WOTC's possible virtual tabletop

[MarkB]

But if the system can't represent the characters that are used in the game being run then what's the point?

A virtual tabletop doesn't need all the rulesets in order to do that, though. It just needs enough flexibility to allow the DM to do the rules-adjudication and then accurately represent the result.

 

[The Hound]

Hussar, (and whoever else is interested) keep watching my posts and sig for the next few days. I'm having an "almost fully functional" preview of the free virtual tabletop site I've talked about here and there. It's being developed as part of a larger project, but our intention is to keep it available and free of charge for people who want to run their own games.

 

[Festivus]

A virtual tabletop doesn't need all the rulesets in order to do that, though. It just needs enough flexibility to allow the DM to do the rules-adjudication and then accurately represent the result.

Amen. I run a Fantasy Grounds game and usually have my books right next to my laptop. One of my players is playing a Duskblade... there isn't any PHB2 support in Fantasy Grounds currently but we make it work just fine.

You don't need anything other than a chat box, die roller and perhaps some sort of shared graphics portal.

 

[Nikosandros]

I guess we have very different views about what's useful in such a setup. For instance, for me the chat is not that useful... I ran the game by voice (I would *never* play by chat). I also don't care very much about a dice roller. I trust my players to roll their dice and tell me the result.

 

[dougmander]

I guess we have very different views about what's useful in such a setup. For instance, for me the chat is not that useful... I ran the game by voice (I would *never* play by chat). I also don't care very much about a dice roller. I trust my players to roll their dice and tell me the result.

Wow, chat is essential for me. When we finish a session, I copy the entire chat history and save it to a notecard -- as my brain slides into middle age, it's handy to have a record of exactly what happened last time.

 

[dungeon blaster]

there's a big difference between what's useful and what's neccesary. Having access to all the books online is cetainly useful, but by no means neccesary, as you can just buy the books and use them (of course, you can't exactly share the books). I highly doubt WoTC would put the books online unless it was sold as some sort of copy-protected .pdf or something at maybe $10 each. Granted, they may put some of the splatbook material online (all of the core classes, maybe?), but like the other poster said...keep dreaming.

However they set it up, I would think that the program could also be used to play D&D minis.

I would think that there would be a fairly large library of images to use as character portraits. They could just crop many of the images they have already commissioned for the books. While they might not provide music (except perhaps the Midnight Syndicate D&D Soundtrack as an extra fee), the program should be capable of playing .mp3s.

 

[Remathilis]

I think the big thing would be a connection to the character generator and a monster database, so I can copy monsters and such right into my game with little prep time. A VOIP would be awesome, but I have to say I did the NWN method of playing and it didn't hold a candle to personal D&D. This would have to be great to make me want to use it...

 

[Nikosandros]

Wow, chat is essential for me. When we finish a session, I copy the entire chat history and save it to a notecard -- as my brain slides into middle age, it's handy to have a record of exactly what happened last time.

Skype already does this for me.

Plus, I only use chat for extra stuff... the session is played with voice. I realize that there are many people who love to play by chat, but I personally couldn't endure it...

 

[Nikosandros]

there's a big difference between what's useful and what's neccesary. Having access to all the books online is cetainly useful, but by no means neccesary, as you can just buy the books and use them (of course, you can't exactly share the books). I highly doubt WoTC would put the books online unless it was sold as some sort of copy-protected .pdf or something at maybe $10 each. Granted, they may put some of the splatbook material online (all of the core classes, maybe?), but like the other poster said...keep dreaming.

What I'm thinking about is a way to handle characters and combat in a computer context... so that if the cleric casts mass bull strength all pertinent stats are auto-updated for all characters, for instance.

Also, if one of the monsters inflicts 25 points of slashing damage plus 15 points of cold damage on a character with protection from cold and damage resistance 3/- the character sheet is automatically updated with the new hp value and the protection spell is diminished.

 

[Festivus]

I should clarify how we run things in my game. We do use a voice chat program (Ventrilo) for all out of character commentary, rules questions.... but we use the IRC type chat for all in character dialogue and die rolling history. Using text only would significantly slow things down for us.

What we don't use is all the extra bells and whistles Fantasy Grounds gives us... like the SRD in the application... I just have a web browser with d20srd.org up on it while gaming, along with my books it's fairly quick to find a rule.