Tabletop RPGs in 2022

Even dark days have bright spots: “and D&D 5e’s Inspiration has been completely forgotten.”

Inspiration is a ton of fun if the players and GM actually buy in and fuck with it – we get some excellent RP moments out of really digging deep into character traits, flaws, and bonds in our Curse of Strahd campaign. I prefer to house-rule it to work more like Mutants & Mastermind’s Hero Points, though (on an Inspiration re-roll-via-Advantage, rolls 10 or less get 10 added), and I also do away with the stupid “any amount of Advantage cancels out any amount of Disadvantage and vice versa” nonsense and actually count 'em out.

Which is maybe a way of saying, okay, fine, Inspiration-as-written maybe does suck, but I love mechanics like that when they’re done competently.

My reactionary take mostly shows my discomfort with more-narrative mechanics. I have a plan to at least get more exposure and build some skills to appreciate and adapt story-oriented mechanics. I’m gearing up to run 7th Sea second edition. I’m not sure how many sessions to carve out before reverting to baser instincts. I can already feel the urge to swap to first edition rules or maybe All for One: Regime Diabolique.

Oddly, I feel comfortable improvising and keying off of player actions. The discomort arises from something about the orientation of fiction-first rules, sometimes a reversal of action and result, sometimes a detaching from anchoring (numerical?) truths about the world. Because 7th Sea has so little numerical description of things in the world, there might be less of those feelings. There should be fewer occurrences of one system presenting a certain view of likelihood being contradicted by another.

E.g., a system for falling damage and a system to land-safely-with-explanation. I’m more used to the former. It says something true about that world. The latter reduces the amount of truth in the system without adding new truth, as a mechanic in its own right. I think that’s why the story approach feels more nebulous. But, I think I like what I see about 7th Sea. If someone’s falling off a high tower, it asks me to explain how bad of a fall is this likely to be without action on the Hero’s part. It never told me up front with formula for distance, ground material, number of awnings. I guess I’ll see how players interact. I hope for “richly”, like whipping their belt off and hooking around a laundry post–and not “technically”, like I’m best at Wits+Taunt, so I roll that and spend all five Raises to cancel the damage.

Detailed mechanical systems might have encouraged patterns of such technical responses. Fairly so, even. The system did all of the work of explaining what was going on. We witnessed the result, then acted from that point.

The.trick, to repeat myself, is ensuring my group gets enough experience in this style so we can appraise what we like best. These are folks who’ve only had me as a GM, 95% of our sessions in two D&D campaigns. Even if this trial doesn’t work out, though, I know I’ll circle back later, until I feel I have reasonable fluency in running a fiction-first game. (A next pass would likely be Blades in the Dark or Thirsty Sword Lesbians.)

I think you’re grasping onto the right ideas in ways that make me hopeful it can work out for your group, and for what it’s worth, I know at least one guy in our larger RPG collective who strongly feels the way you do about “neutral” numerical systems producing formulaically generated situations/complications to respond off of, so it’s not like you’re off the reservation for liking how you do things already and the mechanical support that a game like D&D offers to enable that kind of play. Mind, the guy in question with us also basically spends every waking moment in our Discord whining about how no one else wants to play joyless zero-player-input death-march campaigns like he does, hah :)

But yeah, a narrative-forward game is generally gonna ask more of the players, and in some ways, there’s an element of “it’s as fun as everyone is interested in making it” inherent to a lot of those. Not that there isn’t some of that to D&D, too, right? You can easily lock yourself in “I swing my Longsword 3 times and Second Wind to heal 1d10+3 every single turn until we win or we die” style mindsets with certain classes, and unless the GM does a lot of heavy lifting to force people out of the rote ruts they dig themselves, they’ll tend to stay there and then wonder why the game “got so boring.” Alas, the human mind is infinite in its capacity to ruin its own fun :)

Whereas, yeah, if you want to roll a slightly fantastical, stylish swashbuckling action movie style campaign where people are whipping out belt buckles onto oh-so-convenient flagpoles midway down the thick-walled tower of Lord D’Arcy Montague III, his semi-imperial fuckfacery, you can certainly prime the pump to an extent – explain the tone and timbre of the game, ask people how they do a thing repeatedly, have NPCs behave stylishly themselves – but at the end of the day, you’re a little bit at the mercy of the players willingness/ability to stop waiting for a formula to tell them they’re in danger and decide decisively that they should do awesome shit to escape the situation.

