Playing tabletop games is fun. However, getting a group to show up for a game isn’t always easy. That’s why virtual tabletops (VTT) have become quite popular, as it allows people to partake in tabletop games without having to all be in the same place. Sigil is a new service that brings the VTT experience to Dungeons & Dragons fans.
That’s right, you can now play D&D online, eliminating the need to find an IRL group to play with to get your Dungeon Master fix. It’s a 3D VTT, too, so you get immersive visuals with that video game feel to go with your games.
Wizard of the Coast’s Sigil is a downloadable software that lets you recreate a tabletop D&D game. Instead of having to get people together in a single room, though, you get to play remotely with others, all while getting an experience that fully resembles offline tabletop play, complete with 3D version of game boards, miniatures, dice, and everything else. The character miniatures are all static, of course, to reinforce the tabletop feel, but they do add a variety of effects and lighting to help set the mood.
It’s designed to work with D&D Beyond, so players can import their character sheets, complete with their equipment and abilities, from the service, eliminating the need to start from scratch on the new system. The game also comes with its own miniatures creation system, so you can create all sorts of character figures and deck them in cool outfits. Players can also build maps of all sorts, complete with a built-in library of in-game assets to speed up the process, which you can share with other players to see numerous adventures get played out in your creations.
Sigil comes with both single player and multiplayer modes, so you can play D&D on your own or you can join quests with other players. Players can also create and host their own multiplayer rooms, so you can invite people to join your games. Do note, free players only get access to the introductory adventure and a limited number of slots for miniatures, with everything else requiring you to sign up to the subscription service. If you’re a serious D&D player, though, it is affordable enough that it’s probably worth paying for the recurring subscription.
The game runs on Unreal Engine 5, although the service shouldn’t be that resource-intensive as traditional video games, so even regular productivity laptops should be able to handle it. For the best experience, however, the outfit recommends, at least, an RTX 2080 or AMD R9 380 GPU, as well as 16GB of RAM.
Sigil is available to download now with many features already working. However, early reviews say it’s still on the cooking stage, with a good load of features already, but far from the polished gem it could be. Suffice to say, this will probably get a lot better in the next six months, so that’s something to look forward to. A full subscription to the game costs $6 a month or $55 annually.