Q on Fantasygrounds, OpenRPG, DnDi, and other methods of online play

[redcard]

I tried OpenRPG, but I couldn't understand it. It seems to have been made by programmers, and that's not something that's good for my gaming group. Maptool seems to be the one I'm going to go with now, couple it with Vent or Skype and we should be golden.

The one problem I can forsee having already is the character sheet information/management. How do people do it in Maptool?

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

Weeeellll... that's part of the problem that the system neutral ones like Maptool and Battlegrounds have.

You can do some primitive stuff for maptools in terms of adding notes to a fig.

There is a tool that they've been working on that's eventually supposed to hook into Maptool/Initiativetool. They don't have an official release of that yet though, but you _can_ download the tool and play around with it.

Inittool (another of the RPTools) is currently the way that I'd worry about handling it. It'll handle having the "essentials" you're going to need. If you need a full character sheet for some reason, the easiest way to handle that is to use a form-fillable pdf character sheet. If you use Foxit Reader, you can fill in all the values in the various fields and then save it.

Some of the form-fillable character sheets are pretty nicely done too, and even include some auto-calculations.

If that doesn't work for some reason, you can probably get away with a jpg of the character sheet and using a graphics editor to fill in information on the sheet that way. Not ideal, but workable.

http://rptools.net/doku.php?id=home

 

[redcard]

Well , I meant the CS's from the players, though, I gather they'd mail them before the game starts or something similar.

 

[LrdApoc]

Not to spoil the party but D&DI is also rule neutral.. its not going to adjudicate rules. Its merely the direct offering in this space from Wizards.. so if that is a factor you're looking for then they are all equal in that way.

 

[Festivus]

Not trying to threadcrap here, but the competitive advantage I saw for DDi (based upon the previews) was the use of 3D virtual minis. Now that I understand WotC plans to charge extra for those, I believe DDi's game table just jumped into a level playing field with the pre-existing online tools (of which you list many).

As for me, I'm a big fan of Fantasy Grounds. Connections are easy, maps are easy to load and zoom, and the RP Token Tool (found at that link above) is a simple way to create tokens from any image you can find on the net. Literally takes only seconds.

The user community of FG is also nice, and already has a 4e character sheet with powers - but hasn't released it publicly due to the fact the GSL isn't out yet.

Wis

I use FG2 myself. The lure of DDI to me isn't so much the 3d tokens as the integrated tools. For example, I would expect the full text of the power your character is using would be hotlinked to the token representing the character. I would also expect things like dungeon adventures to be preconfigured in DDI so that I could choose to run "Heathen" without any need for me to create the maps. I look forward to what WoTC has to offer, and until then I'll be running with FG2.

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

Not to spoil the party but D&DI is also rule neutral.. its not going to adjudicate rules. Its merely the direct offering in this space from Wizards.. so if that is a factor you're looking for then they are all equal in that way.

One advantage that a stand-alone tool has is that it's not dependent on someone else in the same way.

So something like RPTools can be used by whomever, and if the website goes down, as long as someone's got copies of the tools to share out, folks aren't stuck.

Reading over the Official D&D Insider FAQ, it's got a few things that it talks about that makes it less than ideal if you're planning on using it for multiple systems.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dndifaq

[sblock=DDI bits]

How much will the D&D Insider subscription cost?
$14.95/month, or you can buy a 3-month or 12-month subscription at a discount. A 12-month subscription works out to $9.95/month.

As a Dungeon Master, I plan on subscribing. Will all my players have to subscribe to receive benefits from the D&D Insider content and tools?
Your players who subscribe will also gain the full benefits of the D&D Insider features. We’re creating the D&D Insider experience to be as useful as possible to every player, not just every group. That said, some functionalities will be available without needing to subscribe; for example, we are planning that subscribers will receive a set number of Guest Passes for the D&D Game Table (and can purchase more) that they can provide to their players, allowing them to join an individual game session.

Will non-D&D features (e.g., sci-fi minis, a hex grid, mini facing) be implemented?
Our first goal with D&D Insider is to support 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons.

Will 3rd party companies be able to use the D&D Insider tools? Specifically, could a company recreate one of their adventures or produce Digital Minis for a 4th Edition product?
Anyone, individuals and companies, will be able to use our tools to create free maps and adventure content usable on the D&D Game Table. Regarding the production of D&D Insider Digital Objects (3D tiles or Digital Miniatures), we will consider establishing new types of partnerships with other companies to expand the scope of these digital tools in a structured way.