Maybe it helps to say, “In D&D, you know you’re on 20HP and facing a 4d10 fall of the cliff that statistically puts you unconscious and 120ft below your nearest ally every time, so maybe now’s the time to risk a nasty Counterspell and cast Feather Fall or rely on their Rogue’s Defensive Roll. Here, if you allow all these Fictional Uh-Ohs and No-Nos (whatever your system of choice might choose to call its mechanic for ‘ending up in progressively more fraught situations’), the world is gonna have free reign to do things to you on the scale of fucked-up-life-ruining-shenanigans of Count of Monte Cristo that will make you wish you’d just gone SPLAT!, so it’s time to get creative and let loose your inner Errol Flynn, dammit!”

I wish you luck, @_aaron. I think getting out of a comfort zone can be very liberating and VERY inspiring in getting you to rethink how, and why you do things when GMing. I’m going very much the opposite route with a lot of open sandbox play (as I’ve prattled on and on and on to Mando offline) very dependent upon player responses, choices and reactions engaging with a world “that is.” Which has been a blast, because I have generally run campaigns with very structured narrative ideas for as long as I can remember. Doing things really differently has really just juiced me up and invigorated me in a big way.

Thank you both for the encouragement. I would want to quote Armando’s line directly, but I would feel quite the poseur for not having seen any of Flynn’s films yet. That these Zillennials wouldn’t know who he is might permit the line. Navarone, you’ve ventured in a direction that’s unique to my ears: from strong narrative to sandbox. I’m heartened that variety inspires and difference teaches. Me want. Maybe get!

I like narrative-first RPGs in small doses. You get that fun feeling of story-telling with friends. It almost feels like a whole different genre though. I like the way you put this…

… which in non-story-games leads to the problem of way too many rules to try to add more truth to the game. There’s some magical middle ground where there’s enough core rules to make judgment calls easy, but not so many core rules that I need a rulebook at the table (I hate referencing rulebooks during a game). I think ideally in a traditional rpg an action falls through these steps:

  1. Resolution is handled explicitly by the rules. If not covered…
  2. DM infers a reasonable ruling based on adjacent rules. If there aren’t any adjacent rules…
  3. Use a generic resolution system (eg “Athletics check DC 13”) or Rule-of-Cool.

The more often you’re hitting 1 or 2, the more coherent the world feels, which helps a lot with making in-world decisions feel meaningful and effective. Lately I’m really drawn to traditional RPGs where the brunt of the rules are not in the combat section. I feel like these games are way more likely to have adjacent rules for any given ruling a DM needs to make.

There was some blog post I read a while ago about a similar structure idea for DM prep (I can’t recall the source). It was saying if players ask a question about the world, you go through steps like:

  1. Answer the question using explicit notes you’ve taken. If no notes cover it…
  2. Answer by rolling on random tables you’ve prepared. If no tables cover it…
  3. Wing it.

Similarly, the more you’re hitting 1 and 2, the more coherent the world feels, and the more impactful decisions feel in it. I’ve been prepping a lot more random tables lately which makes prep shorter and gives plenty of reference material at the table. Like if players are going into a castle, I’d write up a table on common furniture in castle rooms. That way instead of putting a description in every room, I can just roll up some furniture if players ask about it.

Sorry I’m just rambling, but these posts got my brain bubbling in some random direction (I blame recent lack of sleep). Sometimes I think my tastes in RPGs are the opposite of @ArmandoPenblade’s so it’s always surprising to me how much I agree with what he posts. Having the right number of rules in the right place allows “fucked-up-life-ruining-shenanigans of Count of Monte Cristo” to feel fair and fun! But buy in is essential in either case, whether it’s narrative style for a story game or the ruleset / tables that creates those narratives.

I think frequently great GMs and roleplayers may find very different kinds of emotional-social-tactical experiences enjoyable, and might desire to have them in very different settings or using very different tools or with very different kinds of people, but the core underlying methods to get to the enjoyment consistently within your chosen settings, using your chosen tools, with your chosen companions, are nonetheless very broadly applicable.

e.g.,

Like all of the hell yes. I think my general method of session running is basically:

When the players ask what happens in-game when they [do something] (note: this “asking” might be implicit in them using a mechanic or triggering an effect, and “do something” can occasionally, often hilariously, also mean “don’t do something”), I go through steps like:

  1. Answer the question using the immediate rules to handle a very specific situation. If no rules cover it. . .
  2. Answer the question by using the explicit notes I’ve written beforehand. If no notes cover it. . .
  3. Answer the question by making an inference that derives from 1 & 2 (AKA, wing it)

Sometimes I’ll insert a 2.5: “Ask them what they think happens,” if it’s the style of game that encourages that.

