Ways to play D&D online?

[teach]

Hey everyone out in enworld land, after some great D&D and roleplaying at Gencon, my farflung friends and I are talking about playing D&D online. Does anyone have any recommendations, or at least some experience with it? What would you recommend? I think we're going to start with Maptools, since it's free, but we're all pretty busy, so if there is something that is easier to use, we'd probably rather use that.

Thanks!

 

[Gilladian]

Maptools does have a moderate learning curve, but it is the best tool I've found in extensive online searching and testing. We ran a 4e campaign for almost 3 years and we've just started a BRP/CoC campaign this week.

Add skype and you have a really nice "package"; it almost feels like playing live.

OTOH, if you're using a very simple rules-lite system rather than say, pathfinder or 4e, you could get away with skype and one of the many "whiteboard" websites. I can't remember which ones we tried, but we found one that allowed use of a grid, and had some decent ways to save "projects" for re-use.

 

[Dedekind]

It depends on how full featured you want it to be. If you really just want a shared battle map, MapTools totally will do that. It has an initiative tracker and you can import/create conditions for each token. My PCs use the macros for their powers. That is about as much as we feel we need (except for also using Skype).

If you want more than that, MapTools will also do it, but then it requires a bigger time investment. I haven't tried Fantasy Grounds or the other products.

Some friends had success with using a webcam to play.... I think you can get but a multi-video conference package from Skype for a reasonable amount of cash.

 

[IronWolf]

MapTool is great. You can use it without a framework for your system of choice and be just fine or you can add in a framework and the tool can take care of a good amount for you once setup. There is a bit of a learning curve, but make sure to take advantage of the video tutorials and that will do a lot to help get you up to speed.

For voice I usually use either Skype or Ventrilo. I sort of prefer Ventrilo as it has a lighter resource load than Skype - but it seems everyone has and is familiar with Skype these days. So more often than not I end up using Skype for that reason alone.

It is pretty easy these days to game remotely for groups that want to do so. We sometimes use these tools when we just have someone that can't make the regular gaming session in person and they all work well.

 

[IronWolf]

Some friends had success with using a webcam to play.... I think you can get but a multi-video conference package from Skype for a reasonable amount of cash.

If you go the webcam route and want to conference multiple people you can do it via the hangouts feature in Google Plus without needing to pay for the video conference ability with Skype.

 

[OnlineDM]

As you might guess from my name, I run games online and love it.

I first tried a program called OpenRPG, then discovered gametable, then discovered MapTool. Since then, it's been all MapTool and I've loved it.

I did some demos of other systems at GenCon, and the one that looked the most tempting is Fantasy Grounds, but I honestly don't see a compelling reason to switch away from MapTool and Skype.

If you want some education on using MapTool, you can look at the MapTool Education Central section of my blog. There are also great videos out there about learning to make maps and such in MapTool. There are some pre-built frameworks for various games that make things easier to run, although those are overkill in a lot of cases.

I'll also say that for simplicity, don't worry about lighting and vision-blocking layers. These are features that MapTool does especially well, but I find them to be overkill. You can have "fog of war" covering the sections of map that you don't want the players to see yet, and then easily remove the fog as they explore new areas. That's enough - don't worry about vision-blocking layers.

Welcome to online D&D!

 

[Kzach]

Yet another vote for MapTool.

As others have said, it has a steep learning curve, but it's well worth the investment. No other VT comes close to being as versatile and well made as MapTool. I regret paying for FantasyGrounds and I'm currently in the D&D VT Beta which also isn't worth paying to use.

I highly recommend also learning Veggiesama's 4e framework.

As for chat, Skype sucks. Don't use it. Ventrilo or TeamSpeak with the Speex codec is the best.

 

[amerigoV]

Has anyone tried using the Google Hangout yet for online gaming? At lease for the voice/video?

 

[HelloChristian]

I have a Google+ account and from what I can tell, a lot of guys are playing via the hangouts. They seem to be utilizing the Hangouts to great effect. A lot of the people I see doing this are individuals who write many of the "old school Renaissance" blogs for systems like Labyrinth Lord and Swords and Wizardry. Recently, dozens of them participated in an online "Constantcon" where Hangout games were occurring round the clock.

 

[teach]

As you might guess from my name, I run games online and love it.

I first tried a program called OpenRPG, then discovered gametable, then discovered MapTool. Since then, it's been all MapTool and I've loved it.

I did some demos of other systems at GenCon, and the one that looked the most tempting is Fantasy Grounds, but I honestly don't see a compelling reason to switch away from MapTool and Skype.

If you want some education on using MapTool, you can look at the MapTool Education Central section of my blog. There are also great videos out there about learning to make maps and such in MapTool. There are some pre-built frameworks for various games that make things easier to run, although those are overkill in a lot of cases.

I'll also say that for simplicity, don't worry about lighting and vision-blocking layers. These are features that MapTool does especially well, but I find them to be overkill. You can have "fog of war" covering the sections of map that you don't want the players to see yet, and then easily remove the fog as they explore new areas. That's enough - don't worry about vision-blocking layers.

Welcome to online D&D!

Thanks for the links. I actually had already found your Maptool Education Central page in my google searches and had found it really useful.

I appreciate all the advice everyone. It sounds like Maptools will do everything we want it to (be a battlemap) and skype with video chat will do the rest. If we start to get fancy we can add in other bits and pieces, but I'm glad to hear that the fancy features of Maptools won't get in the way of our use.