Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

[Overly Serious]

@p1138 Thanks for the comprehensive reply. I apologise if it was a little painful to get there. I'm not part of this world and perhaps some natural assumptions and context that might be expected were missing from my questions.

It seems like there's not much market in functionality or tools, more just adventures and adventure content (maps, beasties, whatever). I've never touched virtual gaming beyond being nudged into using Roll20 when a meet-up wasn't possible (very limited) and Foundry (better). But for me I like to game with friends. Otherwise it's spending tens of hours by myself writing something for a bunch of strangers to enjoy and then fuck off into the ether once more. But the tech interests me.

Thanks for your patience.

 

[p1138]

@p1138 Thanks for the comprehensive reply. I apologise if it was a little painful to get there. I'm not part of this world and perhaps some natural assumptions and context that might be expected were missing from my questions.

It seems like there's not much market in functionality or tools, more just adventures and adventure content (maps, beasties, whatever). I've never touched virtual gaming beyond being nudged into using Roll20 when a meet-up wasn't possible (very limited) and Foundry (better). But for me I like to game with friends. Otherwise it's spending tens of hours by myself writing something for a bunch of strangers to enjoy and then fuck off into the ether once more. But the tech interests me.

No, there's definitely a LOT of tool functionality. It's just that most of that is built into foundry or the addon developers just do it for free.

Here's a video with some examples. Quest logs, including entries for players, places to put notes, notes specific to the DM effectively letting you or the players build an entire dossier about something. Or even the language mod, sure it's for the text chat but an NPC speaking in a language that no one in the party can understand or only some party members? Pick from the drop down, and it becomes gibberish for everyone else without needing to specify before or after that it's in a different language or having someone at the table in a conversational encounter "hear" something they shouldn't be able to understand even from another PC and be able to metagame it if it's not a language on their list. Want to assign buffs/debuffs, status effects, etc. to tokens, and even set how many combat rounds those effects last? Sure, can do that either just with an icon to visually track it like the one in this video or others will even apply the math to rolls like when someone has a 50% miss chance or something.

Here's another video showing foundry add-on modules. Day/night cycles, visual weather effects, it can do that. Don't like the foundry UI for character sheets, scene changes, or whatever? There's addon modules for that. Want a different way to track initiative? There's modules for that.

It basically boils down to...

Adventures, probably in the marketplace
Resources, google and there's a bunch on patreon
Utility, some nerd probably already did it for free with the source on github.

You can see from the previous links that this thing has varying levels of support and automation for hundreds of games, thousands of utility modules some of which are game agnostic and some aren't. It all works well so long as it's working well, but like I said when the shit falls apart mid session usually because some player can't keep their PC functional, it can go to shit very quickly.

Thanks for your patience.

No problem. Unlike sometimes on this forum where some people just can't seem to read the most basic of English, it just seemed more like a "if I can throw enough examples and context at this guy maybe he'll get what I'm talking about"

 

[Overly Serious]

No problem. Unlike sometimes on this forum where some people just can't seem to read the most basic of English, it just seemed more like a "if I can throw enough examples and context at this guy maybe he'll get what I'm talking about"

If I keep asking the question in different ways, he'll eventually get what I'm asking.

Lets just call it an Opposed Comprehension vs Explanation roll.

 

[Ghostse]

It seems like there's not much market in functionality or tools, more just adventures and adventure content (maps, beasties, whatever). I've never touched virtual gaming beyond being nudged into using Roll20 when a meet-up wasn't possible (very limited) and Foundry (better). But for me I like to game with friends. Otherwise it's spending tens of hours by myself writing something for a bunch of strangers to enjoy and then fuck off into the ether once more. But the tech interests me.

There isn't much market in Functionality or Tools because the cost/benefit is never going to be economically viable given the market size. These are all free/community/hobby projects for a reason.

The other issue is that, outside of an adventure pack where all the tools and how they need to be used are heavily bounded, any extension beyond the most basic will need so many customization options to fit potential use cases you're often not too far removed from the scripting language.