And for running a campaign as a whole? Yeah, the steps are again very similar.

Reading your thoughts @porousnapkin gave me some brain bubbles, too. I started thinking that what shifts in what I think of as more-narrative rules is perspective. For a player, the locus of thought moves outside of the character to something broader that accounts for the structure of play itself. Then, like with video games, folks have preferences for something more first-person or more third-person. And that can change with genre or even particular sorts of action.

Then I ran 7th Sea (second edition) last night. Like in board games, my understanding by reading the rules proved different from what they actually implied in play. The players did not change their perspective, though how the rules resolve action is different. Okay, sure, it’s the first session, and maybe some will start to develop a sense of failure-as-interesting for a character. It absolutely seems like the game plays fine without doing that. So, I was surprised.

Running the session heavily resembled the sequence of extrapolating detail that you and @ArmandoPenblade described. Something fascinating emerged. The way the rules say a Hero succeeds at the thing they want by spending a Raise meant I felt a need to add interest to a scene that wasn’t coming through the tension of what a dice roll will be. I added bigger, clearer downsides: at the end of this round, you’ll be sinking into the sea if you don’t get off the ship. I added optional things of interest, tempting them to choose if they could get enough of what they already knew they wanted and go for more or not. I think I always had stuff like this in games I ran. There just seems to be a different priority and clarity around choices in the action of 7th Sea. Maybe because it is so open, because the players’ intents aren’t mediated through as many mechanics.

We finished half the adventure I had in mind with four players using pre-generated characters. That’s a bit slower than my guess but not much. However, play got faster over the course. I asked for their thoughts at the end. Everyone enjoyed the session, quite a bit more than I predicted. They also had observations that revealed things I hadn’t directly synthesized about the game:

  • The universality of the mechanics kept things moving. I.e., once they played the first action sequence, later ones and dramatic sequences all worked the same way.
  • Spending Raises had certitude of accomplishing a thing, and the consequences were clear for not addressing the situation.
  • The small scale of Wounds as consequences compared to their health made heroic action feel more doable.
  • Choosing an approach at the start of a round helped guide later choices without binding them.
  • Social co-exists with action, and the fact everyone has Raises to spend means everyone participates in a scene.

I haven’t really heard of 7th Sea before, but your post made me intrigued and I found this review to get a better idea on what it is. Holy moly that game sounds neat! I hope you keep writing us about how it’s going. I think I have to pick up a copy of this! I hope you keep writing about your experience with it, the backwards nature of its core rolling procedure is hard to wrap my head around having not played it.

Really love to hear this! Like porous, I’m not immediately familiar with the particulars of 7th Sea (a buddy of mine loves it and is always bugging folks to play, but things haven’t materialized just yet), but this sounds like a ton of fun, and I think those calls – like having the clear big downsides + side distractions to push the envelope of things while still letting their spent raises feel awesome – were super solid on your part.

I’m generally a fan of heavily universal mechanics for the base of my system, with an option to Get Weird™ for a particular mechanic for funsies if I want (most one shots I run have a a Get Weird™ moment in them, hah), and yeah, it really does help drive things forward.

The mention of approaches to drive guidance kinda reminds me of some elements of scores in Blades in the Dark and related systems. Hmm. Maybe I need to snag a copy of 7S at some point :)

I was thinking similarly, @_aaron’s stakes raising reminds me of timers in Blades in the Dark and Index Card RPG. I love timers in RPGs, they give so much focus to the drama. They also let you as a DM put big stakes on the table without feeling unfair because the players get X actions to respond to them. I like in ICRPG they recommend setting timers by rolling a d4 eg. “The Kraken is bringing the ship down in d4 turns.” There’s great dramatic tension in the roll, d4s are fun to spin down each turn, and leaving the amount of time up to fate lets you stress alongside your players.

