Wizards of the Coast introduced its new digital tabletop, Maps, is coming into public beta after a yr of alpha testing. This new part of Maps takes all the digital tabletop’s unique options — which incorporates rolling digital cube, character tokens, and integration of maps and monsters from a consumer’s D&D Past library — and provides the power for gamers to run fight encounters and observe initiative immediately within the digital tabletop.
Nevertheless, there was no point out of Wizards of the Coast’s shiniest new toy, Undertaking Sigil, a 3D digital map that’s at the moment in closed beta. Sigil premiered at Gen Con earlier this yr to blended critiques in a dwell precise play starring Baldur’s Gate 3 actors Samantha Béart and Neil Newbon alongside precise play titans Brennan Lee Mulligan, Aabria Iyengar, and Anjali Bhimani.
Amongst these low-prep options are simple integration of participant and enemy tokens, real-time encounter balancing primarily based on the up to date Dungeon Grasp’s Information, and a versatile initiative with out interrupting the encounter. For larger encounters or multi-stage dungeons, monsters could be hidden till the time is correct, giving Dungeon Masters a instrument to at all times up the drama (or take away some additional monsters if issues aren’t trying good for the celebration).
This Maps replace, oddly sufficient, makes Wizards a robust competitor in a digital panorama full to bursting with competing merchandise, together with fashionable options like Alchemy and Foundry. But it surely additionally places it into direct competitors with its personal companions, together with formally licensed VTTs like Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds. The benefit for harried recreation masters, in fact, is that after having gamers roll up a personality digitally, they’ll simply hit a button within the internet browser to seamlessly take the motion out of the theater of the thoughts and right into a 2D, visually immersive digital fight expertise. Based on the put up on the D&D Past weblog, “the aim of Maps has at all times been to permit Dungeon Masters to prep much less [and] play extra.”
Based on the D&D Past announcement, solely Grasp Tier subscribers will be capable of host recreation classes in Maps, however all customers with a free account and browser-based web entry can be part of a hosted recreation.