Any DDI News?

[Garthanos]

At least, please, add in the rules for companion characters and monster themes to the MB... Pleaaaaasssseee...

This

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm sorry but I'm sure they are making a ton of money from DDI subsriptions. And that money was supposed to go to the gaming tools. If they only have a handful of people who have to update the builders, do the mags AND work on the gaming table then WotC is yanking our chains.

They should hire a big video game company and get us what they said they would before 4e was even shipped.

Yeah, they should hire a big video game company, and then the whole project can be released on time, like Duke Nuke'm Never. ROFLMAO!

 

[Zaran]

Yeah, they should hire a big video game company, and then the whole project can be released on time, like Duke Nuke'm Never. ROFLMAO!

I'm at the point where I believe Duke Nukem will come out before we get the online gaming table.

 

[Stoat]

I'm at the point where I believe Duke Nukem will come out before we get the online gaming table.

Except for special occasions and cons, I game exclusively online. I'm a big fan of the DDI, and I don't care if WotC ever puts out an online gaming table.

There are multiple, good VTT's available. You can get them for free, or you can get them for a relatively modest, one time payment. They allow an extraordinary amount of customization by the DM. In particular, it is trivially easy to import any image file to use as the battlemat. I can snag maps from the WotC archives. I can snag 'em from the Cartographer's guild. I can make my own using CC3. It is similarly easy to make custom tokens to represent NPC's and PC's.

The VTT that WotC was talking about three years ago looked a hell of a lot less flexible to me. Making it 3d would effectively destroy my ability to use badass custom maps and tokens. I'd be stuck either using the tiles and virtual minis provided by WotC or using crude tools to "draw" the maps. I don't want it.

 

[Zaran]

The VTT that WotC was talking about three years ago looked a hell of a lot less flexible to me. Making it 3d would effectively destroy my ability to use badass custom maps and tokens. I'd be stuck either using the tiles and virtual minis provided by WotC or using crude tools to "draw" the maps. I don't want it.

The products I have seen are not that simple to use. Maybe they are for you. Ironic that you don't need them. I happen to want something that I can use with online friends and when some of my regular group friends move away. I have yet to find anything that I can use with ease. I'd be happy just to use the tiles they give me.

In addition, I do not have alot of minatures. We use printed tiles or dry-erase for our monsters. Maybe the online gaming table isn't for those who have the resources you do or the time to make your own . I happen to think that the market is out there.

 

[Shazman]

According to Lou Huderski (part of the DDI studio at WotC), the studio is involved in "several other super-secret projects" in addition to maintaining and updating the Character Builder and Monster Builder apps. We also know from other various WotC staff that there are unannounced digital projects in active development. I'm sure that we would have already heard about these projects if this were 2008, but the amount of poo flung at them by the community for missing their original launch deadline has forced them to implement the no-announcing-it-until-it's-nearly-ready strategy that a lot of high-profile game studios use. Fortunately, their track record so far on application quality has been very good. When they do release the next big D&D digital tool, I expect that it will be awesome.

They were pretty foolish to use the virtual game table (that will most likely never be) as one of their main selling points for 4th edition when it apparently was not even close to being ready at the time. They deserved the flack they got for it. They made it sound like it was right around the corner, and nearly three years later it has yet to materialize .

 

[OnlineDM]

I know several people in this thread have talked about the desire for a virtual tabletop for playing D&D online, and others have mentioned that such third party tools exist. I can attest to that - I've been running my first ever D&D game for the past couple of months, and it's all been online. I've blogged about my experiences using three different systems - OpenRPG, Gametable and MapTool. MapTool is my favorite so far, though I haven't gotten to run a session with it just yet (darn players going on vacation for two weeks!).

You can check out my blog for more details, but in a nutshell I think Gametable is the easiest to build maps in, OpenRPG is the easiest to connect players to (but a pain in the butt to load maps and minis into) and MapTool is the most powerful and flexible. Right now I'm using Gametable to draw the maps and then using Photoshop to convert them to images for use in MapTool (Gametable's image export function seems to be buggy).

More info at my blog: Being an Online Dungeon Master

 

[DEFCON 1]

They should hire a big video game company and get us what they said they would before 4e was even shipped.

Or some people should just get over it already.

This is why they aren't mentioning anything. Because otherwise they get people like you complaining every other day when they don't get what they think they are 'owed' because it was 'mentioned' that it was coming. Better to just remain silent than to hear this kind of stuff day after day.

 

[Zaran]

Or some people should just get over it already.

This is why they aren't mentioning anything. Because otherwise they get people like you complaining every other day when they don't get what they think they are 'owed' because it was 'mentioned' that it was coming. Better to just remain silent than to hear this kind of stuff day after day.

I am owed it. I pay for the right to complain every few days because I have a DDI subscription in which they flat out told us that it was to pay for the development of the tools such as that gaming table.

 

[Jabba Von Hutt]

Let's see what we have available till now, a character builder, a monster builder and an encounter builder. These 3 things would pretty much cover the data behind any type of virtual table. They are all possible to build independently from each other. However, the missing components will work integrally with one another and need to be co-developed. Which if they are still working on will take much more time.