IfDungeons & Dragons’Sigilhas a target audience, I’m definitely in it. As a 3D virtual tabletop solution,Sigilmakes it possible to play out dungeon crawls, combat encounters, or even chance meetings at taverns in virtual dioramas, a concept that immediately intrigued me as a dungeon master. While it’s not the first 3D map-making software, it’sin a league of its own as a comprehensive VTT solution, at least on paper.
D&Dhas been showing offSigilfor a while now, but I didn’t get a chance to try it out until recently, with some codes arriving in my inbox just a week beforeSigil’s open release. Luckily for me, my regular group was ready and willing to deal with a long download and a few hours of taxing their graphics cards with an Unreal Engine 5 take onD&D. We jumped into Sigil’s pre-made module and emerged one session later battered, bruised, and admittedly quite entertained.
Learning The Ropes Of D&D’s Sigil Experience
Communication Is The Key
First thing to know aboutSigil:you need a D&D Beyond Master Tier subscription to invite other playersto your lobby. Before the wide release, this wasn’t clarified on the website or guide, and the app simply omits the invite code option from its place in the menu if your account isn’t Master Tier. This confusion made for a slow start to the session and served as a template for the rougher elements of the experience.Sigilisn’t great at communicating which features are available or unavailable, and for an alpha release with a long roadmap ahead, that can be disorienting.
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As for the features that are actually available,Sigiltends to make them fairly intuitive. My players had no trouble claiming characters, moving around, using actions, and resolving combat encounters. As the DM, I didn’t find commanding the array of NPCs and enemies any more difficult.Every stumbling block was simply a question of figuring out that a feature wasn’t present. Fog of war exists, for example, but it wasn’t available in the sample module.
I’m most concerned by the reliance on D&D Beyond integration for character sheet features. While everything a character needs to do on a combat turn is easily handled within the game, otherfunctions like leveling rely on the D&D Beyond end of things. In the sample module, which uses built-in characters, the fundamentally inadequate solution for leveling is that moving to the third part of the module simply switches out character levels. Even when using D&D Beyond characters, though, Project Sigil’s conceptual goal of immersion and the need to wrangle a D&D Beyond tab don’t mesh on a single monitor.
Immersion In D&D’s Sigil Can Go Either Way
Imaginative Possibilities In A Confined Space
When it comes to immersion, I can see both major upsides and downsides to usingSigil. If you have an interesting environment like the sample module’s, it could be a good way toencourage player interactions that are harder to convey on a flat plane. My players had some fun moments with minecarts and rubble, and while their experiments spawning in tokens might be out of place in a less experimental session, the introduction of a badger did have a payoff. If your group is struggling to pay attention in online play, this could be a real solution.
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While the ease of adding elements on the fly is a major benefit,Sigil’s defined boundaries may still curb the flexibility found in a space left more to the imagination. So far, I’m more interested in using it for major combat encounters than building entire dungeon crawls. Even with a flat map laid out, you can generate a lot of atmosphere and mystery when a dungeon exists largely within players' minds, and I’m not convinced thatSigilcan fully recreate that.
Sigil’s D&D Map Creation Is Intuitive But Limited
You Can Make Anything, But Making It Great Is Harder
I also spent a bit of time inSigil’s map creation, which impressed and frustrated me in equal measures. Rather than designing based on which building blocks are available, I attempted to recreate the first floor ofCurse of Strahd’s Death House. Most functions are snappy and useful, butSigilneeds much better control options for free placement, and other ways to manipulate and adjust the current prop set could make up for missing objects.
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When I threw in the towel, it was mostly because I felt like the exercise was getting me nowhere. Laid out in the 3D space,my awkward approximation of Death House was starting to feel like a creation of less interestthan the haunting environmentdescribed inCurse of Strahd. Upon re-opening the file, my front door has also apparently converted to a blank stone wall, which isn’t encouraging.
I could eventually get something that worked out of the endeavor, but with a few props that were perfect for the job and a majority that would better fit a tavern or underground dungeon, it would never be a truly great Death House. For those other, currently better-supported purposes, I might have another go in the near future. I can envision some funSigilcreations and sessions, and I think you could make anything you needed to in some form or another, butit’s currently geared towards some specific environments.
Sigil Might Not Be Right For Most D&D Groups Yet
A Fascinating Work-In-Progress
A lot of DMs might be concerned about the workload ofmaking maps inSigil, but I think that’s mostly preferential. Although I only sometimes create maps from scratch, I tend to lay out encounters in Photoshop, and I thinkSigil could actually be a perfectly efficient option for DMs who do spend a bit of time on encounter set-uponce it’s a bit more feature-complete. Using it extensively would definitely require some willingness to let go, however. If players take a narrative pivot that renders a planned Sigil map irrelevant, it’ll have to be repurposed or scrapped.
More pre-made content, especially if it starts tying in with official adventures, could actually makeSigilan effective way to avoid prep work.
I’m actually less troubled by the prospect of converting DMs than the difficulty of getting every player in a group on board. It looks fantastic, which might be reason enough to use it, and the visual delights pay off especially well in the joy of lobbying spell effects at enemies.The intensive nature of Unreal Engine 5, however, could be a concern. A couple of my players ended up checking their PCs' temperatures partway through the session, and they weren’t thrilled by the numbers.
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Add in some bugs and the potential for individual problems, and it’s currently a big ask. Some of the ones we experienced might mostly be the results of the pre-made characters' weird limitations. One player’s character name kept resetting after renaming it, leading to some running gags, and another accidentally overwrote their stats with an imported character and never figured out any way to revert. Others, like aplayer having to reload after getting permanently stuck on one action, are farther-reaching.
In time, all ofSigil’s biggest sticking points should be smoothed over, andD&Dis making no pretense of this being a complete release in its current state. As an open alpha, it’s an interesting and often impressive rough draft for something that could be great, and the experiment might be worth a shot for interested groups. As a primary solution for playingDungeons & Dragonsonline,Sigilhas a long way to go if it wants to compete with the comprehensive use cases of alternative VTTs.