I use MapTool as my VTT and do a lot of my own scripting/coding. I had started down the path of coding up little character sheets that would pop-up and autocalculate HP/defenses with an eye to automating things like targeting and damage rolls. Mid way through I realized I was spending significantly more time trying to provide not just error checking for HP values but for making sure that mistakes could be easily amended or rolled back than I was just updating values on the Characters and just adding a "click these numbers to do damage"

If you were looking to make money on these sort of thing, you'd be much better served by going Whaling:
That is, make a some custom modules as a 'portfolio' and then approach the big Streamer DMs and offer to customize their VTT to their specifications.
You'll be competing with their cabal of simps willing to do it for free, but anyone deep enough into business of streaming will know sometimes Free labor is the most expensive.

Even then, I don't think you'd ever get to make that your day job. I think at best it'd be beer-money sort of hobby.

Additionally, a LOT of what they'll want will be art based (either direct graphics or at least prettifying the UI) so unless you are also a digital artist, you'd need to have a artist you can use and they'd take a cut.

The only other market I could see, and I hate to even suggest this because I hate everything about it, would be AI DM integrations. Plugins to allow an AI DM to interact with the VTT and assets. Because as much as it fills me with disgust for the world, there would almost certainly be a viable market.
The only thing that doesn't make me full mald is that LLM AI is just hallucinating so couldn't coherently interact with the hard reality of things on a (virtual) table top, so you'd need a traditional AI to handle enemies/board/orchestration, a strategic AI (I forget the term. I want to say bayesian, but might be neural net) to handle tactics if you don't want it getting stale, and a LLM for dialog.

to supporting tabletop TVs with overhead cameras that can track physical minis on the table,

Quick aside on this, having followed this stuff with interest since the early demos with with MS surface:
- the overhead cameras have tons of issues especially the more you try to farm out to them The promo videos don't show the AI vision going utterly insane on a fairly regular basis unless everyone is very careful and intentional with their movements.
- The most robust system I have seen for this was using a little bit of everything: RFIDs for the minis to track positioning, overhead camera tracking to determine what is being interacted with, and touch integration for the menus.
But even then, there was very noticable jitter. It looked flawless with the creators working it, but then the minute a normie stepped up "Ok whoa hold on you're moving the mini too fast/lifting it too high/needs to be kept over the table" and other such issues quickly cropped up.
- using RFID is the most reliable way if you want interactive minis, but using RFID is not compatible with "just put a TV on is back" unless you are OK with the RFID reader circuits being visible or serious hardware mods with the giant LC display.
- The map size was also fairly limited, and in both expect and subtle ways. it wasn't tiny it was at least 18x30, but when physical minis are involved, even just scrolling the map over a couple squares is suddenly a big deal

 

[p1138]

Quick aside on this, having followed this stuff with interest since the early demos with with MS surface:
- the overhead cameras have tons of issues especially the more you try to farm out to them The promo videos don't show the AI vision going utterly insane on a fairly regular basis unless everyone is very careful and intentional with their movements.
- The most robust system I have seen for this was using a little bit of everything: RFIDs for the minis to track positioning, overhead camera tracking to determine what is being interacted with,
But even then, there was very noticable jitter. It looked flawless with the creators working it, but then the minute a normie stepped up "Ok whoa hold on you're moving the mini too fast/lifting it too high/needs to be kept over the table" and other such issues quickly cropped up.
- The map size was also fairly limited, and in both expect and subtle ways. it wasn't tiny it was at least 24x48, but when physical minis are involved, even just scrolling the map over a couple squares is suddenly a big deal

Oh absolutely. Same goes with every attempt at AR(augmented reality) gaming, and there have been people working on this with multiple methods for well over a decade now. Once it actually works with real gamers for a real game, there's some interesting potential though.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I'm not being clear, it seems. Is there an extension marketplace for these VTTs where a company or individual says: "Here is module Metal Dice which accompanies every dice roll with a Thrash Metal riff for $5.99" sort of stuff. Is there an independent for-profit market place or is it all just community mods people make and throw out there for free?

