As a hardcore roll20 hater, I’m not too happy about this. Hopefully this at least makes R20 better and demiplane won’t just be killed off in 6 months.
Why hate roll20?
Less about specifically hating Roll20, than the blatant engagement in anti-competetive practices and the monopolization of the industry in a push toward a vertically integrated monopoly.
Sort of like if Hasbro bought out the main book printer used by a bunch of TTRPGs so they have a vertical integration and can basically force all those other games to either deal with a hostile competitor to get books printed at unsustainable prices or completely upend a huge section of their development pipelines, try to find another printer, build that relationship, rework the pipeline and formatting guides so the printer actually can print the books. That’s a process that could take multiple years and millions of dollars to do. Both of which options would kill even large rpg studios.
Why the hate?
Roll 20 kind of sucks. They haven’t made tangible improvements in years for performance, and the gm and player tools are lacking compared to other options despite making money hand over fist.
You don’t love your GPU being pegged while displaying a static map?
Even worse, Roll20 development is not only slow, player made solutions to issues are locked behind a paywall.
Making your customers pay you a monthly subscription to fix your product for you and then charging other customers a monthly subscription to access the fixes you didn’t make is a grift so insane it’s bordering genius.
That’s no reason to hate anything. You just mentioned there are alternatives, just switch to them.
P.S. I am very skeptic of any claim that any TTRPG product making money have over first these days. Especially one with a functional free tier.
We did. I still hate roll20.
And I’m trying to understand why.
Let me make a comparison. I like Fari as a Fate VTT. Fari is limited to the point of being “bad”, but I still like it for what it provides for free and how they interact with their community. It’s likely related to me preferring to play theater of the mind and using VTT to share art, simplify skill rolls/ math, other stuff that makes the session go smoother.
For that level of requirements, Roll20, Role, Foundry, all offer a decent package.
What is it about Roll20 that rubs you the wrong way enough to elicit hate? Just not updating the product?
We used roll20, and it sucked, and ruined the experience in a lot of our sessions. You’re all like role playing, getting into it, and you can’t cast your spells because of roll20. We put money into it, buying shit for our games. They put money into youtuber sponsorships instead of improving the platform. It’s personal. You finally get 4h of overlapping free time on a Friday and the adventure won’t load. Do you understand now? We switched, but we still hate it. Knowing that they still haven’t improved years later just feels like “yeah that’s about right”. Fuck roll20.
Source: https://blog.roll20.net/posts/roll20-has-acquired-demiplane/?_hsmi=310100938
“We’re excited to announce that Roll20 has acquired Demiplane, the best-in-class character-building solution for tabletop roleplaying games! Demiplane joins a growing suite of TTRPG (tabletop roleplaying game) offerings from Roll20 that include Roll20 Tabletop, DriveThruRPG, and Dungeon Scrawl.”
I suppose “hand over fist” is a subjective term, but you don’t acquire companies for free.
DriveThruRPG (which merged with Roll20 in 2022) according to https://www.wargamer.com/dnd/roll20-buys-demiplane
Roll20’s making some cash to keep their payroll* and purchase other companies.
*the business running
It’s pretty common to include a stake (ie stocks) in the purchase tender of companies. Sometimes very little actual money is exchanged. They agree on what each company is worth and the owners of the bought business end up with an equivalent stake in the remaining company.
I guess Roll20s subscriber numbers plateaued and they are now feeling the pressure from dnd beyond. Buying a competitor is probably the fastest way to bolster their customer count.
Hopefully they don’t go out of their way to try to lock you into using their VTT. I’m not a fan of Roll20 myself but as long as they let Demiplane be themselves and keep it mostly open for third party plugins to do their thing, we should be alright in the long run.
Honestly? Be prepared to leave. Enshittification is coming to get Demiplane.
(A new entry for https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ …)
I wouldn’t be surprised if they introduce another subscription tier at some point that features Ads or worse. Then, at a later date, they will gradually raise prices across the board so the new subscription tier becomes as expensive as the current one.
I have no idea what Demiplane is but I do hate to see companies buy other companies.
Demiplane is dndbeyond for RPGs other than dnd*, currently pathfinder 2e, alien RPG, avatar legends, the 2 critical role RPGs, and some others.
*They’re also adding 5th edition soon, but it’s currently just the dnd 5e SRD and kobold presses Tales of the Valiant, not the full dnd 5e
Oh that’s cool. I’m happy that it exists and now kinda sad it’s only owned by one VTT. That would’ve been a good resource for other VTT’s out there.
