[HN Gopher] Show HN: I built a virtual tabletop for playing Dung...
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Show HN: I built a virtual tabletop for playing Dungeons and
Dragons
Diceright is a virtual tabletop for playing dungeons and dragons
with friends on the web. You can watch a quick overview of how it
works here: https://tinyurl.com/diceright. And there's a list of
the main features right on the homepage. It's a Ruby on Rails site
that makes heavy use of action cable for keeping the maps and
tokens in sync for all players. On the front end, I'm using HTML
canvas for the maps and a js library called fabric.js for
interacting with the canvas. Otherwise, just jQuery on the front
end. I optimized it all to work on mobile too. I built this as a
side project for fun over of the past couple years. It took a lot
longer than expected, but it was also a lot of fun. I did all the
design / UX for it too which was a struggle at first but was a
great learning experience. Let me know what you think and if you
have any questions. Thanks!
Author : YakiSauce
Score : 213 points
Date : 2023-10-12 14:35 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.diceright.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.diceright.com)
| Capricorn2481 wrote:
| Very nice! Looks like a legit VTT and not a throwaway one. What
| were some of the hard things about this project that you didn't
| expect?
| YakiSauce wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| Man, so many things. I think maybe the hardest thing was really
| getting into the weeds of all the class/race features and
| modeling them all in a way that made sense to the user and
| would 'just work'.
|
| There are features that add damage, but only under some
| circumstances. Features that change at different levels.
| Features where you get to pick between a few options and then
| they also change at different levels. Just a lot to model out.
| And a lot of hard decisions about how much to automate and how
| much to leave on the user.
|
| Also, designing and building it all to work on mobile ended up
| being more than I expected because when adding new features I
| often had to go back and make it mobile friendly too.
|
| Oh and doing the dynamic lighting (where you can add walls and
| lights to a map and 'see' what player tokens would see) was
| pretty tough because it involved learning some math to do those
| calculations. But that was also pretty fun.
| solardev wrote:
| I'll check out it out my desktop later and add more thoughts, but
| for now, on my phone it's kinda hard to get a feel for it because
| everything is in desktop-sized videos. Would you consider adding
| some mobile screenshots of the major features, perhaps?
|
| There are a few bad tabletops out there. This one seems like it
| actually had a lot of thought put in! But it's hard to tell apart
| from the others at a glance. The videos aren't really readable on
| a phone and the paragraphs don't convey how each feature works.
| YakiSauce wrote:
| Hmmm yeah that's a good point. The site does work pretty well
| on mobile but I didn't make any mobile videos. I'll put that on
| my todo list. Thanks for the feedback!
|
| And if you do get a chance to check it out on desktop, I'd love
| to know what you think.
| losvedir wrote:
| Neat. My friends and I have a campaign going on roll20.net. I
| don't suppose there's any way to "import" our current stuff into
| here? Is this just for new campaigns? Our DM manages everything
| so I'm not entirely sure what's involved (I think he's purchased
| some add-ons maybe) or if this is even a sensible question.
| YakiSauce wrote:
| Hey yeah, totally sensible question - wish I had a better
| answer. Unfortunately there isn't a great way to transfer an
| ongoing campaign. That's one of the main issues with getting
| folks to try out new virtual tabletops - there's some pretty
| established platforms already out there and there's a fair
| amount of lock in. Especially if you consider the assets a lot
| of DMs have purchased on those platforms, like you mentioned.
|
| But I'm hoping eventually Diceright will have enough 'killer
| features' that people will give it a shot anyway. Would be
| great if you guys would consider it once you finish your
| current campaign. Thanks!
| secabeen wrote:
| There is a converter from Roll20 to FoundryVTT. I've used it
| with great success:
|
| https://github.com/kakaroto/R20Converter
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Same. My game is using roll20 for maps and D&D Beyond for books
| and character sheets. There's a chrome extension that can link
| them together.
| treyd wrote:
| 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 use a proper game
| engine that can target the web (with wasm/emscripten/etc)? You're
| making a game after all, and it would mean that people who are
| happy downloading and running a native application locally for
| better UX would be able to.
|
| [1] edit: That I was aware of when writing this comment
| initially.
| manbash wrote:
| Criticism for Foundry aside, it's an extordinary effort to
| implement a mature self-hosted alternative, especially as FOSS
| implies it's going to be a side project for most if not all of
| its developers.
|
| Foundry's upside is that it's extensible (modules), which
| increases traction and nurtures a community.
|
| Most of the FOSS attempts will probably die if they won't take
| that approach (extensibility that is).
