What are your "must haves" for a virtual tabletop?

[DMBrendon]

There are many virtual tabletops that have been around for ages, and some newer upstarts like Roll20 that have quickly become very popular. What is it that these new ones do in such a short period of time that makes them more appealing than the more mature products? What do they need to do to make you switch?

 

[Hand of Evil]

Group movement - would like to be able to select multiple characters and move them at the same time.
AdHoc mapping - able to paint / overlay objects on to the map; ruins, pit, spell effect (wall of fire), etc.
Linking to character sheets - just a quick way to check out an NPC or character

 

[RSKennan]

To answer the thread title directly, for me a new virtual tabletop would need:

-3d, rollable dice, with stranger types like d30s, fudge dice, and others that you can choose from to fill a "dice bag" for a given campaign. The ability to customize the exact look of the dice in your dice bag by making them look like metal, stone, fire, or whatever. Optional special effects that you can see but won't annoy others.

*The ability to roll in the open or in private.

*Customizable character sheets that fill in derived stats for you

*In app copies of the rulebooks that you can copy and paste from to character sheets or monster/npc sheets.

*Importable 3d models of minis and a 3d terrain system, with the option to flatten to 2d and tokens. Hexes and squares/cubes. Effects on the terrain, like flickering light sources, winds, fire...

*Shareable Music and audio (unlikely to be legal, sadly).

*chat feature

*The ability to show notes, images etc, and to pass them to selected participants without everyone getting them.

*Video chat

*PC, Mac, and Linux support

*Possibly support for speech to text like Dragon Naturally speaking to allow for rapid adventure generation, or recording transcripts of the game.

Basically, everything Fantasy Grounds 2 does, and more. More flexibility for other systems, and more power.

 

[Bagpuss]

I have the original app, what appears to be missing from that is a quick way to clear the decks, delete everything.

A way to save and load encounters would be handy as well.

 

[DMBrendon]

-possibly support for speech to text like Dragon Naturally speaking to allow for rapid adventure generation, or recording transcripts of the game.

That sounds cool. I'm not sure how practical it is, but very cool.

 

[DMBrendon]

Group movement - would like to be able to select multiple characters and move them at the same time.
AdHoc mapping - able to paint / overlay objects on to the map; ruins, pit, spell effect (wall of fire), etc.
Linking to character sheets - just a quick way to check out an NPC or character

Group movement seems to come up time and again. I find its often when the party says "We'll go back into the room by the stairs" or something and they all need to be moved at once.

I like the idea of AdHoc mapping, for allowing PC actions to affect their environment, and it makes improvisation easier.

 

[raexgames]

Hex's i second that. The proper hex where they are angled.

I also second loading encounters

 

[dd.stevenson]

There are many virtual tabletops that have been around for ages, and some newer upstarts like Roll20 that have quickly become very popular. What is it that these new ones do in such a short period of time that makes them more appealing than the more mature products? What do they need to do to make you switch?

The big advantage of roll20 over some of the other free products is that roll20 is accessible. Only one of my players has an iPad/smartphone, but all of my players have browsers that can run roll20 with a minimum of fuss. Once everyone has warmed up to the idea of roll20, then the extra features become an inducement to subscribe--but they're not the reason we went with the product originally.

 

[raexgames]

Honestly I used to play with a simple white board and mumble. You never got to save anything. Your characters were always a dot and your combat involved a lot of erasing. Having music, images, and cool features like rulers always makes it more in depth, but as long as the technical aspects don't overshadow the reason you are there. roleplaying

 

[DMBrendon]

The big advantage of roll20 over some of the other free products is that roll20 is accessible. Only one of my players has an iPad/smartphone, but all of my players have browsers that can run roll20 with a minimum of fuss. Once everyone has warmed up to the idea of roll20, then the extra features become an inducement to subscribe--but they're not the reason we went with the product originally.

That's interesting, that simply making it so widely available and easy to get started is enough.