zerojad

ssh83

Cameroo

pixelacious

Trivia..When Gygax got divorced all of TSR went to his wife. They put out absolute crap until selling it to WotC who still puts out absolute crap.

Trivia pt deux...TSR stands for Tactical Studies Rules. I won the entire 3 ring binder Monster Manual collection and all it's suppliments with that.

Eville1

tme2nsb

Anyways, on topic. While this is a neat idea, I don't think it will work too well in tabletop games. It seems to be rather cumbersome to bring a laptop with this program to every game. Then again, most people probably bring a lot of their books anyways, so this would make it easier to carry books back and forth (says the person with over 10 pounds worth of D&D source books >_<).

Albinobird: Running from Richard!

Neverwinter Nights I think is the closest you can get to seeing a graphic interface D&D game be fun, but it takes a lot of work on the part of the dm, and of the community as a whole to create content beyond what the original programmers did. NWN 1 is a fantastic game now due to the sheer amount of work that's gone into it post release by Bioware and the community and people continue to do fantastic things for it. What it lacks though is the ability to change rules on the fly and create new landscapes easily into the game.

NWN 2 further broke customization of armors and weapons by creating a new system that focuses on allowing detailed changes to faces height, and girth in characters. It also made it tougher for people to jump in and try new servers immediately.

That being said nothing beats yelling

Kounji

That is good news, then. Now, if only it was free, it'd be better than OpenRPG or the like. But since it isn't... Bugger that.

@Bunn:
I've played GURPS. I prefer D&D. GURPS is *far* from perfect. Very far, in fact. The system is terrible for high powered things (Drawing up a 500 point character takes memorization of the rule books or hours of reference work. Admittedly, D&D has a lot of tomes, but the vast majority of them won't apply to your character idea) It's far too rules heavy, and a lot of it feels... kludgy. For thigns that Aren't D&D, I prefer things like One Roll Engine games or Heroquest. Those are good. Also, Saga. Saga is a damned good system.

rekenner

Kirkpad

Bunn

Crazy_Buffet_Happens

Danin

dv8godd

The designers have stated, repeatedly, that the "virtual tabletop" doesn't enforce rules. It doesn't even know what "the rules" are. The game table doesn't care if you're playing D&D or World of Insufficient Light or Call of Kachooloo. It's just a table with some terrain and a grid.

NinjaDebugger

I wouldn't worry about it, it looks like it will be a nice TOOL for the gamers, rather than a rule lawyer that will restrict players from having fun.

Pips

NoBullet

Who should be more ashamed that we're the only ones referencing that- us, or the rest of the kommenters?

HootieMac: Section 9 Reject

dv8godd

rekenner

HootieMac: Section 9 Reject

D&D Insider, however, seems to be the antithesis of what makes D&D fun. I'm in a campaign right now where the DM fudges rules multiple times a session for the sake of making things more cinematic. We're still using D&D rules and there are limits to how cinematic things get (We use a heavily modified Action Point system, based on the one in Eberron) - But how well would that be translated to this? Somehow, not very well, I don't think.

Of course, I could be wrong. If this just turns out to be a virtual placemap for the characters and monsters, it could work. Of course, there's already programs out there that do that. I can't recall any name offhand, sadly. A game that ended up short lived used one for tactical combat, and it worked great.

But, somehow, I don't think this will just be a virtual placemap system. If this forces the DM or characters to hold to rules, then it utterly defeats the point of D&D. Go play WoW, at that point.

rekenner

But it doesn't look very good.

Gouki4u

It's backwards compatible with all versions of D&D ever released. Also, any other game system you care to run that would like to have a gridded board with some terrain and miniatures.

NinjaDebugger

Fishstick

Poison

Now what would make this product rock, if it was backwards compatible with all previous versions of the D&D/AD&D Core Rules (ie: AD&D 2nd Edition).

I haven't played in years though. So I don't think this would make me want to get back into playing (Forget DMing ).

xiphos

WoD was also a good table top game.

Sinharvest

NotJeff

dv8godd

I'm no expert here, indeed, 3.5E is my first foray into the world of tabletop gaming, but I am familiar with the rules and experienced enough to know what exactly makes a DnD game FUN. It's the freedom, the customizability, and the room for creativity. Effectively, rule 0 makes DnD fun, allowing you to not worry about silly rules like encumbrance beyond common sense.

And therein lies the problem with 4E; it doesn't offer nearly as much freedom, especially in character generation. I pride myself on creating interesting and unique characters that are fun to play. In general, I always have a character in backup, ready to be made should my current one die. The sheer number of classes, races, and feat choices allow for me to make someone as specialized or as generalized as I want. 4E, from what I'm reading, doesn't offer that. It seems to be mostly pre-made feat trees. For example, the fighter. At first level, you pick a weapon of choice, and that dictates how your character levels. Then, at 10th you pick a paragon path, and that dictates the next 10 levels. Then, at 21st, you pick an epic path, and that dictates the rest of your levels. It's all just pre-generated crap, so we'll only really be seeing about a dozen different fighters most commonly played. Really, it's a lot like WoW, and I don't mean that as a compliment.

Granted, 3.5E needed streamlining and balancing, but this is going a bit far here. The skill system is vastly improved, but that's about it. With a billion and a half splatbooks out there, wizards got to cherrypick gamebreaking spells and ruin any campaign. 4E's solution to this? Force every wizard to be an evoker apparently, because the fighter doesn't have ENOUGH people stepping on his toes. Seriously, this is why warlocks are so boring to play. The sheer number of prestige classes is overwhelming, and few of them are ever actually useful; the others are overspecialized to death. It looks like now, though, they're cutting back on that, but might be making PSIONICS part of the core game. Seriously, why? The game is designed as a land of wizards and magic, not psychics and telepaths. I guess the mindbender PrC was just too popular. Also, CR was just FUBAR, so I'm kind of glad they dropped that.

