Virtual Tabletop software?

[Hussar]

To be fair, cross-platform support (without forcing Mac users to purchase Windows) is the first thing I look for, in a VTT. The second would be either a free player version, or a free trial version. Next It has to support 3.5e/d20. Ideally, it would support movement in three dimensions.

Granted, I DM a chat-based game via IRC, because VTTs seem to befuddle my players. I would need a VTT that had a bulletproof GUI, did not require running multiple programs or accessing CLIs, and had boatloads of support.

To be fair Aeolius, I don't there there are any VTT's that support 3d movement. I imagine that a 3d environment is simply too hard to code given that the background map would have to be built in 3d every single time. Wotc's abortive stab at things aside, I don't think anyone else has even tried.

About the best you could do is an isometric map. OpenRPG does do isometric but is somewhat unreliable and has a very steep learning curve.

While I do like Maptools, I would not call it's GUI bulletproof. It's not hugely complicated, but, it's not all that easy either.

I really do wish Maptools supported sound though. That's the one thing I really miss about OpenRPG.

And I have not looked lately, but I could sweat that Rumbles Maptool Framework takes a cut / paste from CB or MB, right? Someone tell me I am crazy but with any VTT, data entry for the campaign is the biggest chunk of time you spend no matter what... so a import from other forms is a boon.

Yes, that is correct. You can cut and paste from any pdf file into a token and it will pull out the die roller macros for you. It's not 100% accurate, but, it works most of the time.

 

[Griogre]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Xorne
But what makes FG2 awesome for me?

- 3D animated dice
- ruleset specific character sheet for many systems
- DM Story/Map/Image/Encounter/NPC/Item Database
- Easy exporting to make the above adventure database modular
- Fantastic community support
- 3D animated dice (they deserve two mentions)

It [MapTool] doesn't have 3D animated dice (which, while it may look cool, doesn't actually contribute to the game at all, IMO)... snip

Naturally you are in titled to your opinion, but the pretty dice do matter and not just for their prettiness. What you are overlooking is the dice are also part of the user interface. What is more natural to a gamer than to pick up and roll dice as an interface when a die roll is required?

 

[IronWolf]

Naturally you are in titled to your opinion, but the pretty dice do matter and not just for their prettiness. What you are overlooking is the dice are also part of the user interface. What is more natural to a gamer than to pick up and roll dice as an interface when a die roll is required?

While MapTool might not have graphical dice to click on there are buttons to make your dice rolls. Want to make an attack, click the attack button and your attack and damage are rolled, etc. Graphical dice rank pretty low on my list of desires as well when the frameworks in MapTools already have buttons for me to click to make rolls I need to make.

 

[Merkuri]

I imagine that a 3d environment is simply too hard to code given that the background map would have to be built in 3d every single time. Wotc's abortive stab at things aside, I don't think anyone else has even tried.

I don't believe WotC's game table was truly 3D either. I mean, it was shown in 3D, but I don't recall seeing any photos of minis on different levels. The bells and whistles may have been rendered in 3D, but I think under the hood the map was still flat.

There are lots of problems with rendering maps in 3D, especially if you're talking about something like multiple floors of a building. Unless you're showing it in a first-person perspective (from inside the map, essentially) you have to decide things like where to cut the map or make it transparent, where you let the camera go (if the camera's movable)... there's just a ton more processing needed for a 3D map than a 2D one.

It's also a lot harder for a user to make their own 3D map. 3D programs tend to have high learning curves. The time you'd need to create a 2D map of a building is probably a lot less than the time you'd need to create an equally detailed 3D map of the same building.

Naturally you are in titled to your opinion, but the pretty dice do matter and not just for their prettiness. What you are overlooking is the dice are also part of the user interface. What is more natural to a gamer than to pick up and roll dice as an interface when a die roll is required?

You pick up dice just as often in MapTool as you do with any other VTT, which is to say not at all. The difference is in how you see your fake dice on the computer screen, whether it's as a number or as an animated image. That part's just set dressing. IMO, the number you get from the roll (and how random it is) matters more than how it's shown to me.

Oh, and by the way, there are macros in MapTool that will show you an image of your die with the right number showing after you make a roll. It's not animated, but it does prove that you can use MapTool to show you dice.

 

[Steel_Wind]

I don't believe WotC's game table was truly 3D either. I mean, it was shown in 3D, but I don't recall seeing any photos of minis on different levels. The bells and whistles may have been rendered in 3D, but I think under the hood the map was still flat.

The only program which matches this feature set is NWN1.

 

[Aloïsius]

It's also a lot harder for a user to make their own 3D map. 3D programs tend to have high learning curves. The time you'd need to create a 2D map of a building is probably a lot less than the time you'd need to create an equally detailed 3D map of the same building.

I remember playing with the doom editor tools when I was young... You don't really need "real" 3d for 99% of the dungeon you are using. Just something that allow you to create stairs and cliffs, and would manage flying creatures...

 

[Merkuri]

The only program which matches this feature set is NWN1.

Was NWN1 true 3D, though? Do you ever remember bad guys being on a different elevation than your party?

Just because the set is 3D doesn't mean the map is true 3D. And if everyone is going to be on the same elevation anyway I'd actually prefer it to be in 2D so my imagination can take over.

When the tokens for everyone's PCs are static 2D images (or even posed unmoving 3D sculptures) on a sketched 2D map it's easy for you to imagine the battle scene with characters parrying and dodging and leaping all over the map. But when the depictions of the characters move and make the same attack animation over and over again it gets hard to imagine them doing anything else differently. There comes a point where if the images look too real they drown out your imagination, which could have done a much better job of rendering the scene than the computer is doing.

In that sense, to simulate a PnP RPG I would actually prefer a flat 2D map with 2D image tokens like MapTool, over a 3D animated world like Neverwinter Nights. The only time I might want a 3D map is if I were trying to simulate characters being on different elevations.

 

[Aeolius]

As it incorporates underwater combat, I wonder how Into the Deep , DDO Update 6, will handle 3D movement.

 

[Merkuri]

As it incorporates underwater combat, I wonder how Into the Deep , DDO Update 6, will handle 3D movement.

Possibly, it won't. It may just have characters walking on the bottom.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Was NWN1 true 3D, though? Do you ever remember bad guys being on a different elevation than your party?

Just because the set is 3D doesn't mean the map is true 3D.

It's "true 3d" in the sense that all spell effects are targeted at the head node. So it appears in 3d for all intents and purposes. There is no indepedent 3d pathing in the pathnodes in the tiles - so in that sense, no.

(You can fake putting characters at different heights though with a swap appearance script.)

Still - it can work and it is easy to make things appear 3d and have monsters in flight over party's heads, etc.

Now - I personally wouldn't run a campaign using NWN - and I think it's fair to say that I have a helluva lot more technical knowledge on the Aurora engine than probably anybody else here on ENWorld. I'm just saying that if you really wanted to present something in 3d or isometric, NWN1 was as close it reasonably gets.