Sigil, Wizards of the Coast's VTT, Officially Launches

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Sigil, the 3D VTT developed by Wizards of the Coast and formerly known as Project Sigil, has officially launched on Window devices. Today, Wizards of the Coast announced that anyone with a D&D Beyond account (free or paid) can now access Sigil, provided they have a computer with Windows OS. Interestingly, the system's full functionality is based off of D&D Beyond's subscription tiers, with access to create multiplayer rooms and the ability to share and load maps tied to the Master Tier account. Master Tier subscribers also have access to builder kits, custom mini outfits, and unpainted minis. The Sigil client can be downloaded from D&D Beyond.

Sigil has been in development since at least 2023 alongside the launch of the One D&D initiative. One major concern about the new system, which uses Unreal Engine 5 to create 3D battle maps for D&D, was its pricing. At least for now, pricing seems to be tied directly to D&D Beyond subscriptions instead of pushing an additional monetization scheme onto players.

EN World saw a preview build of Sigil earlier this year, with a robust and relatively quick-to-implement map building system. One question that I kept asking while previewing Sigil involved exactly what Wizards wanted Sigil to be, as it functionally appeared to be a level or map builder with some basic D&D automation built into the game. The system doesn't include a full D&D revised 5E engine, but it does contain a significant amount of integration for the app to mimic some of D&D Beyond's dice rolling and resource management system has. It doesn't look like a bad VTT, although it's more appropriate for big set piece battles rather than standard "goblins attack the caravan" type encounters.
 

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Christian Hoffer

Christian Hoffer

so they spent effort removing the option rather than not offering it for new releases?

I heard that too and chances are there is no other reason, maybe they hope people who would have bought a few items now buy the whole thing, otherwise removing them is just money wasted
Yup, they specifically removed the a la Carter feature from all available titles.
 

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Yup, they specifically removed the a la Carter feature from all available titles.
I know they did, the ‘heard too’ part was about not many people buying them.

To me it would make sense to then not offer that for new releases, actually going in and removing the option for existing titles does not save you any money, it costs you additional money.

To actually remove it means you either hope you get some people to buy the whole thing now rather than some parts, or you want to be unified to not get questions why some titles have the option while others do not… probably a bit of both. In either case they did not do it because they are anti MTs, MtG is nothing but MT since its inception, we just didn’t use the term back then
 

Having used Sigil now, I think it was definitely a mistake, if they want this to be long-term successful, to not label this release as an "open beta". Sure, they "shadow-dropped" it - i.e. with no advertising or fanfare at all - but that just limits the audience, people will still judge it as a released product, and it is not even near where it needs to be to be a released product.

If I am to speculate, I'd imagine this was so they can be make money from the MTX sooner, but I think that's still a mistake, because the MTX-in-beta barrier has been long-broken, like years ago. C.f. Path of Exile 2 for a very recent example - it's a paid beta AND it has MTX AND most people are kind of okay with that! People have judged it more harshly than a normal beta, but because it was paid, not because of the MTX, that was expected.

So I really think they should have called it an "open beta" or just a beta. Oh well, opportunity missed! Maybe the shadow-drop will be protection enough? But I think more likely it'll just limit growth.
 

I know they did, the ‘heard too’ part was about not many people buying them.

To me it would make sense to then not offer that for new releases, actually going in and removing the option for existing titles does not save you any money, it costs you additional money.

To actually remove it means you either hope you get some people to buy the whole thing now rather than some parts, or you want to be unified to not get questions why some titles have the option while others do not… probably a bit of both. In either case they did not do it because they are anti MTs, MtG is nothing but MT since its inception, we just didn’t use the term back then
They updated the Beyond system, and as part of it they did not bring the feature forward. Hard break. Bit the reason seems to have been a lack of uptake.

And to be fair, the a la carte prices were pretty unattractive: if you only wanted 2 or 3 options from Xanathar's, it was probably best just to buy the whole book on Beyond to get the 3 options, just on cost effectiveness.

And of course WotC has no principled objection to microtransactions: WotC, as such, has no "principles" really. Microtransactions did not work on Beyond, so they pivoted towards the larger packages. Don't expect the market there has changed.
 


Question for anyone who has actually tried this out: how does it handle vision, such as dark vision in a long dark corridor with a light source in the middle so there would be varying degrees of bright and dim light interacting with darkvision and such?
It has very rudimentary ability to handle this so far. It's just not close to their finished product at this point
 


Having used Sigil now, I think it was definitely a mistake, if they want this to be long-term successful, to not label this release as an "open beta". Sure, they "shadow-dropped" it - i.e. with no advertising or fanfare at all - but that just limits the audience, people will still judge it as a released product, and it is not even near where it needs to be to be a released product.

If I am to speculate, I'd imagine this was so they can be make money from the MTX sooner, but I think that's still a mistake, because the MTX-in-beta barrier has been long-broken, like years ago. C.f. Path of Exile 2 for a very recent example - it's a paid beta AND it has MTX AND most people are kind of okay with that! People have judged it more harshly than a normal beta, but because it was paid, not because of the MTX, that was expected.

So I really think they should have called it an "open beta" or just a beta. Oh well, opportunity missed! Maybe the shadow-drop will be protection enough? But I think more likely it'll just limit growth.
We disagree very often, but not on the idea they should have said this was beta. Because people are definitely judging it right now ...
 



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