The D20 Beat: Designing Burn Bryte as a digital-first tabletop RPG

Video games have been one of the bright spots of the coronavirus pandemic. Humans are social animals, and the shelter-in-place and quarantine orders continue to keep us at home. And in most cases, this is keeping us from playing tabletop role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons or Vampire: The Masquerade.

Enter digital tabletops such as Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds. These “virtual tabletops” have tools that helps players run pen-and-paper RPGs. They have maps and player tokens. They have character sheets and die-rollers. But so far, no publisher or writer has designed a system that taps the possibilities of a digital toolset.