Google+ Hangouts and RP Tools Map Tool used in an online only game?

[GNOgamer]

I have been playing with the idea of starting a game that would be online only. The players would connect over the new Google+ feature called Hangouts which creates a video conference with up to 10 people. Then for combat I would use Map Tools.

Has anyone tried this or something similar already?

Any pointers/suggestions?

[ryric]

GNOgamer wrote:

I have been playing with the idea of starting a game that would be online only. The players would connect over the new Google+ feature called Hangouts which creates a video conference with up to 10 people. Then for combat I would use Map Tools.

Has anyone tried this or something similar already?

Any pointers/suggestions?

I've been part of a weekly group that games over Skype and Maptools for about 6-7 years now.

Some pointers:

The person hosting Maptools needs to know how to configure their firewall to let Maptools through. Sometimes I have to go into my router because my IP address has changed. I think there is a way to remotely host a server but we don't use that.

Watch some of the Maptools tutorials. There are some neat things you can do with lighting/fog of war if you know how.

I'm currently running Serpent's Skull, and I copy the images from the pdf into Gimp, then save them as .png files which Maptools can recognize as maps. I can then import them and set the grid size and so forth. For dungeons, I can set the map to "night", and put vision barriers in all the walls so that the PCs can only see what is lit up.

Make sure you get Tokentool as well, you'll need it to make tokens for use in Maptools.

All in all, it took us a while to get used to it, but it works really well now. I'd be happy to answer any specific questions you might have.

[DMFTodd]

Unless everyone has giant screens, they're not going to be able to see the video chat while Maptools is up. Not sure video chat helps anything regardless. We play with Skype + Maptools and it works great (as long as the players aren't wandering off doing internet things rather than pay attention.)

[Banjax]

There are a number of options for playing games online depending on your style of game and players.

There are lots of virtual tabletops, character generation tools and other utilities out there, some are free others you have to pay for.

As far as table tops go the best free ones I've found are MapTools (http://www.rptools.net/index.php?page=maptool) and Gametable (http://sourceforge.net/projects/gametableproj/) each with their own pros and cons.

MapTool is by far and away the more powerful of the two programs but that comes at a cost of its user friendliness, it requires more work on the part of the players to learn to use and much more work on the part of the GM to learn to use all of its features, if you want to run complex scenarios with fog of war, lighting effects and generally take the game one step closer to being a video game MapTools is probably the best tool.

What gametable lacks in advanced functionality it makes up for in ease of use, all the options are simple and easy to access and the interface is very intuative. Personally I use gametable in my games as we tend towards just using scratch maps for individual encounters and leaving the rest of the world up to our imaginations.

Both programs allow you to set up dice macros for your rolls and both allow you to send text based chat to the other users.

If you want to add voicecomms to your game then there are even more options, obviously things like Facebook and Google+ have their integrated chat functions but DMFTodd makes a good point about it being hard to see the video window and the map window at the same time.

There are lots of VOIP programs out there, the most common ones that get used for gaming are Skype (http://www.skype.com), Teamspeak (http://www.teamspeak.com), Ventrilo (hhtp://www.ventrilo.com) and Mumble (http://www.mumble.com) I've used all of these at one point or another over the years and they all have their good and bad points.

Skype has good sound quality and is easy to set up but the lack of a push to talk button irritates me enormously, I don't want to broadcast (and definitely don't want to hear) loud crunching sounds coming through my headphones every time somebody eats something at the table and if people have anything going on in the background (music, the tv, loud pets) it gets broadcast constantly.

Teamspeak and Ventrilo, its been a few years since I've used either of these, generally easy to set up although sometimes have problems if people are using different systems (PCs and Macs react to different sound codecs in different ways so can be difficult to find the middle ground between getting everybody on and getting good sound quality) both require a server program to run (and I'm not sure if you can get small servers for free or if you have to pay for everything)

The jewel in the crown (in my opinion) is Mumble, its a little annoying to set up but once its up and running it is easily the best VOIP solution I've ever used (and the program we use in my games) while it does require a server to run the actual chat room its one that you can run from your own computer (I host both our mumble server and gametable from my PC when playing) without adding any noticable lag to the games, the sound quality is excellent and it has that all important push to talk function.

[mcbobbo]

I run one using maptool and ventrilo. It works well. The only down-side is all the prep required. You can't easily make things up on the fly, so you wind up building a full color module for every game session. Takes a week to make and a few hours to blow through.

Resources like this cave generator and others are a god-send.

Face to face is a lot easier, but the online tools are getting better by the day. Lots of PF-rules stuff available for maptool as well, so that helps.

[Liz Courts]

Moved thread.

[Caineach]

I saw one person who set up a second desktop for a screen and logged into a hangout with that and as normal. It allowed him to share his desktop while also participating in a video chat. From what I understand, it worked pretty well. It would solve some of the problems others seem to have mentioned with Maptools taking over the desktop, as it is now integrated with the rest of the video chat. I have never used Maptools or Hangouts, so I can't really comment overall.

I think adding video is a good idea. Many people are more engaged with visuals than with just voice.

[mcbobbo]

Well, one could always trim down maptool's size, assuming you can get the hangout webcams into a reasonable, non-full-screen size.

[Banjax]

mcbobbo wrote:

I run one using maptool and ventrilo. It works well. The only down-side is all the prep required. You can't easily make things up on the fly, so you wind up building a full color module for every game session. Takes a week to make and a few hours to blow through.

Resources like this cave generator and others are a god-send.

Face to face is a lot easier, but the online tools are getting better by the day. Lots of PF-rules stuff available for maptool as well, so that helps.

There are a few things you can do to make it easier, if you have the talent to draw the artwork yourself you can make area sections as individual tokens and then paste them together like a jigsaw (there are some token packs out there on the internet that are free to download if like me you can't draw to save your life)

It does mean your areas tend to be slightly more regularly shaped than otherwise which is only really noticable with natural features like caves, rivers etc but it saves a lot of prep time

[Dorje Sylas]

Banjax wrote:

mcbobbo wrote:

I run one using maptool and ventrilo. It works well. The only down-side is all the prep required. You can't easily make things up on the fly, so you wind up building a full color module for every game session. Takes a week to make and a few hours to blow through.

Resources like this cave generator and others are a god-send.

Face to face is a lot easier, but the online tools are getting better by the day. Lots of PF-rules stuff available for maptool as well, so that helps.

There are a few things you can do to make it easier, if you have the talent to draw the artwork yourself you can make area sections as individual tokens and then paste them together like a jigsaw (there are some token packs out there on the internet that are free to download if like me you can't draw to save your life)

It does mean your areas tend to be slightly more regularly shaped than otherwise which is only really noticable with natural features like caves, rivers etc but it saves a lot of prep time

See this would be a good time for a resurgence in the old Geomorph concept. Back in the days before heavy digitization geomorphs were interesting but not all that usable. Now with digital rearngment they'd work great.

[mcbobbo]

There's a downloadable torrent chocked absolutely full of gigabytes worth of images for maptool floating around. Even THAT doesn't really help. You still have to draw everything by hand, to scale, in living color.

It's hard to explain, but contrast that to flip-mat play where you can just scribble rooms and doorways with an erasable marker, and then explain what's within.

Night and day. Especially when players go off the rails.

Now, perhaps if there were a better inking tool for maptool, then maybe it wouldn't matter.