Or is everything a Patreon style ecosystem for this stuff if/when it is paid?

I'm asking if the independent mod community has a significant profit based market or if it's all free sharing stuff and "please tip" stuff.

I'll try.

Yes to all of these.

The marketplace is built in to the program, and is optional. It works like a phone store, where you can type the name of a system into search, and it gives you a bunch of one click results.
If you're a power user (and if you're using foundry, you should be) you can go on github or .io and grab a "manifest link", which is something like game-system-v3-abc123.json. Just paste that into the store and it'll download.
Alturnitively, you can drag and drop files into folders, but that's really only if you're pirating paid content, using custom or downloaded maps or finding something that isn't on the "store" for whatever reason. eg. I download maps from r/battlemaps a lot. eg2. A lot of people use the module that intergrates 5e.tools into Foundry.


There are free stuff, like maps, less popular game modules, alturnitive character sheets, macros for die rolling, etc.

There are patreon stuff. eg. Free maps, but sign up to the patreon for alts and fancy versions with animations and real time lighting effects.

There are indie paid modules. eg. "Pay £3 to get this indie module from DMs Guild in Foundry format"

There are paid modules from big brands.

 

[Ghostse]

Oh absolutely. Same goes with every attempt at AR(augmented reality) gaming, and there have been people working on this with multiple methods for well over a decade now. Once it actually works with real gamers for a real game, there's some interesting potential though.

I think we're pretty far.

The two absolute best things I saw were:
1) Pure touch LCD.
there were two large downsides to this:
First, unless the GM is on their own screen (he was) there is no way to to designate user permissions. Thus retards or clumbsies might activate the big-bad's ability.
Second: "how much was this?" "You don't want to know, but enough I'm trouble with my wife"

2) a guy I knew solved the scrolling map problem. Sort of.
He had done the "gut the TV to the absolute bare minimum" thing. He had 4 teflon-coated "minsleds" with magnets in the base, and had some arduino-controlled arms with magnets on the tip. So as long as he managed scroll speed very carefully, the arms would keep the minis where they were supposed to be.
I don't think I need to go into the issues.

 

[Overly Serious]

@Ghostse just rolled a critical success on his Decipher Question check. Thank you for that. That was everything I wanted to know and with the context to understand it. Very useful.

Well, almost everything I wanted to know. @Judge Dredd added some additionals that I didn't know I wanted to know but definitely did once I knew them.

Well I think I may have a little poke around with FoundryVTT after all. The APIs, the sort of mods and modules people produce - it sounds interesting regardless. I'd actually be up for writing some adventure modules and selling them even if chances of making billions is slim. But I don't play D&D or Pathfinder and it seems like those are the big ones. Others systems I might try I suspect are pretty tightly licenced. Still, might be good to play with the tech. And going whaling is something I could actually do...

 

[Martys_not_smarty]

It's not a ttrpg per say but the latest to go on my list of games that cause friendships to come to blows after fours hours is Dune Imperium.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Well I think I may have a little poke around with FoundryVTT after all. The APIs, the sort of mods and modules people produce - it sounds interesting regardless. I'd actually be up for writing some adventure modules and selling them even if chances of making billions is slim. But I don't play D&D or Pathfinder and it seems like those are the big ones. Others systems I might try I suspect are pretty tightly licenced. Still, might be good to play with the tech. And going whaling is something I could actually do...

The main issue you'll have is port forwarding. Yes, 2008 is back, but I guess that's to be expected for a self hosted server.

I'm still using an old version, but I wouldn't buy it just to sell adventures. I guess drivethru would be better for that? Not sure. They used to have a public server you could join and poke around on.


Speaking of adventure writing. Recently I've been annoyed at some low quality free adventures. ie. Free adventures that have since been paywalled, and "adventures" that are not something you can run but the writers idea of a joke.