| treyd wrote:
| Yeah that's how I see how it would work. Just build a
| framework for the players to interact in according to the
| basic mechanics of tabletop games and then expose a rich
| module API and hand it off to users. If you're clever about
| it I could imagine you could machine-translate the art asset
| formats made for Foundry, or design it to use it directly.
| delecti wrote:
| I think Owlbear Rodeo fits the bill, somewhat.
|
| They recently released a more feature-rich cloud-based V2, but
| simultaneously released the source and self-hostable images for
| their V1.
|
| Edit: I meant to add this initially but just forgot:
| https://blog.owlbear.rodeo/owlbear-rodeo-legacy-edition/
| tomlagier wrote:
| 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.
| Capricorn2481 wrote:
| > 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
| bee_rider wrote:
| People who are into D&D and people who are into open source
| programming already both have time consuming, creative, indoor
| and sedentary hobbies. I think they mostly look for additional
| hobbies that scratch less-overlapping itches.
| manbash wrote:
| This looks like a really awesome project.
|
| But, I can't understand if this is a subscription service or I
| can simply self-host. I don't want to sign up without having that
| information first.
| YakiSauce wrote:
| Great question. So far, I've just been doing this myself as a
| side project so I haven't spent much time thinking through how
| I would or could monetize it (open to suggestions on that).
| That being said, I think eventually, it would probably have to
| be some kind of subscription, if there's any real interest in
| it. It's not really built to be self hosted right now
| unfortunately.
| jbaczuk wrote:
| 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 end, it was a little
| frustrating and I decided I don't get it so I've never tried
| again.
| delecti wrote:
| There are usually fairly clear rules for executing the steps in
| a combat (what actions are "legal" on a character's turn), but
| the characters' goals in a campaign are entirely subjective.
| The overall flow of a campaign is collaborative storytelling:
| the DM sets the scene, but the characters decide their actions
| at any given point along the way, and having clearly delineated
| "go here next" is often viewed as a sign the DM is being too
| controlling.
|
| Think of Lord of the Rings (both because it's a good example to
| make my point, and because it's the source of a lot of the
| inspiration for D&D). All the fellowship are independently
| given a vague mission to go to Rivendell. They then decide, in
| Rivendell, to embark on a quest to take the ring to Mordor.
| Consequences split them up on separate missions along the way;
| in a D&D game, splitting the party is poor etiquette, but it's
| a good example of how your immediate next steps can change in
| unpredictable ways. The overall journey of any given character
| is decided by that character based on their circumstances and
| personal values.
| tnecniv wrote:
| Correct. It is much more free form than other games (and even
| more free form RPGs exist).
|
| Every group has their own style. The DM might be very strict or
| loose with his reading of the rules. Players could be more or
| less into the role playing aspect (do you have to do voices and
| talk in character or not). Ultimately, your character can do
| whatever the DM allows them to do. That might seem "unfair" but
| the DM is not your opponent trying to beat you, they're telling
| a story with you.
|
| There's not really a win condition. Some groups play campaign
| modules which are pre-written stories the DM interprets for
| your group. Some make it up on the fly like an improv comedy
| group or nerd jazz.
| wincy wrote:
| I play D&D because I'm hyper competitive and D&D doesn't trip
| that "competing against other people" that makes me short
| circuit (and often spend a ton of money, Magic The Gathering
| especially got me so I won't play that at all anymore) while
| still being that same kind of fun. It's a way to hang out with
| my friends and tell a group story that's fun to talk about and
| reminisce about "the time the evil demon lord tried to fly away
| and the Druid called upon the power of nature and hit him with
| a lightning bolt". Or "that time the bard sold his soul to a
| devil".
|
| I don't really remember specific combat we remember the fun and
| stories we told, even if they're pretty lame compared to just
| reading a book. But they're our unique story.
|
| And if I put a ton of time into D&D that looks like "3D
| printing terrain" or "painting miniatures" (which are cool
| little statues so have some inherent aesthetic value) which are
| also fun hobbies (in my opinion) vs "accruing lots of thin
| pieces of cardboard" or "number goes up on screen".
| Arch485 wrote:
| 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.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 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.)
