First Dungeons & Dragons VR trailer teases a beginner-friendly tabletop game – but I’m just begging for a custom game mode

Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked‘s first trailer just dropped
It shows us the Demeo-meets-D&D experience we were expecting
There’s no release date, but we were promised post-launch DLC support

Just over a year ago it was announced that Demeo developer Resolution Games would be creating a VR Dungeons & Dragons title, a collaboration akin to combining peanut butter and jelly – it just made perfect sense. Now we’ve got the first trailer for the upcoming project: Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked (try saying that five times fast), and we’ve got our first look at the gameplay.

Demeo is the essential tabletop experience in VR with elements that fans of IRL games will recognize instantly – including dice rolling, miniatures, and fantastical settings. It was already approaching D&D in VR, so an official partnership between the two games wasn’t surprising. And the end result is exactly what people expected.

As seen in the trailer (we’ve dropped it below for you) various players come together as their diverse set of characters – a Dragonborn warrior, Halfling mage, Elf bard, and Tiefling rogue – to take on a band of Kobolds in a tabletop setting made to look like woodlands.

It ends with a quick flash of recognizable Demeo gameplay – a player rolling a die to make an attack, while the other members of their party scan their hand of cards to decide what actions they’ll take on their turn.

Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked | Announce Trailer – YouTube

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So far, the only distinctly D&D change is that the usual 12-sided die used in Demeo has been swapped for the iconic 20-sided die (D20) which all D&D campaigns rely on. However, other D&D elements have been stripped away to make the game more like Demeo; Battlemarked will be a Dungeon Master-less experience (a person who runs the game for the players) with the game deciding how NPCs and monsters engage with the players, and the title will focus on “social strategy rather than social roleplay” according to the developers – so expect combat galore.

Beyond what the trailer had to show us, Resolution Games and Wizards of the Coast have promised us two story-based campaigns at Battlemarked’s launch, with additional campaigns planned as DLC for future updates.

We’re not sure which settings will make an appearance, but we expect a few iconic locations and campaigns from the Forgotten Realms – Icewind Dale, the Tomb of Annihilation, Waterdeep, and Ravenloft to name a few – will be adapted for this upcoming title.

We unfortunately don’t know when that launch will happen however, nor which platforms Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked will launch on, though we’re expecting it’ll match the core Demeo’s release – Meta Quest 3, PCVR, PlayStation VR 2 and Apple Vision Pro systems.

Dungeons and Dragons book and players

(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)

Give me customization, or give me death

There’s a lot we still don’t know about Battlemarked but one aspect of D&D I hope we do see is customization – the ability for players to create their own characters, and potentially even their own campaigns.

I’m not expecting something to the same degree of Baldur’s Gate 3’s character creation, but the ability to mix and match classes with different D&D species to create my choice of hero rather than having to select a pre-made champion – which is what you do in Demeo – would make this feel more like a D&D adventure.

I also know a lot of players – myself included – were hoping this Demeo collab might materialize as some kind of virtual tabletop experience that gives us control over the action for our own custom games. I certainly don’t mind the inclusion of a DM-less campaign mode, but a DM-led custom mode would be awesome – especially as a stepping stone for new groups to transition from playing Battlemarked to playing D&D-proper. Demeo isn’t new to PvP – with its Demeo: Battles variant – so pulling in elements into a 3v1 players vs DM environment would be a lot of fun.

Admittedly, I’m not holding my breath for either of these customization suggestions, but as a D&D and VR fan I’m excited to see what Resolution games and Wizards of the Coast have in store for us.

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