The Hounds of Everlund (THoE) First game with MT

[strokes]

THoE just played its first game with MT last night and I must say it went very well. The camp had been using OpenRPG for the past couple of years, so the transition over to MT was a realitive simple one. All the players, including myself were greatly impressed with MT's features and its overall look.

We had just one issue though...

'm using the developmental vesion of MT, 1.3.b30, and running the release version Init Tool, 1.0.b23, in the background. At one point I tried to export as html to file, to clipboard from the InitTool, and then pasted it into MT's chat. Everyones chat window went black, and the only way we could get it back to normal was shutting down MT, and rebooting.

I was wondering if thier's a better way to list initiatives, transferring from InitTool to MapTool. What do other folks do for their d20 combat?

That was one of the features I really liked about ORPG was it's Init tool, which was built as a plugin for the application.

Overall, last nights MapTool experience was a great one. THoE will actually be taking a break, as we try out D&D 4e. I get to play a PC in this one The new DM will be using MapTool for his 4e game and I plan on making MapTool my main virtual table top tool of choice.

thanks for all the great work on this one folks,
strokes.

[Hawke]

I was wondering if thier's a better way to list initiatives, transferring from InitTool to MapTool. What do other folks do for their d20 combat?

Cry and incessantly post here about it! But otherwise, I usually just run initiative in notepad and do my best to copy and paste into MT. I haven't tried exporting to HTML as I'd feared it might cause problems. Your particular issue is the first I've heard of it... I'm sure people will explore it a little bit further.

One idea I had but never got to try out (I went to face to face and then took a break) was creating a little chart off to the side of the map and using copies of tokens for initiative order. I figured I'd have a 2 column, several row grid and I would simply order them by their initiative order. When someone had acted, I'd slide it over. When the round was over I'd slide them all back. Downside here is that you have to refocus the map away from combat.

If you were dealing with massive maps with multiple encounters (rather than one encounter per map) You could solve that by creating a background template, convert it to a token, click and slide that over to the area of the map you're fighting.

There's plans for an initiative tracker integrated with MapTool, stay tuned!

Hope you guys had a great time... what other ORPG features did you guys miss? What MT features, if any, was a welcomed surprise?

[strokes]

One of the players had a special macro set up in ORPG for his attacks. When using it, he just enters the combatants AC and when executed says whether or not he hits the stated AC. He tried in MT, but not surprisingly it didn't work. This has always been one of his favorite macros, for when others ask about it, he proudly shows it off, explaining how to use it.

The group enjoyed the sight/vision features last night, in conjunction with the fog of war. At the time, I didn't know how to use the topology tools, but I viewed the tutorial on it this morning and applied it to some of my maps. Very cool.

'Very Cool' was said many a time last night as the players learned about the various features of MapTool. I especially like the token tool macros, speeding up my die rolling for the various creature checks. I was very meticulous about setting up creature nodes in ORPG, containing useful die rolls I may need during an encounter. This has always been a very tedious chore at best, yet the MT token macros make short work of the same task, and seem to be easier to execute.

Another thing I like about MT is the /rsec command which allows you to put text in with your roll. ORPG uses {} for secret die rolls, but doesn't allow any text. That's something that always bothered me with Open.

The other thing everyone liked and this the main reason THoE just made the switch to MT is, while in Open, every time I loaded a map, a player would inadvertently get booted. It never failed. This was very frustrating for us and even got the point where we were betting on who would get the boot. Not a problem in MT. Changing from map to map, loading tokens on the fly, is all a cinch.

I guess I'll have to patiently await the intro of the integrated init tool. For my game, that's the only thing MT is missing at this point.
strokes.

[Hawke]

One of the players had a special macro set up in ORPG for his attacks. When using it, he just enters the combatants AC and when executed says whether or not he hits the stated AC. He tried in MT, but not surprisingly it didn't work. This has always been one of his favorite macros, for when others ask about it, he proudly shows it off, explaining how to use it.

Ah, yes this scripting feature is coming next version (or... if the gang is doing 1.4, the version after) that should allow a fuller scripting environment. A simple if,then,else will probably be the first thing added.

Hopefully we'll get some of the initiative stuff soon and you guys can explore some more of the features. It's pretty crazy... it seems every session I come up with some new way to use MapTool I hadn't thought of before!

Next session you should upload some screenshots to the gallery.

[Double King]

that flesh golem map is great.

[trevor]

thanks for the report back strokes !

I've got a patch in hand that puts a simple init panel directly into MT. I need to coordinate with the patch author before fully integrating it.