flood a dungeon really hit home for me because most of my favorite moments from my life of gaming are about "out of the box" solutions like that which aren't possible in a digital game (because it's impossible to code for every possible thing playrs might think of). I believe that had a lot of impact on me as a teen and made me a lot more creative and imaginatuve as an adult rather than having every game handed to me as a prepackaged, restrictive bundle with only one or a very few possible resolutions or outcomes. Talespire looks so effing cool, but is it too restrivtuve for creativity?

The other, related issue is about WotC and their future. I started this video with a lot of skepticism, but he makes some really good points about WoTC's growing monopoly and how the form of doing something can dictate how we think. Even if you don't play any of their products, a market dominated by one massive monopolistic company (making market entry too difficult for competitors) is no good for anyone except the shareholders of the corporation.

On a rubber-meets-the-road practical level, it makes a misanthropic person like me wonder to what extent WoTC will use its power. On the one hand, it's impossible to predict the future in most cases, but on the other hand one thing that's a near-absolute-certainty with corporations is that they will do whatever increases their bottom line, without regard to any morals or ethics or concern for their customers - that's a given.

It's pretty clear that's their plan, and it's a diabolically clever one. First, make sure your products dominate the market in every way. That part is done. Then, transition every single thing to digital platforms (which they have clearly and publicly stated as their goal) which lets you introduce microtransactions and locks players into your ecosystem when they have a large investment in your content, much more than a few rulebooks. It also conveniently destroys the issue of aftermarket content, because no longer will you be able to re-sell your old books, lend them to a friend, hand them down to your little brother, or anything else.

Importantly, while they allow making licensed content for their system, they market it themselves, take 50% of any sale, AND, most critically, WotC takes full ownership and control of your content. So they are well on their way to dominating the entire industry, owning everything, and only allowing creativity if they get ownership of, and half the profits from, whatever you make. They will not only grow their content library with free contributions, but they will also continue to pay a few professional game writers to make them additional branded content for very little money. They don’t have to sell many digital copies of a supplement for $30 per copy before you make back whatever pittance they paid for it.

I think WotC's endgame plan is to basically be a holding company for owning a massive amount of IP and making all their money passively by licensing it digitally and also making huge profits on microtransactions and subscriptions. Their expenses will be miniscule compared to the profit margins on selling copies of bits and bytes. There was never really all that much money in printing snd selling gaming books on paper - ask any of the thousands of small publishers who had to close their doors over the past 40 years.

Lastly, a question for Smiteworks: once WotC gets their virtual systens set up (google "One D&D" and pick the first result) and want to drive traffic to them, how long do you think it will take before they decide to destroy their competition by ending your licensing agreement? And leaving aside the question of whether it's a good idea or not, how long will Smiteworks last with no 3D capability in the face of Talespire and WotCs digital online tabletop? Maybe it's a bad thing, but it can't be denied that people, especially young people, are suckers for eye candy.

Anyways, that was a long intro. Here's the video for your consideration. I'm Interested to hear people's thoughts.

https://youtu.be/4wlSCwp_JVA

[LordEntrails]

I'm not worried about the evil mega corp WotC or Hasbro. I don't buy it.

Sure, corporations want to make money, it's their obligation to share holders. But it doesn't mean they will do so in such a ... diabolical way as you worry about. The OGL debacle has shown several things; 1) there are people inside WotC who are gamers in it for the love of the game and won't support the type of manipulation you worry about, 2) the community, the customers that make money for WotC/Hasbro won't tolerate it and are aware and intelligent enough to prevent it, 3) and most importantly, With the OGL and now the CC of the SRD, the two most important parts of "the game" are not controlled by WotC/Hasbro; a) the basic/core rules are now the property of the world, and b) there is so much open/available/free content already available you could play D&D for a lifetime and never need anything from any company.

The only way WotC/Hasbro will continue to make significant money off of D&D is if they sell good products at a reasonable price. Just like Pathfinder taught us, if they don't, they will lose the market.

[HywelPhillips]

I've said this before, but I've now had a couple of play experiences in 3D VTTs and have spoken to a few more GM's who use VTT's extensively and...

I'm just not worried about it.

The core of the TTRPG experience for me is the open-ness. The ability (as Dave Arneson put it) to SWINDLE the dragon out of its loot rather than having to kill in it glorious technicolour pixel gory detail. To drown the dungeon by damming a river. To set up as sellers of arcane rare books, rather than following the dangling plot hooks to the by-the-numbers murder mystery the adventure path had in store for you once you've found the first few arcane tomes.

