Paizo announces Paizo Game Space

CheshireElf wrote:

Being able to focus on story rather than having to go through a whole book's worth of map extraction/ resizing to fit a grid plus searching for token art and then think about story - priceless!

But hopefully available via subscription :)

I'll throw in my 2 cents .. you hit the nail on the head. Running games is a lot of fun using a VTT ,but grabbing maps & other stuff is a chore I could live without.

I'm a little surprised Paizo doesn't just partner with the RPTools team vs reinventing the wheel. Maptool already does so much, especially when you consider how customizable it is via macros and all the framework libraries that are freely available. The only disadvantage to Maptool is the amount of advance prep work ... setting up vision blocking, figuring out the macros, etc.

To repeat what another poster mentioned, if you could use the artwork from any subscription in your game AND throw in images you already have available, that would be great. IMO, a nominal fee for access isn't unreasonable, given the potential convenience of an app. However, if the VTT doesn't let you use art from your subscriptions, it'd be hard to justify paying another fee for this VTT when a person can simply use Maptool for free.

I won't go so far as to say that maptool sucks, but it is clunky as hell and not real intuitive. Yes, you can get it to do just about anything, but there is a pretty steep learning curve and it just isn't worth it to a casual user. My GURPS GM did some truely awesome stuff for our different campaigns on MT, but he also spent a LOT of his spare time doing them.

Definitely excited...due to the arrival of several small children, my gaming group now mostly meets up over Skype, and not having a simple way to share maps and video at the same time can be a pain. Nice work Paizo folks. : )

I'm a little surprised Paizo doesn't just partner with the RPTools team vs reinventing the wheel. Maptool already does so much, especially when you consider how customizable it is via macros and all the framework libraries that are freely available. The only disadvantage to Maptool is the amount of advance prep work ... setting up vision blocking, figuring out the macros, etc.

Except for those of us behind firewalls or routers that don't allow port forwarding (which I have found to be a fair number of gamers behind wireless routers) Having this run through the browser instead of new software is something I've been waiting for since WebRPG went down years ago

ziltmilt wrote:

I'm a little surprised Paizo doesn't just partner with the RPTools team vs reinventing the wheel. Maptool already does so much, especially when you consider how customizable it is via macros and all the framework libraries that are freely available. The only disadvantage to Maptool is the amount of advance prep work ... setting up vision blocking, figuring out the macros, etc.

Except for those of us behind firewalls or routers that don't allow port forwarding (which I have found to be a fair number of gamers behind wireless routers) Having this run through the browser instead of new software is something I've been waiting for since WebRPG went down years ago

True, but there is a LOT more to Maptool, than the connection.

I won't go so far as to say that maptool sucks, but it is clunky as hell and not real intuitive. Yes, you can get it to do just about anything, but there is a pretty steep learning curve and it just isn't worth it to a casual user. My GURPS GM did some truely awesome stuff for our different campaigns on MT, but he also spent a LOT of his spare time doing them.

The thing is, once you get over that learning curve there is a wealth of options that make for a cool session. I use LM's pathfinder framework, so basically my setup is the map and tokens. In most cases, this doesn't take me any longer than 30 minutes.

I would love to beta test this,

even more so since I'm a game dev student.

Can you run entirely homebrew campiagns through this?

And din't they try a model that required us to pay for it?

And didn't they require us to pay for it before they even released it? Yes, yes they did.

I'm a game dev student.

It's young people like you who give me hope for the future.

I tried searching every post, I really did. I am sorry if my eyes skipped over the relevant details.

I love the fact you are doing this. I have several concerns.

When you do charge a fee for this service, am I going to have to RE-BUY books, pdfs, maps, etc just to use it? Like most people I still prefer book copies of books. Even though I have purchased map-pack products before, nearly everything I buy from Paizo is done through one of their authorized retailers, AKA my Local Friendly Gaming Store.

I have already resigned myself to the fact that I have to pay for a book twice when I use Hero-Lab, an electronic product you guys have endorsed/licensed to use your copyrighted info. They already have a 'Tactical Console', which I personally find handy for big fights, as it electronically allows me to import monsters, pcs, etc

I would still prefer this to be stand alone package that can be bought and downloaded lide d20 pro, Battle Grounds or Fantasy Grounds. I use maptools but I am looking for something that is easier to use that doesn't require as much prep time.

