I tried the D&D Digital (VTT): Playtest First Impressions (Patreon)

I'm going to be publishing this to my Substack this week and wanted to give you early access (especially now that the embargo has lifted)!

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Overview

On May 18, 2023, I received an invitation from the D&D Creator Relations Team to participate in what they described as the “first closed playtest group“ for the upcoming D&D VTT (referred to as “Dungeons & Dragons Digital” in the invitation) between Friday, June 2nd and Monday, June 5th, 2023. This invitation was extended to all digital summit attendees. 

So what was this playtest all about? In the invitation email, they stated:

This playtest has been set aside for our Creator Summit virtual attendees to test, experiment with, and provide feedback on an early build of the D&D VTT. If you’ve previously playtested our Unearthed Arcana releases, the goal here is similar. Our team wants to know what you like, what needs improvement, and what we can do to create the best possible experience.

Unlike the 2023 D&D Creator Summit, an NDA was required for this playtest. This wasn’t unreasonable, since it was remote and in an environment WotC didn’t have control over. It should be noted that while the NDA restricts recording and sharing audio, video, streams, screenshots, and other forms of gameplay capture during the playtests, it does not limit any the participants’ ability to share feedback and opinions (positive or negative) about the VTT, D&D, or WotC.

That said, this write-up will not include any media related to the playtest. Just my feedback and opinions.

Technical Context

Before I get to my feedback, I think it’s important to provide some technical context about the computer (my own PC) I used to playtest the VTT. Here are some potentially relevant pieces of information:

• Operating system: Windows 10 Home
• Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
• Graphics card: GeForce RTX 3070
• RAM: 16GB RGB RAM

In terms of connectivity, here are the specifics of my home internet (I conducted the playtest via ethernet):

• Download: 1.5 Gbps
• Upload: 940 Mbps

Note that during the 2023 Creator Summit, the D&D Beyond team stated that they want the VTT to be accessible on “any device that you have”. For the playtest, participants used a desktop app.

I did the majority of my testing with Temple Smit (BlindTemple), another participant of the playtest. We swapped roles between DM and player, creating new instances of the playtest environment each time.

The playtest was limited to the terrain and character set up seen in this YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RiRoslMaa0   

What I Liked

Let’s start with the positives from this playtest.

The VTT ran smoothly on my computer and the available playtest environment was beautifully detailed at all graphical settings. For example, small plants like ferns remain animated (billow in the wind) even on the lowest graphical settings.

You can tell that the team behind the VTT is prioritizing “ease of play” (apart from the obvious example of direct D&D Beyond integration). Some of the highlights for me include:

• The ability to hide walls isn’t universal - this is nice for when players are in different locations on the same map.
• The encounter mode seen in the existing marketing videos automatically rolls and tracks initiative.
• When selecting an attack or spell, the system automatically highlights valid targets. This is a nice accessibility feature. The system similarly does this for movement, highlighting the area within a characters base movement speed.

Feedback

I’ve broken down my feedback into three categories: general, visual, and gameplay.

General

• 2 network errors occurred during testing within a 2 hour period
• We experienced one issue where Temple’s camera unexpectedly locked in place
• Entering the room code every time a player joins was a bit annoying, especially since other VTTs like Roll20 can have assigned users easily join.

Visual

• Regardless of the graphics settings, the colours in the playtest environment were never as vivid as they were during the First Look video. Everything felt “foggy” and desaturated on the lowest settings - this is a bit of a concern for me from an accessibility perspective. On the highest graphical setting, there were far more shadows that created much more contrast. That said, the “foggy”, desaturated look persisted.
• In general, I found the contrast to be too low. This made text difficult to read and miniatures to spot on the “table”. The same could be said for the pointer/highlighter function - this was difficult for us to see (accessibility issue).
• We could not get set piece objects like wagons in focus from every angle when zoomed in close.
• When zooming into the “terrain board”, I felt like the environment lacked a reactive quality like in ARPGs like Diablo, where walls and obstacles fade out according to the position of the character. In the case of the VTT, it would’ve been nice for the environment to “cut away” in a similar manner based on the position of the camera rather than awkwardly clipping in and out at inconvenient angles.
• Even with the “hide walls feature”, environmental lighting is absent. Hiding the walls creates a universal lighting effect inside all structures. There is currently no way to have rooms illuminated with contextual, environmental lighting while also “removing” the roofs.