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| 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.
| caffeinewriter wrote:
| 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.
| YakiSauce wrote:
| 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.
| rolph wrote:
| 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.
| svachalek wrote:
| 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.
| hackan wrote:
| This is pretty cool!! Is this FOSS?
| miah_ wrote:
| 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 map.
|
| We do dice rolls and type their output into chat. Our player
| sheets are player sheets, and we scanned and sent pdf's to DM. We
| keep group inventory via chat. Everything else is basically
| overkill, because it requires the DM to redesign maps via some
| web app and DM's already don't have time.
|
| *edit
|
| to be clear. we've looked into them all. the solution above is
| what we've now been doing for _years_ on our D&D game. Goddamn
| erake (our BBG).
| VonGuard wrote:
| 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.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| 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.
| mrinterweb wrote:
| 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)
| bee_rider wrote:
| Nowadays we have multiple genres of combat and mechanics
| focused video games. (FromSoft games, to CRPGs like
| Baldur's Gate, to tactics games like Xcom).
|
| In the 70's, that space was much less populated, so pencil
| and paper RPGs might have been the best small tactical
| games people could get their hands on (not everybody wanted
| to sell their houses for Warhammer miniatures).
| rolph wrote:
| some people love and thrill on dice.
|
| D&D is rooted in a dice and miniatures, wargame, light on
| the scenario building
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chainmail_(game)
|
| enough people liked it, and enough model,miniature, hobby
| was around that it held, and became more embellished over
| time.
| david2ndaccount wrote:
| The dungeon itself is the game/puzzle/challenge that the
| players are trying to overcome, either for the default goal
| of finding its treasure or for a specific goal like find a
| specific macguffin or other target. In this mode, the
| players trade their resources to overcome challenges and if
| you can achieve your goal without fighting or expending
| resources at all, the more the players are able to achieve.
| The default is not to fight every monster you encounter but
| to decide if you need to engage to achieve your goal.
| Random encounters are a way for the dungeon to fight back
| against the players and to put a clock on them - the longer
| they take to explore the dungeon or the less efficient they
| are in their exploration, the more they will have to deal
| with encounters that are unlikely to have any treasure at
| all.
|
| It's a very complex and interesting game to play.
| Unfortunately newer editions have gutted this gameplay by
| removing xp for gold (thus removing the default goal of
| most dungeons) and removing all of the procedural dungeon
| crawling rules. The tabletop form is still superior to
| CRPGs as your ability to interact with the world itself and
| overcome challenges in interesting ways is only limited by
| your imagination and ability to creatively apply the tools
| available to your character.
| YakiSauce wrote:
| 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.
| danudey wrote:
| 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.
| rolph wrote:
| 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.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| 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.
| miah_ wrote:
| The cost, and setup time to use any of these tools has been
| far greater than loading up a image and sharing it.
|
| We've found no VTT tool that can do basic fog of war
| _without_ loading in a bunch of other features we simply
| don't need.
|
| Is it superior? I never said that, I said that the feature
| set was overkill.
|
| A long term problem? Like I said above, our game has been
| going for _4_ years.
|
| A big problem with these tools is the assumption that your
| players won't do something you didn't plan for. Which the
| system I described deals with well. Our DM has many times
| spent hours planning our game only for us to spend the entire
| time slot in one location, or deciding to go somewhere else.
| When that happens, all he has to do is roll out the setting
| for us to use our imaginations, or to load up a new image and
| black layer and share it, 5 - 10 minutes tops.
| hansoolo wrote:
| When I was still playing tabletops a lot, we had the luck of
| having an extremely creative game leader who was a graffiti
| artist. So our maps were drawn during the game, which was super
| awesome!
|
| So do you just play online with strangers? Or do you also play
| in person?
|
| Ah, that were great times back then...
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| Nice! It looks great and very useful.
| mikepk wrote:
| Very 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 :) ).
| rcarr wrote:
| Personally, 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.
| YakiSauce wrote:
| 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.
| rcarr wrote:
| Yeah you've got to follow your passions. I reckon you could
| be well positioned to take advantage of an emerging market
| though. I'm pretty new to it all myself but I've been doing
| lots of reading on it the past year, and it seems the recent
| DnD popularity explosion mainly happened through Stranger
| Things bringing into the popular public conscious again and
| then Twitch/YouTube players like Critical Role. The latter
| seem to be drifting slowly away from DnD towards their own
| RPG systems and ecosystems. If you have a well developed
| product you may even be able to contact the teams behind
| these systems who may be interested in acquiring your product
| to become the base of their own DnD Beyond like system.
|
| I'd join as many RPG reddits, forums and discord channels as
| you can find and then just periodically scout to see if you
| can spot any emerging trend and ride the wave. I personally
| reckon it's only a matter of time until there's some show on
| par with Critical Role's popularity but for detective RPGs,
| superheroes, sci-fi, Cthulu or whatever.
