Status of D&D Game Table?

[D'karr]

The WotC VTT demoed/premiered at DDXP and later demoed at Gencon had the capability of making tokens rather easily, from any image source. So creating tokens on it was not an issue.

One of the "features" of that VTT was that you could import your 3D character from their "imaging" software and use it as your token on the table. I saw the DM at the table demo this feature and it was nifty.

The VTT was ruleset agnostic and would not force any game specific artifacts. This was a good thing and also a bad thing. You could play any game you wanted with the table, but the lack of support for the ruleset could also be a detriment, IMO.

The game table looked awesome and the use of 3D models was very appealing. I would say that would have been a selling point. They had ported over the Dungeon Tiles at that time. Some of the tiles actually had 3D elements such as burning braziers, etc.

I'd love to see somebody come up with a 3D game table someday.

 

[wedgeski]

Further, IIRC, WotC was planning to charge extra for "virtual minis." I don't think they ever came up with a solid plan, but some of the ideas I saw floating around looked pretty unappealing (I'm thinking about the "random virtual mini booster pack" here). In other words, you'd pay for the VTT and then pay more for minis to use with the VTT.

This isn't true, I don't think. It was merely a (stupid) idea floated somewhere that -- as usual -- got blown out of all sense of reality by the fandom.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

The key selling point for a WoTC VTT would be integration with DDI.
You could buy an adventure mod and get the maps, tokens, floor plans and a campaign file for the DM utilities and the whole lot would be bundled together.

If you roll your own then you could also pull stuff directly from the other tools.

The problem they have IMHO, is that the market is moving on and they are playing catchup. They do not have the resources to compete and buying would be their best option.

 

[Stoat]

The WotC VTT demoed/premiered at DDXP and later demoed at Gencon had the capability of making tokens rather easily, from any image source. So creating tokens on it was not an issue.

Do you mean the user could create 2D tokens or 3D tokens?

This isn't true, I don't think. It was merely a (stupid) idea floated somewhere that -- as usual -- got blown out of all sense of reality by the fandom.

You may be right. To my recollection, WotC hadn't settled on what they were going to do, and a number of different pricing models were floated around. I was under the impression that they wanted to sell 3D tokens separately and were looking for a way to do it, possibly with random tokens, more likely by providing a basic set of tokens with the VTT and then charging for add-ons.

 

[Oldtimer]

I'm not a dev, but aren't there Java tool options within .Net as well? Similar to some of the the Python options? (Actually a big fan of Python for sys admin scripting, so not trying to knock it - just curious about similar java tools for .Net).

Well, there is J#, but that is largely considered a dead language nowadays.

 

[D'karr]

Do you mean the user could create 2D tokens or 3D tokens?

You'd take a 2D image and place it on a token. The token looked like a 3D miniature base with the image on top of it. The token was "flat", IIRC.

You may be right. To my recollection, WotC hadn't settled on what they were going to do, and a number of different pricing models were floated around. I was under the impression that they wanted to sell 3D tokens separately and were looking for a way to do it, possibly with random tokens, more likely by providing a basic set of tokens with the VTT and then charging for add-ons.

Yes the talk about charging for miniatures was discussion of things that they were considering, among many other ideas. They never settled on any definitive type of "pricing." At that time even the pricing for DDI was up in the air. The talk of micro-transactions kept coming up, but there were issues like how many miniatures, could you share miniatures, could you trade miniatures, could you duplicate miniatures, etc. A lot of this was WotC spitballing ideas, and some took them as OMGWTFBBQ they are charging for virtual miniatures!!!

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Well, there is J#, but that is largely considered a dead language nowadays.

My understanding is that J# breached the Java licence in several ways, or at least that is what Sun claimed and eventally MS settled and dropped J#

 

[Zaran]

Yes the talk about charging for miniatures was discussion of things that they were considering, among many other ideas. They never settled on any definitive type of "pricing." At that time even the pricing for DDI was up in the air. The talk of micro-transactions kept coming up, but there were issues like how many miniatures, could you share miniatures, could you trade miniatures, could you duplicate miniatures, etc. A lot of this was WotC spitballing ideas, and some took them as OMGWTFBBQ they are charging for virtual miniatures!!!

I think some of this is because they took the stance of not telling us anything. They probably should come out and tell us what they are doing and what they aren't. At the moment, everyone thinks they aren't doing anything because they are so quiet. We assume that they don't know what they are doing and don't want to say something that isn't true to us. Its a cursed if they do , cursed if they don't kind of thing. I wonder if they would lose any customers if they came out and said they aren't going to do a virtual game table? I doubt it. They probably lost those people already.

 

[IronWolf]

You'd take a 2D image and place it on a token. The token looked like a 3D miniature base with the image on top of it. The token was "flat", IIRC.

Was it something similar to this?

 

[D'karr]

Was it something similar to this?

No, visually it looked like a round miniature base with a picture attached to it. Just like one of the tokens they have in the basic set but tacked on to a miniature base.