Menyr says it does.
Table Top RPGs have seen an explosion in popularity over recent years, eventually becoming the predominate force of power in the growing markets of the games industry. Somehow TTRPGs are becoming more well known and popular than bloody VR! Can you believe that? Folks have been spending millions trying to get VR to work for years and TTRPG's resurrect themselves out of nowhere to eclipse them. That's gotta smart some people. (VR is building a little something, just increadibly slowly, I believe it'll get there someday.) But if there's one problem that gets in the way of the growth of RPGs, it's the fact that they have to, by their very nature, be played in person. I mean sure, you can sign up to Dnd Beyond for an expensive little subscription and hold your campaign there, but for one: that only works with Dnd, for two: Beyond's services are impressively taxing on bad bandwidths (I don't even know why, it's pretty upsetting) and for three:1 Dnd Beyond is kind of just like a more specialised version of Table Top Simulator.
Table Top Simulator is an old steam game that does exactly what it says on the tin. It simulates Table Tops so that you can play any number of table-top based games online with your friends. If you know what you're doing and get the right kind of assets, you can honestly turn around and play any sort of game you want to through that app, even Dungeons and Dragons. (I can attest to that because I've literally seen people do it.) All Beyond offers you on top of that is the in-game connectivity to the Dnd database so that you can look up spells instantly, which is something that good old Google is pretty decent for. What I'm trying to say is that for an official Dnd playing experience, Beyond gets the job done, but it's decently lacklustre in the grand scheme. They could have gone so much further to do something special with it's concept. And for my money, Menyr is that special something.
Dozens upon hundreds of projects are born, built and killed on the boards of kickstarter, where any one with a dream and internet connection can beg for money on ideas they may or may not have the skills to actually produce. The flurry is so intense that most people don't ever hear about the success stories, or care about them either because a lot of the big funded ideas are mindless self-destructive spirals that couldn't have possibly worked in the first place. But amid that whirlwind of narcissism and silliness, sometimes truly inspired ideas born from hands that appear accomplished enough to achieve them pop up and attract crowd funding like drip enthusiast to Air Jordans. Menyr is one such project over the past few days that has become a member of that club for the chosen few; the few with ideas that get overfunded to a silly degree. And why? Because Table Top games really need a better alternative for remote play.
Firstly, Menyr asked for 48,000 dollars and is sitting just above 300,000 with 8 more days left in their campaign; so it's safe to say that the team are going to have pressure on them to finish this project to a satisfactory degree going forward. You can't get overvalued like that without the shackles of expectations wrapping around your extremities. But it may be worth such a valuation for people out there as Menyr proposes to bring remote Table Top play something it's been sorely lacking for years now: Style. Essentially it's an engine through which players will be able to create a fully realised 3d render of their fantasy worlds that looks fit to bear the Unreal Engine 5 tag when it comes to fidelity, all customisable to the whims of a Dungeon Master to immerse their players fully. Oh, and the product is going to be free to play. That's pretty hype.
What we're looking at here is a proposition to create a new standard for digital roleplaying going forth, a standard wherein high quality digital graphics are just as important for telling the story as the storytelling ability of the Dungeon Master. (Or, alternatively, maybe some rookie DMs can use that as a crutch whilst they shore-up their storytelling tools.) Of course this style of game isn't going to automatically fit every TTRPG out there, I mean Pathfinder, D&D and probably Warhammer at some point, will find themselves at home but The World of Darkness series? Maybe not. I've recently see other tabtletops like Blades in the Dark get a really cool personalised online format mode, but I suppose Menyr wants to be the catch all for all the TTRPGs that lack the resources to go that full-throttle adaptation route.
What I find really promising, at least in concept, is the idea of a marketplace for assets that seems to be almost entirely fan controlled. Essentially they're making it so that modellers can create assets for fans to port into their own games either for free or through a fee at the discretion of the asset author. As you can imagine, this is the sort of open framework that some of the most sacred corners of the Internet still stick by such as game modding. However a system like this is really situational and temperamental in equal measure. It might take off with great gusto; and it might totally fall flat in front of everyone never really sparking up any internet. I suppose it all really depends on the success of the Menyr and the accessibility of it's marketplace.
Of course, the question comes whether turning an activity that is supposed to be played physically and face to face into a digital format isn't kind of missing the point; and I do understand that angle. Dungeons and Dragons is a social game in the sort of manner that can't be displayed over discord channels and a digital play board; but then there are some people out there that don't have the opportunity to make those trips. Heck, some people out there don't do well in public settings and would enjoy Dnd much more over a computer screen; I know because I just happen to be one of those people. Menyr's approach is an inclusivity tool that cannot and should not replace what Dnd currently does, but might just be a vector for TTRPGs to reach a bigger audience than it already is.
That is all assuming that the product which has been promised can be made. We've seen plenty of Kickstarters over the years fissile up in the atmosphere after learning many truths, often how the requested funds were not enough to complete the project and that they end up running out of investor money after a while. Menyr doesn't seem to be a big and overly complicated idea that would require millions upon millions to make, one would assume, but we'll have to wait and see now they're sitting on nearly 10 times what they asked for. I really like everything I'm seeing and have heard about the project and really hope that the team pull it all together like they say that they can. TTRPGs could be on the verge of a new dawn if they can.
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