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