RPGs

I've been playing Tabletop, or Paper and Dice, Roleplaying Games for something like 16 years now. I enjoy them, and I'll probably be one of those guys still playing into my fifties and later. Maybe.

A handful of years ago I stumbled upon the idea of Virtual Table Tops, a way of doing Paper and Dice games online. OPEN RPG was the program I had encountered, and the implementation was buggy, but workable. Recently, I've found something better.


Enter RPTOOLS, and their suite of programs, specifically MAPTOOLS*.

It's simple, except that it's built from the ground up. Essentially, it's a chat client, with a layerable drawing feature, some RPG specific add-ons, and it's free. But it's better than that.

You can set visibile distances, lighting, obstructions, etc etc etc. It's really bad ass how feature rich this thing is, especially since it's FREE! The only thing that sucks is the lack of in-suit voice/data.

Want to send the PDF scan of the map from your sourcebook, instead of meticulously copying it? Gonna have to hit up some email addys. Wanna talk, and save the typing for dice rolls? Better get something like Ventrillo, a program VERY familiar to online PC Gamers.

But, really, those are VERY VERY minor problems- Ventrillo is free and can handle a normal group inside the limits of it's free, local host, server.

Want some numbers?

Documentation: 95% - video tutorials, awesome macro documentation, and an active Forums. Would be 100% with a document accompanying; but still, almost perfect. The video tutorials are AMAZING!

Features: 85% - I discussed the reasons why above. Some adventures require long descriptions of events/speeches. Having to type that is bad; but since you're building the maps beforehand, take a minute and write it all out in NOTEPAD, for easy cut and paste blocking. I just wish there was some player status implementaion, a la MMORPGs. AFK, and ReadyCheck, would make this 87%-90%.

Functionality: 88% - There are still bugs/issues. Most of these are simply annoying. I put it below 90% as a caution to people expecting perfection.

Other Problems: I've discussed them above. The only other one is if you're running a significantly older/underpowered machine. Space for storing all the gigabytes of graphics you'd want can be a problem. And if you're not a texture/3d/etc graphics modeler, you're gonna have some trouble gathering all the modern models you might want. But a little imagination and effort can overcome most of that. (For instance, I wanted a BBQ grill for a back patio. No such luck, and I got tired trying to search for one. Instead, I used a dark 55gal barrel, added two small pipes for smoke chimneys, and voila! Similar problem with sinks; so I used an image for an old washbasin. Ever seen those modern sinks that look like big bowls on top of a counter? That's what these look like. Good enough for me.) Top-down view only; but remember, if you were drawing out your game maps by hand, that's how they'd be, too.

Overall - 95% (Averages to 89.3, so 5.7% was added because it's COMPLETELY FREE, and OPEN SOURCE!) This is truly amazing. If you've moved away, but wanna still game with the same ol' assholes; if you're too poor/busy to drive an hour for the weekly game night; or if you're just more comfortable using computers rather than ACTUALLY being face-to-face with other humans, this is exactly what you're looking for.

As Tabletop RPGS are orders of greatness above the old Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books, this is that far beyond Forum post games, or trying to run a real game in a chat room.

*(Launching will cause the program to be installed and then run, downloading isn't significantly different for getting to know the program).