ranzware
Back in 2023, I reacted in a very grumpy fashion to D&D’s announced virtual tabletop, now dubbed Project Sigil. Well, now it’s here—with surprisingly little fanfare, I might add—and it’s available to test out for “free”. I say free in airquotes, because if you want the full suite of features, you’ll need a D&D Beyond Master Tier subscription.
A couple years ago, my gut reaction to this whole business was that it was built on a “big-budget misunderstanding of what matters in role-playing games”. These are harsh words, and I still generally stand by them—but you might be pleased to know that, on a face level, I do think what Wizards of the Coast has put together here is sort of cool and charming, even if I struggle to find use-cases for it.
What we have here, adventurers and gentlefolk, is a pretty shiny 3D map creator that’s D&D-exclusive. That’s it. You can put minis on it, it’ll autoplay combat music for you, and when you roll an attack a bunch of dice explode pleasantly, rattling off minis like they’re made of reinforced concrete. Numbers flash, dopamine receptors fire, it’s a kitschy and endearing little time.
The map-making tools, while obviously limited in terms of assets to the pre-arranged “builder kits”, are pretty easy to use. It doesn’t take long to cobble together something halfway pretty, with grass textures bleeding pleasantly into each other and boulders clippable to your heart’s content.
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Sigil stumbles more when it comes to the mechanics of the thing. This thing, as a VTT, lives and breathes based on its connection to D&D Beyond. For example, everything’s tethered to minis without files or folders for dedicated character sheets—however, you can import a character sheet from D&D Beyond with a quick copy-and-paste style upload.
This extends to the DM’s side of things, too. While Sigil does offer a journal tab for DM notes, I seriously doubt you’ll be able to run a campaign out of it—you’ll be better served, no doubt, by having a random Google doc open in another tab as Mystra intended, and by having your monster stats also open in D&D beyond for easier reference. Having monster traits and such nested in contextual menus is a bit of a headache.
The major problem I can foresee is plain old hardware access. I just don’t think Sigil works if you don’t have multiple screens available, or a spare laptop to keep your campaign notes handy. Its graphics are shiny enough that players bound to cruddy laptops are probably going to start having a hard time, especially on maps flooded with assets. Part of the allure of something like Roll20 is that you can run a game on a toaster, not so here.
Then there’s flexibility, though that was always going to be a problem. The more you rely on cool 3D environments, the less you can rely on your imagination. It doesn’t take long to find a fit-for-purpose PNG somewhere to toss into Foundry or Roll20 if, say, I want to have a battle between two skyships over an active warzone—or a celestial struggle on the palm of a petrified demigod. Sigil can’t bend to these whims, because a dev somewhere’ll have to make compatible 3D assets first. My real issue, though, is how the artificial limitations are already showing their cracks. Just take a look:
I don’t actually have a problem with the value proposition here. All VTTs have some sort of subscription service or one-time licence payment—and if you’re looking at Sigil seriously, you’ve probably already subscribed to D&D Beyond’s Master Tier for its other benefits. Sigil is just sort of a bonus on what you, as a D&D-Beyond using DM, may already be paying.
What staggers me really are the limitations. Just 50 custom miniature slots, and only 21 custom mini outfits. Just 83 minis (although I should note, flat tokens are available for use). If you wanna knuckle down and use Sigil for all your campaign’s battles, you’re going to have a hard time—sure, you can store all your NPCs on D&D Beyond and just paste them over, but if you’re operating almost entirely on homebrew, you’ll eventually hit a wall.
And sure, VTTs like Roll20 have storage limits. Foundry, too, if you’re hosting it on a server—but the crucial difference is that these limits are generally pretty generous. You can fit a lot of jpegs into 10GB, and if you’re hosting off your machine, Foundry’s storage is basically just limited to your own computer.
Which’d be alright if Wizards of the Coast just wanted an optional playground, but Sigil so clearly wants to be D&D’s digital home, a VTT to compete with tabletop’s versatile and powerful bevy of options. But it won’t be able to, and it’s a problem with the concept itself.
Sigil, so far seems mostly good for one-shots and short campaigns, indulged in for the novelty before you go back to graph paper.”
A solid virtual tabletop should be easy for the whole group to use, flexible for the DM’s choices, and robust enough to sustain a long and complicated campaign. Sigil, so far seems mostly good for one-shots and short campaigns, indulged in for the novelty before you go back to graph paper.
I genuinely think Wizards would’ve been better-served by doing what already and provably works, instead of going all-in on this 3D miniatures stuff—I can very much see a bespoke D&D Beyond VTT, one with low systems requirements and basic, top-down battlemap functionality that automates and imports all of your character sheets to be extremely useful.
But I just can’t escape this itching feeling that Habsro really wants to find ways to DLC-ify Dungeons & Dragons, and the cracks here are starting to show that. I’m doomsaying off bad vibes here, but I can entirely see paid-for builder kits, minis, and the like coming down the line. Baldur’s Gate 3’s cast is getting thrown into Sigil, after all.
As it stands, what we’ve ended up with is a kinda-pretty battlemap creator that I can’t think of many use-cases for, especially not over the other options that already exist and don’t tie you to a single system. If you’re already subscribed to D&D Beyond, it’s worth having a gander, because it might bring you some joy for a setpiece or two—but if you’re already using another VTT, I can’t see anything here that’s worth switching for just yet.
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Kurt Indovina
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