Awesome!!!
The set up was dual boxing Maptools DM & player over two screens. A monitor of 21 inches (DM's view) and a monitor 42 inches (Player's view).
The game session lasted 8 hours. The campaign was homemade 1st level D&D 4E.
I used Rumble's framework 4.08 edition. The whole campaign created and tuned around August, though played during X-mas vacations.
I will describe here all the merits and flaws using MapTools instead of traditional pen and paper.
Merits:
1. Using Rumble's framework we experienced automated combat. No more buzzing in my head and my players' heads about tracking down everything.
2. Illustrated maps and fog of war setting. No more copying and in game drawing of what my players can see ( and tbh I am the worst art drawer).
3.Smooth movement and pace of the game.
4. Player interaction with many many "colourful" NPCs. My experience in Dming art is vast. Though it is the first time that my PCs have roleplayed with so many NPCs. imagine a whole keep-town, full with NPCs, ready to interact with every PC in any giving moment. The true merit of using maptools is that the DM can have already built in scripts and little background story for every NPC. You can't have that polished option in pen and paper by any means.
5.A DM token (DM visible only) helped me a lot to organise and run a flawless session. Basically in each designed room or area I have a serial numbered token named e.g. as "DM (2-Laboratory). This neat token is filled with read aloud texts, descriptive macros, treasure, skill challenges, skill rolls and special scripts for nearly every possible circumstance in a given area. No more browsing in a book turning pages and trying to find skill DCs in the books. Again this option facilitated a smooth and fast play.
6. Day and Night campaign. Easily to set it with Maptools and gives out a realy natural occuring world.
7. No more 2-3 encounters per session.Actually this thing is prolly one of the top features of using Maptools and especially Rumble's automated combat framework. All those years I was playing either 3rd or 4th edition the max encounters that we could play during a given session were 3 in average. The progress was slow and as a DM that likes to build his adventures I couldn't introduce a large dungeon crawl in my campaing since my players would kill themselves from boredom. Let us just say that I wouldn't dare to imagine how many session would take to finish up deluxe adventures e.g ToEE, RttoH, Dragon Mountain, or any other published campaign that included heavy encounters. In that first session my players finished 11 encounters! Tbh I laugh back at my old days as a DM in traditional pen and paper. Colossal dungeon crawls incoming.
8. The session was a total success as I said and during that we had some spectators, some persons that were old D&D veterans, but couldn't spare any more time in D&D with their busy- married lives. Well you can imaging the outcome, once I told em that Maptools is designed for net gaming. End of story, they rolled their characters. Next session will run with 12 players online including me. If it is fast enough will be awesome. Raid option like in MMOs
9. I am bored to think of any other merit of my first session using Maptools, but there should plenty more.
Flaws:
1.Well none.
Once, I get some free time I will polish every detail of my custom campaign in Maptools and share it with you guys. Again my respect to every developer of Maptools and to Rumble for his 4.15 nowadays framework. You guys rock!
