The Fancy Bastard Forum

Yeah, my dump is also Intelligence. I do try to help the group figure things out (out-of-character), so I'm not really as worried about that as DrPepper might be, but I do have a slightly harder time remembering to write Rhyd'Ley's in-character dialogue to match his low INT.

Well, an INT stat of 11 corresponds to an IQ of about 110 (above average), so they're not total buffoons. :)

Posted By: Mike BradyWell, an INT stat of 11 corresponds to an IQ of about 110 (above average), so they're not total buffoons. :)

Heh, I was at the Wizards of the Coast website and I watched the YouTube preview of the upcoming video that has the writers of "Robot Chicken" playing D&D. (And also Wil Wheaton announced on twitter that discussions were in place for another Penny Arcade podcast). But in the related movies list on YouTube I came across http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWZ2WdeTo1M, a 2 1/2 year old video detailing some of the things that were supposed to be available with a D&D Insider Membership. Remember the D&D Game Table and the D&D Character Visualizer? Me neither. I'm just glad we started with MapTool and didn't wait for that D&D Game Table that of course was just around the corner.

Heh yeah apparently quite a few heads rolled when the promises from their tech guys didn't pan out. But honestly, Maptool is such a mature and well-developed product that I'm not sure I'd even want to switch over to the DDI Game Table anymore. Unless the maps were already available... then I might.

To their credit, though, I've come to consider both the Character Builder and Compendium to be indispensable products. They are really fantastic. If I was writing my own adventures I'm sure I'd love the Monster Builder too.

Here's an interesting interview with Jonathan Hemingway at Gearbox about how D&D influenced the design of Borderlands. There are several good points on world and character design for you fellow world-builders out there.

Speaking of D&D podcasts and videocasts, I found one at http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/i-hit-it-with-my-axe. This one has a bunch of goth/suicide girl type porn stars playing what I think is 3E. It's not my thing, but maybe you'll think differently. And plus I've become like a 4e snob, older editions don't really interest me.

They actually play a 3e spinoff thats completely homebrew'd by Zach (the dm dude)

Any thoughts about the new official D&D Virtual Table?
http://dreadgazebo.net/video-in-depth-overview-of-the-dd-virtual-table-beta/
http://critical-hits.com/2010/11/23/preview-dungeons-dragons-virtual-table/

Some of my thoughts:
* A lot that's very comparable to MapTool. I question whether it's going to have all the customization options that MapTool has.
* Voice chat is included. That's nice. One less step needed.
* Also there are apparently what they call "voice fonts" which are overlays that change your voice to better simulate an elf, or dwarf, or a man (if you are a woman), or a woman (if you are a man). One guy said it was stupid, another said it was a mixed bag but still impressive.
* Some stuff missing from MapTool. It's new and in beta, so obviously that *may* change. Or may not. No vision blocking other than manually hiding parts of the map, for example.
* Building dungeons one tile at a time seems pretty tedious. Again, one would hope that they would take advantage of the synergy by making published maps and official monsters and characters created in Character Builder easily imported into this. That seems like one of the most obvious advantages of an official tabletop.

I watched the dreadgazebo videos, and came away with the feeling that it's little more than a prettier version of MapTool.  Voice chat is nice, but Skype is so common and robust that it's not really a big deal.  Obviously, it is designed with DnD in mind, so there won't be any GURPS or Shadowrun games being run on it (or at least not easily).  This question may have been answered by Wizards already, but would each player need to have their own DDI account to use it, or just the DM?  If it's everyone (as I would suspect), then the cost would become the deciding factor for me. 

[Last post was duplicated but I can't find a way to delete it. So I edited it to this instead.]

Yeah, I feel the same way.  Wizard's offering doesn't come close to offering the functionality of MapTool (which may be unfair considering how mature a product MT is), but I'd jump on it in a heartbeat if they provided ready-to-use content.  Not for our current game of course - we're sticking it through with MapTool.  But I only just last night finished coding the last part of our current adventure.  Now, that being said, the reason it took me so long was because I'm fully exploring the functionality of MT, and that extra functionality not only enhances the experience but, I believe, also speeds up gameplay.  The Virtual Table will eventually adopt some of that, I'm sure, but by that time MapTool 1.4 will be out and will offer a completely new experience.