Nice to meet you ...

[Wren]

Hi, I am Wren.

I am a long time role-player who has used programs like this in the past, like OpenRPG and WebRPG. Usually a GM, mostly because none of my real and electronic friends are ever willing to let me play.

Is there any "lobby" style functions with this program, and/or a tutorial for people like me to get used to the programs functions?

[Azhrei]

Hi, I am Wren.

Welcome to RPTools, Wren!

Is there any "lobby" style functions with this program, and/or a tutorial for people like me to get used to the programs functions?

Not currently. There are plans for a CommunityTool in the future, but for now the way to find players is to post in the "Looking For" forum. (I also use ENworld.org and PenAndPaperGames.com.)

[khabalox]

and/or a tutorial for people like me to get used to the programs functions?

http://rptoolstutorials.net/maptool.htm

There fairly good... gives you a quick, basic intro to all the features. My guess is that it just scratches the surface (read: MT is deep), but it gave me a good start.

Oh, and I'm new here too, and digging MT in general and macros in particular. Finally I can reconnect with my group from college.

[Loki]

hello

my name is matt im 20 and ive been playing D&D and rifts (as well as some home brew games) since i was 9 or 10

im going to college as a computer science major (surprise? i think not)

i develope software in C/C++, Visual Basic (for any windows users), Java and Python
(as well as web scripting)

well its going to be nice talking and getting ideas from all of you

[Dathkar]

Hi. I currently live in south-central Indiana and do a variety of things for a living but mostly help other people set up their own part time businesses to earn a little extra money in this horrible economy.

My RP background: Introduced to D&D through a buddy in high school who played solo adventures out of books-- very much like Choose Your Own Adventure, except with dice. I bought the D&D Basic set (red box) and then started buying adventures. Then, because I'd bought Hollow World adventures I bought the Hollow World Boxed Set. Then, not really understanding the nomenclature, I bought AD&D books that served up a whole new level of complexity. I was hooked. We organized our scholastic bowl team (hey, many of us were athletes as well, we weren't nearly as nerdy as that sounds) into an AD&D group with as many as 7 or 8 players at a time.

At college I figured no one would have time for games. Boy was I wrong! Small campus, most of us without cars, in a not-so-nice area of town with very little else to do, we dove into games. Battletech, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Vampire: The Masquerade, LARPing, Kanar, Magic: The Gathering (which died a quick death among our crowd), Paranoia, the list goes on and on. We pulled games off the internet such as Pets: The Shedding and Highlander: The Gathering. We converted rules into hybridized TT and LARP so we could get as many people playing at once as we could. We networked with other gaming groups off-campus and built up a LARP that drew people from Chicago and Cincinatti and the Louisville area... without being a part of Shared Universe or One World By Night or any of that, though we also played in their games, as well.

Today, we don't LARP, that group fell apart several years ago. I went back to school in 2002, got a degree in Applied Anthropology and did some graduate studies in Geographic Information Science. I don't get along well enough with computers to want to do software design, which is what employers want from those with a Masters degree. And the industry standard, in the US, is horribly buggy and I refuse to work with it. Besides, a lot can be done with a mash-up based on Google Earth, Access and a couple of other progams.

Today, I help market my inlaws' businesses on the internet and plot out my next gaming move. One day, I will strike it big with a couple of my ventures and I will have time to go back to the table.

I found RPtools on The Older Gamers website in a discussion on how to run TT games over the internet. I played around with a couple of other programs but found their documentation absolutely incomprehensible, or the tools not robust enough to hold my attention.

My desire is to have essentially a GIS program as a VTT, with a zoom that allows me to build an entire planet and yet have the party track their movement along various trails in a deep forest, with a fog-of-war shrouding all. I'm thinking the hardware requirements might be a bit much for a VTT, but I know that they do similar things with ArcGIS and TransCAD. The problem is that those programs are designed with the idea that the world is Earth-sized and Earth-shaped. ArcGIS simply isn't moddable that I know of, and TransCAD doesn't output the right sort of graphics for me to recommend.

So far, MapTool seems to be the most robust and user-friendly program I have encountered and the one I am currently boning up on. I'll probably have a few questions so I figured I'd stop in here first and say "Hi."

[Azhrei]

Welcome, Dathkar!

I found RPtools on The Older Gamers website in a discussion on how to run TT games over the internet.

Thanks! It's always nice to know how people heard of RPTools.

My desire is to have essentially a GIS program as a VTT, with a zoom that allows me to build an entire planet and yet have the party track their movement along various trails in a deep forest, with a fog-of-war shrouding all. I'm thinking the hardware requirements might be a bit much for a VTT, but I know that they do similar things with ArcGIS and TransCAD.

