DM's Familiar (my program, not a VTT) can import stat blocks and can then Export to the Klooge format. I do all my data entry in DM's Familiar, click a button to export to Klooge format, and then import everything to klooge.
Which virtual tabletop do you use?
- Thread starter knifie_sp00nie
- Start date
DM's Familiar (my program, not a VTT) can import stat blocks and can then Export to the Klooge format. I do all my data entry in DM's Familiar, click a button to export to Klooge format, and then import everything to klooge.
My concern and why I was hoping WotC would get their act together, was a universal platform / system. It would be nice to just find people that you could just game with without having to get the application for. WotC should have went to one of these 3rd party vendors, evaluated, and selected.
WotC has not show good judgement on their software projects.
WotC has not show good judgement on their software projects.
RSKennan
Explorer
I swear by Fantasy Grounds II, despite its problems. It's fickle, but not buggy. In play it feels almost exactly like a very focused tabletop session of D&D. You move your tokens, roll your 3d dice, the GM can change lighting and show visual aids, etc. You also have a character sheet that you can click to roll that field's associated dice automatically. Playing with text chat is tedious, but over Skype things move along very well. It's literally the only reason I keep a Windows partition.
Some features that become drawbacks in certain situations- it uses a square grid, and the only option for anything else is to disable the grid altogether. With the grid on, your tokens snap into position when you drop them. Without it they don't. That means that it's excellent for any game that uses a square grid, and not as cool for games that don't.
There's no official 4e ruleset. There is an unofficial one of questionable legality, though. Same for SW Saga. The rulesets define how the program interprets your interactions with it. Other systems, like Savage Worlds, have official rulesets and you can code your own.
It doesn't know how to do dice pools for success-based systems, but that might be a ruleset issue. It's really geared towards d20, and getting it to do other things is harder than it needs to be.
Some features that become drawbacks in certain situations- it uses a square grid, and the only option for anything else is to disable the grid altogether. With the grid on, your tokens snap into position when you drop them. Without it they don't. That means that it's excellent for any game that uses a square grid, and not as cool for games that don't.
There's no official 4e ruleset. There is an unofficial one of questionable legality, though. Same for SW Saga. The rulesets define how the program interprets your interactions with it. Other systems, like Savage Worlds, have official rulesets and you can code your own.
It doesn't know how to do dice pools for success-based systems, but that might be a ruleset issue. It's really geared towards d20, and getting it to do other things is harder than it needs to be.
RSKennan
Explorer
Oh, and I'm sure this is a common feature, but in Fantasy Grounds, there's a combat tracker that allows you to resolve your attacks by rolling dice on your foe. If tells you if you hit, and if you do damage, it applies it automatically. It speeds up combat quite a bit, and frees the GM to describe things, IMO.
mastermaven79
First Post
All I need from a Virtual Tabletop
All I need from a virtual tabletop is the board or mat, with square grid(and the ability to make the mat/board smaller or bigger to accomadate different sized battlefiels). Tokens for PC's and NPC's and monsters(they must have a front and back for facing). A dice roller so that all players can see your rolls. A drawing tools so i can draw on the mat/board. Thats all i really need. I don't need any of those bells and whistles.
All I need from a virtual tabletop is the board or mat, with square grid(and the ability to make the mat/board smaller or bigger to accomadate different sized battlefiels). Tokens for PC's and NPC's and monsters(they must have a front and back for facing). A dice roller so that all players can see your rolls. A drawing tools so i can draw on the mat/board. Thats all i really need. I don't need any of those bells and whistles.
You dont have to use every feature on a VTT. The important thing is that for the features that you do need that the program does those bits of it very well.
Most VTTs have a graphical map and for all of those they all have a grid option. They all have tokens which you can move and they all update everyone elses tokens when one person moves theirs. Thats the essential bits for a graphical VTT.
You say that you dont want other features but if you find it hard to connect with outhers or that it crashes or that its clunky to install or use then you would find that there are differences between programs. All of them have strengths and weaknesses. Theres no one that is better at everything.
Most VTTs have a graphical map and for all of those they all have a grid option. They all have tokens which you can move and they all update everyone elses tokens when one person moves theirs. Thats the essential bits for a graphical VTT.
You say that you dont want other features but if you find it hard to connect with outhers or that it crashes or that its clunky to install or use then you would find that there are differences between programs. All of them have strengths and weaknesses. Theres no one that is better at everything.
azhrei_fje
First Post
I used to say the same thing about DM Genie. But I don't use that program any more.
In addition, with the advent of MapTool (and the other RPTools applications) which are Java-based, I don't need a Windows virtual machine at all. (I still have one for that stupid, icky LiveMeeting crapware, but that's for business, not for gaming.
)MapTool has square and hex grids, or you can go gridless.
Ditto for MapTool. It doesn't have any game-system specific code in it except for the movement counting stuff (1-2-1 or 1-1-1), but this simply means that users can define their own rules via the macros they write to implement game functions.
Oops. I said above that MapTool doesn't have game-system specific stuff besides the movement counting, but it does have a large variety of die rolling features, including success-based rolls, exploding rolls, and a bunch of others. So I guess that's two exceptions instead of one.
Also on the list for inclusion soon is some kind of card deck support. MapTool won't be making decisions based on the cards, but it will provide support for drawing cards from a deck, placing them back into the deck, shuffling the deck, and so on. It will be up to user macros to make decisions based on the cards that are drawn or used.
Crazy_Dragon
First Post
anyone know one that has a Mac client?
IronWolf
blank
Maptools is written in Java so it will run on platforms which can run java. Those include Windows, Mac and Linux. The downloads page has dmg files for the Mac.
heruca
Explorer
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