Do you have a group of friends who have time in their busy lives to play Dungeons & Dragons with you, but can’t afford to buy multiple figures to help visualize the world? Don’t worry, that will all change. Wizards of the Coast recently announced that players will soon be able to play this popular tabletop adventure game digitally.
Pre-alpha footage of the upcoming D&D Virtual Tabletop was shown during this year’s D&D Direct livestream. Players will be able to link their character sheets from D&D Beyond to their virtual miniatures and will able to visualize their games through their monitors like it was a video game.
According to D&D Digital and principal game designer, Kale Stutzman, he wanted to bring the fun, convenience, and authenticity of D&D to the virtual space since according to him, existing virtual D&D systems tend to be lacking in those features. He also said that players won’t be bounded by D&D’s rules since some play by their own rules. So this virtual tabletop will allow players and the DM to do whatever they want in the space they create.
Throughout the video, we got to see how this virtual tabletop will work. Dice will appear on screen and damage roles will automatically be conducted during combat. The DM will also be able to add effects to the area like flames if the building is caught on fire. And creatures will emerge with unique effects to make the game feel more exciting.
Stutzman confirmed that all the creatures from the Monster Manual will be transformed into figures for players to easily access. But at the same time, the community will be able to share their own assets.
“The strength of it is the community. And the community creates everything and we create stuff and the community tries to one-up us, and then we try to one-up the community, right? Like that’s a big part of it. And you know, having that sort of marketplace where you can just like download other people’s stuff and check it out, I think that’s like the core to the final experience.”
At the end of the day, the goal is to unite friends who might not be able to come together physically. But they’ll be able to still play a campaign together through an immersive and virtual platform. At the same time, make playing D&D a bit more convenient since not everyone could afford physical buildings to create an immersive landscape at home.
“What I want to do is connect all my friends and play with them. They’re on their computers, they’re on their phones, they’re on their game consoles, but we’re all together playing through the same virtual tabletop.”
The D&D Virtual Tabletop will slowly allow the public to playtest it before it announces an official release date. Playtest for this virtual system will open around late 2023 on D&D Beyond.