I have no problem buying additional addons like token bundles, maps etc it saves me time instead of having to make the stuff myself. I would like to see the Bestiry token box available for this as well as the NPC Codex.

I just dont want to be dependent on an internet connection to use this as I am looking for something that I can use at my table, as I plan to have a 42" LED intergrated into my gaming table very soon

I tried searching every post, I really did. I am sorry if my eyes skipped over the relevant details.

I love the fact you are doing this. I have several concerns.

When you do charge a fee for this service, am I going to have to RE-BUY books, pdfs, maps, etc just to use it? Like most people I still prefer book copies of books. Even though I have purchased map-pack products before, nearly everything I buy from Paizo is done through one of their authorized retailers, AKA my Local Friendly Gaming Store.

I have already resigned myself to the fact that I have to pay for a book twice when I use Hero-Lab, an electronic product you guys have endorsed/licensed to use your copyrighted info. They already have a 'Tactical Console', which I personally find handy for big fights, as it electronically allows me to import monsters, pcs, etc

David, I also prefer books, but I also purchase the pdf's as well as all the updates to Herolab so I would really like to see this application intergrate with Herolab

I love how aesthetically attractive and efficient this program is looking.

Gone is the early nineties default black screens and jarring medieval fonts.

Everything is sleek, simple, high resolution and beautiful.

It's like you got German interior decorators (expert 10) into the setting and they took 20 on it.

Fingers crossed!

David Hopper wrote:

I tried searching every post, I really did. I am sorry if my eyes skipped over the relevant details.

I love the fact you are doing this. I have several concerns.

When you do charge a fee for this service, am I going to have to RE-BUY books, pdfs, maps, etc just to use it? Like most people I still prefer book copies of books. Even though I have purchased map-pack products before, nearly everything I buy from Paizo is done through one of their authorized retailers, AKA my Local Friendly Gaming Store.

I have already resigned myself to the fact that I have to pay for a book twice when I use Hero-Lab, an electronic product you guys have endorsed/licensed to use your copyrighted info. They already have a 'Tactical Console', which I personally find handy for big fights, as it electronically allows me to import monsters, pcs, etc

David, I also prefer books, but I also purchase the pdf's as well as all the updates to Herolab so I would really like to see this application intergrate with Herolab

I don't buy much online, I prefer buying things through my local Hobby Store, but between the Pathfinder books, APs, Modules, Companions etc, and all the HeroLab updates, I've spent a small fortune on Pathfinder.

If I have to go back and re-buy everything all over again... well I guess we could just try Skyping for long distance gaming.

Paizo Game Space

current run through: 7 minutes. previous run-through: 9 minutes

pre-demo checklist

mouse for laptop
mac mini, ethernet cable, plugged in, turned on
http://192.168.132.126:55435
hide browser chrome

sign in, select Gary Teter's Swallowtail Festival
zoom in on ginormous dragon so big as possible

minimize window

have separate blank browser window open in case of accidental switching

--

presentation

We're working on a lot of stuff:
A redesign of the Pathfinder Society website, along with new forums for each faction
Way to upload character sheets and stat blocks to paizo.com, going to be biggest stat block database on the internet
More stuff I can't talk about.

Tonight i'm going to talk about one thing.

Today, Paizo is announcing a new way to play the games you love: Paizo Game Space.

[main screen ON, showing map with dragon]

--

Paizo Game Space is amazing software that lets you play with the people you know... anywhere in the world. All you need is the internet.

It's a virtual tabletop. Now VTTs aren't new. I'm gonna say "VTT" a lot because "virtual tabletop" is kind of a mouthful.

Virtual tabletops aren't new. There have been literally dozens of them before this. Some of them we like. Some of them we like a lot.

But none of them is exactly what we think a virtual tabletop should be.

Please arrange something similar for Play By Post (PbP.) PbP is much more accessible than a VTT as it works irregardless of people's schedules.

just supporting online play is huge though!

