Does Quest Portal mark a new era in VTTs?
Quest Portal is shaking up how virtual tabletops are done with seamless AI assistance, mobile-friendly design, and easy onboarding. Creator Gunnar Holmsteinn explains.
Quest Portal links:
Quest Portal, the virtual tabletop
Quest Portal tutorial (by Dave Thaumavore!)
The VTT Generally
Hi Gunnar! Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your relationship with tabletop RPGs?
Hi Dave, I've been a long-time fan of your review videos, so I'm happy to have this opportunity!
Starting way back. I was a shy kid, a complete wallflower. However, when I was around 11 years old, I was fortunate to be introduced to AD&D 2nd edition. I was utterly hooked and played 2-3 times a week for years. Playing brought me out of my shell because I had this magical place where I was a mighty warrior - a leader of armies running around places where people listened to me. What I did mattered in that world. I became a lot more confident and outspoken. I also learned English by reading the Players Handbook and all the Complete Handbooks. I was probably well over twenty when I realized that "Charisma" is pronounced with a hard ch, like ‘christmas’ and not soft, like. ‘cherries’.
I've continued playing ever since, and TTRPGs have always had a very special place in my heart. Right now, I’m playing in two long-running campaigns and a bunch of one-shots whenever I get the chance. I’ve also been getting my 5 and 6 year old daughters to play with me, so a lot of Cora Quest recently!
Tell us about Quest Portal.
Three years ago, my friends and I wanted to move our game online. We tried most of the VTTs and were surprised by how clunky they felt. We wanted something that didn't complicate playing together, but instead facilitated it with something super simple to use. We decided to draw from our experience and build a powerful VTT that could make it easier to get into TTRPGs.
We've experienced incredible growth in the last year, so it looks like what we are building resonates with players.
Today, Quest Portal is the best place to play TTRPGs, especially if someone in the group is joining from their mobile phone. That´s where we really shine.
We have a very simple goal: to increase the number of Game Masters in the world. We’re excited about our progress so far and continue to build features we think will make a meaningful impact. We recently launched a fantastic Character Sheet builder and a gallery of templates so now anyone can create a really powerful Character Sheet for their favorite game, our players and lots of indie creators are using it for their games.
With many VTTs available today, each offering different strengths, what specific gap or unmet need were you aiming to address with Quest Portal?
Our approach to the market is to develop powerful technology that lowers the barriers of entry, and just be super focused on reducing the friction for game groups online. It's so f-ing hard to become a Game Master. You need to be an expert at many things.
Knowing the rules? We got you with our AI Assistant.
No access to a PC? You can still scratch the itch with the mobile app.
An interface that requires a thousand inputs and coding degree? hell naw.
We’re leading in three areas that are important to increasing the number of GMs: a powerful AI Assistant, a world-class mobile experience, and an intuitive interface.
What have been some of the biggest challenges you and your team have faced during the development of Quest Portal, and how did you overcome them?
Prioritizing our roadmap is by far the hardest thing, especially with a small, 10 person team like ours, where time is our most limited resource, but the enthusiasm is boundless. We want to build everything that our fantastic community asks for as well as ideas we get from playing our own games. However, we have to make sure things stay simple and fit into our primary directive of increasing the number of GMs by making TTRPGs easier to get into.
We try our best to overcome this by listening to the people that matter: the players. We aim to deeply understand the core of what any addition is attempting to achieve when proposed and we explore various solutions to solve those problems. We use their input and our analysis to help us prioritize what we do next.
Can you walk us through the user onboarding experience? How beginner-friendly is Quest Portal for players new to virtual tabletops?
It takes 5 minutes to get started. We've timed it. From the second you start signing up, until you've created your first campaign and added your first scenes and invited your friends.
We focus on keeping the UI intuitive, filling the VTT with free content, offering support for multiple TTRPGs and building tools that really help you prepare and run your games.
Getting into TTRPGs is hard enough that the tech should stay out of the way and make things simpler. An example of that is that switching between Scenes/Maps feels like using PowerPoint slides, something that most people are familiar with.
How does Quest Portal handle rule integration for different TTRPG systems? Are there plans to support more games in the future?
We want to be really good at helping you discover and understand the rules, rather than taking the joy of learning a system from you by automating everything. That's where our Library and AI Assistant step in to help.
We are constantly expanding our Library with basic rule sets that are easily searchable. When you set your campaign to a system for which we have resources, our AI assistant is fine-tuned to answer questions from these sources. Super helpful.
We have recently implemented Character Sheet Templates, which uses the same system as our Notes system. A system that means that creating a template for one of the thousands of systems out there (including your own homebrew) is easy, familiar, and requires no coding whatsoever. Once you've created your modifiers and roll buttons, you've got a sheet that can eliminate the maths for players who just want to be able to roll the best parts: it's shareable with other Quest Portal users, and you can set your campaign to always use the template.