1. A car adventure inspired by fast and the furious. You have points in fast and family, and as you race, you lose points in family which you recover by holding BBQs. Because apparently Fast and Furious "family" memes were hilarious in 2023.
2. A cyberpunk adventure based on the movie chopping mall. It's just a maze from the back of a cereal box and a bunch of silly tables (like what flavours of juice you can get from vending machines).
3. A youtube channel I like recommended a free adventure that is now paywalled. I did eventually find a copy of the free version, and it's just a curse of strahd map re-keyed. It at least has the decency to be okay, but if I payed £6 for it, I think I'd feel ripped off.

I don't know if google docs leaves identifiable metadata in it, but I'm so tempted to at least write some drafts. Obviously my work won't compete with classic free adventures like The Haunting, but fuck, I think I could do better than those. Given the Shadowrun appreciators in this thread, I think Chopping Mall could be adapted into a low level Shadowrun game easy. And not counting any maps (just use your local mall) it could fit on a double sided A4.

That's another thing. I read there are well known classic adventures for fantasy (Ravenloft, Barrier Peaks, Bone Hill, Keep on the Borderlands), horror (The Haunting, Edge of Darkness, Paper Chase) and sci-fi ...with no classic sci-fi examples given. I assume they mean traveller or shadowrun, though I'd consider Shadowrun cyberpunk instead of sci-fi, I guess it works. If anyone knows what non-shadowrun classic sci-fi adventures, let me know.

 

[LovisXVI]

I think Chopping Mall could be adapted into a low level Shadowrun game easy.

Well, if I remember the plot of Chopping Mall correctly, that is essentially the Renraku Arcology plot.

 

[The Ugly One]

The existence of magic and monsters causes all kinds of issues the people of DnD worlds seem to ignore.

Part of this is that originally, D&D was structured under very different assumptions. A 10th-level character isn't supposed to be a murderhobo; he's supposed to be a king who's accumulated enough gold to buy a castle and outfit an army. There are only 9 12th-level druids in the whole world. There's only one 9th-level monk. A 10th-level wizard shouldn't be a murderhobo. The basic problem is that murderhoboing is fun, and being high-level is fun, so high-level murderhoboing became the typical way people played the game. But the fact remains that under the governing assumptions of the World of Greyhawk, by the time a wizard can cast Invisible more than once a day, he's quite wealthy, and he's not going to be working as a pickpocket.

I'm just trying to understand if there is a market for paid mods for VTTs. Or if the whole community is just people writing and sharing stuff for free or on a "please tip" sort of basis.

I bought most of the 5e extensions for Fantasy Grounds, which I used to keep our game going during the authoritarian China Virus lockdowns. Lots of published modules have VTT versions as well. So yes, there's a market. Do I know how big it is? No.

 

[Overly Serious]

The main issue you'll have is port forwarding. Yes, 2008 is back, but I guess that's to be expected for a self hosted server.

Port forwarding isn't a problem. I can do that.

I don't know if google docs leaves identifiable metadata in it, but I'm so tempted to at least write some drafts

Can you not use something other than Google Docs if that's a concern? Or is it that you need it for the sharing part?

I think Chopping Mall could be adapted into a low level Shadowrun game easy. And not counting any maps (just use your local mall) it could fit on a double sided A4.

Never heard of it but based on that trailer, you could absolutely do Shadowun with low-level people trapped in a mall whilst drones run amok. Could just be some hacker or a rogue security protocol tripping. I'd probably use that over AI just because I'm old fashioned and AI used to be a Big Deal. Less so later on, though.

 

[Dante Alighieri]

Can you not use something other than Google Docs if that's a concern? Or is it that you need it for the sharing part?

Proton has the same features

 

[Judge Dredd]

Can you not use something other than Google Docs if that's a concern? Or is it that you need it for the sharing part?