VTT's are already a somewhat less than ideal intermediary in the this process. Theatre of the Mind is harder to invoke when you are sat individually at computers scattered over the globe staring at a screen with crappy video conferencing rather than around the table in a shared conversation with in-person non-verbal cues and body language and all the stuff we realise we take for granted until you have two players who ALWAYS start their sentences at the same time and clash over the voice/video call.

This stuff is hard. 2D VTT's already require* a significant ramping up of GM prep work compared with a regular gaming session. The ones that crop up most often are the audiovisual prep requirements - maps, pictures, finding the right Syrinscape moods to play, etc.

* require is too strong a word. There are groups that manage to play happily with no maps or tokens, just the GM occasionally sketching something and everybody talking. But my experience with dozens of different groups and online GMs is that the pretty picture of the scene (sometimes with tokens on top) or a map of the area is a pretty fundamental part of the shared experience. We are all staring at computer screens - at least a map or a picture of the tavern room we are in gets us into a shared imaginary space more easily and helps ease us in to some immersion.

No-one doubts that 3D VTTs have the potential to kick that immersion up a notch IF done well. The degree of immersion in a really well-done 3D computer game is pretty darn good compared with the typical Thursday night VTT beer and skittles online game of D&D on FGU. But the amount of work required to prep that 3D environment is immense. Even with tools like Dungeon Alchemist, churning out 3D environments is demanding. Assets are orders of magnitude more complex to make. Computer game level design takes large teams of professional 3D artists working for YEARS on the equivalent of a single dungeon. Compare and contrast the vividness of the experience based on an old-school blue TSR map and an in-person session, a modern 2D VTT map a la Mike Schley/Rime of the Frostmaiden, and these 3D VTTs. It's cool and all, but I put it to you that the moment the players go off-piste, the immersion breaks.

One pro DM said yesterday about how his players thought he was unprofessional when he improvised a dungeon for them on the fly because they went in an unexpected direction. He drew the floorplan out with tiles as they went on a 2D map in roll20. Imagine how much worse it is going to be when you try going down an alleyway the DM hasn't prepped in a fantasy city in 3D. They go down into the sewers or up to the rooftops - and unless you've bought the mega-super-duper-whole Waterdeep city pack, the game stops until next week when the DM has had time to make all these 3D levels.

Or it falls back into 2D - which it's not clear these 3D VTTs will even be able to do.

Or it falls back into theatre of the mind - which rather defeats the object of the 3D VTT. Groups who do this all the time might well find the whole 3D too cumbersome and fall back to FG or Roll20 or Foundry or even some of the much simpler VTTs out there that some groups prefer.

I'm sure there will be some groups who absolutely LOVE these 3D VTTs. Some groups actually played DM'd games using computer game engines like Neverwinter Nights. But I note that none of the three market leaders for VTTs went down that route. I believe that's because of the asset creation overhead of 3D and the fact that the pretty graphic immersion can actually hurt rather than help the immersion if it stops the GM being able to improv on the fly.

WotC may well try for digital monopoly and try to leverage their purchase of D&D Beyond to achieve it. But the technology to do this has been around forever (Neverwinter Nights) and it never caught on. It was a minority interest at best. So unless they have a truly radical solution to the DM content creation/3D level design problem, I don't think it is going to conquer the world.

And since the community stood up to them over the OGL and got 5E released under Creative Commons, they've already lost the war for exclusivity. There's a huge number of 5E players who will continue to play 5E if WotC drop the ball with 6E. If the 6E 3D VTT is too hard to use for the things that make TTRPGs unique, or if it it too expensive, or just too much damn work for the poor overloaded DMs, it's not going to become a monopoly for them.

So don't worry. Have a play with the new toys when WotC release them, see what you think. Run a game or six. Use it if you like it. Don't if you don't.

Cheers, Hywel

[HywelPhillips]

P.S. I realised that this is why FGU is my VTT of choice- it's the better GM organisational tool. I'm running a sandbox shipwrecked on a desert island hex crawl, and the ability to organise my resources to be able to improvise quickly during a session - tables for everything from loot to encounters to maps of the locations of the encounters, map pins, parcels, etc. and add-ons like the latest MNM downtime tracker.

