I Did a Little Experiment and I'm Impressed.

[Rechan]

Does it have all the existing moduels set up? I desperately, desperately want to play Madness at Gardmore Abby. And DMs are intimidated at the dauntingness of programming that into Maptools.

 

[Hussar]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but there really isn't any macroing to set up in the VTT, right? Wondering if you subtract the macroing time, how do they stack up against each other then?

/snip

Well, I suppose you could play without any macros, but, wow, would that suck for playing 4e.

We use Deviant Null's on maptools for our games. It works very well. But, on the DM's side of things, you have to code in every single power for every single different type of token. There is an additional bit you can add in that will let you cut and paste from the Adventure Builder, which is nice, but I do find that it misses stuff quite often. And, I still have to take the steps of cutting and pasting into the tokens as I go.

Does it have all the existing moduels set up? I desperately, desperately want to play Madness at Gardmore Abby. And DMs are intimidated at the dauntingness of programming that into Maptools.

Currently, there are only three modules set up for immediete use - Andok Sur, The Splintered Spring and The Shrine of Glass Spire Forest. They don't use the map tiles - they use the art from the module. They look pretty schweet.

I'm REALLY hoping the Chaos Scar stuff will be forthcoming.

 

[Kzach]

I don't care what anyone says, there are 5000 ways to totally screw up a macro and 3 ways to maybe get it right. You can spend a really inordinate amount of time on that, and in fact we all eventually tired of the whole rigamarole after a couple years and the online group has gone on to using lightweight customized rules adapted specifically for quick play on the VTT.

Eh, I'm going to have to disagree here.

I am currently creating a Neverwinter based Maptools game that will be using a sandbox-style, ie. I've created every conceivable map for the entire area around Neverwinter and tokens for every single faction using all the suggested monsters across 14 levels in the setting book. That means the players can go wherever they wish and basically choose the fate of Neverwinter with me guiding the factions and their defiance or support of the PC's.

So far I'm up to almost 200 individual monster tokens that are ordered on a separate map for easy copy-pasting as needed. All fully worked up with the Veggiesama's framework which is easily considered one of the most cumbersome framework for which to build macros.

I haven't found it especially tiresome. It simply requires having a methodology for quick macro building which in turn requires a solid understanding of Maptools and the framework you're using to build monster tokens. I don't consider myself to be a particularly advanced user of either, just a particularly diligent one who doesn't shy away from repetitive work.

Did I mention that I also built 60 custom maps for the campaign and I use high quality art for all tokens?

None of this is outside the realm of feasibility for anyone to do within a reasonable amount of preparation time. It just takes organisation and a bit of perseverance to get through the initial learning curve and repetitive labour.

Does it have all the existing moduels set up? I desperately, desperately want to play Madness at Gardmore Abby. And DMs are intimidated at the dauntingness of programming that into Maptools.

Now THAT would make the rest of the mess that is the DDI VT worthwhile; having ready made adventures that you could just plug right into and start playing with a minimum of fuss. I still wouldn't prefer it over Maptools, but it would certainly be something I would consider using for once-offs or join as a player.

 

[Mirtek]

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.

It's a trade of freedom for convenience. It's fine as long as the limited selection of tiles in the VT contains everything you need, but if the tiles you want are not there, all the quickness of the preparation does nothing, you just can't run the mod

Personally we only use MT as a table top, that's it. No need to enter any stats of macros. We slide around tokens and have it do dice rolls, but beyond that everyone is tracking everything with pen and paper.

As a DM I don't even have MT do any dice rolls, I roll them myself on my desk so that I can cheat in favor of the players. More easy to pretend that the crit was a miss or a normal hit when not everyone seen maptool announce the natural 20 in the chat window

Well, I suppose you could play without any macros, but, wow, would that suck for playing 4e.

Yeah, just imagine we wouldn't have macros in real-life D&D

 

[KarinsDad]

Huh! I found the LoS/FoW/Lighting features to be by far the strongest point of the whole thing. I can set up a 'dungeon' map, set FoW on, set 'night', draw some boxes on the vision blocking layer, and things are all set to go. The players always see exactly what their characters can view and the map is revealed automatically as they explore. That seems like a HUGE time saver to me in play to me. Basically it is a whole set of things I don't have to deal with manually and I can always be confident I haven't forgotten to reveal stuff the PCs should be able to see nor that the players have access to a bunch of information the characters wouldn't have. TBH I doubt I would use another VTT at this point that didn't have at least the vision stuff. I guess I could live without the lighting features, but I'd miss those a lot too.

Yeah, too bad some of us are so bad at using Maptools that setting this up is beyond us. Course for me, most features of most software products are so non-intuitive that I only am able to use a small subset of their capabilities.

 

[OnlineDM]

Yeah, too bad some of us are so bad at using Maptools that setting this up is beyond us. Course for me, most features of most software products are so non-intuitive that I only am able to use a small subset of their capabilities.

