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

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.
yeah, that might very well have limited the number of MT sales too, if you want a handful of things, you already get the full book for the same price
 

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Maintaining a software capability costs developer time and resources that can be equated to money. Sometimes it's called bloat, or technical debt, or testing overhead.
in case of a major redesign yes, otherwise you can just let it sit there. Not sure how they implemented it, but they still need to support the purchase of individual items (the full book), not just a distinction between whether you are subscribed, with access to everything, or not. Chances are the MTs are not all that different from buying an entire book
 




in case of a major redesign yes, otherwise you can just let it sit there. Not sure how they implemented it, but they still need to support the purchase of individual items (the full book), not just a distinction between whether you are subscribed, with access to everything, or not. Chances are the MTs are not all that different from buying an entire book
You can just let the code sit there. It still incurs a "cost" over time. We don't know how it was coded, and no idea if they have had to refactor that part of the code or not. But someone with at least minimal competence made the decision for "reasons". It's interesting to some degree to contemplate those reasons, but I was only correcting the misnomer that there was zero cost to leaving it.
 

as I already said, I have no evidence either way, but that does not mean there won't be any. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
But, as history has shown us, sometimes complete absence of evidence means that there really isn’t anything there and assuming that the thing you are expecting to find really is there can lead to very painful consequences.
 

as I already said, I have no evidence either way, but that does not mean there won't be any. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
If a claim has no support, it probably shouldn't be made in a confident tone like it's common knowledge. That's what I was responding to and you jumped into with these gadfly responses.
 


If a claim has no support, it probably shouldn't be made in a confident tone like it's common knowledge. That's what I was responding to and you jumped into with these gadfly responses.
if your point is that we should not assume that the VTT will be mostly MT financed then I agree. To me it sounded more like you were arguing it would not have any, but maybe I read that into it
 

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