D&D Virtual Tabletop: A Closer Look – Posts

Hello! I’m Kale Stutzman, the Game Director of the D&D virtual tabletop.

You may have seen bits and pieces of the product my team is working on in previous screenshots and at D&D Direct. (You can get answers specific to our D&D Direct preview in the FAQs below.) Today, I am here to give a first-hand early report on the internal development of this new play platform. While the 3D environments and minis make for engaging screenshots, let’s talk about what functionality the VTT has right now and where we see it improving in the future.

D&D Virtual Tabletop Goals

When I first set out to pitch this product with a very small internal team, it was driven by my experiences as a longtime D&D player in a world where getting together in person was harder than it used to be. We wanted a virtual space where we could gather our friends wherever they were—on a computer, phone, console, or even in the same room—and play the game we all love.

To do this effectively, this experience needed to satisfy three core criteria: It had to be Fun, like playing in person, it had to be Convenient for both Dungeon Masters and players, and it had to be Authentic to the rules and how people play the game. Using these keywords as our North Star, we started work on an immersive experience while trying to solve the real-world problems our players were having with learning how to play, connecting with each other, and keeping their groups alive.

• Fun: As we make the VTT, we must recognize that traditional D&D and digital D&D are different. What makes playing in person fun might not translate perfectly to an remote experience. When rolling dice, for example, you can’t beat holding a bunch of dice in your hands, shaking them up, and letting them go on the table! When you play digitally, a lot of that experience is gone, so we added digital-only features to the dice-rolling process to make it fun in its own way, such as animations for critical hits, automatically adding your bonus to rolls and returning the result, becoming part of a roll sequence that is integrated with the rules and fun to watch, etc.
• Convenient: We don’t want to replace the inconvenience of getting everyone together in the same physical space with new digital inconveniences. We want the act of getting your game going to be as simple as seeing if your friends are online and jumping in. This means the game doesn’t require a lot of setup or specialized knowledge. It just needs to work right out of the gate. DMs shouldn’t have even more prep to do. They should have less.
• Authentic: This is something Wizards of the Coast has always been in a unique position to tackle. Our team works directly with the writers and designers of the game to come to a consensus on what the best digital version of the D&D experience could be. We’re working together so that the rules can be the same wherever you play them. But the rules only take you so far. The true strength of D&D is the roleplaying we all do, and the VTT is designed to support that part of the game as well.

Project Update

In game development terms, we are in early pre-alpha. You might have also heard this called a vertical slice or a beautiful corner. This means we have built just enough rules, features, and content to package them together for player feedback, which will help us iterate and rapidly improve the experience. However, there are still too many bugs and missing pieces to put the game into the hands of the community, so we have only opened testing to anyone that works at Wizards and their friends and family. We also playtest the game weekly with the development team. I know, playing D&D at work sounds very fun (and it is!), but it also serves an important purpose: It keeps us focused on providing player value with every new feature we make.

And what are the features currently in the client? Right now, we are focused on the core game experience and engaging content. We know people are expecting a lot of customization in the final experience, and we plan on providing that. But, we first have to make sure it’s still the D&D that we all love and that it’s the easiest and most engaging place to play.

Here are some of the features we’ve been testing in the latest build:

• A Connected 3D Experience: We want players to really feel like they are playing together, so we have created various ways to interact with the 3D space, including pointers, pings, simple drawing tools, dice, and minis. All these systems update in real-time so you can see exactly where your friends are and what they are doing.
• Dungeon Master Controls: The DM can spawn minis on the board, assign monster data to them, and show or hide them from their players. They can adjust hit points and other stats on the fly, adding conditions or custom notes to each miniature. Initiative order can be rolled and arranged automatically, because we want DMs to be able to focus on the game not the mechanics.
• Dice Rolls and Automation: Rolling the d20 should be fun, but we are experimenting with what happens after that. Automation of checking the attack roll versus Armor Class, damage calculations that are automatically applied on a hit, and automatic saving throws are all currently in the game, but there is always the option to do it all manually.
• D&D Beyond Integration: Players can assign a character from D&D Beyond to a mini, which updates their stats and features, allowing them to be immediately used in game. Not all abilities are supported as of this moment, but most direct damage spells, weapons, and healing have simple automation to speed up play without taking away control when players want it.
• VFX and Animations: We are experimenting with VFX so that when you cast a fireball, it feels appropriately epic! Some of our monsters also have amazing animations when they first get unhidden by the DM. These assets are currently focused on the adventure content we are producing, but they will form an exciting toolset we want to put into the hands of players later.  
• 3D and 2D Maps: Along with our static 3D map content, we also can import 2D maps and play on top of them with minis. This has been a quick way for us to test out adventure material before building environments in 3D, so it only makes sense to give players that same freedom.
• Fifth Edition Rules Compatibility: We are turning monster and spell data into automation and VFX, so that means we need to put all the Player’s Handbook and the Monster Manual into our game ability system. There has been a lot of great progress here, and I am constantly surprised by spells or monsters that “just work” when you select a character or monster.

Into the Future

We are focusing on play right now, but after that, we will be focusing on tools to unlock even more avenues for creation and play in the future. We want everyone to be able to play D&D however they want to. That might be traditionally with books or D&D Beyond, using a screen to cast the VTT while everyone sits around the table, calling a friend to share a screen when they can’t make it, or playing entirely remotely inside the VTT. Our connection with D&D Beyond supports the accessibility of the characters, rules, and adventure content, which we will integrate further as the project matures.

So, that’s the snapshot of what we are testing right now. As we get feedback, we continue to improve the experience and make iterations toward the goal of a public beta. We are very happy with the results so far, but we have a lot of work ahead of us to get it polished enough to show our biggest fans.

Here’s what the schedule looks like for us in this moment:

• We’re going to continue focusing on content and play for the rest of the year.
• We will slowly open up playtesting to more and more players throughout the year as we feel confident in the features we have ready to show.
• Once we are satisfied with the core experience, we will work on creation tools next. We want players to be able to customize their characters and the miniatures used to represent them. We also want DMs to be able to quickly build worlds to play at their table, all while cutting down the amount of time needed to prep a session.
• Then, when we’re happy with our toolset, we want to open it up to the community and let people share their creations with each other. D&D is nothing without the community’s direct involvement.

Hopefully, this answers a lot of questions about what we have been working on and maybe spawns a lot more! We are excited to show our progress more publicly and start getting feedback from a wider audience, but that is just the beginning of this journey. We’ll have much more to share in the months and years to come, so I hope you will come experience it for yourself later this year and join us on this new adventure.

Thanks for reading,

Kale Stutzman

Game Director, D&D Digital

FAQ: D&D Direct Showcase

There are a few things I wanted to highlight on our first hands-on video from D&D Direct. Some of our eagle-eyed viewers may have also noticed a few things specific to our dev environment.

How did you film this segment?

We have found that playing the game is the best way to really understand how the VTT works, so we did just that. I ran Makenzie, Ify, and Gina through an hour-long session of D&D and we had cameras capturing the whole experience. The gameplay you see comes from that session.

Afterwards, I sat down with Gina and Ify for a Q&A. We had some prepared questions and encouraged them to ask their own. We ended up using the questions our two hosts came up with themselves as D&D players.

Why do some models say ‘Painted’ next to them?

This is just a development term we were using between models that were textured and not textured. We don’t currently plan to release unpainted models.

I noticed you could see the hit points of enemies. Is that something players can see?

The Dungeon Master can choose if they want their players to see the hit points of enemies or simplified descriptors like Healthy and Wounded. When you see hit points for enemies during gameplay, that is when we were showing the experience from the DM view. Similarly, you may have noticed grayed out creatures in the DM view. These are creatures only visible to the DM, and not the players.

In the video you mentioned there would be a community marketplace. What did you mean by marketplace?

When I said marketplace, I was referring to a shared space for creators to upload and download creations from. Community tools are also a long way off. In the meantime, tell us what you would want out of community sharing.