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I'm planning a game to start around the end of January or early in February, hosted by a friend of mine who has a projector mounted over his gaming table. The GM for the game I played in there before used MapTools, but I wasn't terribly impressed with its interface or its stability, so I'm considering one of the non-freeware VTT programs, such as Battlegrounds RPG Edition, Fantasy Grounds 2, or D20Pro.
I'd be very interested in hearing from people who've used one of them in this context, especially if you've used more than one and can compare their performance. I'm leaning somewhat toward D20Pro, for its system specificity and ability to interface with Hero Lab, but I don't like the lack of the dynamic fog-of-war feature that all the others, even MapTools, offer.
Sorry I can't help you out with that, but dotting for future reference. I've always wanted a projected map over my table, so yeah.. -whips out note pad and pen-
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There are a number of other threads on the forum on this topic. Of the commercial VTTs, I believe d20pro is the best. It is lacking one critical feature that causes MapTool to beat it (in my humble opinion): line of sight/dynamic fog of war. The d20pro team has been working on that feature.
On the Hero Lab integration bit, I'll toot my own horn and point you to towards my open source TokenLab, which automagically exports from HeroLab to MapTool.
I use a projector mounted setup as well. It's fantastic. Action shot!
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I started playing online using Fantasygrounds during an extended stay away from my group.
It worked so well that we kept using it at home.
You don't need an overhead projector, we just put it on the TV.
- Foxit PDF tools to extract maps and pics from Paizo pdf's
- Corel Photopaint to edit maps and make the miniatures.
At first I started building miniatures as a round token with the appropiate pic but lately I've been making them as whole figures. I look for an appropriate image of a painted minature, trim all the bacground, put it over an oval shaped "base" and use it in my encounters.
That, along with paizo's superb maps makes for GREAT experience.
(we are currently running Curse of the Crimson Throne, one of the best AP IMHO)
Had been using TTopRpg 2.0 for the past year on my laptop, which was connected to a friend's t.v. via a hdmi cable. Worked fine except for the fact that I was essentially running the game from the living room while the players sat in the dining area one room over.
Recently though, I've switched to using a portable mini-projector mounted on a tripod, then projecting my maps onto a portable screen and found this to be a much easier set up overall.
First, what kind of computer are you running this on?
Secondly, I think MapTool would still be my first choice for a projected face-to-face game. If you're not relying on automation for dice and combat, then you don't even need to deal with the harshest aspects of MapTool. You can just close out all of those windows and fullscreen it, making use of the best vision, lighting, and fog of war features of any VTT.
MapTool has serious drawbacks, but if all you need is map features and not game mechanic features, it's clearly the best option.
As far as stability, I've reverted to b63 on MacOS and I'm having great success with it (some of my players are running Windows boxes too). Later features like individual FoW are less important for a projector game anyway, so you won't miss much.