I'm losing two players to moving out of town (one here for another couple weeks, and one long gone), and we're having too much fun to stop playing.
I don't have a lot of experience playing D&D on-line, though I've done a bit with AIM and wiki-based text games. We're about halfway through volume 4, and I'd love for us to carry on. What do you folks recommend?
I'm losing two players to moving out of town (one here for another couple weeks, and one long gone), and we're having too much fun to stop playing.
I don't have a lot of experience playing D&D on-line, though I've done a bit with AIM and wiki-based text games. We're about halfway through volume 4, and I'd love for us to carry on. What do you folks recommend?
I personally would recommend Fantasy Grounds or d20pro. I like the interface of Fantasy Grounds MUCH better.
I use Kloogewerks myself and like it. Fantasy Ground and Maptools (free) seem to both be popular options. There's also Battlegrounds, Screen Monkey, and a host of others I'm forgetting.
We tended to not use minis or maps too much, so found a conference call on skype or video conference on iChat did the trick.
Maptool is free and cross-platform. It is extremely easy to get a simple map and chat with dice-roller set up. For a little extra effort, you get initiative tracking and health bars. If you want to take the time to get good at the (sort of weird) scripting language, then the sky's the limit as far as what you can do.
If you decide to check it out, be sure to use a recent development build. Don't be scared, it's stable and WAY ahead of v1.2. It is also very close to a final 1.3 release. I use build 50 myself.
I have been pulling all of my maps and tokens from the PDF versions of Runelords, and it has been the greatest game I've ever been involved with. I had never played with maptool before this.
In many ways, I find that the quality of game is much better online than in person. People are more focused on the game because it is easier to backtrack and there's not a lot of intrusive idle chatter. I definitely miss the social call aspect, but we have occasional parties for that.
I hope everything works out for you!
Maptools and Skype = gaming goodness.
Any VT will do, methinks, just depends on how much you want to get involved with nifty features.
Wow, these are a lot of options. Thanks, everyone!
Anyone know of a review site where I can find a comparison chart or a description of the relative strengths and weaknesses of the various options?
Maptool is free and cross-platform. It is extremely easy to get a simple map and chat with dice-roller set up. For a little extra effort, you get initiative tracking and health bars. If you want to take the time to get good at the (sort of weird) scripting language, then the sky's the limit as far as what you can do.
If you decide to check it out, be sure to use a recent development build. Don't be scared, it's stable and WAY ahead of v1.2. It is also very close to a final 1.3 release. I use build 50 myself.
We use Maptool in our sessions even though we meet in person. It creates a nice interface for people to visualize the game without dealing with mass quantities of minitures. We use 2 laptops, with the players laptop connected to a TV.
We use 1.3.53 currently. The sight blocking, light sources, and fog of war aspects are great for revealing a little bit at a time. The simple initiative tracking is great and macros help out here and there (once you figure it out). Since we're in person we don't use the chat interface, but we've played around with it some and it's pretty solid.
The states give visual clues as to what condition people are in (such as prone, flying, dying, unconscious).
With a little extra work, you can have simple stat blocks so you don't have to refer to paper sheets doing normal attacks or checking AC or saves.
DO NOT try using build 51 or 52. They are MESSED up, and will not close Java properly leaving a HUGE memory issue.
Also, if you do decide to use Maptool, get their TokenTool as well. It's a nice simple interface that can create some pretty nice tokens.
The player I put in charge of figuring all this stuff out is taking us with maptool. Thanks for the suggestions, everyone!
For the record, b56 has been working okay.
Welcome to the club ("cheapskates who demand fully featured VTTs for free")!