Crit Interview #002: Varun Singh of Tabletop Mirror

Welcome to Crit Hit Interviews, a series of interviews with interesting creators, players and makers in the TTRPG space. This week I’m talking to Varun Singh, the man behind Tabletop Mirror, an online app designed to help homebrewers organize and generate TTRPG content. The platform has made a few big moves in the TTRPG technology space, including the acquisition of a fairly large play-by-post platform and a successful Backerkit campaign. But what is the app exactly?

Varun sat down with me to explain the product and its origin, its audience and the future of TTM.

Crit Hit News: So what is Tabletop Mirror’s origin story?
Varun Singh: I started out as a Game Master who started running D&D and eventually Pathfinder but I didn't like how the system worked for various reasons. So I started modifying certain mechanics. Eventually I found that if I’m gonna play online, then my homebrew mechanics were not going to get any support from a virtual tabletop like Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds. So in 2018 I made Tabletop Mirror, which is supposed to be a tool that unifies all the different tools available for online DMing into a single source that works for all these things. In short, our mission is to provide a first class VTT experience for anyone playing any system

The system has been around for around six years. It started with me and my table, and then it spread to my friend’s tables. And then at some point, someone kind of nudged me and said, “Hey, this is a useful tool, I think you should put it out there on the market.” We started our open beta in January, and people have picked up the app since. We have about 1,500 users and 100 systems installed as of late July.

So what does Tabletop Mirror do exactly?

The software offers tools to combine the VTT experience with world building software like WorldAnvil and to allow homebrew creators to customize an experience to fit how they run. So if a player has homebrew rules or lore settings, they can have players create characters through their chosen system inside Tabletop Mirror as well as the ability to automate rolls and access the lore.

How is what you have different than what Roll20 or DnDBeyond does currently?
Both DnDBeyond and Roll20 have this problem where it’s designed for one particular flavor of the main games that people play. And they do that one thing really well. But if you want to create your own homebrew system, then Tabletop Mirror will let you do it. For example, if you wanted to create a custom spell in Fifth Edition that creates a dice pool, DnDBeyond doesn’t have the ability to support it.

Tabletop Mirror, in contrast, is designed for homebrewers. By catering to the interests of homebrewers, we are also then supporting people creating entirely new systems from scratch.

You recently launched a Backerkit campaign after your beta launch. What is the goal of the project?
So Tabletop Mirror was previously funded by myself as a project of passion. The point of our Backerkit is to give us some funding so we can say with confidence to everyone that we have the money to keep our servers running, to continue expanding and potentially even get more developers to help with more difficult features. The Backerkit also helps clients know that we’re not just a short-term project but that we’re going to be around for at least the next three years.

This funding will also help us pursue a number of new goals, including monetizing a creator’s content, helping people connect with each other, play-by-post functionality and providing support for the top nine TTRPGs.

Are there any plans for monetization?
First off, I want to clarify something. I think that a major problem that the tabletop gaming industry suffers from is that there are a lot of people who come into this field not wanting to build something that makes people's lives better or easier. Rather, they're looking to monetize a market that is “underutilized.” I don't want to do that. I think that there is a balancing act. We need to have the finances to make sure the lights stay on and make sure we can keep growing, make sure that we can keep doing the things we want to do. But I don’t want to make this product with the goal of selling it down the line to investors of some VC. I want this to be a project is “built for homebrewers by homebrewers.”

With all that said, we intend to rely on subscription tiers. Each tier will give you certain numbers of ‘units’, which refer to the digital items or coding that you create on the platform. For example, a 5e item might be one unit while a campaign would be several. Your tier level would determine how many units are available to you.

Earlier this summer, you acquired a play-by-chat website known as Role Gate. How did that deal come about?
So Role Gate is a play-by-post website, but it relies more on a chatting mechanism and a dice roller that’s very synchronous. It allows players to play their roleplaying game on their own free time so that they can walk away, come back, step in and out as they need. And there’s a lot of folks who play this way since it allows them to play their favorite TTRPGs without managing scheduling issues.

Role Gate’s developer and I spoke a while ago, and he said that the website was not developing enough revenue for him and that he had other obligations in his life, from finding a full-time job to caring for his new daughter. So he put out an open call for someone to purchase the website, and I reached out to him. We arranged all the appropriate transactions and now here we are.

What does Role Gate add?
There’s a couple of reasons I bothered with this purchase; the first is that it’s about preserving one of the most popular play-by-post platforms. As size goes, they’re really big with about 100,000 users. I wanted to make sure those players didn’t just lose their platform and have nowhere to go.

The second reason is that several TTM users have asked for a Play-by-Post feature, and integrating Roll Gate would allow us to do that.

The third reason is perhaps my biggest reason. Play-by-Post platforms suffer from not having any integrated system support, according to the players I’ve talked to. By merging TTM with Role Gate, we can create this really unique experience where you could have any system you play have instant support and simplify the calculations around certain spells or actions. So if you want to cast Fireball during a play-by-post , this will help simplify the process.

How do you intend for TTM to compete with better known VTT options like Roll20 or Foundry?
Ultimately, we're aware that we’re against companies like Wizards of the Coast and major platforms like Foundry and WorldAnvil. But I believe Tabletop Mirror offers a different approach that none of these platforms really address around homebrewing. We’re a small player, but we’ve a lot of support from others that will help us stand out and reach those who want to support us.

Thank you to Varun for chatting! You can check out his Backerkit here.