Gameplay

• Objects weren’t particularly interactive and the terrain board felt like a static art piece. There were a lot of interesting features that I wanted to click on, but everything apart from the miniatures wasn’t interactive. Doors didn’t open or close and furniture pieces were fixed in place. I’d love to be able to tip a table over to create cover for my character!
• Despite what I liked about the hide walls feature, structures did not have multiple levels. Some of my biggest frustrations were not being able to put my rogue miniature atop a tree or position my ranger in an over watch position on the roof of a building.
• While encounter mode was nice (see my note on initiative tracking), it lacked action tracking. There were no indicators of whether a character still had any actions, a bonus action, or a reaction available after casting spells or rolling attacks.
• There was no way for the DM to “pull” all players to a single focal point when telling a story.
• Much like my feedback about the lack of visual contrast, PC and NPC conditions aren’t communicated well as they were not immediately easy to identify if one is placed on a miniature (ex. blinded status).
• Parts of the system were rather unintuitive - when testing out a combat encounter, it took Temple and I 15 minutes to troubleshoot his attempt to cast a spell. As the DM, I could not access his character to troubleshoot like I would with D&D Beyond.
• For a complex tool like this, the absence of an undo feature was incredibly frustrating. I was very disappointed for this to be absent in the playtest.

Wants

Obviously, the VTT is still in development. These things take time. So, here are some of my wish list items following this playtest:

• A toggle for object labels, much like alt text on images. In general, the VTT will need to have a comprehensive suite of accessibility features.
• Restrict player movement through environments - hiding miniatures isn’t enough as secret chambers are visible due to the free camera movement. In many ways, this removes the surprise and tension from new environments. I would love for there to be a setting a DM can enable so that if an assigned miniature hasn’t visited the interior of a structure, the player cannot see inside until they do so. This is obviously suited to things like dungeon crawls.
• Dynamic. Character. Poses. There was no way to interact with objects like benches or mounts. Furthermore, an unconscious or dead state for miniatures would be a welcome addition - especially since you can’t free rotate them.
• The option for a compass. It would be cool to have the compass rose on the base of a selected mini, so that everyone can be descriptive about where they’d like to go.
• On the latest episode of No Dice, No Problem, we talked about the difficulty of environmental puzzles in theatre of mind games. The VTT would be incredible if the environment could be interacted with in a way that secret switches to open doors could be a reality.

Final Thoughts

After the playtest, I had a few lingering questions:

• How will the density of terrain pieces and miniatures affect performance?
• What sort of accessibility features are being planned (colour blind mode, etc.)?
• What will the mobile play experience (phone) be like?
• How easy is it to build environments?

I don’t think it’d be fair to say that I was disappointed. My expectations weren’t that high. I hoped that we would be equipped with a rudimentary playtest, where we would be able to create environments to tell stories. This wasn’t a sandbox, but rather a superficial, curated experience. While it’s pretty, the VTT currently lacks the major technical functionality and features required for widespread use.

I am sure these will take time and appear in future playtests.

Apart from the obvious selling point of direct D&D Beyond integration, I wonder how this will differentiate itself from other tools like Tabletop Simulator or Talespire.

Check out this 2021 video by Dungeon Printer showcasing some of the features of Talespire, a system agnostic VTT that also happens to have Hero Forge integration. Talespire is very similar to how the D&D VTT team have presented the tool in related media, only with an immense amount of polish.

The awesome team at Dimension 20 have also previously used Talespire as a digital tool for their encounters for a series called The Seven.