Hussar
Legend
The DDI VTT is now in open Beta, so, I figured I'd give it a test spin.
I've played using VTT's for quite some time now. I started out with OpenRPG for several years and then migrated over to Maptool once Maptool got that much better. While I'm new to the WOTC VTT, I'm hardly new to virtual tabletops in general.
So, I did a little experiment. I picked a module from Dungeon - Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (The Dungeon of the Ghost Tower) - The Dungeon Of the Ghost Tower - mostly at random. I just wanted something low level that I could prep.
I opened up the PDF at 11 PM here. It's now 12:20 as I type this and I'm completely, 100% done with all prep for the module.
WOW.
The tools are pretty intuitive, although there's still much room for improvement. But, for a 4e game? Man, that's the cat's ass. Drop down the tiles, drop down the monsters and poof, you're done.
Doing the same level of prep in Maptools would take me easily twice as long. Simply coding the macros for the monsters would take twice that time and I'm pretty quick at coding monster macros. I should be, I coded several thousand of them for the World's Largest Dungeon. I set up the entire module, as written in a bit over an hour.
I'm still kinda agog at this. I've never seen a VTT prep go that quickly.
Now, let's not forget that there's some improvements that should be made - more tokens for one. There's a ridiculously small number of tokens available and that's just stupid. Chucking up tokens takes someone a few minutes. And the fact that I cannot import my own map images leaves me somewhat cold, as well as a lack of an "DM only" layer on the map.
But, give them time. As far as being able to drop down adventures at the drop of a hat goes though, that's pretty damn sweet.
I've played using VTT's for quite some time now. I started out with OpenRPG for several years and then migrated over to Maptool once Maptool got that much better. While I'm new to the WOTC VTT, I'm hardly new to virtual tabletops in general.
So, I did a little experiment. I picked a module from Dungeon - Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (The Dungeon of the Ghost Tower) - The Dungeon Of the Ghost Tower - mostly at random. I just wanted something low level that I could prep.
I opened up the PDF at 11 PM here. It's now 12:20 as I type this and I'm completely, 100% done with all prep for the module.
WOW.
The tools are pretty intuitive, although there's still much room for improvement. But, for a 4e game? Man, that's the cat's ass. Drop down the tiles, drop down the monsters and poof, you're done.
Doing the same level of prep in Maptools would take me easily twice as long. Simply coding the macros for the monsters would take twice that time and I'm pretty quick at coding monster macros. I should be, I coded several thousand of them for the World's Largest Dungeon. I set up the entire module, as written in a bit over an hour.
I'm still kinda agog at this. I've never seen a VTT prep go that quickly.
Now, let's not forget that there's some improvements that should be made - more tokens for one. There's a ridiculously small number of tokens available and that's just stupid. Chucking up tokens takes someone a few minutes. And the fact that I cannot import my own map images leaves me somewhat cold, as well as a lack of an "DM only" layer on the map.
But, give them time. As far as being able to drop down adventures at the drop of a hat goes though, that's pretty damn sweet.