Any chance of seeing online, top down, minis? I use them in my PbP version of Curse of the Crimson Throne... and they add a lot of the combat maps.

I have already resigned myself to the fact that I have to pay for a book twice when I use Hero-Lab, an electronic product you guys have endorsed/licensed to use your copyrighted info. They already have a 'Tactical Console', which I personally find handy for big fights, as it electronically allows me to import monsters, pcs, etc

Don't think of it as buying the book twice... think of it as buying someone lunch because he saved you 20-30 hours of entering the data by doing it for you.

HeroLab is very very good.. and the prices on the books are quite reasonable when you look at how daunting the editor can be.

You are not required to buy the add-ons from LoneWolf. You *can* use the Editor to enter it all yourself. Speaking for myself, I consider the $5 bundles of 4-5 Player or Campaign Setting books, and the occasional $10 for a big hardcover, to be bargains.

As someone who likes to game online occasionally and hates spending gobs of time setting up and dealing with software issues, this sounds awesome.

While I like the idea of using it for an AP, I'm most interested in using this for PFS. Hopefully PFS pricing will be reasonable, I can see this being a huge bump to online PFS.

This. A big hurdle in my life right now is scheduling time to play games. If PFS is accessible with game space, and I can search for a game to join when I have time play one, that would be peachy +5 keen (plus wounding).

It seems like that kind of functionality is really more about how the PFS website might evolve with game space. The PFS pages might have a immersive user-interface that tells the player "you are in the grand lodge, chatting with fellow pathfinders, looking for an expedition" while the game space itself is agnostic. A gm might recruit people from the PFS page and then they all log into game space and make he game happen.

Man, that's cool.

This looks really interesting (and like some others who've mentioned this, I find this a far more exciting development than PFO). I'm excited to see what Paizo will come up with and expect it will be quality. I don't expect it will all work 100% right from the get-go but I also trust that things will ever be fixed or tweaked.

Random questions that do not actually have to be answered:
I would assume that materials for APs or modules would require their purchase or a subscription first?

What assets would be available to the free customers?

Would customers, free or paying, be able to import their own images (specifically maps and character icons)?

I see PFS being talked about a lot, so would this allow people who do not have local PFS chapters be able to join an online chapter?

ETA: I think it should be called "Paizo's Mom's Basement" but barring that, "Game Space" is fine and describes exactly what it is, which is very definitely not a bad thing.

Random questions that do not actually have to be answered:

I would assume that materials for APs or modules would require their purchase or a subscription first?

What assets would be available to the free customers?

Would customers, free or paying, be able to import their own images (specifically maps and character icons)?

I see PFS being talked about a lot, so would this allow people who do not have local PFS chapters be able to join an online chapter?

Like I said earlier in the thread, these are the types of questions that we don't have the answers to yet. We HAVE started to talk about what assets will be free to everyone. What stuff you will have to pay for. How much that might cost. How much work it will take for us to make the stuff we sell you (to figure out whether the price works for the amount of work needed to make it).

We've also started to have discussions about importing assets from outside paizo.com, but don't have anything to announce yet (all sorts of discussions about the legality of images that aren't ours, who owns the rights, could Paizo get sued if somebody imports something owned by another company, how much bandwidth might this take up and who pays for that bandwidth).

On the topic of PFS, we don't know much yet other than we feel it is super important and will be a feature of the Game Space.

-Lisa

Lisa Will there be any form of public beta testing of the program?

I've often dreamed of a table that, in some ways, would resemble the table game from the Millennium Falcon, but I'm sure that when that table becomes available, someone, probably Lisa Stevens, is going to tell me that I have to , "Let the Wookie Win" (I sort of like my arms where there are, thank you).

It will be intersting to see where they go with it. Right now it is pretty dang simple to buy the PDF versions of Paizos maps and use them in Roll20.net, and that is free and browser based already. So hopefulyy they will make it a super robust and simple tool with instant intigration without work on our part, or we might as well use the tools already out there.

I've often dreamed of a table that, in some ways, would resemble the table game from the Millennium Falcon, but I'm sure that when that table becomes available, someone, probably Lisa Stevens, is going to tell me that I have to , "Let the Wookie Win" (I sort of like my arms where there are, thank you).

