Wizards of the Coast has given players a better look at the D&D virtual tabletop in action, complete with animated spells and a better idea of what it'll actually feel like to use.
Revealed via the D&D Direct stream, this preview shows off a party exploring a quintessential but fully-3D fantasy tavern before tangling with a giant insectoid monster and lizard-like Kobolds pulled from the pages of Dungeons and Dragons books. Although this means plenty of virtual dice-rolling of the kind players will be familiar with from D&D Beyond and programs such as Roll20, it also leads to our first glimpse of how animated spell effects are going to work via the use of a classic Fireball. This kind of visual spectacle - and being able to easily import your characters - seems to be the D&D virtual tabletop's selling point... along with the realistic lighting and textures of the Unreal Engine system used to power numerous video games. This is a far cry from the top-down 2D battlemaps normally utilized by competitors.
