Wizards of the Coast announced that its new virtual tabletop, Maps, will enter public beta after a year of alpha testing. This new phase of Maps takes all of the original features of the virtual tabletop, including digital dice rolling, character tokens, and integration of maps and monsters from the user's D&D Beyond library, and adds the ability for players to run combat and track initiative directly. on the virtual table.
However, there was no mention of Wizards of the Coast's brightest new toy, Project Sigil, a 3D virtual map currently in closed beta. Sigil premiered at Gen Con earlier this year to mixed reviews in an actual live play starring Baldur's Gate 3 Actors Samantha Béart and Neil Newbon alongside real-life titans of the game Brennan Lee Mulligan, Aabria Iyengar and Anjali Bhimani.
Among those low-prep features are easy integration of player and enemy tokens, real-time encounter balancing based on updating Dungeon Master's Guideand a flexible initiative without interrupting the meeting. For larger encounters or multi-stage dungeons, monsters can be hidden until the time is right, giving Dungeon Masters a tool to always ramp up the drama (or remove some extra monsters if things aren't looking good for the group) .
This update to Maps, oddly enough, makes Wizards a powerful competitor in a digital landscape packed with competing products, including popular solutions like Alchemy and Foundry. But it also puts it in direct competition with its own partners, including officially licensed VTTs like Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds. The advantage for harried game masters, of course, is that after having players create a character digitally, they can simply press a button in the web browser to seamlessly take the action out of the theater of the mind and into action. a visually immersive 2D experience. Digital combat experience. According to the D&D Beyond blog post, “the goal of Maps has always been to allow Dungeon Masters to prepare less [and] play more.”
According to D&D Beyond's announcement, only Master Tier subscribers will be able to host game sessions in Maps, but all users with a free account and browser-based internet access can join a hosted game.