What kind of community or user feedback has been most impactful in shaping Quest Portal’s development?
Before starting Quest Portal, I never used maps. We would scribble on graph paper and use dice and coins for tokens every now and then. So I just assumed Map support wasn't necessary, and the first version of Quest Portal skipped maps completely, just Scenes for Theatre of the Mind, Notes, and Dice. Luckily, both my teammates and early community members showed me the way. We quickly shifted gear and now have great support for Battlemaps, Grids, Fog of War, Tokens, and more on the way.
How does Quest Portal ensure accessibility for players and GMs with varying levels of technical skill or disabilities?
Giving people who don't have access to powerful PCs a chance to play with friends on iOS and Android devices is the highest-impact thing we've done to make TTRPGs more accessible.
Our Character Sheet builder doesn´t require any coding skills, we felt it was really important to make our Creator tools as accessible as possible for all skill levels.
One of the simplest but most powerful features that I came across in my time using thus far with Quest Portal was the ability to hyperlink Library entries within other entries very easily. It’s almost like building a wiki page for a campaign. Was this hard to implement programming-wise? Why don’t more VTTs do this?
It's important to have quick access to all your relevant notes during play. It really cuts down on prep time for both GMs and Players. We've invested a tremendous amount of engineering time in building a strong text editor. Being able to @mention notes and characters is key to weaving a great story together!
Side note: it used to be called "Pen and Paper" roleplaying games, but somehow "tabletop" roleplaying won. I prefer calling it Pen and Paper, it helps remind us of the importance of writing instruments.
Why don't more VTTs do this? I'm not sure actually. Technology has come a long way since the start of VTTs, and we've the benefit of building a system that can take advantage of these ideas from the start. It's a great feature that we love, and I'm sure other VTTs will catch up.
Can you explain how the Enhanced Call of Cthulhu investigator sheets and Universal Character Sheets streamline character management? Any future plans to support other RPG systems?
I think that the real reason D&D is big today is D&D Beyond. Having great software is the most powerful unlock a TTRPG can possibly have.
We want to recreate that experience for more TTRPGs. We started with Call of Cthulhu because it's my favorite system, but now we support many others through our Library and Universal Character Sheet Templates.
Character Sheets are probably the most important artifact of TTRPGs, they definitely touch more people than any other thing as it's the only thing many players interact with. You can learn alot about a system, the design philosophy and the atmosphere of a game from that one sheet. It’s the start of the roleplaying experience.
When designing our Universal Character Sheets, we wanted to get the right balance between being easy to use, powerful, and also malleable to support multiple systems and the player uses. I want to be able to write notes and reminders on my Sheet, and when creating pre-gens, perhaps a few words of guidance for the player using it.
The Universal Character Sheets and Templates have quickly become our most used feature, so we'll continue to improve them.
Quest Portal supports mobile play across iOS and Android. What challenges did you face in ensuring a seamless experience across devices, and how do these apps compare with the desktop version?
We've known from day one that having a phenomenal mobile experience would be crucial. It's not possible to offer a great experience with a direct port. There are so many differences when it comes to design patterns and user behavior. So we designed the desktop web app with that in mind. That forced us to make specific architectural and technical decisions.
The first version of our iOS and Android apps focused on the player experience. We did that to help with prioritization. Now we've added a whole lot of GM features so the gap is almost closed, GMs will be able to run a full session from their mobile or tablet apps soon.
The character sheet templates seem like a great way to streamline player setup. How flexible are these templates for customization, and how do they evolve with user feedback?
Thank you! We decided to make our Character Sheets feel like a powerful piece of paper. You can start with a blank sheet or duplicate a template, and then have full control over everything on the Sheet.
In addition to the regular formatting and real-time collaboration you expect from editors like Google Docs, we have a few purpose built widgets, such as Roll Buttons, Modifiers, Points, Slots, and Collections. These widgets allow you to build a Character Sheet, without having to learn to code.
User feedback has been key here, my team and I can't possibly know all the mechanics of all the TTRPGs. Our community has been key in helping to build up these templates and explaining to us what we missed. We've been back to the drawing board a bunch of times, really trying to nail the experience. For example, our first iteration of the Roll Buttons didn’t allow you to reference other stats - and so we added it.
How does Quest Portal’s Dice system stand out, particularly with saved Dice Formulas? Can this be customized across different RPG systems?
Macros found in some VTTs can be really powerful, but not everyone knows how to write them, so to make it accessible we decided to create a nice visual builder. You can click on the different types of dice, add addition and subtractions, configure exploding dice and keeping or dropping the highest numbers. Then we show you the resulting macro, so you can learn that format if you want.
