The Dungeons & Dragons Virtual Table

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

To the best of my knowledge, the plan for the VT is to gradually introduce features in the beta testing. My guess (and this is a complete guess, based on no knkowledge and requiring no tapdancing) is that the first part will involve them working out the connection issues as well as the functionality, like DM tools, player tools, etc. The next phase will involve communication with the Character Builder. And then communication with the web-based Monster Builder. (You *did* catch that in the FAQ...right??). Finally they will open it up to stress testing with lots and lots of people before they push it gold.

I figure it was the gametable that had you excited, right? I can see that. Unfortunately, the online character builder diminishes the impact of a game table.

I see no problem in having a MapTool or GameTable clone from WotC as part of my subscription. That's pretty good. But the fact that the new builder leaves a lot to be desired doesn't cause optimism now.

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I suppose it is relatively obvious why WotC puts the online builder out now and does not continue supporting the old one with new material. Dark Sun and Essentials are basically "killer apps" for D&D now. The software that supports Dark Sun and Essentials will be the one people want to adopt. A perfect timing for a new software to replace an old and make all those pirated character builder databases uninteresting.

So I find it unlikely that they will offer to change the online builder to "Beta" version and update the old CB (even if at least Dark Sun seems supportable). It would go against something that is probably core of the strategy for the new CB. Unlikely doesn't mean impossible, of course.

 

[jbear]

And there you have it! The cream and cherry on top that I thought would be announced with the online CB. The timing of it does seem like damage control. But so what? At this stage any good news is good news.

As for the screen shot ... hmmm ... it looks okay. But playing on FGII for over 6 months now and I must say having 3d dice that you actually pick up and 'throw' and they roll and bounce off the sides of the box ... funnily enough that is a big draw card for me for some reason. Just clicking on the relevant dice and having a number come up below ... it wouldn't be the same.

So this is intersting news for me personally.
It's interesting because:
1) I play online and its my only real chance to be a player not a DM

2) Me and the whanau (family) are moving back to New Zealand next year in June/July and we all want to keep the great pencil and paper game going that we have even if that means doing it online. Though the 12 hour time difference may have the final word on that one.

But like others have said, I'd need some fairly strong reasons to ditch FGII which I really really like.

Things that would make it attractive to me:

1) Flexibility: Both mapwise and characterwise; I wouldn't want to be limited to tiles either. Importing maps which you can lay a grid down on would be a must. And it would be great to be able to import a character from the character builder and drag its token onto the map and be ready to go. But the PCs in my game have homebrew features and objects that I would need to be able to add in. On FG you can type in any feature or power by hand and it will work with the maths.

2) A Dice box with 3d dice that rolled, spun and bounced

3) A solid and clean implementation of the 4e rules (conditions, temporary modifiers, auras, etc.) This would be a big bonus. FGII does a good job of this but it's something you really have to hunker down and learn how to do, and is still continually improving upon.

4) Tokens: I wouldn't mind if the VT came with a small sample of tokens. I wouldn't mind if WptC sold token packages. But I already have a massive amount of tokens made up. I would want to be able to import them and not be forced to use WotC tokens. If you could simply pull a monster from the builder down into a token on the map ... wow that would be FANTASTIC! Otherwise the ability to scale tokens would be necessary. If that could be done individually with each token that would be great. That is one of the current flaws with FGII, you can scale a token and lock it but that affects all other tokens. If you scale a big monster down your noraml tokens get tiny. Not a big deal, but worth mentioning IMO.

5) clean, fast and yet flexible intergration with MBuilder and CBuilder. That would make things very interesting. FGII can intergrate anything, monsterwise or characterwise. But there is quite a bit of complication with exporting your adventure modules made and dealing with linking tokens. Being able to drag out a monster or a character straight from the builder that appeared as a token would be so awesome that it's worth mentioning twice.

6) I would be interested in 'buying' ready made adventures with maps, tokens, story with NPCs that you could drag and drop dialog from or ready made drag drop descriptions of areas. Especially if these modules could be then edited easily to add my own stuff to them. If that is the way WotC wants to make micro transactions, then , yep, I'm interested! But again flexibilty is important here. I do that with readymade adventures. They are the bones I build my flesh upon.

The 3d VTT would have had me sold no questions asked. That can't be, fair enough. Maybe in a distant future. In the mean time,this one has certainly pleasantly surprised me and I will follow development with keen interest. My above comments are certainly not demands. They are observations that I hope filter down to WotC from the perspective of an online gamer who already uses a very good VT.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

- this to cost extra. No big deal for me since they announced that when they scrapped the original VT and other tools.
- there will be microtransactions of some kind. Let's be honest, the LOTRO & DDO models have simply been far too successful for this to be NOT the case. They have to do this right, however, by truly selling addons that other players/DMs do NOT need. Like the boosters for Gamma World.