Just for doc creation. I can use other things like some open source office program, or even just posting plain text. It's just convenient to use google docs and it has an export as PDF option and isn't bloated with features.

I was trying to see if Kobold Press had any new adventures out (their website is a mess to browse) and supposedly one of their new books is worthless in print, because they accidentally put an image over some important text. This was fixed in the .pdf version, but if you payed £50 for the hardback, you're fucked.

Hopefully this isn't a sign that TTRPGs are going to way of video games and tabletop where proof reading is ignored because they can "patch it later".

 

[Overly Serious]

Just for doc creation. I can use other things like some open source office program, or even just posting plain text. It's just convenient to use google docs and it has an export as PDF option and isn't bloated with features.

FWIW, LibreOffice can export to PDF. I much prefer MS Office but this can do it fine if you want. And if you ever get serious about this stuff and want to do actual DTP style production, Scribus is a surprisingly good Open Source DTP application.

Hopefully this isn't a sign that TTRPGs are going to way of video games and tabletop where proof reading is ignored because they can "patch it later".

Sadly, I've already seen multiple cases of this. The (normally good) Cubicle 7 with their disastrous releases of Wrath and Glory comes to mind. I fear it's only going to get worse. Standards are slipping.

 

[Judge Dredd]

The (normally good) Cubicle 7 with their disastrous releases of Wrath and Glory comes to mind.

What happened?

I fear it's only going to get worse. Standards are slipping.

If anything, you'd think they'd do it the other way around. Release the PDF for a week or two, so the community can find any glaring errors, then send it to print. I think the grognards who like physical are willing to wait an extra month.

Or you know, proof read and playtest things.

And if you ever get serious about this stuff and want to do actual DTP style production, Scribus is a surprisingly good Open Source DTP application.

I doubt I'll ever get that far. It (like many things I wanted to do creatively) is just a case of me being mad at low quality work that gets recommended. There's lots of extremely high quality free maps, and I'm greatful for them, but now I'm getting skeptical. Free adventures that are just a waste of time, and payed games that are low effort. I'm a sucker that doesn't mind paying for things that I like, but the quality is so low that I can't trust any of it.

I mention Kobold Press because their adventures, especially the Prepared books, are good. But even then, I guess I've only used half the content in each. And now they're limited to only their store, and from the hardcover issue they appear to be slipping. Big fan of Sly Flourish's books. But they've been gradually filling with wokeshit, and city of arches I haven't picked up yet because it's exclusive to his site and seems to be a setting book instead of a set of adventures. Did they learn nothing from Netflix and Steam?

 

[Overly Serious]

What happened?

Exactly what you described. They released a product filled with typos, errors, utterly wrong weapons stats. Then fixed it all later with a PDF update. What about people who'd brought print copies? Well, they had the updated PDF as their errata.

 

[Wallace]

Part of this is that originally, D&D was structured under very different assumptions. A 10th-level character isn't supposed to be a murderhobo; he's supposed to be a king who's accumulated enough gold to buy a castle and outfit an army. There are only 9 12th-level druids in the whole world. There's only one 9th-level monk. A 10th-level wizard shouldn't be a murderhobo. The basic problem is that murderhoboing is fun, and being high-level is fun, so high-level murderhoboing became the typical way people played the game. But the fact remains that under the governing assumptions of the World of Greyhawk, by the time a wizard can cast Invisible more than once a day, he's quite wealthy, and he's not going to be working as a pickpocket.

It's arguably built into the implied setting. See here.

 

[Brain Problems]

Almost everyone I play with uses digital character sheets* via (may allah forgive me for even uttering this) D&D Beyond but roll physical dice. I despise tossing digital dice and only do/did it when playing digitally over (allah, forgive etc) Roll20 because of macros and ease of speeding up an already slow, disconnected experience anyway.

*Just occurred to me that this may be more of a knock-on effect of very few people having access to printers at home or being total cucks afraid to print their Chad imaginary game sheets at the office to impress their co-workers.