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  1. #1
    ddavison's Avatar
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    Fantasy Grounds and One D&D - predictions for the future

    Hey friends, I wanted to take a bit of time to think over my response to this and to post something here. There were a lot of new announcements to unpack with Wizards Presents. Some of them are good for our business and others may present a few challenges. It is my job to navigate those in a way that satisfies our customers, offers something unique, and allows the business to continue and even grow.

    1. One D&D - the new version of D&D
    This will supposedly be backward compatible with existing 5th edition content. In addition, there are playtest materials that are available to the public. We will need to look at these on a case-by-case basis to see to what degree we will implement these playtest features. Will they be campaign options? Will we wait until closer to release? It is all still unknown at this time, but we have some experience with D&D Next and the eventual transition to the final form of D&D fifth edition, along with the updates for Tasha's, Monsters of the Multiverse, etc. We think that FGU will be a great platform to help test out playtest material more fully than on any other platform.

    2. Release schedule for the rest of 2022 and 2023 and physical product bundling
    We are already working on the Dragonlance content, and we have had that in-house for a while already. It looks very cool, but we won't be able to share much about it, other than we are working on it.
    Here is our placeholder for its release scheduled for December 6, 2022.
    https://www.fantasygrounds.com/store...=WOTC5EDLSOTDQ

    There are numerous other titles in the pipeline as well and we will plan to have these all out and available as soon as we are able to release them. It looks like D&D Beyond's physical bundles that pair with a digital version on D&D Beyond, along with early access to parts of it, will make D&D Beyond the primary place where people will go to get the first copy of these new products. In a direct competitive nature, this means that people deciding between the two will be encouraged to go with DDB instead of FG; however, this may actually help us move more units if this reduces the overall costs for people who buy on multiple platforms already.

    The new schedule shows that there are even more D&D titles coming out. As long as we continue to be able to release these, we should be okay. I'm not 100% sure, but I believe that every sale we make for a D&D title produces more revenue for WOTC than a game store, bookstore, or Amazon sale would.

    D&D makes up a large part of our offerings, but we have many other licenses.

    3. Official D&D VTT releasing some time in 2024
    I think the alpha footage they showed looks very slick and I have been monitoring their recent hires for video game developers over the last few years. WOTC has invested a lot of time, energy, and money into that VTT and it looks very nice. We have discussed 3D environments internally and Carl Pinder actually had a VTT in development that had 3D interfaces that were very similar to what was shown in the alpha footage. He brought that with him when he joined the company. The big problem we see with this approach is how can we consistently create and release all the necessary 3D assets to coincide with new product releases. If we received 5 different WOTC releases each year and we had 2-3 months advanced notice of the content for each of those, there would be no way for us to produce those assets in a timely fashion and at a cost that would make it viable financially. If WOTC does it internally, they have a much better chance at being able to do that.

    Will people want to play in this 3D VTT space exclusively?
    I believe some will and some won't. We have 2D maps with LOS and lighting and if I look at games run on Twitch and YouTube, the vast majority of them just run theater of the mind style games. No matter how good the UI for the WOTC 3D VTT is, I can't imagine it will be any easier to run than a top-down 2D map. I have a slightly different vision for what I think people will want to use. Again, it won't satisfy everyone or even be used by everyone. Our goal is to simply create options and have those options be useable in D&D and all the other games we support.

    With that in mind, here is an early peek at what we are envisioning.


  2. #2

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    Very cool Doug and thank you for taking time to give your thoughts!!

  3. #3
    That looks really cool. My issue with 3D has always been the assets - having done some 3D asset building for film-making, it is a time-sink beyond the nightmares of DM's who like to homebrew or do anything outside the script of a written adventure.

    2.5D is a much cleverer way to go, especially the more you can integrate it with the existing 2D maps.

    Some players will love it, some will hate it, and as the DM I will definitely still want the top-down 2D map while running the game. So I'd put in my first request: make it a mode you can hop into and out of at will, independently of the other players' choices. Not an on-or-off choice for the whole game. You probably want this for performance reasons to have mercy on the poor players joining the game on a ten year old laptop with a small screen, too.