[Incoming ramble] I read this series of RPGs a couple months ago called 2400 (which I heard about listening to the Into the Odd Remastered podcast where Jason Tocci was interviewed, which I recommend!). Each game is only 3 pages of rules and a cover, but still pretty dense. The mechanics are light and rely heavily on GM rulings. There isn’t much in the mechanics to make decisions about, so the decision space is entirely in fiction. To make that work, if an action is dangerous, the related roll process reads like a negotiation:

  1. The player describes what they’re attempting
  2. The GM explains what they would roll and what happens on success and failure
  3. The player then can amend their action, seeking different success or failure conditions or a different roll (repeat ad nauseum)

This is in contrast to a lot of D&D I’ve played where what happens on failure isn’t explicitly stated before the roll. Often, there’s an assumption that failure just means “nothing happens”. But then when something does, it can feel cruel and punishing. For instance, if you’re trying to disarm a trap and on failure trigger the trap, that feels cheap if you didn’t know that was possibility before the roll. I’ve been trying to incorporate specifying failure conditions during that negotiation phase in my personal games lately and it’s really powerful! Like timers, I feel like it lets me put harsher conditions on failure and have it still feel fair because players have an opportunity to amend their action to reduce the chance of downsides or do something else entirely. In 2400, there’s no HP, so the way you die is by literally having the DM put death as the failure condition of a roll. Great way to knock up the stakes while still saying “yes and…”!

I think 2400 is probably too mechanics light for me, but I can definitely get a lot out of experimenting with things that aren’t in my wheelhouse. I’m hoping to run one of them for a one-shot sometime soon.

When I read Blades in the Dark, I thought the clocks were the dryest thing. They turned me off of running the system. I was immediately reminded of being in a playtest in 2007 or so. One session the developer, as we talked to an NPC, set down an index card with information and a reward. A quest card. Another player and I hated it. That ended the session within 15 minutes. There was something too contractual, too gamified for my understanding of the interaction.

I’m trying to understand the difference between my feeling then and my feeling to the events in the 7th Sea. Years later, I should at least admit the possibility that developer had ideas about stakes like these other systems have since presented. But I still get a tightness in my gut thinking about it.

There’s a 7th Sea quick start document at https://www.chaosium.com/content/FreePDFs/7th%20Sea/7th%20Sea%20Quickstart.pdf. Up through page 16 are the general player-facing rules. The next few pages are more for the GM. Then, in the sample scenario, there are a couple pages of additional player rules for any duelist or sorte sorcery characters.

Edit: Aha, I figured out this hidey tool makes sense below.

Session write-up

Since you expressed interest, and I’m liking the conversation, I’ll see if I can give a quick-enough play report to show when and how the rules were used. I took the adventure idea from a Warhammer FRP game a friend ran a few months back when I made my first out-of-state trip in three years. (I discovered that I like wearing a mask on a plane for the extra humidity it keeps in the air.)

[Some way through writing it, I came back up here to warn you it’s long. I don’t think I have any overall commentary new in it, just some explanation of decisions. If you’re reading for the discussion of the ideas of running games, feel free to skip.]

Everyone picked one of the four pre-generated characters, found an image to put as a token in the VTT, and decided on a name. They were on a small, fleet pirate ship, manning the oars. Right legs shackled and connected to other slaves by chain. Anyone who wanted to have been part of an uprising the day before could start with a bonus Hero Point (trust me, they’re good) and 3 Wounds (trust me, that’s not so bad). One player took the offer.

“There are shouts across the water, the sounds of cannon fire and steel ringing against steel. You can’t see much over the sides. Suddenly your ship lurches and shudders as another ship rams it on the left. Timbers splinter, water pours in. Anyone who wants to be rowing by the point of impact starts with your chain freed from its anchor, and you’ll take 3 Wounds.” Again, one taker but a different player.

“This pirate ship is going down. The crew flee to the two life boats. One fills quickly and pulls away. The pirates show no concern for any of you. Tell me what you want to do, then we’ll roll dice.” The approaches included Theft, Convince x2, and maybe Athletics. I think they had between 6 and 2 Raises, which in the coarsest sense are how many actions they get to take. I told them the ship was going to be fully submerged at the end of this Round.

The first action was from the player that started least chained. They asked if they could see any of the pirate crew known to have a manacle key. I figured why not, though now I wonder how would it have been if I asked for their action to be spent on Notice? That seems like it doesn’t do enough in an Action Sequence. I feel fine letting that mostly been a Skill that sees use in Dramatic Sequences. So they cross the deck and pluck the key from that crew member. After spending that Raise, they’re still first, so they face a choice of trying to do more things with Theft, which only cost 1 Raise each, or switching to other actions. The players all seem to want to free as many of their fellow rowers as possible, so I tempt them by adding that the captain’s cabin at the aft has been abandoned, with whatever treasure, weapons, or charts that might be left inside.

