Haha, that was fun. Starcraft and a 7-year-old

[Rumble]

My son and I just played through a bughunt using a made-up-on-the-fly ruleset and the Starcraft universe. He asked to play a game (he watches me mess with MapTool all the time) and so I threw together some rules and a maptool campaign, and he used 2 squads of marines to clear out a Terran outpost overrun with Zerg (the marines, of course, were named after all the characters in Aliens).

We didn't do anything very fancy except for some line-of-sight work and a few macros, but we had a great time. Hudson and Spunkmeyer bought it, and Drake and Vasquez were badly wounded, but the Colonial Marines prevailed.

[Humble Apostle]

Awesome! That sounds pretty entertaining

Kinda wish there was a bit more action from non DnD games on the maptools side, like a Warcraft, or Star Wars game. Starcraft could be good too.

[jfrazierjr]

If someone were to do up a simple game like say HeroQuest(US version) or Talisman in Maptool.... I would SOOOO be there..

[Rumble]

I think part of the problem is that a lot of games aren't - what, quite so methodical as D&D? D&D (especially 4E) is procedural, predictable - it lends itself especially to the macro writing and automation of MapTool. It's easier to imagine MapTool uses for games that like a good tactical or overland map, for instance.

I'm trying to branch out a bit, though, looking at some other games and what kind of stuff MapTool can do for them. I wrote a rolling system for D6; I have no idea how much use it's getting but I did it for someone here. I cranked out a dice roller for ORE (used in Godlike and REIGN), which I might use eventually.

The game engine I used for the Starcraft game was largely based on the Quickstart Rules from Exalted that were put out a long time ago. It turned out to be terribly unbalanced (it was either too easy or too hard to kill the Zerg) but we had a good time anyway.

[Crudeboy]

Kinda wish there was a bit more action from non DnD games on the maptools side, like a Warcraft, or Star Wars game. Starcraft could be good too.

Me too, actually. I'm currently playing in a D&D 4e game--and enjoying it immensely, mind you--but at the same time I would like to see more stuff like Savage Worlds, Mutants & Masterminds, and whatnot.

I've got a few pre-gen adventures for Unknown Armies I could MapTool-ize, I suppose, and run at some point. It'd be pretty easy, I would imagine.

Been hankerin' for some Unknown Armies in a bad way.

[trevor]

Sounds like fun !

[Humble Apostle]

How easy would it be to do a wargame style Maptools game?

Such as Warhammer? I've never played one, but the army control style appeals to me almost as much as the RPG games do.

[jungleboie]

you should look into http://www.vassalengine.org. they are a java based server with games made by users. most games are real boardgames, but there are a few home brewed games there.

[Rumble]

How easy would it be to do a wargame style Maptools game?

Such as Warhammer? I've never played one, but the army control style appeals to me almost as much as the RPG games do.

I don't see any reason it would be all that different from using it for an RPG. You'd need to create the maps, create the images, and then if you want, create the macros to handle dice rolling, and you're off.

[DrVesuvius]

You could certainly do a skirmish-type wargame very easily with MapTool - after all D&D and most RPG combat is basically a skirmish wargame at heart. It's just going to be a matter of writing the macros to match the rules. I've been thinking of coding up macros for one of Two Hour Wargames rules, probably Chain Reaction. If anyone's interested, the rules are available free from the THW website.

For a traditional larger scale wargame where you're moving units of figures (20+) in a block, MapTool breaks down because it doesn't have a way to permanently group tokens together and move them as one. You could do like some rules do and make each unit of multiple figures a single top-down token

As for non-D&D RPGs in MapTool, so far I've used it to run Castle Falkenstein and Savage Worlds quite successfully. The Falkenstein game was almost entirely social interaction and roleplay8ing with almost no tactical combat, and the virtual tabletop was mainly used for props, maps and handouts. VERY non-D&D! I'm currently working on Mutants & Masterminds, which while it's D20 based, combat plays VERY differently to D&D3.x

[Crudeboy]

How easy would it be to do a wargame style Maptools game?

Over the past few months I've been tinkering around with stuff to play VOR: the Maelstrom over MapTools, seeing as I lost all of my minis and moved away from other players pretty much in one fell swoop.

I dropped it for a while to wait for the MapTool updates that have been recently implemented and will pick it back up shortly. I'll let folks know when there's something ready.

As far as I've gotten with it, even pre-b48, I think it'll work remarkably well for smaller-scale skirmish type games like VOR or Warmachine.

As for non-D&D RPGs in MapTool, so far I've used it to run Castle Falkenstein and Savage Worlds quite successfully. The Falkenstein game was almost entirely social interaction and roleplay8ing with almost no tactical combat, and the virtual tabletop was mainly used for props, maps and handouts.

I was geared up to play a World of Darkness game a few months back, and I think it was pretty much how that was going to go. Same way with the Unknown Armies game I'm wanting to do.

MT really is system agnostic.

[Malekith]

hmmm i think you could get bigger wargames into Maptool. like warhammer.
WH40k can be done very easily, as units don't have to stay in formation as such (like skirmishers in fantasy) and so just drop down your tokens and use some roll commands (or macros i suppose, but that might be a little overkill as you're only rolling d6s bar artillery dice (could just use tables)) and you're away. don't snap to grid and just measure away!
fantasy is a bit harder cos the units have to stay in formations, but just group select and move them again the do some fine tuning. and angling the units/wehicles woud require some skill, but that can be worked around.
for token's i'd use either a top-down symbol (like in WD mag for ex.) or just take pictures and use the correct base shapes, etc. draw up and army list outside the game and possibly keep the stats on each token if ya want to, and you're sorted.

You could also make up a hexgonal grid map for a longer campaign - fairly sure it's viable an all, but i haven't played a campaign and would have to check the rules properly.

In fact one of my players was messing around on the intro map before my last session and dropped a few SM units onto the table for laughs.

just my 2 cents

Mal

[Hawke]

Snikle had a 1.2 campaign available that used Savage Worlds rules to do Marines clearing out a ship of aliens. It was well done - excellent graphics and had some cool tooltips that helped a GM run it with some lite problem solving.

I played Star Wars Miniatures (ships) with MapTool and it worked pretty well. Setup the right macros and we went at it.

I also played a made-up war game several times where each unit had varied vision ranges, speeds, and attacks. The map was an island with various debris that blocked vision. It was a cool cat & mouse game as both players took turns cruising around the map trying to find each other with some scout units that had big vision ranges but were crazy weak and some tank units that were slow but tough. Unfortunately, the revision of the vision system in 1.3 doesn't allow that to work anymore Because you can see light at any distance & there's no way to let individual units have varied vision it broke my game idea. Maybe someday!

[palmer]

Unfortunately, the revision of the vision system in 1.3 doesn't allow that to work anymore Because you can see light at any distance & there's no way to let individual units have varied vision it broke my game idea. Maybe someday!

A: Use Darkvision style vision for units. This gives them all a light source they can see, but nobody else can

B: You can totally have different vision ranges for each unit. Set them all as separate vision types using the darkvision style.

[Malekith]

that sounds fun!
You could always just use modded game systems to get custom content in, as Hawke has mentioned. Someone may even be able to port Space Hulk in if they're clever enough
I'll have to play around when i get some time to and someone else willing at the same time.

Mal