What happened to the Online Game Table?

Zaran

Adventurer

• Sep 9, 2009

• #1

Is there any news about this? I find it odd that they show an advertisement in the back of the Player's HandBook and there isn't any mention about it on the Insider homepage. Did they can it like the canned the computer aid stuff in 3e?

Does anyone know the scoop? This is something that can really bring my gaming group together.

 

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A

-Avalon-

First Post

• Sep 9, 2009

• #2

Would be nice to have that after so much hype about it... especially since it would REALLY help things out, like remembering which mobs need to save vs ongoing 5 radiant damage, which need to save vs slow or fall asleep, or which ones got dominated and told to run away... sheesh, they aimed for simplification, and ended up making the DM's job a nightmare...

The gaming table would fix that!

 

Zaran

Adventurer

• Sep 9, 2009

• #3

I totally agree! One of the biggest issues my players have is having to keep track of all the little kickers in everyone's powers. The other night I cast sleep on a few orcs and the GM grumbled about all the saves he had to roll every turn and keep track of.

 

Saagael

First Post

• Sep 9, 2009

• #4

IIRC there was a poll to see what people wanted more: DM tools or a table top. DM tools won, so Wizards is focused their resources into the monster/encounter creator, Character Builder, etc. In the meantime, there are several virtual tabletops you can use to track combat. My personal favorite is Maptools from RPTools (I know, shameless plug). Even in face-to-face games you can mange initiative, statuses, HP, equipment, etc.

Anyway, that's why Wizards hasn't worked on the tabletop so far.

 

Mort_Q

First Post

• Sep 9, 2009

• #5

I too was looking forward to the Online Game Table.

 

Artoomis

First Post

• Sep 10, 2009

• #6

Over-promisiing/Under-delivering. That's the history of WotC and various digital tools.

I expect we may yet see it, but it's going to be quite a while.

 

Zaran

Adventurer

• Sep 10, 2009

• #7

I don't remember any poll on whether I wanted something that they advertised their whole edition on or something that only GMs would use. If it was just for DDI subscribers, then they didn't poll everyone that decided to not subscribe until they had the entire product promised.

It doesn't make much sense. They can get the entire gaming group to subscribe to the game table instead of just GMs. Also the people who would design the game table wouldn't be the same people who do those little flash programs so that means they would have to lay those people off just to hire them at a later time.

And then there is the fact that they advertise the table in the back of the book! I wonder if later printings have that same advertisement.

 

Amphimir Míriel

Explorer

• Sep 10, 2009

• #8

Zaran said:

What happened to the Online Game Table?

Click to expand...

It died.

Alone.

In the dark.

...

Good thing we have MapTools

 

Piratecat

Sesquipedalian

• Sep 10, 2009

• #9

Well, not exactly. I got a few hints about this when I spoke to WotC's president at GenCon. I'm writing that up, but here's my guess:

The previous electronic team tried to create a lot of tools at once, and thus had a badly divided effort. They then decided to suspend development of everything except for a very robus character generator. By taking all of those resources and pouring them into one polished project, they ended up with a real gem.

So the question was: what comes next? They chose the monster builder, the first of several adventure tools. I'm guessing that a skill challenge generator will be one of those tools, and I have no doubt that a remote gaming table will be one as well. Greg Leeds spoke quite a bit about how important it is to help groups connect with one another even if they can't all physically be in the same space at once.

They haven't announced it yet, though, and they surely won't until it's a month from release. They've learned their lesson about avoiding vaporware.

(Also note that this thread is in the wrong forum; I'll move it once we upgrade the software to fix a bug.)

 

keterys

First Post

• Sep 10, 2009

• #10

So, from looking in from just a little bit outside, this is what I saw...

1) They hired another company to develop Gleemax, Game Table, all kinds of things... as a general rule, all of those were half-finished and _not functional_
2) They hired an in house development team
3) The game table was getting pretty far along but still crashed very often. Rumors said that they were having to redo the code (the impression I got was basically entirely) to fix stability and usability issues
4) They publicly announced that there was no longer an ETA on the game table or visualizer and they were only going to announce things that had a chance of being out soon
5) They did a poll available to anyone who visited their site, advertised on enworld, asking what people wanted. The online game table was well desired, but at least 3rd place, if memory serves.
6) We've got a character builder, adventure tools, etc. As time goes on we'll get great tools, but I'd assume the game table will either not happen (if the market for it is insufficient by the time resources are available) or will happen in, say, 2-3 years.

In the meantime, maptools is simply amazing for a free tool. Give it a shot.