I’ve had quite a few people bring this up and it’s been on my mind since before Shmeppy’s first prototype. I have some hefty concerns with it.
First it’d go against the 3rd trait of Shmeppy’s design pretty directly. As if to confirm that the painted duck effect is at play, I’ve had users say to me verbatim “I like how I’m forced to use more abstract tokens, rather than spending a ton of time finding the token image that’s ‘just right’”. So I think there’d be a significant downside to implementing this feature.
Second, on the “what it will do positively” side of things, I worry that it will only be marginally more satisfying than what we have now. Whenever I’ve used tokens (with images) in another VTT, I don’t feel like I’m using a handpainted metal miniature, instead it feels like a poor approximation.
I’ve got a plan forward for this feature though (that I came up with awhile ago). Specifically I’m not going to implement it yet. Instead I’m going to wait to see whether GMs and players who have used Shmeppy through several real sessions end up requesting this feature. My thinking is that If enough people who have given the abstract tokens thing a shot tell me that they’d really like images, it’ll be a good hint that the upside might be more than I thought.
But at the moment, the downsides seem to outweigh the upsides.