In person, I would make up the encounter locations on the fly in my head and sketch a map. For VTTs I prefer to have a menu of dozens and dozens of pre-made maps, which I can randomly select or pick from. It's not such a bad overhead - took me a couple of days at the start of the campaign to organise the maps by terrain type, build some encounters, set up the tables and sub-tables and so forth.

The mere thought of trying to do it in 3D!!! The 3D VTTs are really going to have to pull something special out of the bag to match it. And they're not concentrating on the GM organisational toolset aspects - they are concentrating on making it look like a computer game, but oddly also insisting that your character look like a physical figure complete with a base. Which to me is breaking immersion, by mixing up what you're trying to immerse me in. Are we simulating sitting around the table together here, like Tabletop Simulator? Or are we trying to immerse in the game world, like a computer game?

[Nylanfs]

3) and most importantly, With the OGL and now the CC of the SRD, the two most important parts of "the game" are not controlled by WotC/Hasbro; a) the basic/core rules are now the property of the world, and b) there is so much open/available/free content already available you could play D&D for a lifetime and never need anything from any company.

Also the upcoming ORC license.

[ddavison]

It is hard to predict how things will go.
I think it looks pretty cool and will likely be a fun experience. I don’t necessarily think it will be the replacement for all other experiences and play styles. We have some alternative ideas on how people might have a 3D like environment that is still very flexible.

[SilentRuin]

Users against game providers have been at war since before the dawn of of computers, even when table top games were the only thing around.

So this is just the status quo - people swearing they feel so insulted they will NEVER EVER play/watch anything that the company that slighted them puts out. Drama queens - have also been around for a very long time. Nothing wrong with Drama though - its entertaining. And nothing gives the rush of adrenalin like mounting your majestic steed of self righteousness, leveling your lance of pomposity, and charging the forum windmills.

Still, the providers don't like Drama. Users who feel they are above such base emotions don't like Drama. Yet... it comes again... and again... and again in the world of gamers.

I see no surprises that game providers want to make the max money they can. I sure don't see users clamoring for their salaries to be cut in the name of open free for all and reasonable prices! Markets will dictate what price they can get away with and how "bad" a provider can behave if profit is their motivation (if they have shares/salary in the company that will be profit motivator for them). Note how WOTC recent kerfuffle with its users played out - tried to force them into paying them more without offering anything worth the payment - and actually trying to take away things the users already had - zero surprised on the result. Monetary potential hit. Whenever wondering how one of these type of user vs provider conflicts play out - follow the money. Because that is how it will play out regardless.

As far as D&D Live - if it exceeds my expectations - and the price seems commensurate with those met expectations - then I for sure will get it. I own many games after all. Will it replace other VTTs? Only if it provides the same power to do those imaginative things you mentioned and does not constrain the DM's style of campaigning. Time will tell on that. And as VTTs all change over time - time will tell on those other VTTs also.

For now FGU is where I get the max Lazy Benefit as a DM - though that is largely because they provide the ability to modify how the code behaves and for me to put in my own data as I see fit (within their structures). Nothing usually satisfies everyone - which is why there are lots of things out there trying to do the same things (VTTs in this discussion).

So let the Dramaticus Butterfliuses fly to their hearts content. It's entertaining. And won't effect what I do one little bit. I will fly to the products that give me the most entertainment for the right price.

And may from time to time grab lance of pomposity and jump on my horse of self right-eousness to charge the forum windmills for my own entertainment. Guilty pleasures - cast stones from your glass houses as you see fit

[mhossom]

And nothing gives the rush of adrenalin like mounting your majestic steed of self righteousness, leveling your lance of pomposity, and charging the forum windmills.

This is one of the best sentences I have ever seen posted in a forum EVER!!

[JohnD]

When you go highly visual, the time to create an adventure location increases. Many years ago, I used NWN and NWN2... which I largely considered great (and in fact I still break out NWN for some multi-player fun every now and again).

But development time in the more visually capable of the two (NWN2) was significantly more demanding.

When I spent 42 hours making an adventure area that was like a 2nd full-time job... and then my players went through it in 45 minutes of game time. That's when I tapped out, and then found FG and the rest is history.

[anstett]

One way that FG/Smiteworks has my backing is the number of rulesets available for me to use.
I currently run 2e, and will be running Traveller later this year. Broad support for multiple rulesets outweighs any eye candy for me.

I moved to FGU after using my previous VTT for 18+ years. This is the best platform, from a long term stability viewpoint. I am certain that I will continue to get what I need from here.

Or Silent Ruin will create an extension to fix things.