During august, my players and I had a "summer break" in our (almost) weekly DnD/MapTool game, so I used the free time to try to show/explain MT to other fellow french gamers.
I posted an "add" on a few roleplaying french forums, offering an online "course"/demo about MT, over 3 sessions : a player oriented one (what can you expect to see and do as a player in MapTool) and two GM oriented (creating maps / using lights and VBL and basic properties/macros).
At first, it was aimed at D&D 4E (with our own translated version of DevientNull's framework) but since some of the attendees weren't willing to play D&D, we used the framework and RPTroll's Savage World framework as examples of "high-end" macro programming.
I had 2 to 6 "attendees" for each session and that it went quite well, despite a lack of preparation on my side and things I forgot to talk about ...
We used TeamSpeak and 1.3.b56.
And I have to reschedule new sessions in september for new "attendees".
I'll try to do new sessions every other month after the next round , as long as there will be new people interested.
Most people I introduce to MT are very enthusiast about its possibilities and quickly "get it", but at first, they are kinda turned down by the UI and the learning curve (when left on their own).
Even translating parts of the software, wiki and FAQ seems to help but isn't enough. However, "live" demos followed by Q/A does the trick. Video tutorials in french should do it either but I don't have the knowledge and time (and courage ) to make them. (If anyone's willing to do them, I'll host them ! )
But ... in the end, "L'essayer c'est l'adopter" as we say in french ("Trying it is keeping it").
PS :
Also, I took the liberty to buy the "maptool.fr" domain name, directing it to my website wich is now almost totally dedicated to maptooling in french (forum, sharing ressources ...). It clearly states it's a "fan site" and all rptools.net usefull links are present.
Spreading the disease
Moderator: Azhrei
Re: Spreading the disease
Oh, this is so cool!
Thanks for the great story about your demo sessions and also the note about maptool.fr. I'll add a link to the main site to yours and direct French-speaking players in your direction.
Thanks for the great story about your demo sessions and also the note about maptool.fr. I'll add a link to the main site to yours and direct French-speaking players in your direction.
Re: Spreading the disease
Thanks Azhrei.
I had a blast doing that, frankly, and it's somehow selfish : more french MT users means more ressources in french that I can use
I had a blast doing that, frankly, and it's somehow selfish : more french MT users means more ressources in french that I can use
- trevor
- Codeum Arcanum (RPTools Founder)
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Re: Spreading the disease
Hey natha that sounds really cool. Thanks for doing that !
I'm currently working on redesigning the UI, hopefully for the better
I'm currently working on redesigning the UI, hopefully for the better
Dreaming of a 1.3 release
Re: Spreading the disease
Okay, I added a link to your new site, Natha.
It looks like putting "maptool.fr" into the address bar gives me a webmail login (!?) so I used the njxt.com address in the anchor tag. Take a look at the Community page if you want to see how it looks.
(I also edited the DM Genie entry and added PenAndPaperGames. Oops, and I should add some entries for the new Pathfinder stuff as well -- lots of PF stuff out there now. I'll get to that later. )
It looks like putting "maptool.fr" into the address bar gives me a webmail login (!?) so I used the njxt.com address in the anchor tag. Take a look at the Community page if you want to see how it looks.
(I also edited the DM Genie entry and added PenAndPaperGames. Oops, and I should add some entries for the new Pathfinder stuff as well -- lots of PF stuff out there now. I'll get to that later. )
Re: Spreading the disease
Thank YOU (and the other contributors) for MapTool !trevor wrote:Hey natha that sounds really cool. Thanks for doing that !
Well, even if I don't mind personnally (gimme good foreign characters handling in the macro parser and I'll take any UI ).I'm currently working on redesigning the UI, hopefully for the better
But it should help non tech people checking MT more deeply ("Oooh ! Shiny !")
Thanks for the link.Azhrei wrote:Okay, I added a link to your new site, Natha.
It looks like putting "maptool.fr" into the address bar gives me a webmail login (!?) (...)
As for maptoo.Fr ... I must have did something wrong in the DNS/redirection setting of my webhosting provider ...
www.maptool.fr is good though