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I have been looking at the features of maptool and I am wondering if this is possible?

I do PbP gaming and I get frustrated that sometimes the combat sections can take ages (last combat session took over a month!). It is not uncommon for these sessions to draw out, clunk along, lose all sense of urgency and then ultimately grind to a halt when a player goes AWOL. I was trying to think of what could make these sessions progress quicker and I believe a permanent online virtual game table would be the way forward. Players could log on with a password, move their tolken, make rolls, chat through decisions and then log off.

So I was hoping to use something like maptool to establish a gaming 'drop-in' server. My players could login and perform their moves/rolls etc and then wait for the next person. Is it possible to do this with maptool?

I know that you can make a server with a computer and I theorise that if I were to leave it on (at home) and create a player password and a GM password then I could access as the GM from anywhere and my players could drop in and perform their respective turns.

You can give permission to players to move specific tolkens only, in times of strife you could give players multiple tolkens.

Specifically what I am asking is, can this be done and can anyone percieve any problems with this or give any hints/tips on how to do it?

Cheers

With the initiative panel you can prevent people from moving when it isn't their turn.

With jfrazierjr's latest patches you can also set tokens to have a maximum move distance and create a set of macros to limit movement.

The biggest issue I see is that when a client connects to a MapTool server they do not receive a copy of all of the chat that has already happened. So they wouldn't see the results of previous actions or the RP that might have occurred. To accomplish this you'd need to build a chat panel using macros and store the chat into a token. When the player connects, the "onCampaignLoad" macro might be able to read the data from the token and print it to the chat panel. Any new text they add would need to be done through a set of macros so that the new stuff is added to the "token cache" of text.

Some of the macro gurus here can probably help with the chat panel thing. Unless I left something out, I think your plan is doable.

It can? Well... sort of... One issue is that it does not have any way to take into account game specific movement metrics. For grids, you just get the number of units moved, but not the metric movement. so, if for example, you have move metric set to ONE_TWO_ONE, then the getLastPath() will not really work the way you need for your game system.

I plan to try to fix this by adding in a new function to get the actual movement metric, but thats just a want at this time....

isn't there also not a movePad somewhere on the forum, I have no experience with it, but that could do the job maybe... else you could track mmovement and save it somewhere so you can see if someone 'cheated'

Within limits the onTokenMove-functions can be used to track movement. As can the movePad. I think both require you to do design the project it in a certain way .. whatever that may be. But I'm pretty sure almost every movement rule can be done ATM -- not necessary fast.

Really? That's a bug. You should fix that.



I'm not sure there's that much value in retrieving movement distance if it doesn't adhere to the movement metric. It can be easily calculated by the macro for some cases (if the path doesn't double back on itself, the larger of the difference in X and Y coordinates can be divided by the smaller of the two and the result is the number of diagonal steps taken -- I think; I haven't checked it extensively). But if the path doubles back on itself then no simple formula will work and each individual step needs to be checked.

Not sure if we are speaking the same language or not. but just to be clear. using get last path and then counting the number of elements and subtracting 1(remember, the initial cell is included also in the path) will not be the same movement if your movement metric is not ONE_ONE_ONE.



Yea, and all of this is in MTScript code which is slow enough as it is. Sooo.... thats why the want to put it into a function that runs in the java space entirely instead of doing all that via the parser and multiple functions. It should not be that hard as there are at least several places where it's calculated, I just have pull out the parts that don't directly affect the movement cost.

Humpey,

While it is technically possible to do this with MapTool, it might be better to use a different tool. One that I've seen (it was advertised here a while back, and seems to be made with this in mind) is SceneGrinder. It's a web-based persistent campaign tool.

I believe it is not free, though, which may factor in to your decision. Might be worth checking it out even so.

Fixed. Sent you a patch for this and move metric on server dialog.

Thank you guys. I'm trying to put some of these things into practice. I have downloaded the Saga Framework (which is ace) and I'll look into the move pad e.t.c.

Again thank you.

As for the screen grinder, I've had a look and you are right. It is exactly what I want, therefore it makes me very happy to know that it is therefore possible to do. I don't think it has many resources for Saga Edition and I am a bit concerned that there will be other 'hidden' costs i.e. 10 cents for the use of this tolken and you are not allowed to use your own.

You hit the nail on the head when you mentioned the cost, I don't mind it but my players would (they are cheap as hell in game let alone real life!!).