Gametable: Suplemental

Here is the basic mode of Gametable. An aerial view of a gridded world, with drawn in surroundings, and movable 'pog' units. There's a chat window for player rolls and talk, and when combined with Ventrilo is the closest thing to a live D&D session I've seen online.

But it's not real D&D. At least not the way I know it. It WANTS to be D&D, but it is only a robot with dreams. Like instant messengers want to be conversations, and Pinocchio wants to be a real boy; Gametable is a wannabe. But as it neither lies nor shows my mother as a talking icon of an ant- I can accept it for what it is.

What it boils down to is that Gametable's greatest strength, and greatest drawback is its DM. A creative mind that can make full use of the wide utility GT offers, with an engaging story line and fun, sometimes skin of the teeth, battles- is what makes the 'game' worth playing.

The other side of the coin is that this IS a computer game. How long do you usually wait before you know your attack hit the enemy? How long does it take a computer to record and adjust your enemy's hit points and status effects? For a true computer game, this is all instantaneous. But we're dealing with a hybrid here, a computer game run by a human. Instead of the time-is-not-an-object pace of live D&D, there's a gas-brake-gas-brake feel as control of the game is traded between human and machine. For every instantaneous dice macro roll the computer makes at your request, there is several seconds of delay while the DM calculates, or tags are changed.

Maybe it's an aquired taste. For it's multiplayeriness and customizability it's better than alot of games out there. Players are also allowed to draw embellishments on the playing field, which is a worthy trick, and the easily designed dice macros are neat.

In conclusion, Gametable is like D&D on robo-crutches. Not quite as cool as it sounds though.

Gametable in Action!

I'll make sure to post a chronicle tomorrow, I've been slacking lately.

Earlier today we tried out the Gametable with Ventrilo. 3 of us were in The Green Hills, two at my place, and the other lives a few blocks away, while the 4th was in Connecticut. They had all made characters previously, and I had spent quite a few hours devising a dungeon for them to adventure in. This was meant to be a test run, and as I knew we would all be spending a lot of time learning how to work this new contraption, I was not going to delve too much into the plot.

When we were all settled down and ready to start, I had the players place and name their 'pogs'. Pog is the name they use in Gametable that basically represents a character or NPC or monster. I placed them all in the town hall, and gave them a short backstory as to how they met and started adventuring together. It was extremely brief, but had just enough detail to be believable. The first thing that happened when they got in the town, was they saw a bulletin board near the town fountain. The wanted poster basically sent them to the dungeon via instructions from the innkeeper. All of this played out fairly well, but still lacking in the fact that we were not able to look at each other and speak so openly as in person. Drawbacks aside, the postive aspects were still numerous though.

A lot has to be done ahead of time with this system, and it's important as the DM to understand exactly how everything is going to play out. You'll need to figure out how you're going to record initiative, how players will be able to take their movements, etc. Some parts are improved by this. For instance, even the town was mapped out, so players knew where they were in relation to other players when certain things were happening. It also made me realize how important a mapped town can be.

When the players finally showed up at the dungeon, it was slow moving at first. The first battle took a good while, and it was hard to tell if exploring the dungeon was faster or slower than in a face to face game. However, this didn't exactly matter, because the format that we were using allowed for little social time and fun things in between. They were still there, yet not as numerous as normal. Part of this might still have been due to learning how we work together to make this happen, and part is because of the lack of face to face interaction, and the fact that only person can talk at once on vent. Ironically, D&D is a game where most of the fun comes from the sarcastic side comments, or when you quietly interrupt someone with great wit.

All in all, Gametable works. It requires a lot of planning and preparation to make it work, but it does. All had fun, but it was clear that it was a different kind of fun than in a face-face session. Next week, we may try including our faraway friend via webcam!

Also, I'm going to ask Apples if she wants to write something on her thoughts of Gametable. She seems to have a different view of it than the rest of us thus far.

-Lance of the INTERTUBZ LOL DND ONZLINE People.

Online D&D - Cheap!

So in my recent quest to find a decent digital dungeon designer, I found myself stumbling upon (by the guidance of one of my PC's) an application called Gametable.

The page itself even recommends you pair it with something along the likes of Ventrilo.

I have since given it a good whirl, and so far I love what I've seen. Gametable is an applet that will let you draw in the lines of dungeons and encounters, and your players are able to fully manipulate everything; which could be a blessing or a curse, depending on your players. My way of interpreting good use out of this would be to have the DM draw the dungeon in his private edit mode, and then reveal areas and monsters as they are explored by the PC's. You do this by finding the private edit mode, and drawing everything in there that you want, and then use the publish crop to select what parts you want the players to see and when.

Coupled with the player's ability to draw their projected lines of movement, the game could run very smoothly, so long as nobody purposefully tries to mess things up. You also have the option of making dice macros, which are perfect for people who have a hard time remembering the pluses and attacks to all their weapons. A player can simply take all of their attacks and set them up so they have the correct plus and the program does all the math.

Ventrilo comes in when you realize how difficult it is to play D&D through text chatting alone. I've managed to set my computer up as a gametable and ventrilo server without much difficulty. Vent, as we call it, is a beautiful thing that lets you clearly hear the words that your friends from around the world would be saying to you. It is a VoIP that is expressly designed for groups of people to be able to conference together smoothly. It does require you to have a moderate technical awareness though, as the setup and directions aren't exactly user friendly.

So when Ventrilo and Gametable are joined, we expect a huge success in terms of incorporating a long distance friend into some 4E gaming this summer. I personally will be guiding him through a series of quests simultaneous to the main campaign, and he will join up with them when he moves back to the Green Hills this fall.

-Lance of the Hill People