Why would it cost extra when they want to use the free-to-play model of MMO's anyway? Say, DM's access to the VTT is bundled into the DDI subscription, giving some basic contents like tiles and tokens. Additional tiles and tokens or perhaps complete modules can be bought online at the Nentir Vale Adventure Amenities Store.

- while they say that the other tools are not directly integrated, there seems to be a character management and monster management tool. This could mean (i hope) that you have to import monsters and characters by hand, and cannot simply dragndrop them into the tool. Which would be acceptable. This would also be what would make me give up Maptool.

If WotC wants to convince the masses - people like me - they would have to include tools to make running sessions easy. Initiative and condition tracking are only the first steps.

I don't want to look up a power one of my players uses, calculate and resolve her attack manually and enter the new state in some dialog or message box of the shiny VTT. I fully expect such functions to be automated and without the need of macro coding on my side. This is what actually turned me off when I tried my hand at Maptool one year ago. It felt like I was playing Maptool instead of D&D.

Go ahead, Wizards! Jump right in and make your VTT a tool for the masses.

 

[delericho]

As for the screen shot ... hmmm ... it looks okay. But playing on FGII for over 6 months now and I must say having 3d dice that you actually pick up and 'throw' and they roll and bounce off the sides of the box ... funnily enough that is a big draw card for me for some reason. Just clicking on the relevant dice and having a number come up below ... it wouldn't be the same.

I want wireless dice that automatically interface with a VTT (any VTT), so I can actually pick up and throw them, and they'll automatically transfer the results to the software.

Probably too expensive to be worth it, though.

 

[Nikosandros]

If they don't include the VTT as part of a DDI sub (whether with an increased price or not), then that would probably signal the death-knell for DDI.

Yes, including it for an increased price, I can easily see. That's why I specified current subscription.

 

[Lord Ernie]

This looks... interesting. I don't think I'm going to be using it, since I have plenty of offline tabletop opportunities in the area where I live - it's one of the advantages of living in a very densely populated country. It will mostly be interesting to see if they can pull it off, and how well they can pull it off.

For those worrying about the online CB and this: given that they announced the VTT as being in beta and the release of the online CB just a few days ago, combined with my interpretation of some comments of the developers on the WotC forums and my own sense of logic, I would say: "Dont panic." (also, don't forget your towel ). Everything seems to indicate they have two entirely seperate teams of developers working on each tool; in fact, the mentioning of the online monster builder makes me suspect they may have yet another team working on just that. I don't think this will slow down the work on the online CB much at all.

 

[Jhaelen]

Oh dear. And there I hoped WotC had given up on this. Why not license one of the great, existing VTT solutions?

They could then use the freed-up resources to, say, fix the issues with the new Character Builder, right?

 

[zoroaster100]

Well, I hope they don't increase the price of DDI to offer the virtual table. I have no interest in a virtual table of any sort. I can still justify the DDI subscription for the moment (though recent issues with the online builder and reduced Dragon and Dungeon content means just barely), but if they increased the price to add the virtual table they'll likely lose me.

 

[IronWolf]

Maptools is really awesome, but a Maptools like VTT with tighter integration with a specific rulesset and premade monster tokens (both of which WoTC could easily do) would be even better. I don't play 4E, but if I did I'd be quite psyched about such a thing.

The frameworks that you can use with MapTool handle a lot of the rule system specific things. I believe the Rumble 4e framework is popular and I think there is another popular one as well.

Looking at the screenshot on the front page, is that little speaker icons on the left, over the player names? Integrated chat and sound support would be a pretty big leg up over Maptools and most other VTT's where you have to go to something like Skype or Voxli to do voice.

MapTool has integrated chat support. My preference is actually to have the voice system handled outside the VTT, primarily because I would rather development time be spent working on the VTT functions and such than rebuilding the wheel when there are several freely available voice chat options.

With that said, what are the benefits people see to integrated voice chat over letting a dedicated voice chat client handle it (like Skype or Ventrilo)? Maybe I am overlooking some key advantage to an integrated setup?

And best of all:

BETA TESTERS ARE ALLOWED TO TALK ABOUT ALL THEIR EXPERIENCES. How i hope that other companies would do this as well.

Yeah - this is cool. I am looking forward to the reports from the beta testers already.

 

[tenkar]

There are video tutorials on the Fantasy Grounds Website. They are priceless for figuring the software out. They help make a steep learning curve much easier. I'd link, but its a pita to do that from my ipad

I blogged about this.

Annoyingly, I just dropped $150 for the Fantasy Grounds 2 Ultimate License and I'm beginning to regret it. It's incredibly hard to figure out, I've spent a week on it so far and been unable to smoothly get a player into it and playing. Which is alarming for a paid app, and $150 at that.

So I'm sorta excited about this. I'll deeply, deeply regret choosing now to buy FG2, but at least I'll be able to get people into a game quickly and play.

That being said, if we ever get to the point where my players can easily get into one my game and play, I can see how it could be superior, in that it's more like a real table onto which I can drop multiple maps, player handouts, people write notes, share them. All sorts of stuff.

I just wish the damned thing worked.