Quote from: KenHR;290846AM's stalking aside...

.

I don't think he was stalking at all.

Quote from: Broken-Serenity;290424yeh i agree on the general pointlessness of trying to rp on mmo's, thing is the companies who run the games could easily add some kinda filter to the roleplay based servers to stop idiots who lack an imagination from calling there toons stupid shit but they dont seem to give enough of a damn to do so.  thats why i no longer bother with city of heroes, i just cant buy into a city who's citizens want to be protected by a guy calling himself ilikecookies or xxxcaptainbigshlongxxx.

Now we're talkin'. Those are gonna be the names of my next two D&D characters...


...what?

Quote from: jeff37923;290485They were made from bone before, so they will again...

Sweet!  

Quote from: Warthur;290704I suspect more people come into gaming through friends than through stumbling across a book and learning to play from that.

I deeply agree.   However, game stores are very important.   A lot of people who are in our 4e Meetup group were AD&Ders who dropped out of the hobby, then as a whim popped into the game store and got pointed to the 4e books and told to drop by our regular monthly game.

Quote from: Koltar;290707That right there means that Role Playing Games will be around for quite awhile.

I hope you are right!

Quote from: estar;290739The VTT that allows it users access to hundreds of gamers has the potential of putting the industry on a stable footing. As those who can't find players or can only play at odd times can find a group to play the game with.

I agree.  BTW, thank you for the detailed and insightful post about VTTs!

Quote from: estar;290739Wizards has a chance at creating a second generation VTT software with access to thousands of gamers. If they succeed at doing this then look for a sea change in our hobby.  If they open up the VTT to other game systems the network effect will cause it to swamp all other competitors. If they don't then look for a strong third party competitor to emerge.

I doubt Hasbro is sharp enough open DDI to non-4e.  

However, if DDI is a hit, I could see Fantasy Grounds getting investors to create a more open VTT.

Quote from: Stuart;290746given the choice most people would choose sitting at a real table with real people to play a tabletop game over any virtual table top thing instead of playing an MMO.

I agree that most people would choose Real Table (RT) over VTT.   However, I believe that VTT could compete aggressively with MMOs - especially with people who used to play RT.  

Also, I can see people having their weekly/monthly RT experience, but also doing VTT once a week (or more) as their other gaming.

Quote from: Nicephorus;290749I think some people also like the stay at home aspect of mmorpgs.  You don't have to travel or even put on clothes to interact with others.

Icky...but true.

One of my old RT groups disintegrated when WoW began.   Three of the group were decent gamers, but social interaction was difficult for them.   WoW gave them a shield of protection between themselves and their gaming and off they went.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;290809Apologies if the image comes in a bit big: this is what FantasyGrounds looks like:

Wow.   I did not know it looked that good.   Thanks for the image!

Let's not use the word "stalking" lightly here folks; just like a certain someone is summoned up anytime someone says the word "Nobilis", AM shows up to defend 4e; and that's fine, as long as it is relevant to the discussion and not derailing a thread.

The term stalking should really be reserved for someone following someone around from thread to thread to engage in personal attacks or off-topic behaviour.

I do see AM being really obsessed with 4e; and trying very hard to defend it in a place that's overall quite hostile to it, but I do not see that he's stalking anyone in that latter sense.  Unless he radically changed his behaviours, I don't think he'd ever have anything to worry about from me.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Aos;290865I don't think he was stalking at all.

I don't, either.  That was just more of me being an ass.

Apologies, AM, for the failed attempt at humor here.

@RPGPundit:  All well and good... except this thread isn't about 4e.

My reply to Abyssal Maw was:

QuoteYou're not going to start stalking me outside of 4e threads now, are you?

And I hope that he doesn't. If I were asking the admins to do something about him I would have contacted them directly. Which I haven't done.

Quote from: Stuart;290897And I hope that he doesn't. If I were asking the admins to do something about him I would have contacted them directly. Which I haven't done.

...Eerily reminiscent of that passive aggressive RPGnet thing where someone weak will try to goad people into making personal attacks so you can jump up and down and squeal like a cur for the mods. Considering the timing and the fact that you actually are a cur, I thought that was probably what was up.

Anyhow, back to VTTs.

FantasyGrounds by default is optimized for D&D, but they allow alternate rulesets and character sheets to be created and imported. This isn't just a reskin, they use XML to create how the dice come up with successes and such. Like if your character rolls to attack it can automate whether or not a hit is a hit, or handle behind the scenes calculations.

There's a specialized ruleset for Traveller, one for Labyrinth Lord, one for Gurps...and others. The ability to create your own ruleset is available as well, if you can handle XML.

There's almost zero chance that DDI (if and when the online play app ever gets completed) will be extensible like this (although the version I saw allowed for house rules), but I'd hate to see this great resource go to waste just because people don't know about it.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;290901:rant:

Considering the timing and the fact that you actually are an anti-social idiot, I think I was spot on in asking if you've decided to stalk me outside of 4e threads.  How that helps 'the cause' I have no idea.  Whatever.

Thanks for threadcrapping.

Since we've drifted into talking about Roleplaying games played online, did many other people spend much time with MUDs and MUSHes?  I played *a lot* of those back in the early 90s -- mostly KobraMUD and various World of Darkness MUSHes.

Lots of fun at the time, but not something I have the time or inclination for now.

I played a few MUDs when I first got an online account.  I can't even remember the names of them anymore, to be honest.  Gah, there was one in particular I liked that had a RoleMaster-like system, and a decent player base that role-played well.  Aklovestes the Wood Elf Druid was always handy with a Faerie Fire to help his comrades...

I just could never get into them enough to attain the highest levels.

I played a Vampire/Werewolf hunter on a WoD site with a friend from highschool who's in my D&D group now.  One of the random retainers he rolled for has the same name as one of his character's henchmen on the MUSH.

Looks like the day of the Surface is a little closer than I figured.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QflrIK-m4Ts

Rob Conley

Quote from: estar;290952Looks like the day of the Surface is a little closer than I figured.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QflrIK-m4Ts

Rob Conley

All I can say is... wow!

could that music be any more melodramatic?

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;291068could that music be any more melodramatic?

LOL, I thought they should of led off with the section where the guys were playing and THEN show the fiddly setup portion. I doubt the first Surfaces we are able to buy will be that complex. Likely at first we will be bringing up maps, and zooming in with hand gestures. Then putting miniatures on top of that.

I found the timed move allowance indicator interesting.

I also read on the technical details. Basically the table is has a video camera underneath for projection and recording. There are symbols printed on the objects you put on the table. The computer looks at them through the video recorder and is able to draw accordingly through the projector.

The symbols are created in such a way that not only they are unique to each type of object you put on the table that their orientation can be easily be distinguished. From what I understand the hard part was optical recognition to look reliably at those symbols. Once that part was stable the rest of the coding was pretty straight forward.

The surface was originally built as a music synthesizer. With the table objects able to control and alter sound in specific ways.