It's not necessarily a knock on your MapTool skills. I'm pretty handy with MapTool, but I have yet to bother with vision blocking layers, lighting and line of sight. I do use fog of war, but I use it manually, in much the same way that you might cover parts of a physical battle map with paper and then remove the paper as the party explores more of the map.

The VBL stuff is very slick, but MapTool can be extremely handy even without it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, too bad some of us are so bad at using Maptools that setting this up is beyond us. Course for me, most features of most software products are so non-intuitive that I only am able to use a small subset of their capabilities.

MT's VBL really IS easy to use though. Just go to the VBL editing mode and snap rectangles around everything so each wall has a line of VBL embedded in it somewhere. You can erase stray VBL by using the solid box and hitting shift when you lay down the box and it erases. I generally then draw a few straight lines from inside corners so the LoS is blocked by the corner. Usually takes 10-15 minutes at most to do a complex map. Then just turn on FoW and 'night' for lighting if you want the area to be dark. You can then create some tokens (I have some images of torches and lanterns), put a light source on them, drop them on the object layer wherever they're located, and you're ready to go.

Macros for monsters particularly I find to be the obnoxious part of the whole scheme with 4e. There's a macro that will sort of parse the stat block from MB or Compendium, but it usually botches most of the combat macros, so you have to go over each one, fix them, etc. Often oddball power effects and such have to be done in fairly non-obvious ways (at least in Rumble). I figure 10-15 minutes minimum per monster type and you'll often run into cases where tokens get corrupted, macros go into endless loops and crash maptool etc etc etc. I have found it takes me considerably more time to make a monster's macro than it does to design the monster in the first place. PCs are worse, they have vast numbers of obscure effects that can't easily be categorized or might be coded several different ways. Usually the players end up botching them up or again you get stuff that crashes, etc. MORE debugging. That's really what killed it for me for 4e anyway. I write and debug code all day every day for a living, it was WAY too much like work (and MT's macro language is frankly a horrible undebuggable nightmare). This is really all more the fault of 4e having such a crazed number of different effects and whatnot than any fault of MT itself.

SO, for me I'd say if the DDI VTT can get CLOSE on the vision stuff and add SOME flexibility in terms of artwork and let you break away from just stacking tiles to make a dungeon I think it will be the cat's ass. With the ability to just drop a character into it and have it WORK that saves me 2-3 hours a week of PC macro debugging, and with all the monsters likewise that's another 2-3 hours a week saved. I'd definitely go back to running my online 4e campaign at that point for sure. At least as long as the players don't have to all pay for DDI because I'm pretty sure most of them won't...

Anyway, it is good to hear the VT is getting closer to achieving its full potential. Frankly I think they'd be smart to pour money into that baby and get it fully up to speed. Being able to manage a campaign, play, keep all your notes and material online, etc and I think it is almost a whole new genre of game. Really, MMO's are a pale imitation of real RPGs, but they are damned popular since you can play anytime online, etc. If you could play with ACTUAL PEOPLE any old time in a real fully featured campaign setting? Yeah, I think they'd have something that is more than just "play D&D online".

 

[Kzach]

Yeah, too bad some of us are so bad at using Maptools that setting this up is beyond us. Course for me, most features of most software products are so non-intuitive that I only am able to use a small subset of their capabilities.

I find this an interesting comment because I have very little patience for programs that lack intuitive interfaces (Photoshop, I'm looking at you!). If I can't figure it out myself without having to resort to a guide, then I generally throw it out or give up on it.

But with Maptools I was able to figure most things out without any guidance. Which meant that when I couldn't figure something out, I was willing to go to the RPTools forums and ask people and I almost always got an answer or could find one there already posted.

This is one of my gripes about the DDI VT. When I first used it, I just assumed it did stuff automatically because it did SOME things automatically. But there's nothing intuitive or graphically obvious as to WHAT it does automatically and what you have to do manually. As it turns out, the very little that it does do automatically also means you have layers within layers of manual tasks for every single turn, none of which has an intuitive or graphically obvious interaction to let you know that you NEED to do it.

Without either a higher level of automation or obvious graphical cues to let you know what needs to be done to maintain your character from round to round, without having to manually dig through obscure menus and unintuitive right-click contextual menus, I actually feel that the DDI VT is harder to use than even the most advanced Maptools framework.

As for Maptools macros being buggy and cumbersome, I can't argue that; the JavaScript structure is a mess. Apparently they're working on version 2.0 which will be pure Java and apparently that will make macro building and framework building significantly easier and more powerful. It will also put it light years ahead of the DDI VT.

 

[Hussar]

Kzach - the only problem with that is the main programmer for Maptools just got slapped with real life stuff and isn't really doing any coding anymore and no one else has really picked up the slack.

The joys of open source.

I have to admit though, i haven't actually run anything in the DDI VTT yet, so, we'll have to wait and see how well it actually plays.

And, as far as the criticism of using tiles goes- oh yeah, I'm 100% behind you on that. Not being able to use my own maps or add in my own tokens is a HUGE PITA.

 

[Rechan]

From what I'm aware, they just got the thing up and running. Give it time.