Sean Merwin

I have about 48 hours to write about 200,000 words. I think I'm good.

I have about 48 hours to write about 200,000 words. I think I'm good.

hello and welcome to this week's episode of mastering dungeons your favorite tabletop role-playing game news and reviews and and game design and all the stuff i am old man merwin here with less old man teos abadia hey teos welcome to the middle of december

That's pretty impressive. That's pretty impressive. Last year, I used the Snowblower maybe once. I don't even know if I used it once last year. This year, I used it three times in one day and probably eight times over the last two weeks because the lake effect snow here has been brutal, as it often is.

We usually just get the edge of it because the real snow belt is just to the north of us, but it creeped down and we got absolutely hammered by it. Now it's 45 degrees. Everything's melting. But I'm sure we've got another batch just waiting for us.

Yes. Yes. Speaking of bad holiday movies. Yeah. No, not speaking about Hollywood. So what we are going to do this week is since we got a deluge of questions and comments from our listeners, we're going to do a main segment today of all the back listener questions and comments that we can.

So we are going to now just jump right directly into the news this week because there's a there's a fair bit to talk about. Yeah. And we're going to start right away with D&D Beyond adding some stuff, some functionality, if you will, to their Maps tabletop. And the things they've added.

It is very strange that the maps team, maybe with blessing, maybe not, keeps talking about it as the official VTT of D&D, of Wizards of the Coast, of Dungeons and Dragons. And Taos and I are sitting there wondering, well, what is the 3D? virtual tabletop then? Is that the unofficial? Is it the secondary? Is it something else completely? We don't know.

But we do know that if you use maps, you can now do a few more things. You can track monster hit points and see their stat blocks directly in the virtual tabletop as part of the initiative order list. So what did this say to you, Teos? What did you think when you heard the news?

Yeah. Every time a new release comes out where they add a new feature, two things happen. The first thing is I tell myself, OK, I'm going to run a game with this, even if it's just an hour. I just want to see how it works, because Because the second thing I feel is, please don't put any more functionality in.

I don't want any more functionality because the reason I don't use other VTTs is because I don't want to learn them and I don't want to go through even the slightest hassle of connecting one thing to another or having to go into a setting to change for this reason or that reason.

So as these new features come out, I want them to be not necessarily optional, but I don't want them to add complexity to what I need to do to be able to run a game.

You want to slap tokens on there, move them, do the simple stuff. It sounds like this is that. It sounds like you're not having to connect anything. You're not having to do any background programming or even too much just using the interface, but you're already doing the thing and it's just adding this functionality without making you work any harder.

Yeah. And here's where I wonder, because it's just in the DNA of sort of the business folks to want to add features, to want to add functionality, and then want to charge more for it. And right now I get maps free because I'm a subscriber. It's an additional thing. I was already subscribed. It was given to me free.

So the moment they, A, raise the subscription price because of maps, or B, you're right, start adding so much functionality, as I said before, what I would be okay with is there will be this basic maps there. If you're a subscriber, you get it. We're going to put out a version that you pay for that has these additional features that will let them then start to compete

on a more equal level with some of the other virtual tabletops like World 20 and Fantasy Grounds, et cetera, et cetera. And you want to use this an extra whatever a month, right? Extra $2 a month, you get the advanced maps that we're coming out with. But don't do what business people always try to do because it never works out in the end.

And we know all about the crapification of things that we like and things that are good in an effort to make more money end up becoming less usable, less friendly, and in the end end up dying a death.

Yeah, you've got to put that MBA to use and make the plan rather than actually doing the due diligence and learning about your product.

Yep, keep it up, maps. And also keep it up, D&D, the immersive quest. I learned about this because one of my friends in Canada said, hey, they've got this thing going on up here in Toronto. It sounds pretty cool. It's a D&D immersive experience. And it's going to be running. It already came out starting December 11th, running for several months.

And what you do is you form a party and become a rogue, a druid, a fighter, or a wizard. And then you go through this sort of immersive quest. And it's not 100% clear what exactly you do. Mm-hmm. If it's like an escape room type of thing or a true dungeon kind of thing or just an experience like walking through and seeing art and interactive exhibits.