Masterplan vs Roll20 vs Fantasy Grounds, etc.

[heruca]

Thanks for mentioning Battlegrounds, Balesir.

To the OP: if you want a quick overview of Battlegrounds: RPG Edition, check out the Facebook page for Battlegrounds Games. Head over to the Videos section of the page and watch them.

And for general guidance in choosing a virtual tabletop program that is right for you, read this.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Thanks for mentioning Battlegrounds, Balesir.

To the OP: if you want a quick overview of Battlegrounds: RPG Edition, check out the Facebook page for Battlegrounds Games. Head over to the Videos section of the page and watch them.

And for general guidance in choosing a virtual tabletop program that is right for you, read this.

Interesting, though most of the info on RPG Virtual Tabletop seems to be rather outdated. Honestly though, its hard to find good info on VTTs. They tend to come and go, most get to the basic "draw a map and run a chat" stage and then die. Roll20, Battlegrounds, Fantasy Grounds, and Map Tool are pretty much the only things that have viably persisted and continued to develop with significant support and community. Any of those 4 could serve someone's needs.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Oh, and I'd just note that MOTE, basically MapTool 1.4 should be releasing in a few days, finally! Its still Maptool, but it appears that it will feature substantially improved features. It seems like they're still wrestling with the whole "how do we make money off this?" question though. MOTE is 'free', but it is apparently only available to people who pledge in the Kickstarter last year. It sounds like they're not calling it commercial software, and technically you can give it away, but I'm guessing finding someone that will gift you a copy may be somewhat hard, at least for now. Presumably there will be a way to donate, further kickstarters, something...

 

[heruca]

Oh, I thought the MOTE KS was basically people paying for further development of what would be a free app available to everyone. Perhaps I misunderstood.

 

[GMMichael]

XP for smiteworks - that video answered all my questions and then some.

Are there any others? I'm way too lazy to use Maptools

Yeah, some of those systems are a little out of control. If you just want the basics, like us old-school gamers, you can get these for free on penandpapergames.com's chatroom:

- in-chat dice roller
- private messages
- username change
- shared whiteboard
- pencil-sketching in chat window in place of typing
- playing card dealer
- and my personal favorite, Youtube messages (for sending music to the group).

Warning: this resource requires that players have imaginations, and that the GM has standard Excel/Word abilities for performing combat tracking.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

For 5E, we just Skype and I cut up sections of the map and post them as they explore. Once they have completed a fair section, I post the combined pieces together.

For 4E, I prefer to keep using miniatures but I have a webcam on a cable that I can move around. Simply hanging it over the battlemap is normally sufficient but it can be moved as required. Oh, and that's just Skype as well.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Oh, I thought the MOTE KS was basically people paying for further development of what would be a free app available to everyone. Perhaps I misunderstood.

Well, its basically 'Map Tool 2.0', and yes, it appears to be free. OTOH its not like I could find a download link, you have to ask and get someone to forward you a copy. The idea is they'd LIKE you to support the project and not just grab a free download and then ask for support. Honestly I'm not exactly even sure how you WOULD support them right now, as the KS ended almost a year ago and I didn't see a donation page anywhere.

I guess the main guy got sick and more-or-less dropped out right after the kickstarter, and the project has continued, but it seems pretty disorganized. There's no central point of information, they don't communicate well, etc. They seem to be using Google+ mainly and there has been some recent chatter there. I'm not sure if they will have a download link available once the project beta ends (they say this week or next week, the original launch date was supposed to be 2 months ago). Presumably the source code will need to be available, at least, as its a fork of Map Tool, which is AFAIK all copyleft. However, a lot of what they seem to be doing is improvements to installation and other ancillary bits, so they may be able to maintain a hold on certain features even if they do release the source. I dunno. I guess there were some kerfuffles surrounding the forking.