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Show HN: I built a virtual tabletop for playing Dungeons and Dragons

diceright.com

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Re: Show HN: I built a virtual tabletop for playing Dungeons and Dragons

#21

Post by bigstrat2003 »

jbaczuk wrote: post #9

I "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…

You're right, D&D is more of a choose your own adventure than a game which you are meant to win or lose. It's group storytelling, where you're all writing the story as you go based on what happens.

It's not exactly accurate that the DM can change the rules as you go. The DM will sometimes say you can't do x or y, but a good DM doesn't do that capriciously. When I DM, I sometimes tell players flat-out "you can't do that", but it's because they've tried to do something which isn't possible in the fictional world (like if someone says they want to jump so high they land on the moon or whatever). Most of the time, when a player says they want to do something, they should either succeed outright (because it's not actually challenging for the character to do), or the rules of the game will give a clear way to determine success/failure. It sounds like you maybe didn't have a very good DM.

Re: Show HN: I built a virtual tabletop for playing Dungeons and Dragons

#22

Post by caffeinewriter »

jbaczuk wrote: post #9

I "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…

I'd call D&D more of a framework for collaborative storytelling that can absolutely be played as a game. The DM leads the adventure, the players decide how to respond to things. Everyone plays D&D a bit differently.

The most straightforward adventures that typically have a "win condition" are one shots/self-contained adventures from either WoTC or 3rd Party Publishers, like Curse of Strahd, Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, etc.

However, a lot of D&D groups I've played with might have characters die, but will rarely have a group "lose". However, because every group runs things a bit differently, a different group can drastically change how the game feels.

Re: Show HN: I built a virtual tabletop for playing Dungeons and Dragons

#23

Post by YakiSauce »

jbaczuk wrote: post #9

I "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…

Yeah, DnD is a weird one and it's hard to describe because it's really not like much else. I like to say it's one part shared storytelling and one part complex board game, but I do think you're right that in the end it's really more like playing a big game of choose your own adventure.

One thing to consider is that the DM you have can make a massive impact on your enjoyment of the game. I'd definitely encourage you to give it another shot, maybe with a different DM that more fits what you're looking for. But then again, it's also definitely not for everyone. We've had plenty of friend come into our group and just decide it wasn't for them.

Re: Show HN: I built a virtual tabletop for playing Dungeons and Dragons

#24

Post by tomlagier »

treyd wrote: post #7

I 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…

Nit: Foundry uses Pixi.js for rendering, so it's using more or less standard JS gamedev tools to draw on a WebGL context in a canvas.

Edit: See https://foundryvtt.wiki/en/development/guides/pixi

Edit2: For an example of why gamedev toolkits don't necessarily produce performant, highly usable software, check out Dungeondraft (https://dungeondraft.net/). It's built with Godot and gets the job done, but as an application it's a total mess. I'm working on an alternative but (surprise!) it's a challenge.

Re: Show HN: I built a virtual tabletop for playing Dungeons and Dragons

#25

Post by rolph »

jbaczuk wrote: post #9

I "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…

its a series of wins,losses,and revelations, and choose your own path.

rule breaking is a kind of error handling, to get the game on track, sometimes as a plotline, such as chaotic magic zones, it shouldnt be the rule to break the rules.

some groups have house rules, and long game history. if you were sat down in midst of a campaign thats confusing.

some people really struggle with being a dungeon master [DM], but each DM has to play to the group and keep it provocative for everyone.

Re: Show HN: I built a virtual tabletop for playing Dungeons and Dragons

#26

Post by VonGuard »

miah_ wrote: post #15

This 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…

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 campaign. There's a lot less dungeon crawling in today's D&D, but Rappan Attuk makes up for all of it with about 600 pages of one dungeon.

Re: Show HN: I built a virtual tabletop for playing Dungeons and Dragons

#27

Post by dragonwriter »

Arch485 wrote: post #20
jbaczuk wrote: post #9

I "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…

That's not entirely accurate. D&D _is_ a choose your own adventure, and there's not necessarily a way to "win"^1. However, the DM is not technically supposed to just "change the rules as you go" to decide whether or not something is successful (that said, everyone has their own house rules etc. etc.). ^1: Your DM can define an end goal/win condition for your campaign, though.

> However, the DM is not technically supposed to just "change the rules as you go" to decide whether or not something is successful

That's...highly variable. Page 236 of the 5th Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide addresses three valid approaches with pros and cons (nominally to the dice, but because of the role the dice play implicitly to the rules as a whole) ranging from using the rules, stats, and dice rolls for everything, to using the DM’s narrative judgment for everything, to a hybrid blended approach. (Previous editions of the rules had similar license to the same range of approaches with different framing.)

Re: Show HN: I built a virtual tabletop for playing Dungeons and Dragons

#28

Post by jncfhnb »

VonGuard wrote: post #26
miah_ wrote: post #15

This 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…

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.

Re: Show HN: I built a virtual tabletop for playing Dungeons and Dragons

#29

Post by YakiSauce »

miah_ wrote: post #15

This 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 alert with a CTA to apply the damage - so players aren't always asking, wait who did you attack? How much was the damage again?

And on the character sheet side, with a standard character sheet, I've often found myself looking at my AC or one of my stats and not totally remembering how I got to that number. Diceright keeps track of all your bonuses for you and shows you how your stats were calculated.

Those are definitely all things you can do on your own, but it can be nice to have a computer automate them for you.

Again, totally agree that the system you've got works. Just sharing some of my considerations when I went into building this.

Re: Show HN: I built a virtual tabletop for playing Dungeons and Dragons

#30

Post by rolph »

miah_ wrote: post #15

This 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…

ive used a large flat screen beneath a glass table. started with ducttape, built a mount later.

same idea starting black and slow reveal, laptop,and 2nd display, with players around the table.

the enviro sounds came later.

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