You still play with your HANDS!?!

Wow, I feel really sorry for the Psionically challenged...

...Wait, no I don't! Mwahaha *Dominate* Make me a Sammich!

So, for people that don't want to re-pay for scenarios/APs/Modules they've already bought, I have two honest questions:

1) If you bought the books from a brick and mortar location, how is Paizo supposed to know what you own?

2) When you bought your products, was it under the understanding that any digital items that could possibly be developed in the future to support the product would be thrown in for free? Or did you buy it for what it was: a physical product with no promise of a future digitally-supported supplemental product?

I know my own answers to those two questions but am curious to see what others think.

Very soon our culture will evole to that place where you don't actually buy anything. You only pay a fee for permission to look at it, for a while.

Very soon our culture will evole to that place where you don't actually buy anything. You only pay a fee for permission to look at it, for a while.

That's why I made WoTC refund my Insider subscription money when they made it online only, and that's why I'm verrrrrry suspicious of any "solution" that stores YOUR data only in "the cloud."

After all, you never know when "the cloud" becomes "hey, guess what, you get to pay to access your own stuff now!"

Lisa Will there be any form of public beta testing of the program?

Gary has already said that the product will be publicly available as soon as possible and will likely have some warts. It will essentially be a 'beta' release, but the term is fuzzy with web apps.

So let me get this right..the VTT is real time?..in which case it won't be much use for the PbP's here as they tend to span continents and many many time zones.

I do worry sometimes about Paizo's explosion of diversification this year..it reminds me of a certain company once based in Lake Geneva Michigan

Nit-picky comment, but coming from someone who is proud to live less than 1/2 hour from the birthplace of that game, Lake Geneva is here in Wisconsin...hehe.

Lisa Will there be any form of public beta testing of the program?

I guess you could call it a public beta test. Gary is going to open up the VTT for everyone to use and we will then use the comments from users to debug it and make it better. But I don't think we are going to be calling it a beta test program. Just the beginning of the iterative process of making the VTT better.

-Lisa

...or we might as well use the tools already out there.

Just to make things 100% clear, we don't care what VTT tool people end up using. If you like Roll20.net or d20Pro or Fantasy Grounds or Nferno or whatever, then that is fine and dandy with us. Keep using them and playing games. We just wanted to give folks another option here on Paizo Game Space. We aren't in competition with the other VTTs. We aren't going to be trying to outcompete and steal their customers away. People can play with whatever VTT strikes their fancy. We will make ours the way it makes the most sense for us, and if folks don't like that and like some other VTT better, then awesome.

I know that sounds like crazy talk, to not want to crush your enemies and hear the lamentations of the women, but we are crazy like that here at Paizo. In the end, we just want people to be able to play more regularly. If that is here, then great. If it is somewhere else, that is cool too.

-Lisa

IronHelixx wrote:

...or we might as well use the tools already out there.

Just to make things 100% clear, we don't care what VTT tool people end up using. If you like Roll20.net or d20Pro or Fantasy Grounds or Nferno or whatever, then that is fine and dandy with us. Keep using them and playing games. We just wanted to give folks another option here on Paizo Game Space. We aren't in competition with the other VTTs. We aren't going to be trying to outcompete and steal their customers away. People can play with whatever VTT strikes their fancy. We will make ours the way it makes the most sense for us, and if folks don't like that and like some other VTT better, then awesome.

I know that sounds like crazy talk, to not want to crush your enemies and hear the lamentations of the women, but we are crazy like that here at Paizo. In the end, we just want people to be able to play more regularly. If that is here, then great. If it is somewhere else, that is cool too.

-Lisa

Careful, you're "making sense" and talking to "fans". That's a hard line to walk :)

Lots of cool stuff

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY. NOW.

Azure_Zero wrote:

Lisa Will there be any form of public beta testing of the program?

I guess you could call it a public beta test. Gary is going to open up the VTT for everyone to use and we will then use the comments from users to debug it and make it better. But I don't think we are going to be calling it a beta test program. Just the beginning of the iterative process of making the VTT better.