The last thing that bothers me, and this is the biggie, is this. Yes, DnD Insider looks like it's made of pure SUCK. Virtual tabletop is a fantastic idea, but how flexible is it? How well will the DM be able to customize the map? Can he do it on-the-fly? It also removes a lot of the benefits of imagination. A good counter for DMs with players who memorize the MM is to give vague, yet terrifying descriptions of the creature. How will you do that if the 3D model of the thing is RIGHT THERE on screen? Another concern is houserules. Rule 0 is the most important one, right? How will you accomodate for houserules in a computer program? Can you turn encumbrance off? What about criticals, or free actions, or any of these? It's not exactly easy to reprogram something, and rule 0 applies to EVERYTHING. There must be some kind of taskbar or something that lists every program in the game, and the option to turn it off. Yeah....don't see that happening.

Lastly: fees. Yeah....monthly fees? In MY DnD? Not happening. I'm not paying for something I already bought; that's why I don't play MMOs. **** that.

Now, 3.5 is broken, but 4E sucks, so I'm kind of screwed here. In the end, I'll probably give up on DnD in general; I've always wanted to run a CoC game!

Mortal-Mode

I had a 4 member game group when I was out in the boonies of Japan several years ago, but haven't met any the whole time I've been in the big city.

AlKusanagi

*crickets chirping, nobody even remembers or plays Gamma World anymore*

Komrade_Kayce

I have no doubt that devs have probably approached WK about this, but come on, they need to cave. Lets see a RPG (or even Neverwinter Nights style if they must) based on the universe.

Mok

All that's left is to see how 4e is, and how customizable this is for the DMs. Luckily my DM and myself both know a little about 3d art and rendering so if it allows things like custom textures and such(Think NWN 2) then this will definitely be worthwhile....if 4e doesn't suck.

Ajh

maskzilla

Said it on Slashdot I'll say it here... I'll buy the 4e rules when they come out just to get a taste but WotC doesn't get any more of my money, especially for crap like DDI, until they start making more Eberron books. Eberron is what got me into D&D in the first place and they aren't even going to publish a 4e version of the campaign setting until sometime in '09! Even then, I still won't pay for DDI... I would rather tote the books I need instead of paying $15/month to rent digital copies of them!

MantisDragon

DM's cannot cheat in DnD.

I could see this tool being extremely useful for online Dnd games, right now I'm playing a game with guildmates and a tool like this if robust enough would be extremely welcomed.

To use when everyone can get togther though? I'd rather stick with the pens and paper.

Morberis

Or fuck, Witz, just get someone to port a HD version of the SNES/Gen Shadowrun to the XBLA.

Komrade_Kayce

From an art standpoint, this is Wizards of the Coast. They have access to some of the best fantasy artists in the industry, so why does D&D Insider and 4th Edition in general look so shitty? The character art in the books are disproportional and uninspired. The 3D models in that client look about as good as the character doodles the quiet kid made on his character sheet of his elf ranger. You know what I'm talking about. Technically sound but just creepy... like the artist never actually saw a human being before.

wallapuctus

NinjaDebugger

Naurgul

I did play through the SNES one which was fun in its own way too. But on the Genesis one I wanted to see how they did the cyberspace and all that. D:

Witzbold

Eville1

Since for me Shadowrun > D&D.

I can see my friends who run a comic book shop back home being real pleased about this. Im kinda curious to see how it works myself.

---

Seriously though can we bug the shit out of Bioware to make a shadowrun RPG on the PC or consoles? That would be so fucking awesome.

Witzbold

I'm not actually a DnD fan, but this could be a great substitute for when you have a few hours of spare time and a DM and players are hard to find.

mcderek3000

Eville1

@Captain Impulse: At best, it's probably going to include all the rules in the 4.0 core book, and some provision for the DM to arbitrarily modify any stored variable, so you can pencil in the result of any house rule.

zorikin

I know my group wouldnt use it, cause it doesnt work with naruto d20, hell we might not even switch to 4th edition.

Iv played Dnd for 10 years, and i havnt had this much fun as i have had playing the naruto version.

I know im a geek. :)))))

Sinharvest

I haven't read anything related with this game. But I think that there can't be any limits if they just make a system where the game consist just on a computer based version of the manuals that ensures that the way that DM applies the rules are the right one. For me probably this make me exchange from using a bunch of pdf's in each game and replace it with just this game... well at least that is what I hope.

TKoTD

Feigr

Overall I think the system may be okay but paying a monthly charge (it's monthly-fee, last I heard) so that you can put your time into running games is inconceivable. (Oh, and your players have to pay too. And they all have to have PCs, or install Windows on their Macs/Linux systems.) Sure, the company run servers - but they could easily have set it up so the DM hosts and no servers are required. Why didn't they? Because they're after a monthly fee. End of.

I play in games on IRC, they work well. Everyone gets to imagine the characters, presumably they aren't imagining ugly. :) Well not in all cases...

quen

dv8godd

Not to mention the combat itself is likely to look pretty dull, if those character designs are any reflection of the engine.

D&D will always be best as a tabletop RPG, in my opinion. Sometimes technology can make for a better experience (you should see the system I saw one guy had set up with a laptop, map maker and a projector mounted on his ceiling, firing down on the game table), but I think something like this would be severely lacking.

Captain Impulse

symphony_of_the_night

Aprocalypse

Captain Impulse

Zho