Virtual gaming table recommendations?

[tuftears]

As some of you may know, jordangreywolf ran the first Avatars campaign a couple years ago. It was fun, and great to get the gang back together.

Avatars was the most popular virtual reality game of the 2060s - a game in which children and adults would create their own avatars, imaginary friends that they could take on quests in a virtual world overlaid upon the real world. That changed in 2065, when a series of brutal murders culminated in a reality-shattering explosion in their California park on the eve of its grand opening, and Avatars was shut down for weeks. People told strange stories of holes opening up from reality into VR, of falling into the strange worlds of the Diadem, or being attacked by monsters that had somehow escaped into the modern world. But how much of it really happened? Only a few people know, and they're not telling.

Now I'm looking at running the follow-up for the group. But one thing that Greywolf did for the first campaign was to illustrate battles by providing JPGs with a map and players (and NPCs) placed on a grid on the map, giving everyone a good idea where exactly they were. That's something I'd like to do for this campaign as well, but it seems to me like there must be a better way than making maps in MS Paint, saving, and uploading them repeatedly.

A little Google-fu brought me here, a list of "virtual tables". I investigated a couple, but I'd like to know if anyone's tried any of these and what their opinions are.

Here's what I looked at:

RPGTonight. Web-based, hooking into standard forum software.

Pro: players wouldn't have to buy or download a client to use it.
Con: ugly interface, slow response.

RPTools. Required download or Java Webstart launch.

Pro: client responds quickly, looks pretty good
Con: drawing controls are primitive (freeform line, straight line, rectangle, oval)

I haven't yet verified if my players are going to be able to use RPTools yet, but it seems like there'd be a definite learning curve.

I'd definitely prefer that players don't have to pay for client software. It's almost tempting to implement a virtual table of my own... But having played with RPTools a bit, I can see there are a bunch of features that would be nice, yet would greatly increase the 'all you have to do is move pieces around a map, right?' implementation time.

So what about you guys, have any of you tried a virtual gaming table?

Comments

[cjthomas.livejournal.com]

Disclaimer: I haven't used any such tools myself.

That said, you might want to look into teleconferencing tools. Virtual-whiteboards have been a staple of these for a while, so there might be one by now that would have features you'd find useful.

[okojosan.livejournal.com]

Have you thought about something like ustream or livestream?

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

You mean having a camera pointed at an actual map? Then players wouldn't be able to move their own units around. Something interactive would be nicest!

[okojosan.livejournal.com]

Oh I see, you want the players to be able to move their own pieces. I thought you wanted something where you could show the players a little bit of a map, then uncloak parts of it as they see it.

Hmm, I don't suppose pchat would really work. :/

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I did not know about that! It's an interesting idea. };)

I tested MapTool with one of my prospective players, I think it's doable but best to create the maps outside of the server and then insert them, rather than try to deal with its primitive-at-best drawing tools.

[stryck.livejournal.com]

Let me know what you find! I and my friends usually use Dices for chat and dice rolling, but its map function is pretty primitive.

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

MapTools/RPTools is what I tried to sell you guys on for the first Avatars game, but nobody seemed to be very interested in it (primarily, I think, because of the learning curve issues you've noted).

"RPTroll" on the Pinnacle forums has worked on a number of Savage Worlds specific tools for MapTools/RPTools, however, so there should be some stuff specifically useful for the system (and, I hope, a little less clunky than my hacked MUF implementation on Sinai).

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

That's what RPTroll did with the "Wizards & Warriors" freebie fantasy Savage Worlds adventure I did maps and figure flats for on the Pinnacle site. I'll have to see if I can dig up the old thread.

Here's an initial thread with some of the early token work.
Another MapTool thread.

Here's a link to RPTroll's blogspot blog, with a screenshot from the "Wizards & Warriors" MapTool treatment.

I'll see if I can dig up something else later. (Just making a quick morning check of LJ.)

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Hey, maybe I could help draw some generic maps. =) You can move markers around in MapTools, so you could "furnish" some quasi-generic rooms with markers to represent obstacles and other features.

[rowyn]

I tried using RP Tools; IIRC, you can upload JPGs and tokens that you've already drawn to it. But Terrycloth and I could not get it to work -- it was something like "I can load a map but he can't view it". Basically, the connecting-machine-to-machine didn't work, making it useless.

i've been using Google spreadsheets: "drawing" boxes (using the built-in drawing tool, which is just simple shapes and lines) for the PCs and NPCs with letter labels, and using colors on the spreadsheet grid for a rough map. It is very ugly and primitive but works. You can upload images to Google spreadsheets too, but in my experience only half the players could view them, making loaded images unusable

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Being able to move pieces around the board would be superior to having to have people redraw their units every time!

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

MapTools definitely has an ugly interface! I keep being tempted to learn a web technology of some kind and implement my own 'simple' virtual table. But that's a pretty significant investment of time.

I could see a lot of 'easy draw' things that would make this so much more usable. An 'Architectural Drawing Tool' for instance that would let you draw building maps on the fly - Wall Tool, click from square to square to draw a straight wall in that direction, have it automatically generate wall joins and corners. Add Window, Add Door, both aligned with the wall in the square selected. An Outdoors/Cave drawing tool that lets you fill hexes and squares with colors or simplified terrains easily to represent cave walls, or forests/mountains/rivers/grassland/desert.

But, if I can get those features in a separate mapmaking program, then I can simply upload the maps into MapTool or other program I find - whatever makes the task of actually using the maps easiest for me and the players.

