Been reading a bit and I know a lot more but I am still no more convinced. Its like chat, its like a wiki, you can insert pics but we can do all that with chats and wikis. It sounds like its a very nice chat interface but we can already quote bits of convo.

Google does indeed have deep pockets and is probably stuffed with RPG aficionados hell bent on gaming. But it sounds like all the widgets still need to be programmed and yes if they did, only then would they have a VTT. So lets say they do. All the chat is stored and mastered on their servers so in terms of trust I don't get that. As I see it you devolve the trust to them. In fact from a licensing point of view I don't get that either. Parts of it are Apache which is great but it doesn't seem to mention what the rest is. I expect that will not be an issue but Id like to know.

They say that the authentication is done by TLS and it has encrypted stream to the server. They want it to be an email replacement. Thats good and bad. I mean the whole internet is popular and open only because tcp/ip was not a protocol that needed one monolithic server as a host. We all know email is dire but this is not the right way to replace it - well not right from the user point of view, brilliant for info sucking google naturally. Its like only having google mail to choose from until there are alternative servers.

So here is my starting list of changes that need to be made before I will think this is a good idea. And I put them in order of importance for me to use this as a VTT.

1. You have to be able to set up a server for their Google wave federation protocol and become the wave provider hub. It has to be fantastically easy for any noob to do that. In fact you need to be able to set up a hub for just your own group. Ideally you need to set up this hub from your browser or else its not a browser only system and then becomes just like say ScreenMonkey the VTT. Also all the data only goes to that hub and no further like googles servers in some hidden way even to merely authenticate yourselves.

2. It has to have a map and token interface where adding a map is easy - i.e. not like making one for google maps.

3. The dice widgets and others tools need to be almost as good as any VTTs or better.

Everything else I think they could do easily or already have now.

They could do it brilliantly and wipe out all the VTTs no problem but like GP, I don't like it either (regardless of being a VTT creator). I just don't like one company having the whole cake. We have all been ruing that since Windows 95.

So do you guys pro MapTool agree that you need to host the hub or do you think that by using the google server as the entire chat host is alright. When you hit a checkbox and 'send to the wave' do you necessarily imply 'send to google' ? Would be interesting to hear Trevor & Herucas thoughts on this one actually.

France has just signed up the 3 strikes policy and Britain is heading in that direction. The only way this works is because your usually only signed up to one ISP. If you signed up to hundreds at a time and they all delivered the packets then no one could cut you off. Same rules apply here.