A lot of actions go towards unlocking shackles. This definitely took a pause of thought for me to think of what was a good-fitting number. I decided with the other rowers panicking, a Raise regardless of approach could free three people. No player said anything about that not feeling like enough in comparison to other actions. Maybe these sorts of rulings will stand out more as we get more familiar with it, though I should also develop a better sense of how much progress to let an action achieve.

The players get themselves freed early. Then, Convince organizes rowers to use the key themselves and pass it around. That will only help about half the rowers before the end of the round. Almost all the remaining actions get metal items and weapons distributed for the other rowers to break their chains around. One player hurls a broken oar, taking out a pirate, and jumps clear of the ship. The other three players make it onto the second skiff of pirate crew abandoning the ship. A final Convince actions says surely you need us to handle these oars for you fine overlords. Get to rowing, a pirate commands.

Those pirates are a Brute Squad. When we move into the second round, I’m transparent with the players that some of the pirates who hadn’t looked like a threat (i.e., hadn’t been counted in the strength of the Brute Squad) will grow a spine and retaliate if you take hostile actions. It felt like, since there were three of them and not much other direct threat that I had established, this would be give them a better sense of danger and something to do with the many actions they were liable to take. Of the rowers, from they had seen, nearly all had gotten free of their chains but only half had surfaced.

The first player pushes one pirate out of the life boat and creates an opportunity by tossing that pirate’s cutlass to the next player. On the next action, I let the player know that they can spend extra raises for extra Wounds . So, they spend a total of 3 to quickly dispatch the other three armed pirates. The third player in the boat jumps into the water to see if they can help any of the survivors.

At this time I decide a pirate fleet’s cruel treatment of their slaves has encouraged sharks to be active in the vicinity. Poof, a new Brute squad of three sharks harrassing underwater rowers. That player who jumped in happens to be the duelist, so calls for the cutlass. It gets tossed to them in the water. I explain the extra juicy attack option that a duelist has. They Slash with an extra Raise and drive off all three sharks. The people in the raft see the water bloom dark with spilled blood, then a splash as a shark breaks the surface, their compatriot holding a fin, and is that an A carved in its hide, before being dragged back below.

We take a sizeable break. Upon recommencing, I fast-forward a tiny bit getting them to the nearby land they could see and headed towards, away from the sea battle. A company of horseman ride along the beach and greet them. All of the survivors are offered shelter in a heavily-armed fort that squats on this island. (Oddly, they’ve not heard it fire its cannons.)

In the next part, they talk with the command of the fort and his advisor. Even though talks could go poorly, it seemed fine to just let the conversation flow without making it a Dramatic Sequence. Looking at the feedback, it likely meant in this portion I lost the participation of all the players. Maybe using a Dramatic Sequence would have been better for the interwoven action and shared spotlight. It’s certainly harder to tell online and without video. What is known is that after this part, the player who most often has trouble staying awake started having trouble staying awake.

The setup is that this island fort of the Crescent Empire is low on supplies. Pirates mass in the nearby waters. When their attack comes, too many of the warriors have been injured to meaningfully defend themselves, even inside these robust fortifications. But, the advisor has deciphered writings from ruins on the island that speak of a nectar of life. If this can restore the wounded to good health, then the commander thinks they a have chance, a good one even.

I tried to illustrate the despair of their situation in what felt to be a novel method–generosity. Take what remains of our stores. We have no use for anything that won’t be consumed in the next few days. Find what peace you may. If you think you can help, please accompany the advisor.

Then we switched to a Dramatic Sequence. This would let them tackle problems of tending to their fellow survivors, researching the ancient records, talking to the advisor, and scouting the area. I didn’t have much in the way of consequences here. I guess it was already established that not changing the material conditions would lead to mass slaughter in a few days when the pirates land. I wonder if that was clear enough and is what propelled the action for the players.

Opportunities got introduced to speak to a wife of the advisor, locked away in a room for prayer and penance, to find and read some slates that were not intended to be shared, and to intercede with guards who were discussing a careless mistake by two pirate ships in their distance and formation. All of the opportunities were taken. Maybe that’s another sign I didn’t have enough consquences? But, this is a system where they are Heroes. As long as it feels tense, we should be good. Is there a tensionometer?

