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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jackelope King" data-source="post: 3727537" data-attributes="member: 31454">Because this has to be more than just my tabletop at home in cyberspace. It needs to be a program that not only allows for playing D&D online (which I can do in an interface as simple as AOL Instant Messenger or on an internet message board like this). It needs to be able to facilitate gameplay in the way that the iPod facilitates listening to music. There's a world fo difference between allowing and facilitating.Here's an example. If I had no other choice, I could do my homework on my lap all the time. My lap allows me a workspace with which to study and transcribe notes. However, my desk at home faciliates that task much better. I have a lamp on the desk, as well as a larger amount of flat, level surface area, with a cup full of pens and pencils right there. I also have the ability to play music while I'm at my desk to make doing homework more pleasant. It makes my goal of doing homework much easier by providing tools that are useful in accomplishing the task. As mentioned above, why was the iPod so successful in almost single-handidly creating the .mp3 player market? Because it facilitated listening to music any time, anywhere with a top-notch interface and combined it by allowing you to store essentially your whole music collection in your pocket. Then it went a step further and allowed you to integrate your iPod with your computer after the advent of iTunes, which is an excellent music organizer, player, and store all in one. Sure, I could walk around with a boombox on my shoulder listening to music. A boombox allows for music on the go. But it doesn't facilitate music listening in the way an iPod does. Quite simply, the iPod makes it easier to achieve the end goal of listening to your favorite music any time, anywhere.That's what the virtual table top needs to be able to do. It needs to make it easy for me to sit down at the end of the day and get in some gaming, even when my gaming group is scattered from Syracuse to Baltimore. If WotC wants it to be the iPod of online tabletop RPGs, then it needs to facilitate the game in a way all of our "dream tables" did. It needs to ease the bottleneck of finding good games to play in, which means making it easier to run the game.</blockquote>

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