Virtual Tabletop Solutions?

[mattcolville]

I'm keen to know if there's consensus on a VTT solution for D&D4.

A friend recommended Infrno » Find. Connect. Play. and I looked at it, seemed good. But I have no real understanding of what my options are. I realize there may be no solution that's "for" D&D4, certainly I presume there's no option that understands things like what powers do, or supports importing characters from the Character Builder, but something that understands a battlemap and initiative and movement and areas of effect would certainly be a plus over something you just draw on.

Not that there's a problem with "something you just draw on," since that's how we play actual D&D.

One of the options when making a new game in Infrno is "Use D20Pro" which is a choice I don't understand. I guess I don't know what's wrong with Infrno's solution that makes them think this other product is better, and I don't know if its better for *me* who am playing D&D4, not 3.

 

[amerigoV]

This topic comes up even couple of weeks - seems like it should be a FAQ/sticky somewhere (or a link to it if it is somewhere else).

Short answer for me:

Maptools RPTools - Home - its free, good community, active support and expansion, more about the maps than about the environment, there are 4e frameworks (MT is system agnostic, but you can put together packages that are ruleset specific). Support materials are barbell - good stuff to get you started, lots of high end support, not much documentation in between (but a friendly community to fill the gap). My choice at the moment.

Fantasy Grounds does cost some $, it works hard to replicate the tabletop environment, and you can purchase a 4e ruleset. If have only tinkered with FG, so others can comment but I have heard good things about the software and there is good community support.

iTabletop looks interesting. It is pay to use. Heavy on the environment. Its all cloud, so no port forwarding. Also includes voice/video (the other two you need Skype/Vent/etc). The map side appears rather primitive at this time. I am unsure of specific 4e support. Hopefully others can give more info.


There are others, but those I the ones I have some familiarity.

 

[DayTripper]

Yup - RPTools in combination with skype (voice and video if your bandwidth can stand it) is the best solution I've seen so far. I've tried Fantasy Grounds and ScreenMonkey but RPTool's quality and price (its free!) means that it beats the others hands down. Its not 4e specific but I use iplay4e for character management running in parallel.

 

[IronWolf]

MapTool is a great VTT. It has a slight learning curve, but less than it once was. The video tutorials will help get one up and running pretty quickly. I *think* the popular 4e framework is Rumble's. You need a framework as MapTool is system-less without one.

 

[Stoat]

I'm not familiar with Infrno, I use D20 Pro for my game. It's a complete, stand-alone product.

d20Pro Virtual Game Table - Online Pen &amp Paper Tabletop Gaming

It was built to be used with 3.5, and there are fan-created hacks to make it 4E compatible. I'm pretty sure you can import CB characters into it (I only DM, so I don't know for certain). It handles the math side of powers just fine, but sliding, pushing and pulling has to be done manually.

 

[Hussar]

Just to chime in with another vote for Maptools. If you head over to their website and into their forums, you'll find the user developed frameworks and there's a few to choose from for 4e. Veggisama's and Rumble's seem to be the standards.

Another one that's still way in development that has recently caught my eye is EpicTable RPG Virtual Tabletop . Looks interesting. But dev's been pretty slow. Did anyone catch this at Gencon?

 

[TheClone]

We use Gametable (or now "osu" I think). It's not actually supporting any specifiy ruleset but that makes it easy to use with almost not setup time or learning curve. It simple and does it job. It has no bugs and you can use any jpeg, png or something to be displayed in the map (you just have to care for the right size. One square shoulb be 64x64px).

 

[Naszir]

I put my vote down for Fantasy Grounds 2 with the 4e ruleset. In combination with the 4e parser it is a very nice program with solid support. Yeah, it costs $ but so far over the 4 to 5 years I have been using it as a DM it has been worth it.

 

[mattcolville]

Yeah, I should have specified that money is not an issue and free isn't really a virtue for me.

Can anyone who's used both FantasyGrounds an MapTool weigh in on the difference between each? Specifically, how they treat 4E?

 

[Thirsty]

Hi there,

While I can't comment on 4E, I have used both. Personally I found the FG was a better match for me as it "felt" more like a table-top game.

I draw pretty ugly sketch maps, both in face to face games and in FG and I found that when I was using MapTool I felt "obliged" to put more effort into my mapping, to the detriment of my other prep.

The best way to sum up the differences that I found was that FG is character sheet focused and MapTool is map focused. While MapTool is a truly great piece of software, FG is a better fit for me.

Hope that helps a little

Cheers
Chris