We played one Round of that Dramatic Sequence and stopped there. I could see a second round happening or moving quickly to an Action Sequence. The player who was scouting had the monster hunter character, so when they found tracks, they identified them as ghoul tracks and followed them to a lair. We ended with them hearing a scratching of claw on stone.

With time to think back, there are three to five little points I want to describe to remind people of the situation. Overall, I’m still happy with how it went. There was a lot of detail that I added that I hadn’t planned out, like the details of this jinn that guards the ancient ruins. I learned it is the Halted Breath, and nothing living may enter its domain. The advisor made inexplicably quick progress in deciphering the old writings, and there’s a pungent burning smell from his private quarters at night. And will the players remember any of it? Tune in next week.

This is a problem I have. Well I’ve tried many of those system types, I also am deeply involved in and enjoy the board/wargame hobby. And those systems feel too “boardgamey” for my taste. While trying to propel the narrative and encourage full table participation in creating the very structure of the narrative and plot by all parties, it’s too “gamist” for me. I do enjoy that sort of play, but for me it feels better in something like Battlestar Galactica the board game or republic of Rome, as examples.

I am the opposite. I come to tabletop RPGs for the open-ended gamey problems only they can produce due to the presence of a GM. I want solid, structured, procedural mechanics that are adaptable to the narrative and flexible for the GM. I prefer fun stories more as the output of the game rather than the input of the player and GM (it’s a spectrum and I’m more on the output side, but still pro GM and players bringing some story to the table).

Actually the thing that looked interesting to me about 7th Sea was its resolution sounded much more structured and procedural. When a game’s non-combat resolution consists only of skill rolls, I check out. I want more gamey structure across the board.

I hear you. Its why I GM GURPS. It lets me handle that without cards, tables, scene resolutions on charts etc (so in a “Simulationist”) way. The trick and change for me was doing that and trying to make it open world-ish as possible and maximize Player and Character Choice about direction, from uber-big picture to “what are we doing today.” And I respect the games with the abstract resolution systems that try to be interactive and deal with it in a short period of time. I’ve just personally come to the conclusion that when I want that itch scratched, I’ll turn to a boardgame. Because of my own weird mental associations, I guess. It’s hard to quantify, “this is fun for me, because…” And that can be a moving target as life passes too. Currently, my awesome group that are great players individually AND help each other (and me) out are probably 75% of it. Maybe 95. :)

Roll20 and OneBookShelf (DriveThruRPG) are teaming up.

First, this is an integration inspired by passion for tabletop gaming between two successful companies with a shared vision for the future. Roll20 and OneBookShelf both see critical competencies in one another that we know will lead to even greater success. Roll20’s roadmap has included expanding and improving their Marketplace, and OneBookShelf’s goal has long been to expand into the virtual tabletop (VTT) space. Together, we are the best way to buy, organize, and play tabletop RPGs online.

In the coming weeks, we will add PDF support to Roll20’s VTT, giving GMs and players the ability to upload, read, share, and immediately play using any PDF in the VTT. No need to link anywhere else for your players!!

It sounds like it might mean you don’t have to double dip on Roll20 for stuff you’ve already bought on DTRPG, which would be awesome, but if not it’s mostly a shrug for me.

(Not in the sense of being able to read DTRPG PDFs on Roll20, that’s pretty beside the point for me although probably vaguely handy, but in the sense of having sheets/macros/etc ready like marketplace content does now.)

Mergers, and this is clearly a merger, even if they don’t actually say it, but call it “Joining forces” for some reason, are RARELY good for consumers. I suspect this is the same.

While I LOVE Drivethrurpg, it has had the “new site preview” up for years by now, and Roll20 just has so many outdated, clunky systems and doesn’t clean up at all in its systems or documentation, that it drives people like me away.
Merging these two…well, someone really has to have a clear vision and be able to steer the company with a firm hand, because otherwise the confusion from such mergers will end poorly.

I agree completely. OneBookShelf works, but is a tad outdated. Roll20 is super clunky and imo is verging on being not worth it. My question is who of the two parties makes the other better? Unless they are making themselves attractive for purchase as a combination by WOTC. Which will probably be bad for everyone (consumers and hobbyists, anyhow).