-Lisa

Thanks for the response Lisa,

We've still got a few more rounds of internal testing here at Paizo before we start opening it up to other people. It's hard to say how long that will be because we don't know what kinds of problems we're going to find and how long it'll take to fix those, whatever they are. I think "this summer" is still what I'm comfortable with as a timeline.

This sounds like a very useful tool. Just in time for our play group. I am relocating from Seattle to Bay Area for a year and our group has been looking for a tool to use, this sounds almost perfect for the level of detail we want. Seems like most other tools have too much stuff, or are too clunky to fire up easily. We actually decided to go with two stationary laptops with a video chat service next week, supported by two iPhones on face time for detail table views of the map instead of implementing a software system.

Hopefully the product comes up quickly, our play group will definitely give you feedback. Four of our six have been development testers for various table top games and will definitely know how the user feedback loop can improve a product. Hopefully it goes live soon!

And regarding what Lisa says about us not caring which VTT you play on, this is so true that I've been going around the industry for the past year trying to drum up support for a common character sheet interchange file format, among other things.

My vision is that you should be able to build a character in one program, save it into your VTT, play, pull the character back into your character builder, level up, etc., and not have it matter which VTT or character builder you're using. It turns out that this is actually kind of a hard problem to solve for lots of reasons, but I think the end result will make customers happy.

The more you can feel like it's your data, that you get to decide which VTT you want to use it in, the better. And the platform that gives individual customers that confidence is likely to gain support in other ways, too. Kind of like how the OGL has allowed Pathfinder to become a sort of coral reef supporting dozens and dozens of other publishers, that's what we want to happen with our online tools.

In my discussions with the other tabletop RPG software developers, I've always described it as the "Tom Sawyer painting the fence" approach. There is no way that Paizo could do alone all the cool things that could be done to enhance the tabletop roleplaying game experience through technology. I'm not saying it's impossible—have you seen how the next robot is landing on Mars? Clearly anything is possible if you put enough money and resources into it. I just feel really strongly that for Paizo to go down that road would be madness, and that companies that stick to what they know, but pivot when they need to, are the ones that last.

Paizo Game Space is a small pivot, a focal point for us to help define what we think the VTT experience should be. We're not becoming a full-on software company, we're not implementing the Pathfinder rules in software, we're not trying to move the entire game to an online space that we can control, we're not interested in locking you in to our services or servers. It's your game. Play it how you want to.

We've still got a few more rounds of internal testing here at Paizo before we start opening it up to other people. It's hard to say how long that will be because we don't know what kinds of problems we're going to find and how long it'll take to fix those, whatever they are. I think "this summer" is still what I'm comfortable with as a timeline.

Thanks Gary

hopefully when you hit the public release you'll only have to deal with beer bugs

Beer Bugs-> a bug in a program that is generally solved after a programmer goes for a beer, comes back and fixes the bug.

I think it's really cool that the people at Paizo are always tinking long-term. By not only doing their best to produce good products that people will buy, but also leading and inspiring others to make our hobby better, they benefit evreyone greatly, including themselves. Allowing (and encouraging!) third party companies to do PF products, they ensure that there are more products avilable, and also that some great ideas that other people have will be realised.

By creating a friendly VTT that is not meant to be competitive, Paizo makes sure that it is easier and more accesible to people to play (PF, but also any other roleplaying game). That means more players will play, that means Paizo benefits, as well as we.

Thumbs up for the best RPG company out there :)

hopefully when you hit the public release you'll only have to deal with beer bugs

Beer Bugs-> a bug in a program that is generally solved after a programmer goes for a beer, comes back and fixes the bug.

Are you familiar with the term "cardboard debugging"?

Have you noticed that when you vent to a colleague about a bug that's been driving you crazy the solution to the problem becomes obvious (usually just before you complete the explanation)?

It actually works just as well if you talk to a life-size cutout of Darth Vader (or Elvira, or whoever else happens to be in your workspace).

I've heard it as Rubber Duck Debugging.

