RPTools.net

Let me know what you think about this resource. There's only a demo video currently, but it goes through the basics. The amazing part is they have 17k in donations for this project all with in a week's time. To me it looks like a stripped down version of MT for the web and has integrated video chat and music library capabilities.

http://roll20.net/

The integrated video and sound features, along with the seemingly ease of game management are indeed the main draws; at least to me. It's undeniably sleek where it puts its focus on. I'm curious if the art and sound assets are exportable for use elsewhere. There doesn't seem to be other options for persistent macros such as buttons, calling them through chat might get tedious in the long run. It also seems that automated management of states and the like are not available, though I could be wrong. It would be nice if the ability to create triggers is part of the system; such as pcs moving in on a certain map area triggers music, sound, and/or visual effects to start and the like.

After getting setup with MT and other third party tools for sound, video chat, etc., I find the game management features such as the bookmark and game assets to be the only draws for the product; especially when it looks like everything is hosted on their servers. It'd be nice if a person can add a personal library or point to an external resource. Albeit, the efforts to consolidate all desirable features is noteworthy.

All in all, great start. I think if support continues, it'll eventually overtake MT where it is currently lacking if it incorporates a competitive scripting engine. I'll jump on-board if that happens.

They had me at "jukebox." Looks clean, and hopefully they'll avoid overcomplicating the interface. I helped them with some dice rolling code I used for Google Wave back before it died its (fairly well-earned) death, and suggested also that they put in a dice dialog so that users don't have to go to chat all the time (without macro buttons like maptool, that will get tedious pronto). On a personal note, I've talked (well emailed) Riley Dutton a few times and he seems a) surprised by the amount of contributions, and b) excited as hell about getting this going.

I chipped in $25, so I'll be in the closed beta in a week and see if they live up to the promises. If so, well...I'll jump on board right away. And if not, I still have no problem supporting people who build VTTs.

The developer crew just released a video of their AP (actual play) using their pre-beta version of Roll20.

You can find it here. http://t.co/1YsAkUT1

I'm in the closed beta for it, and so far, so good. I have not had a chance to get a game going with anybody (the beta just started yesterday) but it's looking pretty good. I had some small quibbles with the UI here and there (some I would call simply not-thought-out, and some I think are just "doesn't do it like MapTool" does), but it does what it says it does and my sense of the product is that it's in a state where what needs to be done is UI-tweaking much more than bug-fixing.

It's pretty solid now, though, so I think it can only help The Movement.

I'm on the Beta, too, but I'm pretty busy, so I'm mostly waiting for them to iron out some of the kinks before I really try to test anything.

So far, trying to play their introductory video makes Flash crash every time, and I can't figure out how to turn off Snap To Grid.

I don't know how fast their rev cycle is, but I'm not playing an actual game with it until next Tuesday evening - we'll have to see what is fixed/updated by then. I spent a couple hours fooling around with it with my brother (one of my remote players); we experimented with most of the features, and found some issues. Nothing that was really a bug, but more of a "that's not how MapTool does it!" thing - a foiled expectation, more, and some UI decisions that I thought should have been handled differently (in other words, pretty much what I expect for a beta!). But it's pretty tight even so, and I cannot get over the background music option (seriously, I'm like a kid in a candy store with that, and it's such a small thing).

I hope they loosen up the player capabilities, because right now, all players can do is move their tokens, assign a state, and use chat. Players can't edit their tokens even when they're the controlling player, which - to me - is weird (but to the designers, is "working as intended"; different mindset/expectations).

For the snap-to-grid thing, it looks like your option is basically this (at this time): disable the grid on the page, and then use an image with a baked-in grid. When you turn the grid off, it does smooth movement without any weird snapping. But with a grid on, snap-to-grid appears to be assumed.

They just started open beta.

OK, after two months of not paying attention, I've been looking into how much they've improved this thing.

Answer is "a lot." Flash still crashes whenever I load a campaign (which doesn't do much except prevent me from viewing their Intro Video from that location). But they've fixed the snap-to-grid-always feature, made their image search turn up better results, and added at least a couple easy ways to interact with a token's stats. And sight stuff, even.

Of course there are still MapTool features that I miss here. Zooming via scroll wheel, live updates of how far a token has moved when you drag it (not to mention waypoints!), macros programmable with a token's variables or if/then statements, and so forth.

Still ... I think I may start using this. It's a good placeholder for some of my friends who aren't quite up to MapTool's learning curve, until I (someday) get enough time to program a bunch of UI improvements into MapTool.

It is really a very user friendly program.
The only problem I have seen (but that's a breaking point for me) is the way Roll20 manages maps and tokens. No native size, forced resizing (if you are not using 70px/square scale) and no inputing size values, which means only eyeballing scaling which is useless as far as I am concerned.
Great application, great potential, but I think I won't use it if they don't make images management less "by-the-pants".

I'm not completely sold on roll20 just yet. The drawing tools are very limited, and I have not been able to find a way to paint by tiles. Squares measure in feet like 3rd ed, and can't be changed to suit other systems. As far as map creation goes, nothing comes close to MT still.

That being said, I am very much keeping my eye on this project. The jukebox feature is just AWESOME, as well as its integration with google hangouts. I haven't run a game on it yet, but the tabletop feature looks very smooth and responsive.

Oh, absolutely. It's a terrible map-making program; you have to make your maps somewhere else, then import them into Roll20.


They have indicated that their plans include changing this in the near future.

I run hot-and-cold on it, myself. I like it - it's friendly, the web-based part is nice, and the music thing gives me the tingles. On the other hand. I'm not thrilled about the way maps are made and the unpredictability of image sizes, and the macros are 2 specific items away from being useful (specifically, popups to ask for a variable, and the ability to keep the lowest N dice in a dice poll).

The developers seem like good guys, and they're active, so I remain interested.

I ran across this: http://www.aethercon.com/

Basically an online Con using Roll20.

For anyone keeping an eye on the web-based VTTs, Roll20 has seen a number of updates, including in the most recent one a dice GUI, virtual dice that roll when macros are run (they don't have "grab and throw" virtual dice yet, although it's on their minds), and the addition of some more dice roll parsing (including the aforementioned ability to drop the highest dice from a roll). With updates and fixes to map creation, it's showing a lot of improvement.