OMG .... WOTC does it again

[Redrobes]

I'd love to see the market 'correct' and kick out the big players (including WOTC). This should be about story telling not sales.

I think ole Del here makes adventures. Gamerprinter is writing and printing them. The Cartographist is making stuff. It's happening already. Theres no future for WotC - its a done deal and this is basically just death throws which is why I have always been happy to acknowledge the good MapTool is doing despite it kinda competes with mine. I would rather anybody comes up with a decent VTT which becomes popular before WotC expire than nobody makes a popular version or mine was partially popular and then trailed off so that there was no D&D after. It will continue whilst there is a mechanism to play and people want to. People always want to and in the last few years there is now a mechanism - actually a bit of a plethora.

[Talroth]

Did anyone look at the system requirements to that thing? What are they doing with all that processing power? Cracking NSA encryption codes?

I would have to look into it more, but the 3D tabletop might be fun to play on, provided there was a large enough pool of 3D minis, and it was made easy enough to import your own custom ones, or allow users to upload their own custom creations to a common's pool, because there is no way any popular company can outproduce their fans these days in content.


In all honesty, I think WotC needs to get cracking on getting developers to license more D&D PC games, especially with 4th edition rules which will translate very well to the PC I think. For them to attempt to rely on tabletop games as their bread and butter is something likely to kill their business.


Lack of Mac and Linux support, and rather insane system requirements for what is shown, suggests that their online tabletop isn't going to take off as well as it could. I personally don't relate "Likely to use windows" and "Likely to be willing to fork over hundreds of dollars for D&D" as two qualities common in a single person. (This said, I do tend to use windows most of the time simply because I keep forgetting to get around to installing linux)

[NeonKnight]

Ok, time for me to either shine or fall based on my COOL inside knowledge.

The 'table' utilises all of the current Dungeon Tiles products as well as will incorporate future products.

Outside maps seem to be limited to mostly a topdown view of the current D&D Miniature maps. I would not be surprised if some sort of means is provided to allow someone to scan in hand drawn maps.

As to the minis, I know that all of the miniatures that will initially be provided for the table will be the same miniatures as those found in the current Dungeons of Dread D&D Miniatures in Stores now. These minis are the first of the new line of minis to be produced from 3d Art software, and so will all future miniatures. This means that at minimum, the miniatures for the 3d table will be updated three times a year with 60 more miniatures. I do not know if the old miniatures currently out will be scanned in or whatever.

The system looks cool, but is not something I personally would use.

[Talroth]

Well, looking at the other tools they're offering.
"The D&D Character Visualizer is client application that allows you to build the character you want to play, either for your D&D tabletop game or for your game on the D&D Game Table. You select your race, gender, class, and equipment, and this tool allows you to customize your character as you see fit. Once you've built a character you like, you can create a digital miniature of the character for the D&D Game Table or include a snapshot of the character on your D&D character record sheet."

That actually doesn't sound half bad really. I likely wouldn't buy a subscription myself, unless it was like $30 a year or something, in that case I might be willing to drop a bit of cash for it.

[GlennZilla]

I likely wouldn't buy a subscription myself, unless it was like $30 a year or something, in that case I might be willing to drop a bit of cash for it.

It's $10 a month if you prepay for the year in full. So it's $120 a year for everything.

The Character Creator is the only app that I am excited about. Being able to quickly (Please God!) select a few options and print out an NPC or new PC would help me greatly.

The Character Visualizer is nice if you've never heard of Daz or Poser. The output looks about like Poser a decade ago.

The Rules Compendium is expected to be the first app released. And according to the Gamer Radio Zero Podcast it's probably going to take the form of excell spread sheets. Too late, I got a player building an access database for me of all the races, classes, skills, feats, powers, equipment, and monsters. She really likes that kind of work and it helps her with memory and comprehension of the rules. God Bless her!

The Dungeon Builder sounds neat but it's probably going to end up being dungeons only, I dunno how much I'd use it. It's a natural extension of the tile mapper WoTC released before.

Dungeon and Dragon magazines will now be online and electronic versions. They seem to drop the ball on collecting the issues into one single PDF file. The last one I saw was Dragon #360. That's disapointing, but not a deal breaker. I have enjoyed the content so far since they took them in house, somewhat. But frankly, I miss the ads from the Paizo days. Now I have to try to find out what Crystal Caste is pushing directly.

[Badger]

Sorry ... I kinda lost my cool back there... I'm not cool or hip or whatever the kids are saying these days, to what goes on or whats coming out, so it was news to me... here I am ... working on an adventure (3.5) for print/PDF and battlemaps and tokens to go with it (primarily to be used with map tools... but I'll hopefully be able to get them working with Vdale as well.) ANYHOO ... working a little extra hard, so much so that I hadn't even stepped foot into the challenge this month... and there is WotC ... with a little itty bitty teensy weensy link for a (3d even) VTT .... I almost puked on the desk...

I love D&D, been at it since I was a pup. After NK posted up that little comic ... I decided to suck it up and go ahead and give 4e its due ... and quit b!#$$*&% about it. Even to the degree of jumping on the bandwagon and developing the favorite flavor of the month "Point Of Lights" idea... (Posts to come later on that) I love the game .. I love to map.. I love RPG's ... but I LOATHE WotC ... and sure.. its business... if I owned a quadzilliongazillionaire company .. I'd want more!.. Monopolies are a tradition in this country, but quite frankly .. I hope they choke on it... I think RRobes may be right though, WotC doesn't really want to corner the VTT market .. if they did.. we'd all be suited up in our virtual chairs, walking around in some MMP RPG killing things.... oh wait.. Blizzard already beat them to it ..

All for one... None for Them!

Torstan.. how is 4e going to affect MAPtools? what kind of impact will it have?

[jfrazierjr]

I love D&D, been at it since I was a pup. After NK posted up that little comic ... I decided to suck it up and go ahead and give 4e its due ... and quit b!#$$*&% about it. Even to the degree of jumping on the bandwagon and developing the favorite flavor of the month "Point Of Lights" idea... (Posts to come later on that) I love the game .. I love to map.. I love RPG's ... but I LOATHE WotC ... and sure.. its business... if I owned a quadzilliongazillionaire company .. I'd want more!...

Ditto your first sentence.

I personally would expect that 99% of the strong arm tactics comes from the Hasbro lawyers rather than the executives from WotC. Remember that they were the ones who opened up the core rules in 3.x in the first place. I believe WotC understood the importance of the fans and giving them choices to play the game in the way that best suites the players, while allowing the company to be innovative and still make money.

Torstan.. how is 4e going to affect MAPtools? what kind of impact will it have?

I don't think that much. I know the movement rules will have to be customized for the new diagonal rules. Perhaps someone will want to use the deck tool (not sure how it works) to kind of store up a players powers in some way and that would probably need some work to accomidate. I really can't see any hugh changes needed by Maptool based on what I know of the 4e game at this point.

Joe