    Second request - think carefully about how it will integrate with character sheets, chat window and combat tracker. FG is a glutton for screen real estate already and I can see a lot of players still wanting to retain access to those. Maybe shortcuts for popping them up and putting them away again? I think the whole UI could do with some careful streamlining in this area already, and I think this is only going to exacerbate those challenges.

    Handling walls and doors is going to be an interesting challenge. Top-down maps don't give you much to go on as to what texture/image to use for line-of-sight blocking walls and you won't have assets from the module creators either. I guess a library of standard walls with the option to replace segment-by-segment or something for when you have the perfect asset?


    Very much hope WOTC won't lock down One D&D and we can still use FGU to play it. Best wishes navigating the shoals of licences and so forth!

    Cheers, Hywel

  4. #4

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    Nice, Doug

    I think this is a good approach. Using first person perspective and existing 2D art assets seems like a strong transition to a theater of the mind approach. It's marked contrast to Wizard's 3rd person 3D. That stuff is pretty, but it is non trivial to create and and build 3D environments for your own homebrew.

    Eventually moving towards to 2.5D, range limited vision, different types of vision, and inclosed areas would seem like a natural grow path from here as well. Linking existing 2D maps and tokens to this type of view would be amazing as well.

  5. #5
    Very Nice update, thank you Doug!

    I completely agree with the statements previously around 3d assets and those being a major hinderance to creativity in encounters. I have looked into to many 3D tools, like Talespire, Flowscape, Game Master Engine, Tabletop Simulator, etc. and although cool, I feel handy capped by the need for more assets.
    For these same reasons, I have always preferred VTTs like FG, over miniatures. Miniatures are great, but assembly, painting, and storing are reasons I have not ever embraced them.

    All that said , I like this approach and am looking forward to seeing more. I know it is early, but chat bubbles over the speaking token/image would be a nice addition for role play encounters. Please make this functionality available for Call of Cthulhu games as well.

  6. #6
    I have to say that I am a huge fan of this. I like to keep the the 2d map for exploration and some battles, but to break up the monotony of 2d battle and to show how the goblins are hiding behind the trees or the odd boulder is great.

    Just thinking of walking into a room in a dungeon at the wizard is standing in front of his desk, even if it isn't battle but for visual reference and to highlight the importance of the interaction with the NPC.

    Great work and I can say that I am glad that I chose FGU over the other VTTs out there.

  7. #7
    The only disaster scenario I could see is if WotC decides to stop letting other vendors resell their content, which I just don't see happening. With official content still available, FG will be just fine regarding D&D. It is a mature and very flexible platform, with a dedicated ownership team and community behind it. My hunch is that the DNDB system will be "on rails", and hard to drop custom stuff into. And possibly very expensive, although that remains to be seen.

  8. #8
    I really like this concept, it has all sorts of possibilities!

    One question I have is if it is working off maps and such can some players be in the standard top down mode and others in the first person or is it exclusively one or the other?

  9. #9
    ddavison's Avatar
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    It is still early, but we are going to try to allow you to switch your mode and see if it makes sense to allow players and the GM to pick their preferred mode. I have a few doubts about having the ability to have some people in this mode and others in a different mode at the same time. We will have to try it and see.

  10. #10
    I think this first person approach can be super immersive and work really well. It'd also be a unique take within 3d VTT space. Below are the ideas that popped into my head when I watched your preview/test video:

    - Linking top down battle maps/images with the 3d space. I imagine this would be done by projecting the image from a regular image on FGU to the image that displays on the floor in the 3d space (important later).

    - Displaying character tokens where the tokens are on the 2d top down image, so when you move a token it moves to that same spot on the grid in the 3d space.

    - Having line of sight reveal more ground just like the regular top down battle map, but on the ground in the 3d space. This is why I mentioned maybe some way of projecting the image that already existed onto the ground of the 3d space. Because you wouldn't be seeing walls in front of you, just the walls on the ground I imagine the DM could choose a background different to the horizon used in the example (unless the DM place a wall token down or something, not too sure).

    I'm no expert in coding or anything so these are just ideas I think would be really cool and super unique in the VTT space. Especially with being able to potentially keep LOS and whatnot within the first-person 3d space.
    Last edited by DCPye; August 20th, 2022 at 06:46.

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