TaleSpire is a beautiful way to play pen and paper RPGs online
talespire.com
talespire.com
1. No fog of war. You can create zones that have toggling visibility, but its cumbersome and not automatic.
2. No cyberpunk/modern assets. They did make their stretch goal so this will be arriving eventually.
3. No custom audio streaming. I believe you can play music and sounds but only what came with it.
4. Expensive for players at $35aud. I don't mind spending money for resources as a DM, but there should be a player-only version that's much cheaper/free. I would rather pay $120aud if it meant my players didn't have to.
Currently as it stands for me, the best option for a VTT is Foundry[1]. It has everything I mentioned prior and more. Pair that with Dungeondraft[2] and the mountains of free content packs at Cartography Assets[3], you have everything you could ever need for running an internet campaign. None of these require a subscription and are imo the best bang for buck you can get for a VTT setup.
When Talespire addresses my current pet peeves, I will likely switch, but for now it's just not viable for me.
[3] https://cartographyassets.com/asset-category/specific-assets...
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1. I agree with you, but hidden zones are good enough for now.
3. discord...
4. Meh... I think it's the kind of thing that people complain, but will still pay for.
You can't really compare foundry vtt who displays jpegs in a browser with Talespire who offers a 3d environment. It's like comparing a car to a plane.
Planes can be impressively fast, but the vast majority of my commute/transportation needs are better served by a car.
These are both VTT software. I don't see a reason why one should be above reproach just because its 3d.
I get it, 3d makes everything harder, but tbh it also makes playing the games harder. I can use random jpegs and hand drawn maps and direct translations of existing tabletop content in Foundry. What are my options for making my own content in TaleSpire? Recreate every map object by object?
I can buy a PDF of The Shady Dragon Inn (published 1983) and copy-paste all of the maps over into Foundry in minutes, or spend as much time making pretty maps as I want. Lets not even get into the incredible modding support
People will be able to build their own minis, tiles and props very soon.
Building homebrew maps in foundry might be fast, it still looks like crap. We're in 2021.
The problem Talespire faces is that it does so much less than Foundry. It's like comparing MS Paint to Photoshop. A visually gorgeous MS Paint, don't get me wrong, but one with only a bare minimum of tooling.
I also get the impression that Talespire's future scope is mostly limited to visualisation. It's not aiming to provide character sheets for a hundred different systems, or automate hit and damage rolls, or provide shop and inventory interfaces, or visual-novel style character popups, or drag-and-drop NPC design, or any of the other thousand things you can get a Foundry module for.
Your attitude towards your competitors is pretty gauche. You dismiss features and the pricing model they have, etc., while they have been incredibly successful.
I'm always looking for interesting advancements in VTT, particularly because I've got a box with a 55" TV mounted in it I can put on top of my table for using them even when playing with friends in person, but as a potential customer, the dismissive attitude you've displayed towards your competitors has turned me off pretty significantly.
There are multiple maps built for Waterdeep Dragon Heist, for instance. The modern, web-augmented experience of playing D&D is a huge change from the game's past, and it makes modules and campaign books a lot more useful, since the community can share so many more specifics than ever before. TaleSpire takes that a step further, since you can also now share buildings and outdoor spaces.
In 5 to 10 years, this space is going to be just absolutely incredible. It's going to converge with machinima. It's already begun converging with independent theater.
I'm super excited about this, but I do a lot of front-end work, so I've always hated Roll20. It reminds me of a terrible app I built with Backbone.js, with all kinds of event bubbling problems. Plus, before TaleSpire existed, I was building experimental maps in Cinema 4D to see if I could enable online games with gravity magic. (TaleSpire does not support alternate gravity directions, but it's still way better for this use case than C4D.) So I may just be the ideal target customer or whatever.
Really, you can't compare Foundry which has rules support and rulesets for lots of games with TaleSpire where any rule support is off in the distance. Its like comparing a plane to a half-scale wind-tunnel mockup without engines or controls. Most tabletop gridded rules systems are 2d, so a 2d display covers the parts that aren't theater of the mind quite well; it's the rules support that makes or breaks a VTT.
I personally love the modding ability, which allowed creating a nice nostalgic middle ground, an Isometric view which works with 2d rule measurements, and brings back memories of old school RPGs
https://v.redd.it/iz4tui9ykou61/DASH_1080.mp4?source=fallbac...
https://www.foundryvtt-hub.com/package/grape_juice-isometric...
1) This is an area that needs a whole lot iteration. The current Hide Volume approach has been more of a patch while we figure things out. This is certainly one area 3D has complicated things significantly. Looking forward to diving back into it.
2) As you mentioned, this is certainly on the horizon, we've already started dipping our toes into this area and hope to have an ETA by the end of the year.
3) Audio streaming is also something we're looking into.
4) The pricing model has been in discussion a lot. We're trying to avoid maintaining two different builds, so a player only version isn't something we'd like to do. We have been discussing potential pricing models, but, this is likely a conversation which will resume once the full release is imminent. (Post Early-Access)
Foundry and Dungeondraft are both excellent. They pair great together. Our goal with TaleSpire has been one of immersion into the board. Making the interaction with the board feel tactile and fun. And of course being able to both build and play together. Nothing out there quite scratched that itch for us. I now selfishly get this from playing TaleSpire. We still have a good ways to go however.
