D&D (2024) Sigil Review Thread (+)

I want to know more about how Project Sigil is actually working, so the + here is not meant to indicate that comments have to be positive, but that they should just be focused on discussing the VTT itself, not opinions about monetization, how it was announced, what it means for the future of D&D, etc. Just, like, the nuts and bolts of it. I hope that justifies a separate thread; if not, the mods will close this.

I've not got far with it yet, but my experience has been largely negative from the perspective you describe (i.e. actual functionality/experience).

1) You have to install it, which seems a tad unnecessary and severely limits what devices can interact with it. It'd be one thing if the DM had to have a PC, but everyone has to have a PC which can run it. For my group that is definitely not true - it's particularly not true for the devices they use VTTs on.

2) Logging in and installing it is not a smooth or seamless process. It is a multi-step, annoying process, which requires to actually go find your login details and manually enter them. That's going to cause some people to bounce off, just because of that annoyance.

3) There's no built-in tutorial elements that I've found. That's pretty bad for a released product, and will definitely cause even more people to bounce off the product.

4) Particularly because the UI is absolutely not intuitive or well-designed. I'm sorry, I have some experience designing UIs (not a huge amount, but not none), and decades of experience using them, and this is a bad, counter-intuitive one, where a lot of buttons don't do exactly what you'd expect, and there's no natural "flow" to the UI. Could this improve? Of course, but it surprising that they felt this was the state to release it in.

My only really positive impression was:

5) The minis are pretty nice and move in a nice way. Not astounding, but definitely solid.

I only spent less than an hour with it, but given I was ready to spend a lot longer, that's not ideal.

Overall my feeling is "you only get one chance to make a first impression", and this was not a good first impression. To be fair, several other VTTs also have mediocre or bad first impressions, but with an alleged team of 250 people working on this, and AAA videogame money behind it, I was expecting the first impression to be at least as good as "modern" VTTs (i.e. those that have emerged in the last five years). It was not.

Will I give it another go? Maybe. I think I'd want them to add an in-engine tutorial at the very least before I did.

It’s for sure early and missing some stuff I want, but it has potential.

It looks great. Building isn't super hard if you want to do medium complexity. You can import 2d maps and use minis, which is great for the majority of encounters, imo

But, the UI is not great. There is no record of everything that happens, as far as I can tell, like a chat box that records all dice rolls.

It needs a ton of work before I'd even consider using it. Also, one of my players has a Mac.....

Zaukrie said:

It needs a ton of work before I'd even consider using it. Also, one of my players has a Mac.....

Click to expand...

This is something that I'm particularly concerned about - I use a Mac, and won't be switching any time soon as it's a work thing. I'm wondering if anyone with more technical acumen than me (a low bar) has any ideas about how feasible it might be to eventually get Sigil to work on non-Windows OS.

Zaukrie said:

It needs a ton of work before I'd even consider using it. Also, one of my players has a Mac.....

Click to expand...

Every time the topic of Mac support comes up, I'm reminded of this short from Thor, the Pirate Software guy. tl;dr is that making a Mac version is not cheap, not easy, and it was .02% of his game sales. So they dropped it because it was losing money.

So like, I feel for Mac users. My brother is one. But with those numbers, I don't blame any company for not doing it.

Clint_L said:

This is something that I'm particularly concerned about - I use a Mac, and won't be switching any time soon as it's a work thing. I'm wondering if anyone with more technical acumen than me (a low bar) has any ideas about how feasible it might be to eventually get Sigil to work on non-Windows OS.

Click to expand...

Sigil used Unreal 5 as the engine.
Unreal 5 has Mac support, though usually a versions or 2 behind.

So it shouldn't be too much work to get it running. And I'm guessing there will be official Mac support eventually. Maybe in like a year, but still eventually.

Kurotowa said:

Every time the topic of Mac support comes up, I'm reminded of this short from Thor, the Pirate Software guy. tl;dr is that making a Mac version is not cheap, not easy, and it was .02% of his game sales. So they dropped it because it was losing money.

Click to expand...

The situation is different for Sigil. A single Mac user in a group will disqualify a Windows-only VTT. That knocks out a big part of the market - way more than 0.02%. If they don't support Mac, Sigil just won't be able to compete.

Len said:

The situation is different for Sigil. A single Mac user in a group will disqualify a Windows-only VTT. That knocks out a big part of the market - way more than 0.02%. If they don't support Mac, Sigil just won't be able to compete.

Click to expand...

I don't see any reason why it would need to be windows only.

Unreal 5 supports cross platform play.

You could put it on Playstation, X-box, and phones too. Though I doubt they would. Not unless it's very successful.

I don't have a gaming PC. I'm out.