Wow, that's quite a goal! Since the Java virtual machine has limited memory space on a 32-bit machine, you'll need to go 64-bit if you want to build an entire world as one map! I'm guessing that's what you want to do since you talked about having a zoom feature that scales well and that means a single map.

For the time being, MapTool only caches one map at a time in memory, so you could pseudo-implement what you want using multiple maps, each at a different overall scale, to get around the memory issues in a 32-bit environment. In lmarkus' D&D/PF campaign framework (check out the General -> User Creations forum) he has something called "MoveTo" points. This is where a coordinate on one map is stored in a list of "warp points" and you can easily move creatures from the current map to one of those warp points on another map. Not perfect, but close.

So far, MapTool seems to be the most robust and user-friendly program I have encountered and the one I am currently boning up on. I'll probably have a few questions so I figured I'd stop in here first and say "Hi."

Thanks for the kudos. You'll find we have a very friendly crowd here! Be sure to check out each forum for the kinds of posts each holds and then start asking your questions!

[shade_00]

Greetings,

I am a long time RP'er who started in '84 with the AD&D core. I recently found your site. Since then I have been pouring over the tutorials and how-to's. I would just like to first say how awesome this tool looks on the surface. This tool has tons of features that I am very impressed with. I am very excited about digitizing our tabletop and taking it virtual. My mind is exploding with new ideas that I can't wait to get started on! I hope to give back and help out where I can, once I figure out the tools myself. Thanks to all the people that helped put this together, it looks very promising!


cheers,
-shade_00

[king_vitrial]

howzit, another new guy here, i'v had rptools for a while now but never got a chance to use it, so i figured i would stop be here and get myself acquainted and then start trying to recruit some people for games.

my three systems of choice are tri-stat, alternity, and pathfinder (i just can't go back to regular 3.5 DnD anymore). so expect to see me starting some recruitment drive here in the near future. and i hope i don't make too much of an idiot of myself, i do that sometimes.

[Azhrei]

Welcome to RPTools everyone!

[JinxedJosh]

hello everyone Im new to using these tools and would appreciate any help to get maptool up and running so I can play d and d with my friends =)

[Azhrei]

hello everyone Im new to using these tools and would appreciate any help to get maptool up and running so I can play d and d with my friends =)

Um, this thread is to introduce yourself! If you're looking for someone to share the use of the various tools with, check the tool-specific forums. And be sure to watch the video tutorials to give you a head start on how to use MapTool (the main site has links).

[skester]

Greetings from the Great White North!

Hey everyone, I'm hailing from the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) up in Ontario Canada.

An IT professional and a tech geek by nature, my lovely wife of 9 years puts up with both my computer and D&D obsessions. And maptools allows me to combine them (yah).

A bit off center by nature, I describe my job as an "electronic postman". I've been in various IT support roles for the past 15 years. Working at a help desk I've experienced such wonders as a user unable to find the space bar because it wasn't labeled. Back in the age of 3.5" disks I had one Mac user (Mac IIc) who was trying to install Office, isntalled the 10th disk, but the 11th wouldn't fit. Turned out the floppy drive was removed cause she shoved a disk in upside down and broke it earlier in the week, and she was just putting the disks in the hole and it was dropping down into the case. And my favourite, a call by an exec who was complaining that his computer was broken. The location he was in had a tranformer blow up, had no power in the building and the building was in the middle of being evacuated. But he didn't care and wanted someone there NOW to fix his computer....

I got out of the helpdesk and into email after that.

I've been playing RPGs for over 25 years now (ouch I'm almost 40), starting off with ADD and eventually getting into Champions, Paladium and Feng Shui. Now we pretty much just stick to the Pathfinder version of 3.x however.

I've been playing with the same group of players since college, one since high school. Tried to get my wife into playing, but it's just not her thing. Huge fan of mini's, but they take up so much room and gather dust. Maptools is much better for the cleanup afterwards.

Originally got into maptools when searching for a way that some of our friends who moved to the west coast could join in on the games. But now timing is preventing them from joining the game more than anything.


Skester

[Big_Mac]

Welcome to the Looney Bin, Skester!! May all you obsessions come true and this is the group to help that...

[dicehead]

Hi I've just started using Maptools for my games, I haven't had a RPG campaign going in years due to living in the middle of nowhere so it's great to be playing again - I really missed it more than I realised.

[Darinth]

Hey, I've been lurking around the forums/site/wiki for a while now (probably about 2 months on and off). My name's Darinth and I'm a computer programmer. Only have my 2-year atm, but I've been programming computers since I was about 8 years old and am now 25 so I'm at no lack of experience.

In time I'll probably start muckin' around in the code to provide some of my own features and if people want and they prove to be stable I'd be more then happy to release anything I come up with as patchs.

For the moment, however, I'm about to run over to the feature request area of maptool and put up a thread or 2 over there. Is good to finally be posting and I look forward to talking with ya all :)