Right now, we can support most systems. We do need to do a better job when it comes to Dice Pool systems. We need to do more for those style of games as well as games with variable amounts of dice rolled - and we are working on that, so that's exciting to look forward to.
Quest Portal AI
In what ways does Quest Portal integrate AI to enhance the user experience?
Everyone is new at some point, either new to TTRPGs or new to a specific system. The Quest Portal Assistant is great for learning the ropes, it can reference the rulebooks and provide quick answers while you're deep in play.
This also shines when it comes to Homebrew. Starting with a blank piece of paper can be daunting so our AI Notes feature is great at kicking off a scenario, and it's aware of your campaign info and character info, and any other note you @mention. You are, of course, still in charge of writing the scenario, but with a really helpful aid by your side.
AI-generated artwork has sparked debate within creative communities. Since AI is integrated into Quest Portal Pro, what is your response to critics of AI art, and how do you balance innovation with community concerns?
We’re supporting individuals playing at their private tables, and our users love being able to create something specific to their wants, rather than grabbing a generic image off of a Google Image search.
It's really important to make creativity more accessible and inclusive for those who may not have the resources, skills, time or money to produce traditional art. We're ensuring everyone around the table can tell the stories they want.
We understand the concerns and continue to explore how to best proceed. For example, we use an image model trained on a database that respects artist opt-out requests, and we clearly indicate whether an image has been created using an AI in its creation method.
How costly is it to have AI integration in Quest Portal, and would it be sustainable if your AI provider raised their prices by 25%, 50% or 100% in the next year or two?
It's pretty costly. We use a few different models of variable size depending on the use case; we start by analyzing the query, searching for relevant rules in source books, and then answer the query, all within a second or so.
If the prices suddenly rise by 50% this would not be sustainable. However, there are new open source models coming out that are really powerful. We have done a series of tests and evaluations, so if pushed, we would move to other models.
Looking Forward
Many have experimented with AI as a GM or even as players, sometimes with mixed results. Quest Portal currently uses AI as a GM assistant—what other roles do you envision AI playing in the Quest Portal ecosystem moving forward?
I've played around with a bunch of these AI GM tools. They are not fun and completely miss the point. TTRPGs is collaborative storytelling with friends and like-minded strangers. The human connection and shared experience is crucial.
I think the role of the GM is one of the most rewarding roles around the table, and we don't want to replace the GM but rather give them a powerful mech suite and increase their numbers.
Moving forward, we want to use AI to get everyone hyped up about the quest the day before to help make sure that the session takes place. There is a lot here that we are working on that is really exciting, and I would love to share more when we're closer to releasing those things.
What other trends do you see for the future of virtual tabletop gaming, and how do you plan for Quest Portal to evolve with them?
I think the future of tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) is more about broader reach than some significant changes.
Imagine a world where everyone around you is playing—where schools and towns have strong game clubs and local cafes and libraries host tabletop gaming every night.
We’ll have all these hubs of social interaction and creativity. Life will simply be better when TTRPGs become a common thread that brings people together, fostering creativity, collaboration, and stronger empathy.
Making this future a reality is the driving force behind Quest Portal and our focus on accessibility and ease of use. This will enable people of all ages and backgrounds to dive into the wonderful world of tabletop gaming.
What planned features for Quest Portal are you working on right now?
We have two teams right now; one is working on improving the core session experience: working on drawing tools and improving tokens across web, iOS and Android.
The other team is working on making character creation faster and easier for beginners, starting with a really powerful importing tool that takes any PDF, or even a photo of a handwritten character sheet for any TTRPG system, and builds a fully interactive Character Sheet in seconds.. Our prototype is magical, and I can’t wait to ship it - it will help people get started so much faster.
We also have a rotating "healer" role where one of the developers is purely focused on reliability, bugs, and polish. We make sure we set a time, a considerable amount of time, to harden existing features and really figure out how to make them feel nicer to use and more performant on all types of devices.
I have a list of small feature requests that I will be submitting to your team for review. Things like being able to flip a token, show a label for a token, expand Fog of War options, etc. But it brings up the question: how much is too much? Feature bloat is a real danger with any software, so how and where do you draw the line with new features?
We only ship features if we can design them in a way that doesn't break our rule: simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible. But the complex stuff can't get in the way.
Bloat, and the enshittification of software, is the true enemy of playing great games with your friends. Playing a game shouldn't feel like a job with spreadsheets and complicated legacy software.
We also keep a list of things we will not build, like 3D battlemaps, and power hungry features that can't perform well on lower end PC's and mobiles.
Quest Portal links:
Quest Portal, the virtual tabletop
Great article! I’ve been thinking of Quest Portal. If I get even one road block from tech on a VTT, I’m done. I don’t want to go further. This is really helpful. Thank you!