RE: RPG Virtual Table Tops ...

I understand that there are a couple of products out there.   FantasyGrounds seems to be in the lead so far as I can tell.   Will Dungeon & Dragons Insider prevail over FG?   Are there others?  Where is this trend heading?

You must be joking! We're talking D&D here! Everything else in this industry eats D&D's leavings.

-clash

Quote from: flyingmiceYou must be joking! We're talking D&D here! Everything else in this industry eats D&D's leavings.

-clash

But isn't Dungeons & Dragons Insider (the VTT) D&D?  I thought it's linked to E4.  No?

Anyway, I'm more interested in the concept of Virtual Tabletops than in the system they actually run.  Is there a future there in the vitualization of the tabletop, regardless of the rules system?  That's what I want to know.

I've used various voice chat and whiteboard apps over the years.  There was one really cool package years ago with built-in dice roller, maps, and scripting options for character sheet building and such...I can't remember the name, but I ran an AD&D 2e game with it.  It was very buggy, but had tons of potential.  I think the whole enterprise died when the devs tried to make it for pay.

But overall, while it was nice to have all the bells and whistles, I had the most fun last year using just cams and voice with my old friends.  We rolled real dice and did everything like it was a ftf session.  It wasn't exactly the same, but it felt good to be playing with my old friends again.

Which, I guess, is a long way of saying I'm probably not the best person to judge where this is all heading...

I consider FantasyGrounds to be the best of the best--right now. It really does animated rolling dice, for one thing. You can kind of grab them up and roll them, which is cool.

Just by having voice, custom minis and 3-d mode, the proposed 4E Tabletop will beat Fantasygrounds (and I say that as an FGII user and fan). I predict (I'm not going to say how I know this) that the D&D tabletop is going to pwn everything based on integrated meetup boards though. THAT is the real killer part of the app.

I think Gabob is neat, but I have to get Skype installed before I can finish setting it up. I'll report back when I get this thing going. If it works as advertised, I could see Gabob becoming the platform of choice for all non-D&D/D20 games. It has cards, poker chips, map, pieces, all that stuff.. you could run Savage Worlds with it, and that game has plenty of little extra pieces.

A lot of people are getting hilariously hung up on the idea that you have to use the tabletop thing to play D&D4, which seems very unlikely. I think the D&D4 tabletop is just for uniting groups online, and providing a suite of tools. Like today I go to d20srd.org and the Pathguy javascript character builder to build characters. Well, having that kind of functionality would be pretty tight on Wizards right now, because Pathguy only loads the feats he thinks are cool, for example.

Quote from: VBWyrdeBut isn't Dungeons & Dragons Insider (the VTT) D&D?  I thought it's linked to E4.  No?

Anyway, I'm more interested in the concept of Virtual Tabletops than in the system they actually run.  Is there a future there in the vitualization of the tabletop, regardless of the rules system?  That's what I want to know.

What I meant was if D&D Insider is used 30 times more than FG, it would be considered a failure, and under the same terms - 30:1 in favor of D&DI, FG would be considered a roaring success. Of course it will succeed. D&D is doing it.

-clash

Quote from: KenHRI've used various voice chat and whiteboard apps over the years.  There was one really cool package years ago with built-in dice roller, maps, and scripting options for character sheet building and such...I can't remember the name, but I ran an AD&D 2e game with it.  It was very buggy, but had tons of potential.  I think the whole enterprise died when the devs tried to make it for pay.

But overall, while it was nice to have all the bells and whistles, I had the most fun last year using just cams and voice with my old friends.  We rolled real dice and did everything like it was a ftf session.  It wasn't exactly the same, but it felt good to be playing with my old friends again.

Which, I guess, is a long way of saying I'm probably not the best person to judge where this is all heading...

That was likely WebRPG which still exists. It's not that great, though.

Quote from: Abyssal MawThat was likely WebRPG which still exists. It's not that great, though.

That was the one.  Yeah, I'm sure I'm just remembering the good parts.  It was really buggy when we used it, but it was the first time I'd encountered anything like it.

I dunno, though, I just don't see the point of virtual dice and poker chips.  I can roll my own in front of my cam if I'm playing online.

Quote from: KenHRThat was the one.  Yeah, I'm sure I'm just remembering the good parts.  It was really buggy when we used it, but it was the first time I'd encountered anything like it.

I dunno, though, I just don't see the point of virtual dice and poker chips.  I can roll my own in front of my cam if I'm playing online.

Well, for something like Savage Worlds, or Ddeadlands, or even Eberron where you have people tossing in chips, that kind of thing.

WebRPG was awesome for it's time. I was into it about 10 years ago- from 1997-1999.

Fantasy Grounds is very good for D&D. Everyone, players and GMs alike must purchase the product to use it. I don't care for the mapping features, but it has the best looking interface and the best inter-functionality of various elements.

By that I mean you can drag the "attack" column off your character sheet into the chat window and it rolls a d20, adds your modifier and posts the result to chat. You can then do the same with the damage expression if you want, and the result from the chat window can be dragged by the GM into the HP portion of the NPC's listing in the combat tracker. Pretty cool.

There is a Savage Worlds Expansion coming out (likely this weekend).

FG is pretty useless for other games. It's really tied into the D20 system (and SW if you buy that addon). If you tried running another game, most of the features that make FG cool wouldn't work. To alter the rulesets, you need to be an XML programmer. I couldn't make heads or tails of it.

What you may not have heard about is MapTool. It's an awesome free program available at RPTools.net. It has a much more functional map - it computes range, can be set up to show lines of sight, reveal the fog of war depending on the character's vision. You can also generate quick maps from within the program (and on the fly). Writing macros is simple and can speed up die rolling. The program can easily be configured to handle any rules system. The die roller handles adding modifiers, rolling any number of dice, dice pools (and can count successes) and exploding dice. Did I mention it's free?

I'm sure the D&D program will steal away customers from these two, but FG is a one-time purchase rather than a recurring monthly fee and MapTool is free.

I'm wanting to run Mutants and Masterminds and *possibly* another D&D3.5 campaign (in my circle it is technically another players turn to be the DM, so rather than battle it out, I was thinking maaaybe I'll just run my thing over there..)

Yeah, I have a group where 3 guys out of the six are always vying for the DM slot. Heh.

Quote from: Abyssal MawWell, for something like Savage Worlds, or Ddeadlands, or even Eberron where you have people tossing in chips, that kind of thing.

Okay, yeah, I can see that.  That was me with my hidebound old school blinders on talking...

For a full list of VTs visit RPG Virtual Tabletop


MB