Azure_Zero wrote:

hopefully when you hit the public release you'll only have to deal with beer bugs

Beer Bugs-> a bug in a program that is generally solved after a programmer goes for a beer, comes back and fixes the bug.

Are you familiar with the term "cardboard debugging"?

Have you noticed that when you vent to a colleague about a bug that's been driving you crazy the solution to the problem becomes obvious (usually just before you complete the explanation)?
...

I've had that a few times

JohnF wrote:

Azure_Zero wrote:

hopefully when you hit the public release you'll only have to deal with beer bugs

Beer Bugs-> a bug in a program that is generally solved after a programmer goes for a beer, comes back and fixes the bug.

Are you familiar with the term "cardboard debugging"?

Have you noticed that when you vent to a colleague about a bug that's been driving you crazy the solution to the problem becomes obvious (usually just before you complete the explanation)?
...

I've had that a few times

Almost all software engineers have.

There's a good explanation for it, of course. When you are explaining the problem to somebody else you have to step back, take a look at the whole picture, and explain the problem in detail. This means you don't skip over "obvious" steps in the logic. That is usually where the answer lies - that "obvious" connection is based on a premise which doesn't hold in this case.

Azure_Zero wrote:

JohnF wrote:

Azure_Zero wrote:

hopefully when you hit the public release you'll only have to deal with beer bugs

Beer Bugs-> a bug in a program that is generally solved after a programmer goes for a beer, comes back and fixes the bug.

Are you familiar with the term "cardboard debugging"?

Have you noticed that when you vent to a colleague about a bug that's been driving you crazy the solution to the problem becomes obvious (usually just before you complete the explanation)?
...

I've had that a few times

Almost all software engineers have.

There's a good explanation for it, of course. When you are explaining the problem to somebody else you have to step back, take a look at the whole picture, and explain the problem in detail. This means you don't skip over "obvious" steps in the logic. That is usually where the answer lies - that "obvious" connection is based on a premise which doesn't hold in this case.

It applies to all kinds of problem-solving.

I do this a lot with crosswords, I start explaining a tricky question to my fiance and before I've finished explaining I suddenly say: "Oh... got it!"
She hates it when I do that so I have to hold back, finish explaining and give her a few minutes to work on it herself before I write the answer in.

Absolutely brilliant, heart-felt support for gamers everywhere. Thanks, PAIZO!

Azure_Zero wrote:

JohnF wrote:

Azure_Zero wrote:

hopefully when you hit the public release you'll only have to deal with beer bugs

Beer Bugs-> a bug in a program that is generally solved after a programmer goes for a beer, comes back and fixes the bug.

Are you familiar with the term "cardboard debugging"?

Have you noticed that when you vent to a colleague about a bug that's been driving you crazy the solution to the problem becomes obvious (usually just before you complete the explanation)?
...

I've had that a few times

Almost all software engineers have.

There's a good explanation for it, of course. When you are explaining the problem to somebody else you have to step back, take a look at the whole picture, and explain the problem in detail. This means you don't skip over "obvious" steps in the logic. That is usually where the answer lies - that "obvious" connection is based on a premise which doesn't hold in this case.

I am that way with proofreading things.

I am really looking forward to this product. Gaming does need to keep up with technology. More and more I am finding gamers are bringing lap tops to the table.

To me the ideal product would be a combination of Maptools and Combat Manager. This looks pretty close to being just that.

I hope the blank flip mat is free and maybe something like the dungeon symbols from the game mastery guide for maps. Like I want to modify the environment by adding a secret door or somesuch.

...Play it how you want to.

I imagined Gary giving that speech flanked by dragons, inspiring music swelling, with a Paizo flag waving in the background.

Huzzah.

Gary Teter wrote:

...Play it how you want to.

I imagined Gary giving that speech flanked by dragons, inspiring music swelling, with a Paizo flag waving in the background.

Huzzah.

Well, that's certainly how I read it.

We've still got a few more rounds of internal testing here at Paizo before we start opening it up to other people. It's hard to say how long that will be because we don't know what kinds of problems we're going to find and how long it'll take to fix those, whatever they are. I think "this summer" is still what I'm comfortable with as a timeline.

A suspicious person might note that GenCon takes place in the summer.