Nice! It looks great and very useful.
Show HN: I built a virtual tabletop for playing Dungeons and Dragons
31–40 of 126 posts
Re: Show HN: I built a virtual tabletop for playing Dungeons and Dragons
#32Very nice! :) I also had a similar itch a while back and built https://gamescape.app (during the pandemic). Different focus -- all about shared maps and tokens rather than a "full" VTT. Plan is for it to be free forever. Can't work on it anymore since I started a startup that eats 100% of my time, but totally usable (my group uses it every week :) ).
Re: Show HN: I built a virtual tabletop for playing Dungeons and Dragons
#33I always thought it was bizarre that there's no serious selfhostable FOSS virtual tabletop software [1]. The overlap between the two communities is very large and passionate. Foundry is selfhostable but it's a clunky proprietary node.js application and there's a ton of janky UI issues. Roll20 is far worse. I presume that this Diceright project is better since it's actually using a canvas. But why doesn't someone just…
> I always thought it was bizarre that there's no serious selfhostable FOSS virtual tabletop software
> Foundry is selfhostable but it's a clunky proprietary node.js application and there's a ton of janky UI issues.
I don't think it's that bizarre when a genuinely good product gets this kinda reception. It's a thankless job
Re: Show HN: I built a virtual tabletop for playing Dungeons and Dragons
#34This is neat, but so far every thing like this that we've used for our D&D game has been overkill. What we do currently: Take a map from a PDF, load in Paint program (paint.net/photoshop/gimp/whatever), create a layer of BLACK over it. Share the screen. The DM slowly erases BLACK as we move and discover the map. This way, the players cannot see the map. The DM can see the map. The players get to slowly discover the m…
Basically every single tool available can support this, and so much much more.
I wouldn’t suggest you change, but to suggest this method is in any way superior to actually learning the tools and how they work is ridiculous.
And if a DM can’t spare the hour or so to reach parity with this method, that’s gonna be a long term problem for the table.
Re: Show HN: I built a virtual tabletop for playing Dungeons and Dragons
#35Personally, I would market this and build it out for any other TTRPG system but Dungeons & Dragons. I absolutely love Dungeons & Dragons but I think the writing is on the wall that DnD Beyond is going to get the lion's share of all digital DnD spending, especially for newer players. There's always going to be holdouts who don't like the corporate direction, but the majority are going to use DnD Beyond because of how well integrated it all is, and that will include both 2d and 3d tabletops soon enough. So if you're planning on turning it into a side hustle, you're probably better off targeting say Call of Cthulu players, or Fiasco players or Fate players etc.
Re: Show HN: I built a virtual tabletop for playing Dungeons and Dragons
#36I "played" D&D once with some people who play quite a bit, and was confused. Maybe I was expecting more clear rules of how to "win"? It seemed like it was more of a "choose you're own adventure" story rather than a game since the dungeon master is able to change the rules as you go and pretty much decide whether or not you are "successful" with whatever goals are established at the beginning. Is that accurate? In the…
If you like the theme and ideas of the game but are looking for more of a pure strategy, win or lose by the rules sort of experience check out "dungeon crawl board games". Gloomhaven is the most popular of these, with Jaws of the Lion being a better/smaller introduction built on the same system.
Re: Show HN: I built a virtual tabletop for playing Dungeons and Dragons
#37Personally, I would market this and build it out for any other TTRPG system but Dungeons & Dragons. I absolutely love Dungeons & Dragons but I think the writing is on the wall that DnD Beyond is going to get the lion's share of all digital DnD spending, especially for newer players. There's always going to be holdouts who don't like the corporate direction, but the majority are going to use DnD Beyond because of how…
Yeah, you make a good point. Definitely something I've thought about. When I started working on Diceright, DnD Beyond hadn't even been acquired by Wizards yet, so a lot has changed in relatively short time. That being said, they recently released an alpha of their 2d tabletop and there really wasn't much there. I assume it will get a lot better though.
Still, it was a tough call on what to focus on as DnD really is a huge player in roleplaying games. A smaller slice of DnD users still might be larger than a bigger slice of another game.
In the end, DnD is the game I know the most and the one I love. So I decided to do what I thought would be the most fun.
Re: Show HN: I built a virtual tabletop for playing Dungeons and Dragons
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
The big reason we do this is that being a DM, it's REALLY hard to predict what your players are going to do. I used to spend days preparing for a game, only to have the party turn around and wander out of the dungeon 10 minutes into the session, negating all my prep. This way, I can just throw up a map and have them dungeon crawl. I suppose it make a difference that we are playing Rappan Attuk and not a mainline D&D…
I don’t understand how dungeon crawling really felt fun for people. Or random encounters. It just doesn’t seem like a good system for fighting for fun. I always hear the cursed phrase “I guess I attack?” And that’s how I know the fight kind of sucks.
The unlimited potential for creativity and collaborative story telling is what sets TTRPGs apart from video games. The mechanical side of D&D combat is fun, but I don't think going all in on encounters is what makes D&D shine. A good combo of game mechanics and creativity is the sweet spot in my opinion.
I often prefer "theater of the mind" over maps as that can be much more open-ended and encourage creativity. Many of the D&D podcasts use "theater of the mind", and they are great (special shout out to naddpod.com)
Re: Show HN: I built a virtual tabletop for playing Dungeons and Dragons
#39The #1 important thing I've found for collaborative online gaming (and collaborative online work in general) is *have a good mic*. Having three people in a room around one mic doing the THIS SPEAKER IS SMALL SO YOU SOUND FAR AWAY AND I'M GOING TO TALK LOUD SO YOU CAN HEAR just kills any momentum, as does "What? I...........hear.......run the........18" connection interruptions. Video, maps, everything else is pretty much optional, but audio is critical.
Re: Show HN: I built a virtual tabletop for playing Dungeons and Dragons
#40This is neat, but so far every thing like this that we've used for our D&D game has been overkill. What we do currently: Take a map from a PDF, load in Paint program (paint.net/photoshop/gimp/whatever), create a layer of BLACK over it. Share the screen. The DM slowly erases BLACK as we move and discover the map. This way, the players cannot see the map. The DM can see the map. The players get to slowly discover the m…
Totally makes sense - different groups are different and whatever works for your group, works. With Diceright (and Im sure with other VTTs), my goal was to help streamline certain aspects of the game so players can focus on the fun stuff. Mostly around combat and tracking all your character details. So for combat, on Diceright, you can target enemies when you attack and then when you damage them, the player gets an a…
The #1 issue I've had with online VTTs is getting the VTT's grid aligned with the map's grid. I tried this with your solution and the problem was the same; it creates a grid and assumes the grid starts at the very edge of the image and goes to the other edge, meaning that if I want those grids to actually line up then I have to crop the image carefully, which is a huge hassle.
Two things that would make this tool easier to use:
1. Let me manually tune the grid in the VTT to the size of the grid in the image, either by selecting one square and having the system adjust the size and position of the grid to that, or by selecting some number of squares and specifying how many squares I selected, which would give a more accurate measurement.
2. Let me draw rooms with a box tool as well as walls with the wall tool, and let those rooms (by default) snap to the grid. Extra points if I can create a box and then add new vertices to drag out a less boxy shape (i.e. to add alcoves, cutouts, etc).
I haven't yet seen a VTT that can handle grids and boxes and rooms automatically, but as soon as someone figures out how to do AI or machine learning-powered map analysis to turn an image of a map into a (mostly? partly?) usable setup (with tweaks to be done afterwards) is going to get a lot of attention.