Maptools online game table

blackice001 · Aug 16, 2008

I just downloaded maptools and I'm eager to get into a group. but there is the communications part of it. I don't think an irc game would be nearly as fun as one with voice. I see lots of people useing skype, but isn't ventrilo better?

What do you all think makes for better maptools gameing irc, Ventrilo or skype?

Goonalan · Aug 16, 2008

We play using skype evry week, five hour sessions, skype has dropped once or twice in the last six months but it's excellent otherwise.

Maptools has also cut out on us once or twice but for free it's brilliant, it got my "old time" gaming group together again after a five or so year hiatus, have fun, we do.

Cheers

Dalzig · Aug 16, 2008

Ventrilo has to have one person host it. This can be bad depending on internet connections, firewalls, and computer setups.

Skype doesn't require a host (afaik). This usually makes it more accessible.

darkadelphia · Aug 17, 2008

We've also reunited our old group on maptools, and it's been incredible. The tutorials on the website are very helpful.

blackice001 · Aug 17, 2008

Ok, i guess I'll go find skype... I'm dyeing to try maptools, yet none of the "LFG" forums have yeilded me a weekly group... I'm open to invites. would be great, all my current real life groups are just to dam far away and the price of gass is like takeing multiple crits on the wallet.

Eastern standard time would be best, Sunday nights works also. EST zone I'm self emploied so any day time duration and frequency is complety dooable. With the exception that I reserve Fri and Sat nights for my daughter.

Goumindong · Aug 17, 2008

Maptools is simply amazing. I can make macros to do most of anything, it keeps bookwork to a minimum.

You can add in topography to obscure things you don't want seen. You can keep accurate track of enemies that are invisible. You can hide traps, draw on the fly. Add templates for blasts and bursts.

It is wonderful.

darkadelphia · Aug 18, 2008

In fact, maptools is, in many ways, superior to playing at a real table. I don't know if I can go back to the vulgarity of pushing around real objects on a plain old grid ;-)

I forgot to mention this, but we use skype and it works out just fine. We even have a player on 56k, and we manage.

DMDanW · Aug 21, 2008

I also DM a group that uses Maptools and Skype. We have used it now for 3-4 years, and as mentioned before, I don't see us ever going back to the table and grid. We switched to this system when one of our longtime group members had to move, and we all love it. Now if someone can't phyisically make the game, he just calls in from home and still can play.

The only downside is I have started creating / using some very nice maps and since there is a wonderful online community that artwork can be gathered I have kept raising the bar for the maps, and it can be time consuming to make good looking maps.

Speaking of, what types of programs are you guys using to create your maps? I use Corel photoshop pro V12 to create maps or modify user created maps and it works fairly well.

Where do you get your resourses from? The Dungenie community has been my main source of material.

Chadarius · Aug 25, 2008

We use a combination of uStream and Gizmo. I like Gizmo better because they use standard VOIP protocols. Skype is all proprietary. With Gizmo's free conference call feature we can all use whatever voip client we feel like.

Ustream is nice because we can still use a table top map and minis at the live game. We can reposition and zoom to anywhere on the map for the remote folks. I've also started using a "two camera shoot". I hook up a simple usb camera and set that on the DM for non-combat.

Overall we are rather pleased with this setup. We have used Kloogewerks in the past as well. Its an awesome tool and well worth the minimal price.

Recently we have also started looking at the maptool as well. The bottom line is that we are not expecting D&DI to meet our needs anyways (tool that works and that is very low cost). So using all of these other free tools is very important going forward.

I don't expect that any of us from http://lordsoftyr.com will need or want to pay for the advanced D&DI tools. I certainly don't expect us to require any of the tools for any of our campaigns.

VenezuelanWiz · Aug 25, 2008

I started running a game online using maptools. I have 8 players, 3 of them locally, the others scattered across the US. We use Ventrilo for VOIP. Only had problems when two people in Virginia had a massive thunderstorm overhead. We fixed that problem by installing Hamachi VPN that helped lower the latencies they were seeing on Ventrilo.

If you can I'd suggest having someone host the ventrilo server that isn't you, so that you don't strain your computer too much.

To create maps I just downloaded a whole mess of tokens from the maptools site and use those to create the maps. I spend gobs of time cause I'm a bit ocd like that.

Cheers,