Thank you very much for your feedback. I would love to see you join us in TaleSpire sometime in the future once these things have been addressed.
I'm from Brazil and have been playing RPG here for 20 years now. I don't know about other regions, but most tabletop RPG players here are not luxurious at all: playing rpg is VERY CHEAP and that's one of the reasons it attracts people. My group has people of different ages and backgrounds, but the chance of them each buying a R$49 (current price at Steam) game to play is zero - we are currently using roll20 and while it's not a perfect software, it's perfectly sufficient for us. Even if TaleSpire looks and feels awesome, by being a paid product I think it will have a really difficult time penetrating this market. Only chance would be some kind of model utilizing free, like freemium - and when there's a payment to be made, it has to be only 1 player in the group. Take note I'm not defending or saying the rationals behind this behavior pattern is good, I'm just telling you it's real and very hard to change. That said, perhaps the target for TaleSpire is rpg players in Europe and US, which maybe have different spending behavior. Good luck!
Q: Why is there no player only version?
A: In our humble opinion far too many things treat people just as consumers. We'd rather the game was really cheap than remove the chance for someone to discover that they like creating.
You never know, one week a session will be canceled last minute and one of your players might start noodling around in build mode and discover there is a story inside them they want to tell. This is worth so much more to us than splitting the product could ever bring.
Your 1 and 3 are as well: https://talespire.com/faq
And while I get that it's still early days, I don't see anything here that to be excited about where it'll wind up. Streamers will get great visuals out of it (they already are, TaleSpire's doing a good job using streamers for marketing) but this is just another fiddly prep timesink for everyone else that would be better spent setting up characters, locations, plots, etc.
TaleSpire isn't going to be right for everyone. Luckily the TTRPG space is incredibly diverse and have excellent creators with different priorities. So it has a lot of people covered.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the game!
I built my own entry into the VTT space with that in mind before the pandemic with Tableplop[1] when I wasn't happy with the front ends on what was available at the time. My aim is something free, solid and always online to move tokens about a map with fog of war and a simple dice roll syntax. The 2d maps have a lot of weaknesses in judging heights and especially with flying creatures but it's unbeatable for the number of existing assets and maps and for making your own with something like DungeonDraft[2] or DungeonScrawl[3]. 2d also makes it easier to draw lines on a map on the fly and will in the gaps with imagination when you need to improvize, something that does not translate to 3d very well but is the epitome of RPGs for me.
[3] https://dungeonscrawl.com/
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I play table top rpg's a lot online and it would be nice to have something besides roll20 and the various play-by-post options.
The thing is, I think the best thing you could is something less data intensive than roll20 and something more aesthetically pleasing. If the video is a guide, this seem like a thing that an average consumer machine is going to completely choke on. Roll20, the go-to full-featured ttrpg server is infamous for audio, video and general connectivity problem, to the point most people doing video on a different server (zoom, discord, google-meet,etc) and just use the server for simulating the table top. I'm doubting this thing, even more feature heavy, could work better.
And just generally, succeeding in making this truly look like a video game might not be realizing the imagination-based ttrpg ideal.
It feels like the sort of thing that will be great for groups dedicated enough to organize it, though.
Here's a demo: https://demo.foundryvtt.com/join
This is really easy when you are in a room together. Not so much so when apart.
Organise your online events in a similar form to err ... ... reality and you'll have the same problems to deal with 8)
Create a place and arrange to meet. Have a chat and then get on with the event. You may want to require no mobiles or be more inventive by penalising them somehow - that way people who have to be contactable can do so but still play. You could even fold call outs into the game. An RNLI call out causes the characters involved to be thrown into another realm ... and ... get your imagination out. Or perhaps they get thrown into another time/space. Again, it's all about imagination.
We have a text and voice/video channel that’s restricted to just the DM and the players, we’ve all got webcams and pick a time where we can dedicate the attention to the game. Small groups also help.
Funnily enough we’re going to be using Talespire for our upcoming game, but all mechanics/tracking goes through DnDBeyond.
If someone turns off their mic or walks away from the computer you cannot ask what’s up until they’re back. And the fact that they went to get the door is eminently understandable.
I've know that the first thing dice rollers seem to grow is 3D simulated dice, so clearly the market is there.
But this would be (for me) replacing an assortment of wood blocks, lego minifigs, scribbled-on index cards, and assorted tokens with a whole lot of additional prep time.
You never build anything too crazy in real life, because it requires a lot of setup during and between games. It's just not worth it.
In digital form, you can afford to prepare big 3d maps outside of the game, and you can even share the environment you've created with other people outside your game so that they use it in their own game.
After playing for a couple of sessions though, I don't think having huge maps is worth it (yet?). Just a map of the building you're in, in 3D is good enough and makes it easy for the players to imagine a city or town around and not lose track of where everyone is.
Remarkably, it's probably more reliable in terms of performance and stability than Roll20.
Even though it can be a little more work sometimes building in 3D instead of 2D, 1.) you'd be surprised how quickly you can put stuff together once you get a little practice under your belt and 2.) there's already a ton of great builds out there, and the developer's have made it SUPER easy to import stuff (literally just copy and paste for "slabs" of content, or you can share entire boards with a URL). Plus, being in 3D makes it a lot easier to handle things like flying, verticality in map design, and just generally living in a 3D world in a way that I haven't found with most VTTs