| Rayhem wrote:
| The #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.
| mNovak wrote:
| Very cool. I've seen a lot of these out there for DnD
| specifically, and am always impressed by how polished they seem,
| but I've long since wished there was a better way to play WH40k
| or other wargames online. The closest thing seems to be Tabletop
| Simulator, which just feels strange as a full 3D simulator.
|
| It strikes me as slightly ironic, since games like 40k are
| traditionally extremely high $ investment hobbies, so seemingly a
| good market for the side-hustle tech crowd.
| tpmoney wrote:
| If you haven't seen it yet you might look at Vassal
| https://vassalengine.org/ which is geared towards board games
| generally rather than ttrpgs
| bbor wrote:
| I agree! I think it's super doable to annotate a real game with
| modern image segmentation running on a video feed paired with
| rock-solid modern TTS as dice are read, turns are declared,
| etc. From there, it's just a hop skip and jump to a virtual
| tabletop, AR set pieces, and (IMO the holy grail) non-local AR
| games using real pieces. It's such a procedural, probabilistic,
| simplified-spatially game; seems perfect for simulation.
|
| I really don't think games workshop has the corporate culture
| to catch this wave though, which makes the prospect of a IP
| lawsuit a big deterrent to even OS work.
|
| Msg me if you want a link to my last pass at it as a react app.
| Got slowed down figuring out how to offload work onto the
| server efficiently, and also daunted at the prospect of
| translating all the simpler unit rules into JSON. Of course,
| with LLMs, that task just became about 1000x easier :)
| noelwelsh wrote:
| I'm kinda curious, how many people play RPGs with map and
| minatures at the centre? We started with D&D and minatures, but
| quickly migrated away to more free-form systems and styles. For
| us it was always about making a story together, and nothing bogs
| that down faster than technicality.
|
| If your game is centered around maps and minatures, is it also
| centered around combat? Just curious to find out how other people
| play.
| YakiSauce wrote:
| Thats a really interesting question. When I first started
| playing DnD the thing I loved the most was the combat. Loved
| the mechanics and loved that it was basically a big complex
| board game.
|
| Over time, I have started moving more towards the shared
| storytelling aspects of the game. Currently in our game, we do
| a light combat mix, where we only really enter combat once
| every 3 or 4 sessions.
|
| Generally, it's nice that there are so many different RPG
| systems out there now so people can really find the ones that
| fit what they like.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Lots of people play D&D entirely for combat. I don't get it
| personally, but yeah.
| bythreads wrote:
| Same here, As i grew older the "theater sports" of it became
| infinitely more interesting - to such a degree that the dices
| are only used for randomness these days.
|
| We sometime play "dogma" scenarios where you are: a geriatric
| near 1st lvl , a 12 year old 1st lvl thief etc. but i'm getting
| old so these days its a social happening and not an all out
| drinking slugfest
| bsagdiyev wrote:
| How does this compare to FoundryVTT? I use that for self hosting
| online sessions and it's been amazing. Will definitely check this
| out!
| YakiSauce wrote:
| Thanks for taking a look!
|
| So one of my goals with Diceright was to make it as welcoming
| as possible to new players (not really an easy task given how
| complex DnD is). To that end, I wanted to make it easy to sign
| on and get started, right away. And I wanted to make it easy to
| use on your phone. Foundry has a ton going for it, but it does
| require initial work to get set up and it can be a bit clunky
| for someone who's never used it.
|
| Similarly, I wanted to make character creation as seamless as
| possible. On Diceright you just pick your classes and all the
| features get added automatically and rolled up to your overall
| character sheet (and of course you can modify anything you'd
| like). It's easy to make characters quickly and at the same
| time, you never lose track of where features or stat bonuses
| come from.
|
| All that being said, Foundry as a ton of stuff that Diceright
| doesn't have yet, so I'm not trying to say it can go toe to toe
| on features. More just giving how I think my overall approach
| differed.
| Animats wrote:
| There's a whole genre of these things.[1]
|
| There's a true virtual tabletop: Jeri Ellsworth's Tilt Five,
| where the players wear AR goggles and see a 3D tabletop game
| world. Players look at a tabletop mat which provides an alignment
| target and neutral background. One of the more workable AR
| systems.
|
| [1] https://www.laptopmag.com/best-picks/best-virtual-
| tabletop-s...
| flaque wrote:
| This is great! Keep going with this!
| YakiSauce wrote:
| Thanks! Appreciate the kind words
| reissbaker wrote:
| Wow, it looks very comprehensive. Really nice work.
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