Oh - how do you handle 'fog of war' in your tabletop settings? I.E. not being able to see past a door until it's actually opened.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Assuming you started a server and Terrycloth connected to your server, you can set new maps but he then has to click the Map Explorer to get to them.

You can then set the maps player-visible to prevent players getting to maps you prepared ahead of time but don't want to reveal yet.

But, I'd still like to see something more intuitive than MapTool has proven to be!

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

At first I thought that the intention of MapTool was that you could use these markers to build the entire map, but after a bit it seems clear that it prefers you to use a map you load in, and the markers are just to add on to a map later on.

Some ideas on generic maps might be handy... But given the setting, there are a lot of possible places people might go.

[rowyn]

IIRC, I couldn't connect to the server when he started one, and he couldn't connect to the server when I started one. We didn't get to square one when it came to connectivity.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

That's a bad sign!

Firewalls?

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

There's a Savage World campaign with setup macros... I will have to poke at it.

[rowyn]

That might've been it. It was almost a year ago so I don't remember what we tried by way of debugging. Since Terry and I were the most motivated regarding making it work, i kinda felt like if it wasn't easy for us, we weren't going to get the rest of the group going with it.

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

In MapTools, last I checked (and this was a couple of years ago), the GM has an option to set "fog of war" (I believe it's actually called that) for the map, and to selectively designate segments that he can "reveal," piece by piece. You can even set it up so that when people move their minis, they've got a limited range of visibility (due to light sources, etc.) around their minis, which is dynamically updated for them each time they move. It sounds like the sort of thing that could work for a GM who has time to set up his mega-dungeon ahead of time, but for doing things more "on the fly," I'd probably rely more upon treating the whole table as "dark" and just lighting up X radius around the player. Sure, this might result in seeing things through a thin wall that the PC shouldn't "see," but a little roleplaying is in order. ;)

It would be nice if there was some sort of a modular tool, so you could plug in cavern segments and such. MapTools might actually support that sort of thing (as it let me import maps and markers) but you'd need to have those "modules" to start with.

Now, how I handle it in my tabletop settings is that I have map tiles - physical segments of the layout - that I don't put down until it's time for the PCs to either see them, or to at least be aware of them. Sometimes I'll put down a map tile that represents an area (because it's a house, so the players should be able to guess at the rough dimensions of the house) but I won't put down minis or object representations until the door is opened and PCs can see inside. "Map tiles" in this case are sometimes flat pieces of paper or cardstock with printed details, or they might be die-cut segments (ala Advanced HeroQuest, Descent Journeys in the Dark, or Doom the Board Game), or they might be custom 3D creations using Hirst Arts "Castle Molds" plaster blocks or sculpted insulation foam board - depending upon how elaborate I'm going with it. By keeping my "map tiles" segmented, I can reveal them bit by bit ... but I also increase the chance for reuse, because I can mix and match the pieces.

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Well, now it makes me wish there was some sort of Flash or Java toy I could put on a web page (that I have access to), where I could flip between a library of JPEG "maps," and superimpose a few features on it, so even if I can't handle all the particulars of miniatures and the whole game mechanics, at the very least I could have an easier time of refreshing my map and telling people, "Look HERE to see the battle grid."

E.g., for the Big Battle in Avatars, I had to keep updating a JPEG via Photoshop and use FTP to send it. FTP kept timing out to Critter.net many times, making it extra-clunky to update ... and Photoshop isn't exactly customized for this sort of use (though at least I could scribble on the map directly to show when yet another part of the landscape had been blown up by the PCs).

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Well, that's sad to hear. I really, really hoped this sort of thing would work.

RPTools, definitely.

[traveller-blues.livejournal.com]

I've recently started a D&D 4e game, and I'm using RPTools as the user interface. The connection problem depends on what your internet connection is like, but since my game's a sitdown, I'm using the LAN connection setup, which works just fine.

The best thing to do is import a map from another tool (right now I'm using Dungeon Tiles as my drawing tool, which a lot of the 4E community seems to use), and screenshotting the finished map to pull into MapTools. From there, you just adjust Maptools' grid to match the grid on the Dungeon Tiles screenshot, and there you go.

So far, I've run one half session with the tool, and I love it. Tokens can be set up with visual ranges and line of sight, so that I put critters behind bushes and inside tents, and they didn't see the ambush coming. I use the drawing tool to make splash effects from spells, halo critters to show special effects (blue=slow, pink=asleep) and it even has a built in initiative tracker that shows who is next.

The reason I can't seem to connect to outside servers has to do with the way our home setup is through a Linux box with IP sharing, but most folks ought not to have that problem.

-Trav

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Hey Greywolf, take a look at http://gametable.mornproductions.com/Index and tell me what you think?

From a user perspective, it seems a lot simpler at the outset than MapTool.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a good strategy... if this can be applied to whichever virtual table we wind up using!

Re: RPTools, definitely.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Got a link for Dungeon Tiles? It, er, is pretty hard to do a Google search and not come up with a lot of general dungeon tilesets. };)

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

A little more browsing suggests that Gametable might have lag issues with large maps. Bummer!

Re: RPTools, definitely.

[traveller-blues.livejournal.com]

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dnd/20061121t

Use the downloadable version, turn it to Freeform mode, and have fun. It takes a little bit of time to get used to the controls.

-Trav

[rowyn]

Tufty got it to connect to other people, so maybe it was just a firewall problem for us. And maybe Tufty will come up with a good solution for the virtual gaming table issue overall. =) I would love to have something more functional than a Google spreadsheet.