Can I personalize D&D Insider for my “house rules”?
There will be ways for you to use the D&D Insider tools for your own system of house rules. For example, the D&D Character Creator will allow you to both create characters that adhere to the official system of character generation (“RPGA legal”), or that can be filled out however you wish. And, as mentioned previously, the D&D Game Table essentially allows it to be used as a generic roleplaying tool, allowing the DM to run the game however he or she sees fit.

Will D&D Insider subscribers need to purchase Digital Miniatures/3D Tiles individually?
The D&D Insider subscription will include a number of Digital Minis and 3D Tiles. Additional packs of minis and tiles can be purchased individually.

[/sblock]

I'm not looking to start some kind of a flamewar or anything. If the whole DDI thing is able to deliver on what it promises, that's groovy. But at $120 for a year, having to buy tiles and e-miniatures if I want to expand past the basics of whatever they offer, and it looking like you have to use their tools to create a map (instead of doing it offline using whatever you want), it seems likely that there's going to be more attractive alternatives.

Battleground for example is going to be less than that, I get to keep the program so even if the company disappears one day I've still got the tool, and I can load up whatever maps and so forth I want in it.

For free, I've got RPTools doing the same thing.

One thing that DDI offers potentially is the whole "community" thing. If people are serious about spending money on D&D, they're going to be hooked into (potentially) a much wider base of people all sharing at least some commonality. Of course, if people are that into D&D, the chance of using the DDI for something _other than_ D&D play goes down, but I'm sure there's going to be non-D&D games that take place.

Since one thing you seem to hear online quite a bit are issues related to being able to hook up with a group for some face-to-face play, the potential value of the DDI community is something to consider.

Once stuff actually goes live, we'll see how well it lives up to the potential. If it rocks, I'm sure there'll be a decent push from non-D&D people. It's going to have to rock pretty hard to get the non-D&D people though, because it's a much harder sell to get folks to shell out $120+ a year for use of a virtual chalkboard; a lot of the other DDI stuff would be pretty useless to 'em.

 

[EtanMoonstar]

I tried OpenRPG, but I couldn't understand it. It seems to have been made by programmers, and that's not something that's good for my gaming group. Maptool seems to be the one I'm going to go with now, couple it with Vent or Skype and we should be golden.

The one problem I can forsee having already is the character sheet information/management. How do people do it in Maptool?

If you go into the Edit->Campaign Properties menu, you can edit sets of token properties (for example, I have a set for PCs and a set for Monsters), and then input these values when you edit tokens (in the Properties tab). You can also add macros to the tokens to automate die rolling for that character/creature's common abilities, and the macros can automatically get values from the token's properties.

For example, my Monsters properties look like this (I put in separate values for abilities and their mods to simplify the math in the macros; also, the *@ symbol makes that property visible when you mouse over the token, handy in combat):

Level
LevMod
Strength
StrMod
Constitution
ConMod
Dexterity
DexMod
Intelligence
IntMod
Wisdom
WisMod
Charisma
ChaMod
*@HP
*@AC
*@Fort
*@Ref
*@Will
Movement
Passive Insight
*@Passive Perception

An example ability macro on, say, a Blackscale Bruiser lizardfolk to automatically roll his Tail Slap attack and damage (the Modifier variable will pop up a box asking for the value when I roll, handy for accounting for variables like Combat Advantage, Bless, etc.):

<b>Tail Slap</b><br><b>To Hit:</b>[1d20+7+Modifier] vs. Ref<br><b>Damage:</b>[1d8]+6 and knock Prone

 

[Michael Silverbane]

Well , I meant the CS's from the players, though, I gather they'd mail them before the game starts or something similar.

In the online game that I run using maptool, the players keep a copy of the character sheet right in the maptool campaign. From that, I set up token macros for each one that they are free to use or not (they could also set up their own token macros, if they so desired).

You could also have them post up characters on the character management section of Mythweavers (a pbp gaming site) or somewhere similar.

Later
silver

 

[Griego]

My group uses Klooge.Werks. It has a steep learning curve, but it's the most powerful tool I've tried. You can customize your own character sheet definition with XML and it supports scripting through Beanshell, which is basically Java with a few tidbits stolen from Perl and JavaScript.

 

[Kichwas]

One thing I -am- looking for is a tool that has an easy ability to find other players and games. A very small tool that I have to bring my players to would not meet that need. I need a tool with an active community and a good 'looking for game / hosting game' tool.