I run http://obsidianportal.com From the beginning we focused on the story aspect of tabletop games and avoided the gamey crunch. That decision has paid off time and time again.
If you guys want to bypass some of the journal features and instead focus on the tabletop, check out our API: http://help.obsidianportal.com/kb/api/api-overview You could use Obsidian Portal as the backend to store characters, notes, journal, etc. Allow people to import their Obsidian Portal campaigns into Roll20, and you can focus on the tabletop.
We've got around 40,000 campaigns in our system, so it's not a fool's errand.
Micah, no joke, you are on a list of folks we wrote down to contact about this. Really excited to see you're interested and we will ABSOLUTELY be in touch.
Funny what a small place the internet is sometimes.
I've wanted to make something like this for years but never had the time. I remember about a decade ago I tried something called OpenRPG (and even submitted a bunch of patches to it) but it was fairly clunky to use and didn't include voice-chat so we had to use roger-wilco on top of it.
Really interface is key, computer interfaces tend to get in your way and that is really damaging to the flow of the game. I'm definitely going to check this out, and if it's any good, I'll be a bit jealous that I'm not working on it.
OK, Backed.
I like tools like this. I think too often they get cluttered down trying to implement the rules system in the game.
I don't want that, I don't need that.
That's what the GM is for, and trying to implement the rules themselves mean I need to program, in order to run my game.
I just want an extension of my minis map, on the web.
I'd like to click-and-drag to move figures around, scribble on stuff, and maybe import some PNGs if I feel motivated.
Or not. My scribbles are good enough, since you have VIDEO of me, right there, describing it.
Again, this is where people get lost.
Things don't need to stand alone, like they would in Diablo, or Baulder's gate. I don't want to spend a long time mapping out a dungeon before we play, I want to fire up a game, and wing it as we all play together.
That's what I love about Tabletop games.
As a GM, I can just use my marker, and my voice, and GO!
Make that easy, and I'll get all my friends to get their friends to sign up ;)
This looks really interesting. I've also looked at a few of the other virtual tabletop products out there and not been super happy with what I've seen. Making a note to myself to make a pledge later tonight.
Have you posted a link to this kickstarter anywhere else? A cursory search on reddit didn't pull up any results, and I think there are a few subreddits over there that might have some interest as well.
We've posted to /r/rpg and /r/dnd, but linked directly to the site (http://roll20.net) instead...just as a sort of mini A/B test to see if it made a difference :-). If you know of any other subreddits feel free to spread the word!
A very cool project, I've passed word on to the gaming friends I thought might be interested. Heck, I'd be completely geeked about playing D&D or d20 Star Wars using it, particularly with the vast majority of my gaming friends living at least two hours drive away.
It doesn't seem like it would suit my style of GMing at all, though. It's been decades since I used a battle mat or dice. My basic style is just to tell the players what they see, and ask them what they do. Even just trying to come up with pictures for the NPCs the players encounter would seriously slow me down -- in a normal session, probably half of the NPCs and settings are generated on the fly. On the other hand, the video chat, the text chat, the logging, and the idea of mood music all sound like they'd be great tools.
Would it be reasonable to run the system with just those features going? Is there something else out there which will already do this?
Come to think of it - thats probably a good simple feature for them to add:
An 8 bit mode or a simplified mode - A lot of the genre is related to imagination - the GM comes up with his description of frightening beasts, and people fill in the gaps with their own take on it.
At the same time the case should also be made that a good market place will also create good art that inspires people to come up with scenarios.
Hmm. Heck if the market place even takes inspiration from deviant art landscapes and the likes, it could be an impressive force.
Had a guy on Something Awful today ask if he could play on a white background with just color blocks as tokens.
Yes.
Play checkers if you'd like. Honestly, at it's base this is a system of layers in a browser. You can put one thing on top of another thing. You put a token on a table. That's why this thing is cool, I think. Yeah, I'm using it to play D&D... but Riley and I were both pretty intent on making sure this was a blank slate. We both love video games-- but we also both loved that tabletop games can be so, so much more because it's whatever you bring (or don't bring) to the table.
There's no downloads outside of an updated flash player, so there's no reason not to use the system for that. There will be a large kind of empty portion of screen... just like you'd have a large empty table in front of you. Heh.
I will say, I'm really jazzed that combat-wise we have a grid-less measurement system. Like, you can quickly drag your mouse to go "okay, this would move me 10 feet" or whatever, and I've always wanted to fiddle with that as an option.
Heh, usually the table gets filled with munchies when we play face-to-face. :)
That said, I'm convinced this is worth trying out, and will definitely keep an eye on it. If I can find the money in our budget, I'll contribute on Kickstarter too. (That's a big if at the moment, alas.)
Nice work so far. There seems to be growing interest in online roleplaying, but most of the current offerings are lacking right now.
I personally launched Fabletop.com a couple of months ago, but the approach is a bit different, focusing more on a robust chat system, and less on the battlemat.
This is such a cool implementation. Would you be willing to do a write up about how you got the basic tabletop functionality working? I see on your acknowledgements page[0] you use NodeJS and ShareJS. I assume you do JSON object editing like the Hex example[1]?
At first I thought you were talking about a touch table interface for RPG / Board Games. A couple of my friends are doing a bunch of development in that vein:
I was wondering who had that :-). We were originally going to go with d20.io but couldn't figure out if it sounded good or not, and so now that is our shortening URL instead. I checked before using roll20.net and nothing was set up on roll20.com, so we moved forward.
If you guys want to bypass some of the journal features and instead focus on the tabletop, check out our API: http://help.obsidianportal.com/kb/api/api-overview You could use Obsidian Portal as the backend to store characters, notes, journal, etc. Allow people to import their Obsidian Portal campaigns into Roll20, and you can focus on the tabletop.
We've got around 40,000 campaigns in our system, so it's not a fool's errand.
Contact me at [email protected] if you're interested.