RPTools.net

I am currently in two campaigns, both face to face. In one, I GM and I use MapTool and projector/TV to handle player locations and dice rolling(players roll their own dice thought). In the other, the GM has yet(I am still working on him!) to use MapTool, so as a player I use DiceTool to roll dice instead of physical dice.

Anyway, I would like to get a feel for how many people are using DiceTool. I plan to do a few small changes personally for myself and if allowed, I would share them with the community at large. Also, if I can share back, I would be willing to open up for simple, quick feature requests. I will NOT be spending a ton of time on DiceTool, but if there are some small things that would help and they fit with the overall RPTools goals, I would consider looking into it(Stuff like roll in DiceTool and "dump" the data to MapTool chat won't happen, just to give an idea).

I only play face-to-face and roll real dice during gaming.

I only play online now. When I played face to face I used dicetool until I figured out maptool then DT went in the can.

mfrizzell wrote:I only play online now. When I played face to face I used dicetool until I figured out maptool then DT went in the can.

Hmm.. that's a fairly visceral response... Did you switch because MapTool supports more dice types (such as one your game needs), because your group also uses MapTool to handle the "scene", or some other reason?

Dicetool was fine in my face to face games when all I needed was a way to handle multiple dice rolls easily. But even in my face to face game when we all sit around the table with PC's and used Maptool then there just wasn't a compelling reason to keep using it when Maptool could be programmed to handle all of you dice rolling needs and display it in chat for everyone to see.

mfrizzell wrote:Dicetool was fine in my face to face games when all I needed was a way to handle multiple dice rolls easily. But even in my face to face game when we all sit around the table with PC's and used Maptool then there just wasn't a compelling reason to keep using it when Maptool could be programmed to handle all of you dice rolling needs and display it in chat for everyone to see.

Yep, if your group is using MapTool ANYWAY, DiceTool is not needed and has far less features available. As noted, in my case, when I am a player, the GM has not yet gotten to the point he wants to use MapTool as a "whiteboard" with savable state, much less computer rolled dice and everything else MapTool can do.

So when I am playing in his game, I use DiceTool because I can fairly easily roll my attack(multiple if need be) and damage dice and have the results show up to me and I just go down the list and tell the GM the results. This basically keeps me from having to spend extra time doing the math, not that I can't do the math with manual dice, but it's just far faster on the computer especially if I have multiple attacks to make at once. Our combats drag on enough with the other players who use real dice and personally, I don't want to be the hold up in the group...

Dont forget that - with all the traffic MapTool causes most forum users are probably MapTooler. They already have a powerful dice roller. Maybe this is not reaching the real DiceTool users? Dunno.

In gaming I prefer using as few different tools as possible. Switching and coordinating multiple tools keeps me fom gm'ing (steals time/concentration). As player I could see the use ... but I rarely play and my players dont have any electronic device on the game table.
F2F I prefer real dice, but I tend to play easy game systems anyway, so there isnt that much complicated dice rolling. Online use of DT could only ever be concidered if they would grow together. Give the macro capabilites I dont think there is a rel need for that - but given I dont know much of the DT capabilities.

CoveredInFish wrote:Dont forget that - with all the traffic MapTool causes most forum users are probably MapTooler. They already have a powerful dice roller. Maybe this is not reaching the real DiceTool users? Dunno.

Yep... and those that for whatever reason aren't using MapTool may be using CharTool and/or InitTool which both have the same dicelib as MapTool contains. DiceTool currently does not use the same parsing engine, so some of the dice rolling types added to MT/CT/IT can't be done in the same way in DiceTool. However at the same time, DiceTool has a few really cool features that it would be nice to see incorporated into the dicelib jar in some way.

Thanks for the input....