SQYD.studio

Hello anyone. I’m heading down to Toronto for Breakout Con this weekend (pretty excited to play some new board games) so, rather than miss a week, I’m putting this up ahead of schedule. I’m also going to indulge myself with a rant which: A) is likely irrelevant to most people, and B) I’m so uppity about that my friends are sick of listening to me go off about it.

Alright here’s my, unpopular for some reason, opinion. Virtual table tops which automate game systems are bad- they miss the point of tabletop games and add complexity rather than remove it.

I’ll back up a bit. I’ve been playing tabletop rpgs since University. I started in on Dungeons and Dragons during 4th Edition- when I had no idea purists thought it was a bad edition*- and have played a lot of different TTRPG systems since. Eventually we settled with a regular weekly crew. We met up in person until COVID hit- people moved away and started families, now it’s just easier to meet up online. Thus my strong opinions about virtual table tops began.

We’ve used a bunch of them. We rotate GMs and everyone has a preference on what VTT to use for their game. I’ve run games in Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds, played games in Foundry and even had a dalliance with Alchemy. I’ve never touched the D&D Beyond VTT (SigilI think) but I don’t have much hope for it**. I don’t like any of them.

Here’s the thing. These games are designed to be played in person. People gather, roll real dice, tell stories, and get crunchy with rules and systems. You are meant to be able to hold these games in a combination of your head, a handful of props, and on paper notes. These games don’t require a computer to crunch numbers for you. When VTTs automate core systems with the goal of making it easier for the GM to run a good game- they are actually undermining themselves. By taking the maths and resource tracking out of the hands of the players and leaving it up to the CPU you are actually giving people the ability to disengage. Coupled with the fact that we access these VTTs through a portal to cyberspace which contains every-single distraction imaginable – it’s no wonder that online games feel stilted in comparison to rolling real dice at a real table.

Here’s an incomplete list of of fancy wizbang features that VTTs seem really proud of that I think make the whole experience worse for everyone:

• Token ownership – I should be able to grab and move my friend’s piece if they are AFK. I’d be able to do that at a real table. Why do VTTs insist they are a low-trust environment.
• Movement restrictions – Virtual walls you can’t move your token through. Who asked for this? What a pain in the ass. Now everyone has to navigate a maze where the boundaries aren’t clear. It’s dumb.
• Line of sight – This one is especially true when the GM has turned off shared party vision and you can’t see what’s going on in the next room because your token is five feet back from the doorway. Who thought this was a good idea?
• Automatically calculating and applying the effect of checks – this is a huge part of marrying the fiction of a TTRPG to the mechanics. When people get to check out of the maths they check out of the story too.
• Making conditions and effects automatic – Do you have a -2 penalty to attack rolls because you lost your footing in the last round? Make sure to apply the correct effect macro so it will automatically apply. You can’t just subtract two from the result in your head and have the GM check it- you know, like you’d have to do in person. Oh it’s not easy to apply the macro because the UX for this application sucks? Have fun holding up the whole table as you search option you need. Clicking around in a convoluted interface is better than talking to your friends, right?
• And many more reasons– but you get the point.

Seriously, what are VTT makers doing? They are taking great table top experiences and turning them into bad videogames. Buggy ones. This trend is not in the spirit of the hobby I love and it really has to stop***.

Now though, I’ve found Owlbear Rodeo a lightweight VTT that does what I need it to do an no more. It gives us a shared space to roll dice and see props. It’s got tokens, notes, and a decent virtual dice roller. It’s got good tools for battle grids, supporting squares, hexes, and isometric tiles, and it lets anyone move tokens around if they want (just like you could at a table, imagine that). It’s got handy GM tools that let you hide and reveal token- it even supports fog of war, but manually controlled by the GM not automated by on line of sight. All that and it runs in browser so it’s much more lightweight than spinning up TableTop Simulator (which is also a cool program- if a little overwhelming). Owlbear has some drawbacks- extensions are a little limited (for now, new ones pop up all the time). And that’s it, that’s the only real drawback. It is a good VTT.

So yes. If you, like me, hate automation in your VTT Owlbear Rodeo might be the app for you. I much love it, and I hope to keep using if for many years of virtual tabletop gaming to come.

Thanks for reading, if you did. I feel like this blog might be a bit “old man yells at clouds”- but I’m passionate about this. It really feels like there’s a lot of talented people designing these complex softwares who are entirely missing the point of the hobby.

Anydangway, rant over. I’ll blog again next weekend, and I’ll try to play a lot of cool table top games (in person, with real people!) in Toronto this weekend.

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* Another unpopular opinion I’ve got is D&D 4e is very good at what it sets out to do and with the right crew it can be great fun. Maybe I will save this rant for another time.

** *Another thing I’ve got strong opinions about is Hasbro seeing the D&D boom during the pandemic and frantically flailing about to monetize, but I know I’m not alone in this one. Seriously- there are so many great TTRPGs out there we can all move on from D&D.

*** *Also acknowledging that not all VTTs are created equal. Some are much worse for over automation than others (cough Foundry cough).